After I fainted, I lost all sense of time. I was frozen awake.

A wave of numbness and pain spread through my back, and every breath hurt in my chest. I'm not sure if a rib is broken.

You woke up.

“

I lay on the ground, twisting my head to look. A mole was busy combing its wet hair, and like me, it was soaked through.

Hearing the sound of the river flowing by my ear, I stifled the pain in my chest and asked, "Hong...Sister Hong, are we alive?"

"Yeah, I'm pretty lucky," she said, not even feeling like joking around with me.

I struggled to get up from the ground, and as I did, it pulled painfully at my ribs.

"Minor sprain, I saw your wound. No broken ribs, just a twist," a mole helped me to my feet.

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

In front of me was an underground river. My position, along with a mole on my body, was barely on the shore. The space was very small, less than two meters wide.

My backpack is gone, it must have fallen into the chasm and been swept away. Thankfully, my birthmark is still there.

She had some emergency biscuits and tools in her bag.

Leaning against a rock, I looked at her and said, "Hong Jie, thank you for saving my life. I can't swim. If it weren't for you, I would have been drowned."

"

With a mole near her side, she started taking off her clothes on her own.

I hurriedly bowed my head.

Her voice came, "There's nothing here to burn, no way to make a fire. Don't thank me yet, quickly take off your clothes and wring them out. Otherwise you'll get hypothermia."

">

Seeing me fidget, she shook her head and chuckled lightly: "Old lady, I've seen bigger guns than you. Scared of a little chick like you? Hurry up."

Just like that, five minutes later, I was down to my underwear, both hands protecting my crotch. No matter what she said, I refused to take it off any further. This was my last stand of defiance.

"Oh well, never mind," a mole helped me wring out my clothes. She wasn't asking me to take off my underwear.

Here's the cave structure. Her walkie-talkie in her bag wouldn't work, and there were no satellite phones back then. The second communication satellite of Beidou wasn't launched until 2007. So we couldn't contact Big Brother or Third Brother for a while.

Now, we can only rely on ourselves.

The cookies in the backpack had been softened by water, but now, in order to replenish our energy, we could only eat them. The softened cookies were cold and crumbly, they melted in your mouth like drinking soup.

After resting for more than an hour, I got dressed. A mole asked me if I could walk, and I gritted my teeth and said yes.

Two people walked side by side, their steps unsteady as they followed the narrow riverbank.

This underground river flows from west to east, and that's the direction we're going too. The platform that looked like a water reservoir is now gone, it must have been so heavy that it sank to the bottom of the river.

During the trip, I thought about it carefully. To be honest, I still don't understand.

Those thick bronze chains made a deep impression on me.

I know one thing, during the Western Zhou period, bronze casting was done using the sand mold method. The lost wax casting method came much later. Bronze chain links interlocking each other, enduring for two thousand years. In my understanding, it was impossible to create such a long bronze chain during the Western Zhou period due to limitations in craftsmanship.

As we walked, the current grew stronger and the riverbank narrowed. At first, we could walk side by side, but later on, worried about slipping into the water, Xiaozi and I started walking one in front of the other. She went first, and I followed behind.

Fortunately, I had bought a high-end waterproof flashlight before. This flashlight was very helpful at this time.

A cool breeze was blowing from the front, and I felt it.

This is a good thing, I thought at the time that as long as I kept following the underground river forward, I would definitely be able to find the exit successfully.

"<"Wait!" She suddenly stopped in her tracks.">
"

"What's wrong, Sister Hong?"

"Yúnfēng, look at that! What is it?" She leaned over and shone her flashlight ahead.

The flashlight's range was limited, and the distance was too far to see clearly. I could only see some blurry round black shadows, like spheres hanging from the ceiling of the cave.

"What is this?" I can't see it clearly either.

"Be careful, go take a look," a mole turned his head and told me.

As I got closer, this time I could see clearly...

It is a kind of long trapezoidal bronze artifact...

Before these bronze artifacts, there were also many round mud balls hanging from finer copper chains. It's completely unclear what these things are for.

A mole raised its head and furrowed its brow, "Yunfeng, these...don't they resemble chimes?"

(Editor in charge：it novel)