ILSITM Chapter 13

“Ma Tiandong—where are you—” I heard Wen Rourou calling, the sound coming from directly above me.

Then, I heard Old Lin and Old Zhang calling from above the cave entrance.

“Wen Rourou, Old Lin, Old Zhang, I’m below you, there’s another cave below,” I shouted upwards, a little excitedly.

“Are you hurt?” Wen Rourou asked, sounding worried.

“I’m not hurt. All three of you come down. Just stand where I was standing, lift your hands upwards to support the cave ceiling, and you’ll fall into the cave below,” I shouted loudly.

After a while, I heard a “thump,” and an object suddenly fell from the cave ceiling.

“Ouch!” I heard a shout, looked towards the sound, and saw that Wen Rourou had fallen from the cave ceiling, landing on her butt.

I quickly approached Wen Rourou and asked, “Did you hurt yourself?”

“It doesn’t hurt, the soil below is quite loose, I was just startled by suddenly falling down,” Wen Rourou giggled.

I reached out and pulled Wen Rourou up from the ground.

“Old Zhang, Old Lin, you two can come down now,” Wen Rourou shouted loudly towards the cave ceiling, afraid that Old Zhang and Old Lin wouldn’t hear.

Soon after, Old Zhang and Old Lin also “fell” into the cave below.

“The person who dug this cave was really cunning, actually designing a mechanism to connect the upper and lower passages like this,” Old Lin said with a smile as we reached out to pull him up from the ground.

Now, there was a long, narrow passage in front of us and a long, narrow passage behind us.

“Comrades, forward march, or retreat?” Old Zhang asked, standing in front of us.

“The light of dawn is ahead, let’s go forward,” Old Lin said, turning his head to look at Wen Rourou and me behind him, offering his suggestion.

After walking for a while, Old Zhang, who was in the lead, said, “It looks like there’s an underground cave ahead.”

We walked to the entrance of the cave and found that it was oval-shaped, about five meters wide at its widest point and twelve meters long.

To our surprise, ropes were set up on one side of the cave wall.

“These rock nails and ropes on the cave wall look familiar, Tian Dong bro, it looks like you set them up,” Wen Rourou said, looking at me.

“Yeah, I was wondering why they looked so familiar,” I said with a smile.

“If we keep going forward, can we get back to the Pedestrian Street in Jiudong City?” Wen Rourou asked, looking at everyone.

“The passage we just walked through had a slight slope. In theory, as long as we keep going forward, we can get back to the Pedestrian Street in Jiudong City. If we had gone in the opposite direction, we might have returned to Du Guangfu in the Ming Dynasty,” Old Lin said definitively.

We carefully climbed along the ropes on the cave wall to the other side of the cave entrance.

Along the way, we passed through six passages and climbed through six underground caves where ropes had already been set up. As we continued, the passage became narrower and lower.

After walking through this passage with our backs bent for more than ten minutes, it seemed like we had reached the end.

“There’s a door ahead,” Old Zhang, who was at the front, said.

“Let me see,” Old Lin, who was behind Old Zhang, said.

The passage was very narrow, only allowing one person to pass through at a time, so Old Zhang stepped aside to let Old Lin walk in front of him.

Old Lin looked at the door in front of him and said, “This is the door to exit the passage. We climbed in through this door back then. The outside of this passage door is engraved with patterns such as the Taiji Yin-Yang symbol, and it’s designed with a hidden rotary device. But this side of the door, facing inward, is very smooth, with no patterns at all. There’s only a handle on the door, I’ll pull it and see.”

Old Lin used only fifty percent of his strength to pull the door open, and then said, “This door didn’t reset and close, because a jade dagger is wedged against the edge of the door.”

We bent over, climbed out of the passage one after another, and then, stepping on the rope ladder that Old Lin had hung on the manhole cover, climbed up.

At this time, it was just dawn, and a few streetlights were still on in the Pedestrian Street.

“Let’s go have breakfast first. After breakfast, I’ll take everyone to the hotel to open a few hourly rooms, take a shower, and rest for a while. Then, everyone can come to my room for a small meeting,” I said, looking at the somewhat tired Old Lin, Old Zhang, and Wen Rourou.

“Okay, our Duke Who Protects the Nation is going to spend money,” Old Zhang said with a smile.

Old Lin and Wen Rourou chimed in.

At ten o’clock in the morning, Old Lin, Old Zhang, and Wen Rourou arrived at my room on time.

I had booked a mahjong room for myself, with a bed and a table, convenient for us to hold a small meeting.

“The four of us came together because of our shared love of cave exploration. In the early stages, I earned a little revenue through live streaming cave exploration. I plan to take it all out and use it as our cave exploration fund. But if we want to go further, we need to establish an operations team. This will not only solve the problem of cave exploration funds, but also create considerable personal income for everyone’s cave exploration journey. I don’t know if the three of you want to join,” I said straightforwardly.

“There’s such a good thing? Exploring caves can actually make money? Then I’m the first to raise my hand to agree to join,” Old Zhang said with a smile.

“Tian Dong, as long as you don’t dislike me and Old Zhang being old bones, we both support and raise both hands in approval of whatever decision you make,” Old Lin said with a smile.

“Tian Dong bro, as long as you don’t sell me off, I’ll join too,” Wen Rourou said, giggling.

“Okay, since everyone agrees to establish an operations team, then I’ll talk about some ideas for the team’s operation in the next step. In the early stages, my live streams mainly shared cave exploration and daily life after traveling to the Ming Dynasty. The revenue from this type of live stream is relatively low. I now have nearly seventy million fans. Next, we can help fans purchase various small items from the Ming Dynasty, and we can also bring some modern trinkets from Jiudong City to sell in the Ming Dynasty, so that we can make quick money and maximize revenue. Of course, this requires us to frequently travel back and forth between the Ming Dynasty and modern times. We all have to be porters, I don’t know if everyone is willing?” As I said this, I glanced at everyone.

Everyone thought my idea of ​​”proxy shopping” was very good. The three of them unanimously agreed, saying that carrying a little more stuff wouldn’t affect the time travel.

“Next, we may also need to insert advertisements during live streams. We all have to memorize the advertising slogans. In the future, we will also need to edit the live stream videos and make them into television documentaries, so we all need to learn how to shoot videos. I am the host, and I will use my mobile phone to shoot. The three of you are assistant shooters and must carry a mini-camera with you to shoot from your own different perspectives,” As I said this, I asked for everyone’s opinion again.

Everyone thought my ideas were very good, and the three of them unanimously passed them again.

“Also, we must be good at creating and tracking storylines. There is a storyline that we need to track now, that is the ten cases designated by Zhu Youxiao, the Tianqi Emperor of the Ming Dynasty. I analyze that they may have been committed by the same person, and based on the jade dagger we found at the entrance of the passage today, the suspect may have traveled to our Jiudong City,” I said affirmatively.

Old Lin, Old Zhang, and Wen Rourou all had a thoughtful expression.

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