Chapter 44: Return to the Mortal Realm

"I'll go check!" Leng Ying spun around and made to run outside.

Cheng Xiangru quickly stepped forward and grabbed Leng Ying by the arm. "No need to check. There's no point."

Right now, regardless of whether the盗洞 (盜洞) was collapsed by the explosion or not, it no longer mattered. Deep underground as they were, they had zero awareness of the situation above and it was virtually impossible for them to retrace their steps back out through the escape tunnel.

Leng Ying leaned back powerlessly against the wall, blaming herself. "It's all my fault. If I hadn't been so reckless and run down here, you wouldn't have followed, and neither of us would be trapped here."

Cheng Xiangru comforted her in an earnest tone, "You can't blame yourself. Even if you hadn't come down then, once I saw them dragging Brother Chen down here, I would have definitely wanted to follow them to see what was going on. Anyway, things are already like this, regretting it now is completely meaningless. Did you or my dad and the others ever encounter a situation like this before? Think carefully."

Leng Ying wrung her brains to recall, and after thinking for a good while, she sighed softly and shook her head. "No."

Cheng Xiangru paced back and forth, lowering his head and furrowing his brows as he desperately tried to think of a countermeasure.

Leng Ying stood quietly to the side, watching without daring to interrupt.

After quite a while, Cheng Xiangru seemed to have suddenly thought of something. He abruptly stopped, his eyes lighting up as he turned to look at the shaman's main tomb chamber deep within the passageway. "I've got a way."

"What way?" Leng Ying asked eagerly, pleasantly surprised as she stepped forward.

Cheng Xiangru bent down to hoist the unconscious Chen Shanbu over his shoulder. "Let's go inside and talk. It's a brute-force method, and I don't know if it'll work, but I think we can give it a try."

Leng Ying put away her red-tasseled spear and came over to help. Together, supporting Chen Shanbu on either side, they crossed the narrow corridor, pushed open the low wooden door once again, and returned to the main tomb chamber.

The shaman was still sitting there cross-legged, serene, mysterious, and solemn. The fur garments shimmered with a soft luster, and the deer antler headdress on the head stood tall and majestic, as if imbued with the blessings of nature.

Cheng Xiangru temporarily laid Chen Shanbu down in the corner of the wall and turned to ask Leng Ying, "Did you bring a shovel, a pickaxe, or anything like that?"

Leng Ying nodded slightly, squatted down to rummage through her travel pack, and pulled out a folding shovel, handing it to Cheng Xiangru.

Cheng Xiangru said happily, "I knew it. Your backpack never disappoints me."

Leng Ying found it somewhat incredible. "You don't seriously want to dig your way straight out from here, do you?"

In ancient tomb construction, the technique of grouting and sealing earth was frequently used. A mixture of glutinous rice flour, plant ash, and other substances was used together, utilizing the stickiness of the mixture to build walls for sealing, achieving a hardness comparable to concrete. Above that lay solid rammed earth layers, and striking a shovel against them would at most leave a white mark.

Precisely because ancient tombs were sealed layer upon layer by these hard materials, many tomb raiders and archaeological excavation workers nowadays used explosives to blast open holes.

Besides, this was the Northeast in the snowy season; on top of the rammed earth layer, there was also the frozen soil layer.

To dig a path outward from inside the tomb using only a shovel was simply an astronomical fantasy.

Cheng Xiangru pointed at the thick tree trunk that had burst through the tomb ceiling in the corner and was growing aggressively outward: "Dig from there! We'll definitely be able to dig our way out!"

Hearing this, Leng Ying was stunned for a moment. After thinking it over carefully, joy instantly surfaced on her face. "That's right!"

In this world, nothing is absolutely indestructible. Faced with the power of living growth, even the firmest rammed earth would be breached.

Someone had once conducted an experiment: a hard and tightly joined skull could not be broken open with many tools, yet it was eventually easily split apart by a tiny plant seedling.

Looking at this tomb chamber, it had already been ravaged beyond recognition by countless plant roots. One could assume that both the tomb walls and the rammed earth layers had already shattered into countless pieces, and the tree trunk itself could serve as something to climb up on.

Digging outward with a shovel might be a brute-force method, but the probability of success was bound to be very high.

Having been bullied by village thugs since childhood, Cheng Xiangru had frequently climbed trees to hide, cultivating fine athletic skills.

He took off his travel pack, tucked the folding shovel into his waistband, and scrambled up the tree trunk as nimbly as an ape, reaching the upper diagonal corner of the tomb wall.

Clenching his flashlight in his teeth, he observed for a moment and found a gap among the shattered stone bricks.

He clamped his legs tightly around the tree trunk, unfolded the shovel with both hands, inserted the shovel head into the gap, and pried with all his might.

With a series of crisp crashing sounds, rubble and shattered earth tumbled down one after another, exposing a dark brown soil layer.

"Be careful! If you're tired, don't push yourself, switch with me!" Leng Ying shouted instructions from below.

With the flashlight bitten between his teeth, Cheng Xiangru couldn't speak, so he could only nod slightly.

Where it pressed against the tree trunk, the stone wall was severely shattered, and the soil layer was also relatively soft.

It didn't take many shovel-fulls for Cheng Xiangru to dig out a pit nearly half a meter deep. He climbed up a bit further, repeated his previous actions, and dug down more loose soil, further extending the tunnel.

After digging like this for a while, Cheng Xiangru began to feel the strain, his cheeks stiff and numb.

He carefully crawled back down to the floor of the tomb chamber, patted the fine stone dust and dirt from his head, and tossed the shovel to Leng Ying. "Your turn! I'll rest for a bit, and we'll switch back later!"

"Mhm!" Leng Ying nodded. Mimicking Cheng Xiangru's method, she removed her face mask, bit down on the flashlight, climbed upward along the tree trunk, and once she reached the top, began shoveling and excavating.

Just then, Chen Shanbu stirred slightly, letting out a moan as if he were about to wake up again.

If it had been earlier, Cheng Xiangru would have happily helped Chen Shanbu up and fed him some food and water, but now he hesitated, torn over whether he should give him another knife-hand chop and knock him out again.

"He's waking up again!" Cheng Xiangru muffled his voice, using a different tone to sound a warning.

Leng Ying quickly scrambled back down. Cheng Xiangru asked her if they should knock him out again, but Leng Ying shook her head. "No. If we knock him out again, I'm afraid he might never wake up."

"Then what do we do?" Cheng Xiangru was at a loss.

Leng Ying put her face mask back on, rummaged out a thick hemp rope, and tilted her chin at Cheng Xiangru.

Cheng Xiangru quickly put on his mask as well, and together with Leng Ying, they hog-tied Chen Shanbu tightly, also cutting a few strips of cloth from Chen Shanbu's clothes to cover his eyes and stuff his mouth.

After Chen Shanbu hazily regained consciousness, he struggled with low, muffled whimpers. Leng Ying walked over and gave him a kick, deliberately disguising her voice to mimic a man's deep tone, "Behave yourself, or I'll finish you off!"

True to form, Chen Shanbu immediately quieted down, apparently believing he was still in the hands of Gao Zhuang's gang, and did not dare to make the slightest rash movement.

Having dealt with Chen Shanbu, Leng Ying and Cheng Xiangru took turns continuing to dig the tunnel. They swapped countless times over the course of it all, and rested an unknown number of times. Not long after they had completely exhausted the food and fresh water in Cheng Xiangru's pack, after stubbornly hacking through layers of frozen soil using a rotary hammer, shovels, iron pikes, and various other tools, the tunnel was finally dug through!

Leng Ying was the first to poke her head out. Amidst the thick snow layer, she saw the sunset on the distant horizon gilding the snowy realm in pale gold; she saw the drooping branches of the willow trees swaying in the cold wind; she breathed in the fresh, icy air; and she heard the howling, jubilant fierce wind...

All of this seemed to be welcoming them back to the world of the living!