Chapter 22 Tarzan Depot

After it was completely dark, the priestess Ra returned to the "House of the Dead" with food and water for Mount Tai.She didn't light the lamp, and walked into the hut with her hands groping the walls that had been aged and the masonry was peeling off.The moon in the tropics casts a ray of light from the stone ventilation hole, illuminating the "dead house" hazy. Hearing footsteps coming towards him, Tai Shan hastily squatted down in the innermost shadow of the hut until he recognized the girl, and then went to meet her. "They're furious," she began. "No one has ever escaped from the altar alive. Now Opa City has sent 50 people to find you. Except for this 'House of the Dead', they put this The temple was searched all over."

"Why are they afraid to come here?" he asked. "This is the 'House of the Dead'. People who are dead come to worship here. See this old altar? If someone is found walking into this hut, those who are long dead will pay homage to him. So our People have always avoided this place in fear. Everyone knows that as soon as he stepped on the threshold of the "House of the Dead", he was bound to be caught by the waiting ghosts and sacrificed to the altar." "Why are you not afraid?" Taishan asked. "I am the highest priest. Only I can avoid the punishment of those ghosts. Sometimes I bring a living person from the outside world to pay homage to them. Therefore, I can freely enter and exit the 'House of the Dead'."

"Why didn't the ghosts take me away?" Tarzan felt that her belief was too absurd, so he teased her freely. She looked at him for a moment in bewilderment, then replied: "It is the duty of the High Priestess to teach and explain the creeds and doctrines of those wiser than she. Whether she must believe them is another matter. The more a man understands his religion, the less he believes it. Its dogma. And no one alive knows more about our religion than I do." "So, when you helped me escape, you were just afraid that your believers would find out that you were duplicity?"

"That's the way it is. The dead are dead, they can do no harm to the living, and they can't possibly help the living. So we must be entirely on our own. The sooner we act, the better. You know, It's hard to get you a little food under their watchful eyes, and even harder to do it on the sly. Come on, let's see what we can get before I have to go back. What a degree of freedom." She led him back to the secret room under the altar, and from there turned into one of several corridors, which Tarzan could not make out in the darkness.They groped along the winding passage for ten minutes before they came to a closed iron door.Tarzan heard her fumble for the key, then the sound of metal clanging against each other, and finally the door creaked open and they entered.

"Before tomorrow night, you hide here and make sure nothing happens," she said. Then she went out, closed the door, and locked it again. The secret room was pitch black, and although Taishan's eyes were well trained, they could not penetrate the dense darkness.He walked cautiously forward with outstretched hands until his fingers touched a wall.Then, he slowly turned around along the four walls of the secret room. This secret room is about 20 feet square, the floor is made of concrete, the walls and the floor are made of bricks and stones, and the foundation is made of granite of different sizes. , but also strong.

When Tarzan walked along the wall for the first time, he thought it was a strange room with only a door and no windows.But after groping and walking carefully for the second time, he felt that things were not so simple.He stopped in the middle of the wall opposite the door, and stood there motionless for a long time.He then walked a few feet to one side, turned around, and walked a few feet in the opposite direction. He walked around the secret room again, feeling the four walls very carefully foot by foot, and finally stopped at the place that aroused his curiosity.There is no doubt that it is different from other places.He clearly felt that fresh air could be blown in only through the cracks in the walls here.

Tarzan shook the granite that made up the wall piece by piece, until at last one piece was loose.The stone was about ten inches wide, six inches high at the protruding part, and three inches thick.Taishan removed several stones of the same shape.This part of the wall seems to be made of such square stone slabs, and dozens of them were removed in a short while.He reached out and groped for the second layer of stones, and was surprised to find that there was nothing in the reach of his long arm. It took him only a few minutes to dismantle the opening enough to allow himself to slip through.There seemed to be an extremely faint ray of light in front of him.He crawled cautiously forward on all hands and feet, and after about fifteen feet—perhaps the average thickness of the base of the wall—the front suddenly caved in, and he groped forward with outstretched arms, but couldn't reach anything.Taishan crawled on the edge of the wall and leaned his whole body down, but he still couldn't touch anything.

At last he looked up and saw a round, starry sky.The ape Tarzan stood on tiptoe again, stretched his arms and groped upwards, and found that the walls were shrinking towards the center of the shaft, and the inner diameter became smaller as he went up. This fact shows that it is impossible to escape from here. As he sat there racking his brains over the nature and purpose of the strange passage and the shaft at the end of it, the moon shone down on the circle overhead. The mouth of the well shaped like a well, sprinkled a soft silver glow.Taishan immediately figured out what kind of shaft it was.Because far away from him below, sparkling water waves dimly appeared.It turned out that he climbed into an ancient well.But why did the residents of Opa City connect this ancient well with the dungeon-like secret room where he hid in this way?

The moon hung in the sky, and the moonlight poured in from the mouth of the well, illuminating the ancient well. Taishan saw that there was also a hole in the opposite wall, and thought to himself, would he find a way to escape through this hole?He felt that it was at least worth a try, so he made up his mind to act immediately. He immediately went back to the hole that was opened just now, drilled in and moved the stone slabs one by one, and then rebuilt the wall from outside the secret room.When he demolished the hole just now, he noticed that the stone slabs were covered with thick dust.This suggests that even if the residents of this ancient building knew about the secret passage, they had not walked through it for generations.

After the wall was built, Taishan returned to the ancient well.It is about fifteen feet from here to the hole in the opposite wall, and for Tarzan, jumping over it is a piece of cake. Therefore, he quickly got into the opposite passage.The passage was very narrow, and he was afraid that there would be another shaft ahead, so he groped cautiously and crawled forward step by step. After Taishan groped for a few hundred feet, he walked up a series of steps that descended, and when he went down the steps, there was darkness again in front of him.Go a further 20 feet and the passage becomes level.Before he had gone far, a heavy wooden door blocked his way. This door was propped up on the side of Mount Tai with a heavy wooden stick.Tarzan felt he must have reached the exit leading outside.For the purpose of both the bolt and the top bar is to prevent someone from breaking in from the outside, which seems to be a sufficient basis for Tarzan's assumption, unless it leads to a prison.

A thick layer of dust had accumulated on the latch, further evidence that the passage had not been visited for a long time.He pushed the heavy latch, and the hinges of the wooden door creaked harshly because they hadn't been turned for many years.Tai Shan stood at the door and listened carefully, afraid that in the middle of the night, this unusual sound would startle the people in the temple.Hearing no movement, he crossed the threshold and walked in. He groped cautiously, and found himself in a large house.The four walls of the house were lined with metal ingots of odd shapes but identical sizes.Rubbing it with his hands, he felt that these spindles were a bit like a double-ended shoe remover.The ingots were very heavy, and if there were not so many of them, he could have concluded that they were made of pure gold.Tens of thousands of pounds of metal would be an incredible, huge fortune if it were actually gold.Taishan couldn't believe that this would be true, he thought, these spindles must be some worthless scrap metal. At the other end of the house he found another door with a bar.The bolt inserted inside gave him new hope that he was passing through an ancient tunnel to freedom long forgotten.The passage outside the door was like a straight spear, leading straight ahead, Taishan soon found that he had already walked outside the temple wall.It would be nice to know the direction of the passage. If the passage had been to the west, he must have been outside the walls of the ancient city. He walked forward briskly full of hope, half an hour later, a section of upward steps appeared in front of him.The lower part of the steps is plastered with concrete, so when he walked up with bare feet, he suddenly felt the steps under his feet changed, the concrete turned into granite, and Taishan discovered that these steps were built on a huge Hewn out of the rock because there are no gaps between the steps. The steps spiraled up, about a hundred feet high, and then took a sharp turn, and Tarzan came into a narrow gap between two stone walls.Overhead was a starry sky, and before my eyes was a steep slope, below which the steps disappeared.Tarzan hurried up the slope and found himself on top of a huge, rough-faced granite rock. A mile away lay the ruins of Opa, its vaulted roofs and pointed towers bathed in the soft equatorial moonlight.Under the clear light of the moonlight, Taishan lowered his head to inspect the metal ingot brought out carefully.Then he raised his head and looked at the ancient, magnificent but ruined city in the distance. "O Opa," he mused, "you mysterious city long dead and forgotten; you city of beauty and beast; you city of terror and death; A city coin with great wealth!" He had seen that the ingot was made of pure gold. The boulder on which Tarzan had rested stood between Opa and the cliff he and the black warriors had climbed the morning before.This is an extremely huge rock with steep and precipitous walls. Even Mount Tai would have to take great risks to climb down from it.He managed to climb down, though, and put his feet on the soft sand of the canyon.He didn't even glance at Opa City, he turned around and ran towards the barrier built by the cliff.He crossed the canyon, and just after sunrise, he climbed to the top of the mesa on the west side of the canyon.Looking far away, Mount Tai saw green smoke rising from the woods at the foot of the mountain. "Someone." He nursed, "The priestess said that Opa City has sent 50 people to find me, could it be them?" He climbed down the cliff nimbly, burrowed into the narrow deep valley leading to the forest, and walked quickly towards the direction where the green smoke rose.Once in the forest, Tarzan climbed a tree about a quarter of a mile from the column of smoke that rose into the sky, and climbed cautiously forward.Suddenly, a sloppy campsite appeared in front of him, and his 50 black warriors were sitting around the campfire in the middle of the campsite.He cried out in their language: "Arise, my children, and meet your king!" Shouting out of wonder and terror, the warriors jumped up, hesitating to flee at once.From a branch Tarzan sprang very nimbly among them.They were overjoyed to recognize that it was indeed the Chief who stood before them, and not a ghostly apparition. "Ah, Van Qiri, we're cowards," said Busuri. "Leaving you there alone scared us away. But when we've calmed down, we swore to go back and save you. At least to Those scoundrels who murdered you pay blood. We were just about to climb the cliff, cross the valley, and go to that terrible city!" "Did you see fifty terrific looking men descending from the cliff into the forest?" asked Tarzan. "I see, Wan Qirui." Busuri said, "when we were going back to rescue you yesterday evening, we saw them walking past not far from us. Hurrah, we were a mile away from them, and we heard movement. Because they were in a hurry to save you, they hid among the trees and let them pass. They have short legs and walk wobbly. From time to time, some people look like gorillas Walking on all fours and crawling like Borgani. They are indeed horrible people, Van Qiri." Tarzan told them all about his "adventures," and about his discovery of those "yellow metals."Then, he talked about his plan to get into the "treasure house" in the middle of the night and try his best to move the treasure. After hearing this, everyone expressed no objection.So, after night fell, 50 warriors with dark skin color crossed the canyon, trotted all the way, stepped on the dry, soft sand, and went straight to the huge boulder standing outside the city of Opa. Taishan soon discovered that if climbing down from that boulder was extremely difficult, it was almost impossible for 50 warriors to climb this steep rock.In the end, this remarkable feat was accomplished with the mighty power of Mount Tai.He tied ten spears tightly together one by one, and then tied one end of this ingenious "rope" around his waist, and successfully climbed the cliff. After going up, he used the "rope" formed by the eldest son to hang a black warrior.In this way, all 50 warriors were finally hoisted up.Taishan immediately led them into the treasury, and ordered each of them to carry two gold ingots, because one piece weighed about 80 pounds. In the middle of the night, everyone returned to the bottom of the steep stone wall of the huge rock again.Because of the heavy gold ingots on his back, he did not climb to the top of the mountain until the next morning.From there they slowed down, for these proud warriors were not used to the work of porters.However, they had no complaints along the way, and on the 30th day, they returned to their tribal territory. After entering the territory, they should have continued to go northwest and return to their village, but Mount Tai led them all the way west.On the morning of the 33rd day, he asked them to go back to the village and put the gold ingots where they had been stacked the night before. "What about you, Wan Qirui?" Everyone asked. "I will stay here a few days longer, my children," he replied, "now, go and see your wives and children." After the warriors left, Taishan took two gold ingots on his back, jumped up a big tree, and climbed briskly on the dense undergrowth with intertwined branches and leaves.After climbing about 200 yards, a circular open space suddenly appeared in front of my eyes.There are towering old trees lined up around the open space.In the middle of this naturally formed circular "arena", there is a small flat-topped mound made of hard soil. In the past, Mount Tai had visited this secluded and deep place countless times.It is surrounded by very dense thorny shrubs, tightly tangled vines and various creeping plants.Although the leopard Xita is flexible, he has "no gap to take advantage of", and the elephant Tante is extremely powerful, and it is difficult to "break through the wall".Therefore, it has become the "meeting hall" and "casino" of the giant ape.In the wild jungle, only harmless birds and squirrels can still see the mystery. Taishan went back and forth 50 times before moving all the gold ingots back to the "small stage" of the Kochak tribe.Then he took a shovel from the hollow of an ancient tree that had been struck by lightning.Tarzan once "followed the monkey" and used this shovel to bury Professor Archimedes Potter's box of treasure here.It was later used to dig out the box and return it to its original owner.Wielding the shovel now, he quickly dug a rectangular pit and buried in it the gold ingots the Negro warriors had brought from the forgotten treasure house of the city of Opa. That night, he slept on the "little stage".The next morning, before returning to the Wanqirui tribe, he went back to his cabin to have a look.Nothing in the house has been touched, just as it was when he left.So Taishan went hunting in the jungle, preparing to bring back the prey, have a delicious meal, and then sleep comfortably on the wooden bed all night. He walked south about five miles until he came to the bank of a small river.The river emptied into the sea about six miles from the cabin.He walked along the river bank for about half a mile, when his well-trained nose suddenly caught a smell that made the whole virgin forest shudder—the smell of people! The wind was blowing in the direction of the sea, from which Taishan judged that the person emitting this smell was to the west of him.Mixed with the human smell was another smell—the smell of Numa.Man and lion! "I'd better go!" thought Tarzan, who already recognized the scent of the white man. "Numa might want to eat this man." When he climbed through the branches and leaves and climbed to the edge of the jungle, he saw a woman kneeling on the ground praying, standing beside him was a primitive white man, covering his face with his arms, behind the man was an old man with mange all over his body. The lion was slowly approaching him.Because the man turned his back to him and the woman bowed her head in prayer, Taishan couldn't see what they looked like. Numa was about to pounce on the man and couldn't delay for a second.Taishan didn't even have time to pick up the bow and set the arrow.Fighting with a hunting knife, it was too far away from the beast.Now there is only one hope, only one choice, and at the same time this thought flashed through his mind, Tai Shan had already made his choice. A tan arm swung back sharply, and the sharp spear skimmed the giant's shoulder, and then the powerful arm threw the spear out.The spear pierced through the green leaves and sent death into the heart of the leaping lion.The old lion fell dead at the man's feet without saying a word. The man and woman were motionless.After a while, the woman opened her eyes and looked at the dead lion behind her companion in surprise.When that beautiful face looked up, Taishan was so surprised that he couldn't breathe.Could it be that he has gone crazy?This couldn't be the woman he was deeply in love with!However, it was absolutely true that she was the Jenny he had been thinking about day and night! Miss Jenny stood up.The man took her in his arms and wanted to kiss her.A murderous red mist suddenly rose in front of Taishan's eyes, and the scar under his forehead also suddenly turned scarlet. He hitched a poisoned arrow with a terrifying expression on his wild face.He aimed at the unsuspecting man's back, his gray eyes blazing fiercely. He drew the bow fully, his eyes flickered on the smooth shaft, and he wanted to shoot through that heart with one arrow. But he did not shoot the deadly poisoned arrow.The arrow slowly lowered, the scarlet scar on his forehead disappeared, and the tense strings relaxed.With his head down, Tai Shan sadly walked towards the jungle and towards Wan Qirui's village.