Uncle Mei was always the calmest of us, rarely getting startled, so when I heard him shout like that, I knew things were serious.

Following his direction, I looked at the dead man's neck and saw a bronze dagger stuck in his throat. This was obviously the weapon that killed him; a knife in that spot would definitely be fatal.

But what surprised Uncle Mei wasn't the way Tugou died, but the weapon that killed him!

That bronze dagger!

A shiny, sharp bronze dagger!

The moment I saw it, I recognized it—the same style of bronze dagger that killed Aunt Mei and nailed her corpse to the chair!

No wonder Uncle Mei exclaimed; I couldn't help but gasp.

Among the group, only Hongjie had no idea about this bronze dagger. She didn't understand what we were so surprised about. She probably thought we were scared by the way Tugou died.

She stared blankly at Tugou's body, frowning. "That's strange, how could Tugou die in a place like this? And it looks like someone ambushed him..."

I immediately pointed to the bronze dagger in Tugou's neck and asked Hongjie, "Hongjie, have you ever seen this kind of weapon?"

Hongjie shook her head without hesitation. "Never seen it before. Could this be some kind of hidden weapon from the ancient tomb?"

But Uncle Mei wasn't convinced and asked loudly, "Look carefully again, did anyone in Boss Wang's group ever use this kind of weapon? Think hard!"

Because this matter involved the murderer who killed Aunt Mei—after all, we had suspected that Aunt Mei was killed by Boss Wang's men—Uncle Mei lost his composure for a moment, and his tone became a little agitated.

Hongjie was startled by him, glared at him resentfully, and muttered, "Why are you yelling? If I say I haven't seen it, then I definitely haven't seen it. Why would I lie to you? Really..."

I was worried that Uncle Mei would lose control of his emotions and blurt something out, which would alert the enemy and expose our true identities, so I quickly comforted him, "Uncle, Hongjie is just a lookout; she doesn't usually follow Boss Wang's actions. What could she know? It's only natural that she hasn't seen this bronze dagger. We'll find out the truth when we meet up with Boss Wang and the others later."

In other words, only by infiltrating Boss Wang's group could we hope to find the murderer who killed Aunt Mei.

Sure enough, Uncle Mei understood my implication, took out a cigarette, lit it, took a puff, and calmed down his emotions.

I carefully observed Tugou's wound and saw that the dagger had been inserted into his throat from the front. This stab was steady, accurate, and ruthless, without any hesitation. It should have been a fatal blow.

"Attacking from the front, and being able to kill with one blow, the attacker is a ruthless person," I said softly.

"Could it be an acquaintance, so Tugou wasn't prepared?" Uncle Mei asked in a deep voice, taking a puff of his cigarette.

He obviously still believed that Tugou was killed by a member of Boss Wang's gang.

But Hongjie shook her head and said, "No way? Tugou has pretty good relationships with everyone in our group. I haven't heard of him offending anyone. Boss Wang also values him and takes him everywhere he goes, like his own son. If anyone else tried to touch Tugou, Boss Wang would definitely not allow it."

"That's strange then, how exactly did Tugou die?" I muttered with a frown.

Hongjie glanced at the bronze dagger stuck in Tugou's neck and began to speculate again, saying, "This weapon is a bronze dagger, probably a funerary object from the ancient tomb, right? If you ask me, either Tugou triggered some kind of mechanism or trap, or he was retaliated against by the tomb owner!"

I couldn't help but shake my head helplessly. Hongjie always liked to think about things in terms of ghosts and gods.

If she hadn't kept calling Professor Xu a "tomb-guarding Yin soldier," we wouldn't have been so scared that we fled in panic. Now that she saw the tragically dead Tugou, she was talking nonsense again.

I quickly denied, "It's definitely not the tomb owner's revenge, it's either internal strife within Boss Wang's group, or he triggered a mechanism or trap in the tomb."

After saying that, I carefully walked around, looking for traces of a mechanism, but this section of the tomb passage was bare, without any signs of traps, which meant that Tugou didn't die from a trap, but more likely from internal strife.

The three of us stood there arguing for a long time, but couldn't come to any conclusion. Surrounded by Tugou's corpse and Professor Xu's remains, it felt eerie in this dark and deep tomb passage.

Hongjie couldn't take it anymore and tugged at my arm, saying, "Rongsheng, don't just stand here like an idiot, let's go, being with two dead people is a little scary..."

I thought to myself, it's not just you who's scared, I'm scared too!

I immediately nodded and said, "Then let's continue forward and try to meet up with Boss Wang and the others as soon as possible."

Uncle Mei didn't say anything else. He had just finished his cigarette, put it out, pointed to the front of the tomb passage, and signaled us to set off.

The three of us then abandoned Professor Xu and Tugou's corpses and continued forward, stumbling along.

While on the road, I noticed that this tomb passage was still going downwards, and the slope was steeper than the one on the left. Considering the situation we encountered in the previous tomb passage, I couldn't help but be more careful, paying attention to the situation ahead. If we encountered a cliff, I would brake in time.

However, we didn't encounter the same situation here. Soon, we reached the end of this tomb passage. The end of the tomb passage was a spacious tomb chamber, which, in addition to a few bronze artifacts, also contained several tall and magnificent stone coffins.

Seeing these stone coffins, Hongjie immediately became very excited, because finding coffins meant finding priceless funerary objects.

For tomb robbers, coffins were simply treasure chests.

She ran excitedly to a stone coffin, stroked the coffin's thick, hard body, and turned back to me, saying, "So people in this era used stone coffins! Such a big coffin must be full of treasures, right?"

I nodded slightly and recalled what Xiao Liang had told me before. According to the *Chronicles of Huayang*, "There was the Shu Marquis Cancong, who died and was buried in stone coffins, and the people of the country followed his example."

In other words, the custom of using stone coffins for burial in the ancient Shu Kingdom should have started with Cancong's generation.

This also indirectly confirmed that the underwater ancient tombs in the Tuo River and the Yazi River were indeed tombs from the ancient Shu period.

Just as I was recalling the historical knowledge that Xiao Liang had taught me, Hongjie shouted again, "Rongsheng, Rongsheng, come and see, these stone coffins are also engraved with many paintings, take a look at what these paintings mean!"

I quickly stepped forward and looked at the stone coffin in front of me with the light of my headlamp.

I saw that the tall stone coffin was indeed engraved with some reliefs, which depicted the scenery of the ancient Shu Kingdom.

It was a group of richly dressed people from the ancient Shu Kingdom, dancing around a towering tree. It should have been a warm picture of the Shu people living and working in peace and contentment, but it revealed a creepy and eerie feeling!

Because,

The trunk of the towering tree was covered with dense human faces, and the ends of the branches were hung with stiff corpses!

This relief probably depicts not a peaceful and prosperous age of singing and dancing, but a cruel and horrific evil sacrifice!