Chapter 31 The Orb – Northern School Tomb Raider’s Notes

After I passed out I had no sense of time, I woke up freezing.

My back was sore and numb, and it hurt to breathe in my chest, and I wondered if my ribs were broken.

“You’re awake.”

I lay on the ground and twisted my head around to see a mole fixing her wet hair, she was as soaked as I was.

The sound of the river flowing could be heard beside my ears, and I endured the paroxysm of pain coming from my chest and asked, “Sister Hong Hong, we survived?”

“Yeah, we both had pretty good lives,” she said, not bothering to joke with me.

I struggled to get up from the ground, a movement that ripped and hurt my rib area.

“Keep it down, I’ve seen your wound, your ribs aren’t broken, they’re sprained,” a mole helped me up.

When I had a moment to spare, I looked around.

In front of the two of us was an underground river, and the position that a mole and I were in was barely a bank, with very little space, less than two meters.

The backpack I was carrying was gone, I think it fell into the underground river and got washed away, but fortunately, a mole’s still there. She had some hunger cookies and emergency tools in her bag.

Leaning on a rock, I looked at her and said, “Sister Hong, thank you for saving my life, I don’t know how to use water, if you hadn’t saved me, I would have drowned.”

A mole next to no one else, she took it upon herself to start undressing.

I was busy lowering my head.

Her voice came through: “There’s nothing to burn here, you can’t make a fire, so don’t thank me yet, take off your clothes and wring out the water or you’ll lose your temperature.”

Seeing me squirming, she shook her head and laughed lightly: “What big guns and cannons have I never seen, but I’m still afraid of this child chicken of yours? Quickly hurry up.”

Just like that, five minutes later, I was stripped down to my boxers, my hands protecting my crotch, and I refused to take them off no matter what she said, it was my last stubbornness.

“Hey, forget it,” a mole helped me wring up my shirt; she didn’t ask me to take off my boxers again.

It was cave formations down here, and the walkie-talkie in her bag didn’t work, and there were no satellite phones back then, and the second of the Beidou

The communication satellites were only launched in ’07, so we won’t be able to contact Big Brother and Third Brother at all in a short time.

Now, it’s up to us.

The cookies in the backpack were soaked with water, but that’s all we could eat now to replenish our energy, the soaked cookies were cool and loose, that really melted in our mouths, like a soup.

After resting for more than an hour and putting on my clothes, a mole asked me if I could walk, and I gritted my teeth and said yes. The two of them paired up and began to hobble forward along the not-so-wide riverbank.

The direction of flow of this underground river is from west to east, and that’s the same direction we went; the platform that looked like a cistern is now out of sight, so heavy that it probably sank to the bottom of the river.

I thought hard about it on the way during that time, and to be honest, I still couldn’t figure it out. I was impressed by those thick bronze chains.

I know one thing, the Western Zhou period of bronze casting are used in the Fan line mold method, lost wax method that is very backward, bronze chains ring ring, after two thousand years constantly, in my knowledge, the Western Zhou period simply can not make this length of bronze chains, because of the limitations of the process conditions.

Walking, the current is getting more and more rapid, we walk the creek bank is getting narrower and narrower, at first the two of us can still walk side by side, to later, worried about foot slippery fall into the water, a mole and I changed to walk one in front of the other, she is in front, I am in the back.

Luckily, I had previously purchased a premium waterproof flashlight, which helped a lot at this point.

There’s a cool breeze blowing up ahead, I can feel it.

This was a good thing, and I was thinking that if I just followed the underground river all the way, I was sure to find the exit without any problems.

“Wait!” She stopped suddenly.

“What’s wrong Red?”

“Yunfeng what do you see there?” She came over sideways and shone her flashlight ahead.

flashlights

The illumination was limited and a bit too far away to see, all I could see was some vague round black shadows, like some orbs hanging from the roof of the cave.

“What’s this?” I couldn’t see it clearly either.

“Be careful and walk over there,” a mole admonished me with a twist of his head.

As I got closer, this time I got a better look.

It’s some kind of bronze vessel in the shape of a long ladder.

In front of these bronzes, there are also a lot of round clay balls hanging from thinner copper chains, and it’s completely impossible to see what these things are for.