Shen Yuan's words made everyone feel very heavy. The number of human corpses should indeed not be only the eight we encountered. Judging from the number of bat corpses piled up like small hills, even if there are hundreds,
I believe it too.
"So what do we do now?"
I asked Shen Yuan: "You said it yourself, this is Huangquan Road. We can't turn back. Now that it's opened and closed again, we can't wait here for them to come to our door."
"Brother Ye Zi, waiting here is the best choice."
Shale spoke and said to me: "There are about two hundred people in total. Even if they come, we can open the door behind us and establish a defense line."
I don't really want to pay attention to Shale now, and I pretend that I didn't hear what he said at all. No one else would want to talk to someone who has been monitoring and deceiving me for two years.
Shale's expression was a little unnatural, very embarrassed, and he kept rubbing his hands.
Shen Yuan asked: "How do you know there are more than two hundred people?"
"I saw bat carcasses on the way here, and many of them were piled up into small hills."
Shale explained: "I carefully observed two of the piles. There were about eight to ten different footprints around each pile of hills. There were 20 piles of bat corpses there, plus some scattered ones. All
I estimate that the number of people is over two hundred."
"That's right!"
I couldn't help but mocked: "There are footprints all over there, many of them we stepped on. It's as messy as a pot of porridge, and you can see it clearly!"
"It's not hard to tell the difference."
Seeing that I was talking to him, Shale quickly said to me: "We all wore shoes and none of us had any shoes. This is easy to tell. Although there are human footprints all over the ground, if you look carefully,
There are some fixed footprints around each group of bats, as if they had stood there motionless for a long time, very clear."
Shen Yuan nodded, "Yes, we didn't pay much attention at the time. Those fixed footprints should have been left by Ren Zhu when he stood there sucking the blood of bats. According to this calculation, the number of Ren Zhu is indeed two hundred.
above."
"Where did the rest go?" Wu Zijin became anxious when he heard that there were so many people.
"They're not around."
Xue Yue said: "If you are there, I can sense it."
Shen Yuan said: "There are only two possibilities. First, after they absorbed the blood of the bat, they continued to move forward. The map on the Taiyan Monument shows that there are many nodes on this road, and each node is a fork in the road. They
It is possible to leave from a certain fork. The second possibility is that they did not go forward, but retreated.
Returning to Jingguan, and then from Jingguan to our current location, the door may have just opened at that time, and they all entered through here."
I blinked and said, "You mean, it's very possible that Ren Zhu is behind this stone wall?"
"It's possible." Shen Yuan said.
Wu Zijin jumped up and ran a few steps forward because he was closest to the stone wall.
"Actually, don't worry too much."
Shale pointed not far away and said: "There is a natural recessed place there, and there are a lot of golden nan wood underneath, which is very hard. We can bring some wooden shelves over and put them on both sides to set up a small
On the defensive line, we have four guns that can cross fire. No matter which direction the enemy comes from, we can fight back with our backs against the hollows."
"Yes, yes!"
Wu Zijin said: "We also have explosives, which will be placed on the road where they pass to blow them to pieces."
Shale said: "No, in this closed environment, the sound waves and shock waves after the explosion are too dangerous for us."
It is undeniable that Shale's suggestion is indeed a good idea in the current situation. Although I feel unhappy with him now, my own life is still the most important.
Without delay, everyone started to move. Shale and Wu Zijin went down the steep steps and started to move wood. Mao Tianlin also started to take the initiative. He and Shen Yuan found stones and fixed them at the bottom of the wooden shelf, making the two sides
The defense line became stronger, and I was lying on the steps in a paralyzed position. It wasn't that I didn't want to do anything, but the pain in my chest was too much. It was okay not to move. But if I pulled it a little, I would feel a sharp pain.
In about two hours, a simple defense line was completed. It was actually a natural depression. There were many golden nanmu shelves piled randomly on both sides. There were many stones on the bottom of the shelf. We all shrank.
In the cave, if we encounter someone who wants to attack us, they can only come in from the middle of the shelves on both sides, so our pressure will be much less.
The canned boxes were thrown all over the floor, and I forced myself to finish one box. The more I ate, the less flavorful it became, but I still needed to replenish my physical strength.
Shen Yuan wiped the corner of his mouth and said: "I don't know when the door will open. If you want to take a rest, you can take a nap to refresh yourself."
"Who can sleep in this kind of environment!" I said angrily.
Shen Yuan said: "Since I can't sleep, let's all discuss it!"
I said, "What are we discussing?"
"Boss Ye, you are relatively familiar with history."
Shen Yuan said: "Think about it, how much manpower would be needed to build such a project?
!”
"Emperor Yang of the Sui Dynasty built the Grand Canal and levied 3.6 million civilians. At the same time, one person from each of the five families was selected to serve as logistics, and another 50,000 soldiers were assigned to hold torture sticks to supervise the civilians. Within a year, 3.6 million civilians died.
Qin Shihuang spent 2.5 million to build the Great Wall, and mobilized hundreds of thousands of frontier troops and more than one million civilians, resulting in countless deaths. Of course, this place cannot be compared with the Grand Canal and the Great Wall, but there is a reference object for all dynasties.
The emperor’s tomb!”
I said: "As long as there are records of ancient emperors, when they built their mausoleums, they used manpower ranging from tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands, and even more than a million. In this place, I have only visited two gates, namely Kaimen and Jingmen.
If there are eight passages, and each passage is as long as the one painted on the Taiyan Stele, not to mention the financial resources, at least the manpower will definitely not be less than that of an emperor's tomb, and probably more, because the passages here are not
It was dug out of soil rather than stone. During the Warring States Period, when even iron tools were scarce, this was definitely a very huge project."
Shen Yuan nodded and said, "With so many people building such a big project, why is there no record of it in history?"
“Isn’t there no record of Qin Shihuang’s mausoleum?”
I said: "What's so strange about this? Until now, we still can't be 100% sure where Qin Shihuang is buried."
Shen Yuan shook his head and said: "We all know the existence of Qin Shihuang's mausoleum, but we don't know its location. And here, whether it is official history or unofficial history, there is not a single word about it in the records. Don't you think it's strange?
What!"
That's right! Shen Yuan's words reminded me that this is indeed very unreasonable. To build such a project in such a deep mountain and old forest, in such an era of backward technology, there are not hundreds of thousands or hundreds of thousands of people. It is simply not possible.
possible.
In ancient times, when building large-scale projects, there were only two options. One was to use sergeants, and the other was to recruit civilians, such as selecting one person from three households, one person from five households, etc. During the Warring States Period, the population of a country was not large. Even at that time,
The most powerful state of Chu had a population of just over 3 million. Even if Qin Shihuang later unified the six kingdoms, the population would only be 16 million.
Hundreds of thousands of people were mobilized to build the project here at once. Even if these people were killed and buried in the end just like building the emperor's tomb, their families and people in their villages would still leave behind a few words and some clues, but
Now, in the long history, there is not a word or a word of information about this place, not even a trace. This is very unreasonable.
"Prisoners of war!"
Something suddenly occurred to me: "If we use prisoners of war from other countries, we can do this."
"oh!"
Shen Yuan said: "I would like to hear the details."