Have you ever been to a tomb? You should film a tomb raider's diary!

Chapter 9 The gaze of the black stone statue: Danger is lurking!

The hidden path wasn't long; it was concealed behind a huge pile of collapsed rocks.

Lin Mu walked at the front of the group. His pace was not fast, but each step was extremely steady.

Su Nianwei followed closely behind him, looking at his broad and sturdy back, and felt a sense of security and peace she had never felt before.

At the very back of the line, Chen Wentao was being half-supported, half-dragged by two students. His eyes remained vacant, and he kept muttering, "Impossible... the direction of the rock fracture zone can't be wrong... why...?"

His scientific beliefs were shattered to pieces by Lin Mu's cruelest truth at this moment.

At the end of the path, a huge and narrow black canyon, like a scar torn open by an ancient beast, suddenly appeared before them.

This is the true entrance to Zaglama Cishan.

The moment they stepped into the canyon, everyone felt as if they had stepped from the sweltering heat of summer into the frigid cold of winter.

Even though it's only a step away, the temperature difference between the inside and outside of the canyon is at least ten degrees.

Moreover, the light here seems to be swallowed up by some invisible force.

The sun outside was still scorching, but inside the canyon it was as dark as dusk. The beam of a flashlight could only penetrate a dozen meters, and beyond that was a bottomless, dense darkness.

The strangest thing was the sound.

The howling wind outside disappeared instantly upon entering the canyon.

It was deathly silent here, so quiet that you could clearly hear your own heart pounding with tension.

"Stay close, don't fall behind!"

Security captain Wang Meng lowered his voice, his hand never leaving the trigger of his rifle.

The group lined up and carefully made their way into the depths of the canyon.

Lin Mu remained at the front, his eyes scanning the surroundings warily like a hawk's.

The beastly intuition brought by Zhang Qiling's template made him feel as if he had walked into the esophagus of a giant creature, with the rock walls on both sides writhing slightly and exuding an unsettling aura.

"Professors, look at the wall!"

Ye Zhi Qiu suddenly let out a suppressed gasp, his voice trembling.

Everyone immediately shone their flashlights in that direction.

On the smooth, mirror-like black rock walls on both sides, countless carvings have appeared, seemingly out of nowhere.

Those were not words, nor murals, but enormous, bizarrely styled eyes!

These eyes come in various shapes and sizes, including single eyelids, double eyelids, almond-shaped eyes, and triangular eyes, but without exception, they are all carved to life.

What's most chilling is that the pupils of these eyes are inlaid with a black, obsidian-like crystal.

Under the flashlight beam, those black pupils reflected a faint glow, as if countless eyes were staring at them intently in the darkness.

"What...what is this? Is it some kind of totem worship?"

Professor Zhou was also terrified by this bizarre sight.

"Gulp."

Ye Zhi Qiu swallowed nervously, feeling as if her heart was about to jump out of her throat.

She always felt that the eyes of those stones seemed to be moving.

Whenever her flashlight beam swept across, the pupils of those eyes seemed to move slightly in response to the light.

"Is it... just my imagination?"

Ye Zhi Qiu whispered to herself, blinking hard to shake off this absurd feeling.

But when she looked at the statues again, the feeling of being watched did not disappear; instead, it became even stronger.

She even felt a faint, eerie sound in her ears, like countless people whispering at the same time.

"You can...see...us..."

"Come...join...us..."

Ye Zhi Qiu's face turned deathly pale instantly, and his breathing became rapid.

"Zhiqiu, what's wrong?"

Su Nianwei, who was walking beside her, noticed her unusual behavior.

"Sister Su Su..."

Ye Zhi Qiu's voice was choked with sobs. She gripped Su Nian Wei's arm tightly, pointed at the stone eyes on the wall, and said incoherently, "They...they're watching me! They're talking to me!"

Su Nianwei followed her finger and looked at the wall, where the cold stone statues remained unchanged.

"Zhiqiu, you're too nervous, you're hallucinating."

Su Nianwei comforted her.

"It's not a hallucination! It's real! They..."

Before Ye Zhi Qiu could finish speaking, a clear, cold voice suddenly rang out from the front of the group.

"Don't look at those eyes!"

Lin Mu suddenly stopped and turned around.

His voice wasn't loud, but it was like a bucket of ice water, instantly poured over everyone's heads.

"Press your flashlights down to illuminate the path beneath your feet! Everyone, look down, don't look up at the walls!"

Lin Mu's tone was extremely stern, carrying an unquestionable sense of command.

Why?

A young graduate student asked instinctively.

"Because this is not an ordinary statue."

Lin Mu's gaze swept over the strange stone eyes, his eyes as cold as ice.

"This is an ancient form of mental suggestion array. The angle of these eyes, the design of their pupils, and their arrangement in the canyon were all precisely calculated. When a person's gaze is focused on them for a long time, it will induce hallucinations in the brain through visual and psychological suggestion."

Lin Mu paused, then added a sentence that sent chills down everyone's spine.

"If you keep watching, you will, like her, begin to hear voices that don't exist, and even see things that don't exist."

Upon hearing this, the entire room fell silent.

Everyone looked down sharply as if they had been electrocuted, no longer daring to look at the wall.

Ye Zhi Qiu was so frightened that he closed his eyes and clung to Su Nian Wei, trembling.

After a brief pause, the chat in the live stream room erupted in a frenzy.

Holy crap! A mind control array? There's such a thing?!

I stared at the stone eye on the screen for a long time, and I started to feel a little dizzy. Could I have been infected?

[Lin Shen is amazing! He knows all this? Just what kind of encyclopedia is that ancient book in his house?!]

[I hereby declare that from today onwards, Lin Shen is my new male god! He's handsome, strong, and makes me feel safe!]

Professor Zhou looked at Lin Mu, opened his mouth as if to ask if this mental suggestion array was something he had read about in an ancient book, but he swallowed the words back.

He felt that if he kept asking questions, his heart might not be able to take it.

Under Lin Mu's command, the group all lowered their heads and quickened their pace like a flock of quails, eager to leave this awful place as soon as possible.

The canyon seemed to have no end.

After walking for about ten more minutes, Lin Mu stopped again.

"What's wrong?"

Security captain Wang Meng immediately raised his gun on alert.

Lin Mu did not answer. He simply raised his head, his gaze sharp as lightning, staring intently at an extremely ordinary crevice in the rock wall twenty meters ahead.

It was pitch black there.

But Lin Mu's animalistic instincts were frantically warning him.

There's something there.

Something malevolent is lurking in the darkness.