Mercenaries and Adventurers

The rope fell down step by step, and soon touched the bottom of the cave.

Zhao Ji held the rope with his hands and kept it still. After waiting for a while, he felt that time was enough, and then began to pull the rope upwards.

The sections of rope were pulled up by Zhao Ji and coiled into a circle. After dozens of pulls, the end of the rope with the bird tied to one end of the rope was finally pulled up.

At this time, the moon came out one by one. Zhao Ji took advantage of the bright moonlight to hold the birds tied with strings in his hand and observe them carefully.

The bird was warm to the touch and was turning its head to stare at him. Zhao Ji was relieved to see that the bird was still alive. It seems that it is relatively safe under the tree hole, and there is nothing wrong with the animals going down.

Zhao Ji fulfilled his promise and untied the string that bound the bird. As soon as the rope was untied, the bird lay down on the spot and flapped its wings a few times, then walked around a few times to make sure that it was not restrained, and then flew away by flapping its wings violently.

Watching the bird fly away, Zhao Ji untied the string tied on the rope, the rope remained in place, and the string was put away.

Climbing down along the fixed rope on the outer skin of the tree stump, Zhao Ji took a nap in the afternoon, but now he has no sleepiness and is full of energy. He kindled the campfire, and sat by the fire, tinkering with the felled tree trunks.

He heard from the lady who provided the clues that the opening of the ruins was in mid-air, and if he wanted to go in and out for inspection later, he would definitely need a ladder to make it easier for him to walk up and down.

Zhao Ji used two relatively straight tree trunks as the left and right supporting bodies of the ladder, and used thicker branches as the horizontal bars for the ladder to collapse. Zhao Ji originally wondered if he could make this ladder without relying on rope binding. But he quickly gave up. His trunks and branches have not been dried in the sun, and there is still a lot of water inside the tree. It is okay for simple use, but he wants to rely entirely on them to form a wooden tree. Ladders, the material is still not hard enough and tough enough.

Zhao Ji had no choice but to take out a lot of ropes and completely tie the ladder into shape. The final product looked really ugly. Zhao Ji carried this ugly wooden ladder and leaned against the huge tree stump next to the camp. He carefully found a good angle and leaned it against the bark of the tree stump, then grasped the sides of the ladder tightly, and stepped on the ladder's crossbar with his feet.

After climbing a few floors, it was okay, he tied the rope very firmly, and the whole ladder was not crushed by his weight. Zhao Ji was reluctantly satisfied.

The rest of the night passed while Zhao Ji was practicing swordsmanship and spear use.

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The next morning, Zhao Ji barely crawled out of the warm sleeping bag, and it was already dawn outside.

Walking out of the burrow where he slept, Zhao Ji stretched his waist, moved his body, followed the residual heat of the campfire last night, heated up the food he was carrying and ate it hastily.

Zhao Ji shook the water bottle, and checked the other water bottles he was carrying. He didn't have much drinking water reserves. He probably had to go out to find water sources tomorrow after drinking today.

Zhao Ji saved the last sip of water in the morning before putting away the kettle.

I was about to go down into the tree hole. Zhao Ji checked the weather and found that it was still cold and foggy, but there were not many clouds in the sky. It is estimated that it will not rain today. Zhao Ji packed up the things he should bring in his backpack and started working.

After climbing the top of the huge tree stump along the somewhat slippery rope, Zhao Ji took a break and dropped the other end of the rope. This time he didn't leave any ropes on it, and all the ropes fell down.

Finally, Zhao Ji looked at the dark bottom of the tree hole, and finally decided to go down.

With the backpack on his back and the long sword at his waist secured, Zhao Ji grabbed the rope and slowly hung his whole body on it. It's not that he doesn't want to grab the rope with both hands and step on the wall with his pedals, but because the inner wall of the tree stump is quite slippery due to the cold fog in the morning,

Make him a little worried.

That being the case, it might as well go down directly by the rope. He tied a knot every 30 centimeters on the rope. These short knots are just convenient for people to climb up and down.

Moving down a little bit, Zhao Ji quickly entered a place where the outside light could not reach, Zhao Ji felt as if he was sliding down the stomach in the esophagus of a giant.

As he moved down, he found some cracks in the inner wall of the stump, and there seemed to be something in the cracks.

Strong curiosity made him lean his head over to take a look, ah, it turns out that there are some bats huddled together in these tiny cracks. They are huddled together, and they are still huddled upside down, which looks quite interesting.

Zhao Ji didn't want to disturb these dormant bats, after all, he didn't know if these bats were clean or not.

He continued to fall.

Thirty meters is not a long way after all, even if Zhao Ji moved down carefully, he still fell to the bottom very quickly.

It was pitch black all around, and Zhao Ji couldn't see anything clearly. He sniffed, and unexpectedly, the surrounding air was very fresh. He stretched out his hand and stood still in the dark air. Zhao Jineng could feel the slight air flow from his fingertips.

It seems that the structure under the tree hole is still very complicated, and there are other places other than the hole on the head to communicate with the outside.

Taking out the prepared torch from the backpack, Zhao Ji took out the kindling and flint in the dark. Zhao Ji had already practiced the movement of lighting a fire in the dark, and soon, he started lighting a kindling. Then the torch was stretched to the slightly lit kindling, and the torch was then ignited.

The torches were greased with tallow so that they burned vigorously and brightly.

Everything around is illuminated.

Zhao Ji first lowered his head to check his feet by the light. He found that under his feet were some rather hard broken stone-like things. Picking up one and taking it to him for careful observation, Zhao Ji discovered that it was actually not a stone, but a petrified tree trunk.

Stretching out his hand and pinching it, the petrified tree trunk in his hand shattered a lot. Zhao Ji nodded, and confirmed why these tree stumps are hollow, because their trunks are not completely petrified, and they shatter when pinched, and they are not strong at all.

Zhao Ji turned around and knocked on the skin of the tree stump behind him. There was a loud sound, and the skin was too strong, as hard as it was made of latte.

Raising the torch, Zhao Ji began to slowly explore the surroundings.

In fact, there is nothing to explore around, and the surrounding space is not large, so Zhao Ji carefully inspected the surrounding area in a few minutes.

No piles of bat droppings, no mid-air elf relics, no bats in abundance.

Obviously, the huge stump next to his root camp was not the stump where the ancient elf ruins were.

Four out of one, leaving three.

There were not other things around. Zhao Ji found some small holes in the surroundings, which were probably the holes that had not been completely petrified in the center of the thick tree roots. Zhao Ji probed inside, and the inside got smaller and smaller, and soon he couldn't move forward.

When he walked to the falling rope again, Zhao Ji regretted that he didn't find anything. Looking up, the sky above his head was completely circled by tree stumps, as if he was in a huge well now.

Thinking of an idiom from the previous life, Zhao Ji smiled and shook his head, he is not that ignorant frog.

Slowly climbing up along the way, Zhao Ji climbed the rope arch by arch. The knot he had tied on the rope before was very convenient for climbing up.

Soon, Zhao Ji climbed to the top of the stump again.

It's a pity that the door is not popular.

He untied the rope from where it had been fastened, and left only a rope hanging from it at the end. Then he crawled under the stump. This time he had to be careful, because this time the rope was alive.

Zhao Ji grasped the two ropes in his palm and slowly climbed down. When he was almost on the ground, he let go and jumped to the ground.

He stretched out his hand to grab one of the two ropes and pulled it backwards. Soon, the other rope went up, and soon fell down.

Zhao Ji gathered up the ropes, coiled them up again and put them on his back obliquely. Looking at the sky, Zhao Ji decided that this morning he would finish investigating the remaining three tree stumps and find the ancient elf ruins.

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It was really bad luck, Zhao Ji only found the ancient elf ruins at the last huge tree stump.

He didn't expect that the tree stump with the remains of the ancient elves turned out to be the first tree stump near the entrance of the crack in the valley. The surface of this huge tree stump is full of large and small cracks, even if you don't need a rope to climb up and down, you can simply climb up and down with your bare hands.

There was basically nothing at the bottom of the other three huge tree stumps. Zhao Ji only found some strange mushrooms at the bottom of one of the tree holes. That kind of mushroom is one meter high, and it feels a little hard. I don't know if it is so hard because it is rooted in the petrified tree trunk debris.

Zhao Ji couldn't see the effect of these mushrooms, so he cut them off from the root with a dagger, and carried them out of the tree hole one by one. In order to preserve the mushrooms, Zhao Ji put them in the camp near the campfire and tried to dehydrate them.

When he was on top of the stump where the ancient elf ruins were found, Zhao Ji could tell that he had found what he was looking for.

Because sitting on the top of the stump, you can see that there is an artificial hole where the sun can shine. The hole is a regular hexagonal passage, and the sunlight is reflected on it.

Zhao Ji excitedly judged that the thing reflecting sunlight at the entrance of the cave might be some decorative silver.

Finally, he finally found the ruins. It was really not easy this morning. He searched for three times in a row but failed to find them. He wondered if he had been cheated. Fortunately, in the fourth tree hole, there is indeed the hole that the clue provider mentioned.

The bottom here must be full of bat feces as said. Zhao Ji looked at the dense cracks on the outer wall of the stump, and estimated that they were full of hibernating and resting bats. Indeed, this tree stump is indeed more convenient for bats to make a nest than other tree stumps, and the bottom is probably full of thick bat droppings.

The hole in the stump is not high, which is probably one of the reasons why the man fell and was not injured.

Zhao Ji looked down, and estimated that there could be more than ten meters, neither high nor low, and he still needed a rope to go down.

Zhao Ji firmly fixed the rope to a crack at the top of a tree stump, and both ends of the rope fell down. Then he climbed down the tree stump, returned to the camp, took out a captured bird, looked at the last bird in the cage, and planned to roast it and eat it, but now that he thought about it, he still took it. It is better used as an exploration in the ruins, after all, there is no need to catch new birds.

Bringing the tied bird with him, Zhao Ji picked up two flammable branches and climbed up again.

First, throw a burning branch to detect whether the bat droppings underneath will produce burning gas.

As the fallen branches gradually extinguished, Zhao Ji let go of half of his heart.

Then the bound bird was placed at the bottom of the tree hole along the rope, which is used to detect whether there is air underneath for animals to breathe.

This time, Zhao Ji waited for a long time before pulling the rope up.

The bird that fell at the bottom of the rope was alive and well, chirping and cursing for some reason. Zhao Ji scratched his head and untied it. The freed bird flew around Zhao Ji several times, screamed fiercely and flew away.

After coughing a few times in embarrassment, Zhao Ji can go on boldly now.

Just like the previous few times of descending the rope, Zhao Ji leaned his back against the wall, stepped on the knotted part of the rope with his feet, and descended bit by bit.

After Zhao Ji landed at the bottom of the tree hole, he found that the smell here was not pleasant, but it was within the range that humans could bear. There was no cough or weakness in his body.

It was noon now, the sun was shining fiercely, and the surroundings could be roughly seen clearly at the bottom of the tree hole.

Zhao Ji looked around and found that he was now stepping on thick and hard bat droppings. These gray-black feces all over the ground have been piled up for a long time, and they are quite firm when stepped on. Zhao Ji stomped his feet, and the touch under his feet was firm and powerful.

Searching around, Zhao Ji found some scattered metal stuck in the gaps on the walls of the surrounding tree holes. Zhao Ji carefully dug them out with a dagger and a long sword.

Take it in your hand and look at it. It is silver among silver coins.

Zhao Ji laughed. Just these few pieces of scattered silver can be exchanged for at least seven or eight silver coins. After all, silver coins are mixed with other metals, not all silver.

Because there were some bat feces on the scattered silver, Zhao Ji had no choice but to put them into the backpack instead of the money bag inside his clothes.

Zhao Ji searched the bottom carefully for a few times, and found some small pieces of silver scattered in the gaps around the edges. Zhao Ji stared at the large piece of bat droppings underneath, wondering if there were more pieces of silver buried under the thick bat droppings.

Zhao Ji thought about it for a while, and felt that it was too slow for him to dig these bat feces by himself. At least five or six people were needed to do it. There must be a person on the ground outside to crush the large pieces of feces with tools such as a pulverizer, and one person will carefully look for the scattered silver in the end.

In this way, Zhao Ji estimated that it would take about a month to dig out all the feces below.

Shaking his head, Zhao Ji stopped thinking about those things. He raised his head and looked at the entrance of the ruins in the middle of the wall, judging how high this entrance could be, and whether the ladder he made should be higher.