Old Mo used the compass to determine the orientation based on the angle calculated by Xiao Lou.
To reach the location of Tianquan Star as quickly as possible, Yu Hanjiang activated his Lightness Skill Card and took Xiao Lou with him, Lao Mo took Liu Qiao, and Lu Jiuchuan also rode the Vermilion Bird. The group quickly traveled 30 meters due north and then continued to move due west.
Although there will be many forks in the road, with Compass positioning, as long as you keep your direction accurate, you won't go the wrong way.
On the other side, Ye Qi and Shao Qingge both had teleportation cards, Long Sen and Qu Wanyue could use " Long Jump Master " to jump 8 meters at a time, Chu Huaying's own movement speed was very fast, and Gui Yuanzhang's brush could also generate air currents to assist in flight. Everyone also traveled quickly along the direction and distance Xiao Lou had indicated.
In less than three minutes, Gui Yuanzhang and his six companions arrived in front of a stone chamber.
Xiao Lou and his group also happened to be walking from another direction.
Ye Qi exclaimed excitedly, "It seems Professor Xiao's prediction was correct! This should be the location of Tianquan Star, right?!"
Xiao Lou nodded: "Let's go in and take a look."
The stone gate was tightly shut and could not be pushed open.
There is an intricate "chessboard" on the door, covered with white pebbles of the same size. The pebble in the very center at the top is fixed, while the pebbles around it are arranged in a very chaotic manner.
Lu Jiuzhou stroked his chin, looked at the chessboard on the stone gate, and asked, "Is it a Go endgame?"
Yu Hanjiang immediately denied it: "No. Go has black and white stones, but this board only has white stones. How can you play Go with only one color of stones?"
Lu Jiuchuan wasn't embarrassed by his wrong guess; he just laughed and asked, "What are they? Do these pebbles represent stars?"
Gui Yuanzhang walked up to the stone gate and took a closer look. He nodded in confirmation of Lu Jiuchuan's conjecture: "It should be a star map mechanism."
Xiao Lou observed for a moment and said, "The star map mechanism: all the white stones represent a star. We need to reset the star map to open this door. The white stone in the very center is fixed..."
Gui Yuanzhang asked, "Is it the missing celestial star?"
Xiao Lou thought for a moment and said, "It's right in the middle at the top, or it could be the North Star."
After saying that, he gently touched the stone in the middle with his hand and found that the stone could not be moved.
For the ancients, the North Star was a very important reference point for determining direction.
When traveling at night, if you can find the north star in the sky, that is due north. The opposite direction is due south. North is up, south is down, west is left, and east is right. This way you can determine your exact location and avoid getting lost.
Given the star map related to the North Star, and the theme of this tomb being "seven stars surrounding the moon," it's clear that what they needed to reconstruct on the star map was the trajectory of the " big dipper."
The moment Xiao Lou touched the North Star, the star map in front of him suddenly changed.
Two white stones move on the chessboard and eventually stop in the bottom right corner, with the line connecting them pointing directly at the north star.
Xiao Lou said, "This is a prompt that helped us locate the stars Tian Shu and Tian Xuan."
After all, many Challengers don't draw maps while navigating the maze like Xiao Lou and his group, and they might not be able to analyze that the connection between the lower-level living burial tombs is a sign of the Big Dipper. That's why the star map mechanism at this stone gate provides Challengers with some clues.
Seeing the North Star in the due north direction and then the line connecting the two points below, it's easy to deduce that this is the shape of Big Dipper.
No matter how Big Dipper changes, the "spoon" part of the sieve will always be aligned with the north star. Now that Dubhe and Merak have been located, restoring the other stars will not be difficult for Xiao Lou.
The line connecting Tian Shu and Tian Xuan forms an obtuse angle with Tian Ji star, and further to the side is Tian Quan star...
Xiao Lou stretched out his slender fingers, and following the "sifter" pattern in his memory, picked up the stones on the chessboard and quickly pieced together a star map of a " big dipper formation".
Once the star map was completed, a soft light shone on the chessboard.
The mechanism of the stone gate was indeed unlocked, and everyone heard a "rumble" as the stone gate rose.
They exchanged glances. Tang Ci cautiously placed the mechanical ant into the stone chamber first to check for any trigger mechanisms. After the ant circled around and confirmed it was safe, Yu Hanjiang and Lu Jiuchuan were the first to enter the stone chamber.
The other teammates followed closely behind.
This stone chamber is about 100 square meters and very spacious. A ring of eternal lamps illuminates the entire chamber. On the platform in the very center sits a stone coffin. The coffin is larger than the live burial coffin found in the lower level, and its surface is covered with many strange runes.
Xiao Lou looked closely at the talismans, which seemed to match the totems found on the lower level of the burial coffin.
Just then, the entire stone chamber suddenly began to shake violently, and everyone was shaken so badly that they almost lost their footing. Yu Hanjiang quickly steadied Xiao Lou and said, "It seems that this maze is about to collapse. We have to hurry!"
The eternal flame flickered incessantly, and some lime was falling from the roof like snowflakes. Clearly, the explosion had affected the upper tomb chamber, and it was about to collapse.
Realizing the seriousness of the situation, Xiao Lou hurriedly said, "Everyone, split up and check the surrounding walls. Hanjiang, see if you can open this stone coffin!"
Yu Hanjiang nodded, his Lightness Skill teleporting him to the front of the sarcophagus. He raised his military knife and slashed horizontally with force—
The entire coffin lid was instantly cleaved in two by his immense force.
Xiao Lou stepped forward and looked inside the coffin—there lay a skeleton, surrounded by burial goods such as gold, silver, jewels, and jade ornaments, each piece seemingly priceless. Seeing this, Shao Qingge couldn't help but ask, "Can we sell these valuables?"
Xiao Lou said, "Don't move for now."
He used his hands to move the treasures aside, revealing the complete skeleton inside the stone coffin.
Judging from the shape of the pelvis and the condition of the bones, this should be an elderly man. Obvious degenerative changes can be seen at the edges of the vertebrae, and the initial estimate is that he is over 50 years old.
Moreover, and most importantly, only his torso remained of his remains—his head had vanished.
Where is his head?
Seeing this, the teammates exchanged bewildered glances, and Ye Qi couldn't help but ask, "This corpse has no head?"
Xiao Lou stared at the skeleton thoughtfully. Yu Hanjiang said, "This Weekly Secret Chamber is called [ Tomb of the Headless General ]. Could this headless skeleton be the tomb's occupant?"
As soon as he finished speaking, the stone coffin suddenly moved to the side, revealing a downward staircase.
Ye Qi's heart leaped with joy: "This must be the exit from the maze, right?"
Just as his teammates were about to go down to check, Xiao Lou suddenly said, "Don't go down, something's wrong."
He looked at the headless skeleton in the coffin and said with a puzzled tone, "The ancients valued leaving a complete body after death. His tomb was built so luxuriously, with not only a six-path reincarnation mechanism, but also a seven-star-surrounded coffin as a burial item on the lower level. Obviously, he wanted to ascend to heaven and be in eternal bliss after death... How could he have separated his head from his body?"
Ye Qi quickly retracted the foot he had stepped out: "That makes sense. Dying without a complete corpse should be the most taboo thing for the ancients."
Gui Yuanzhang nodded in agreement, saying, "That's certainly unreasonable. This skeleton is headless. Perhaps he offended someone in life, and his head was chopped off by his enemies during the burial?"
Ye Qi wondered, "His head was chopped off during burial? If there was really such a deep-seated hatred, why would they only chop off his head? They would have definitely torn his body to pieces and fed it to the dogs. Would they really let him lie comfortably in the tomb?"
Indeed, with such deep-seated hatred, how could one simply cut off the head and then properly bury the person in a tomb?
As Ye Qi said, if it were truly an enemy, the body would surely be left to rot in the wilderness, to be devoured by wild dogs.
Gui Yuanzhang said, "There is another possibility—this is actually a decoy coffin."
Upon hearing Senior Gui's words, Xiao Lou immediately realized: "That's right, the person in this coffin is not the tomb owner. He placed a stone coffin here and put a headless corpse inside as a smokescreen to mislead tomb raiders!"
Sleight of hand was a common technique used in ancient tombs.
To prevent future generations from robbing the tomb, they would usually place fake coffins and corpses to confuse tomb raiders, while the real tomb owner would often hide in a more secluded place.
This week's route was called " Tomb of the Headless General." After many twists and turns, the group finally found the central burial chamber and discovered a large amount of gold and silver treasures, as well as headless bones. Many people naturally assumed they had found the tomb's occupant and the exit from the labyrinth. Without careful consideration, they might very well have fallen down those steps...
Tang Ci released his mechanical ant: "Let me scout ahead."
As the mechanical ant descended the steps, a sudden "whoosh" sound filled the air. Xiao Lou placed the drone monitoring card on the mechanical ant, and everyone witnessed a chilling scene through the card's monitoring screen—
Going down from here, you'll find yourself in a labyrinthine room filled with a hail of arrows!
Once Challenger steps onto the stone slabs of the secret chamber, a mechanism will be triggered, and the surrounding walls will shoot out a dense barrage of poison arrows, leaving no room for escape. A slight misstep could even turn him into a pincushion...
Ye Qi watched in horror: " Diamonds is such a swindler, pulling this trick at the very end!"
Lu Jiuchuan muttered under his breath, "I told you she was a pervert."
Fortunately, Xiao Lou and Senior Gui calmly thought things through. If they had panicked and run down the steps in a panic because they were worried about the maze collapsing... anyone with a slightly slower reaction time would have been shot to death in the maze by a hail of arrows.
Yu Hanjiang frowned: "If this is fake, then where is the real tomb owner?"
Xiao Lou asked, "Did you find anything on the surrounding walls?"
Chu Huaying said, "We've searched the entire area; there are no hidden compartments or traps."
Xiao Lou raised his head and looked up at the top of the coffin.
Since there are no mechanisms on the walls of the stone chamber, and the secret chamber below is a deliberately misleading "arrow rain chamber," the most likely explanation is that there is another mechanism above it, where the true tomb owner is buried.
Xiao Lou looked closely at the roof.
The roof resembles an astrolabe, covered with numerous stone-like decorations. One of the largest stones could be considered the North Star. Following the direction of the astrolabe on the stone gate, we found stones arranged in a " big dipper array." These seven stones were noticeably brighter than the surrounding stones.
The Big Dipper formation has many empty spaces around it, like grooves.
Those grooves... their shapes look somewhat familiar? Some are round, and some are crescent-shaped...
Xiao Lou recalled the ornaments representing different tribes that they had found in the burial coffin, and a thought flashed through his mind. He asked, "Senior Gui, did you bring everything you found in the burial coffin?"
Gui Yuanzhang reached out and handed the bracelet and pendant, which were decorated with totem patterns, to Xiao Lou.
Xiao Lou took out the wooden comb and jade pendant she had found from her pocket, looked at Yu Hanjiang, and pointed to the star map next to the roof.
He looked at the groove and said, " Hanjiang, try to see if you can put these things into the groove in the roof."
Yu Hanjiang Lightness Skill activated, placing the four "tokens" into the slot—
One of the recesses can hold a bracelet; the semi-circular one holds a wooden comb; the round one holds a jade pendant; and there is a pendant-shaped one for the wolf tooth pendant that Gui Yuanzhang found.
The four items fit perfectly into the four slots!
Xiao Lou smiled and said, "The items found in the coffin of the living burial are the keys to the final tomb."
As the props were placed in, a rumbling sound reached everyone's ears, and the stone slabs above their heads suddenly parted to the sides, revealing a square skylight large enough for one person to pass through.
Old Mo suddenly realized: "There's another layer above. It seems this tomb actually has a three-layer structure?"
To avoid being tricked again, Tang Ci quickly released the drone to scout. Soon, the drone flew back to his hand, and the camera recorded the general images he saw in the stone chamber. Tang Ci said, "There is another stone coffin in the secret chamber above."
—This is the true owner of the ancient tomb!
******