"Run!" Lu Gouzi reacted with lightning speed, turning on his heels and sprinting backward.
Meanwhile, Old Pizi suddenly pulled a bottle of rubbing alcohol from his bag, took a huge mouthful, grabbed a lighter, and spat a stream of fuel right into the flame.
A tongue of fire shot out toward the swarming black mass of bats.
"Squeak... squeak..."
Shrieks pierced the air as the bats began to cry out in agony.
Yet even with their bodies ablaze, the bats lunged at us with reckless, death-defying fury.
Old Pizi spat out two more mouthfuls of alcohol in rapid succession.
Large clumps of flaming bats dropped to the floor with a pattering crash.
"Run!" Old Pizi shouted at me instead of continuing to breathe fire.
I scrambled around and ran after Lu Gouzi.
As I ran, I looked back to see that the oppressive black cloud of bats was still cascading toward us, hot on our heels without letting up.
Old Pizi stopped every few moments to blow fire backward, barely managing to stall their relentless pursuit.
But we couldn't keep this up forever.
There were simply too many bats; we could never burn them all.
And the bottle of alcohol in Old Pizi's hand was almost empty.
We had to find a way out of this desperate situation!
Suddenly, I remembered Dead Face, whom we had rescued from the giant bronze tripod earlier!
"Hide inside the giant tripods and put the lids on!" I yelled at the other two.
With that, we bolted together toward the burial chamber housing the giant tripods.
Once inside, Old Pizi stood his ground at the doorway with his alcohol bottle to hold off the bats, while Lu Gouzi and I each grabbed a bronze lid.
I leaped directly into the nearest giant tripod and pulled the lid tight over myself.
Pitch blackness enveloped me the moment the lid shut, and within seconds, the hollow thumping of bats slamming against the outer walls of the tripod began to echo all around.
Trapped inside the enclosed space, the noise was magnified countless times over, sounding gratingly harsh.
"Are you two okay?!" I shouted, calling out to Old Pizi and Lu Gouzi.
"I'm fine!"
"I'm fine!"
Hearing their replies put my mind slightly at ease.
Hiding inside these giant tripods, no matter how many bats there were, they couldn't break through.
Fortunately, the lids on these tripods weren't original, nor did they fit exceptionally tight—there were tiny gaps here and there, which meant we wouldn't suffocate!
I even suspected that when we found Dead Face inside one of the tripods earlier, he might have been hiding from these very bats.
The bats battered against the metal with a metallic clanging for a while, but as if realizing they couldn't harm us, they gradually grew quiet.
An absolute silence fell over the surroundings.
Only then did I let out a secret sigh of relief.
Cramped inside the tripod, my lower back and waist ached, so I tried to shift my position, but I felt something digging uncomfortably beneath me.
I reached out and felt around—it was a bone.
I remembered Lu Gouzi clearing out all the bones from the tripods earlier, so why was there still one here?
Right!
The tripod I had jumped into was the very last one—the exact one we had pulled Dead Face out of.
After hauling Dead Face out, we hadn't bothered to check if anything else was left inside.
This had to be a gnawed human bone, and my first instinct was to throw it out.
But fearing the bats might slip in through the opening, I didn't dare lift the lid.
I could only force down the nausea and terror rising in my chest, huddling in the cramped space to hide.
Yet the human bone beneath me pressed uncomfortably against my body, so fighting through my fear, I decided to slide it up toward my chest to keep it from digging into me.
The moment my hand closed around the bone, something felt off.
The surface of the bone actually had round holes drilled into it.
This wasn't just an ordinary human bone!
I immediately brought the bone up in front of me and switched on my phone's flashlight.
A closer look left me utterly astounded.
This was actually an exquisite Bone Flute!
Though devoid of intricate carvings, the surface was smooth and delicate like jade.
Crucially, the bone was quite slender and over ten centimeters long—not at all like a human leg bone.
It looked more like the leg bone of a long-legged wading bird, such as a crane.
Though I wasn't a tomb raider or treasure hunter, since I'd crossed paths with such an item, it would be a terrible pity to throw it away, so I tucked it inside my jacket.
Just then, I noticed writing inscribed on the inner wall of the giant tripod.
There were only two lines, comprising about seven or eight characters.
However, I couldn't recognize any of them.
So I took a picture of them with my phone.
"Come on out, it's safe now, the bats are all gone!" Lu Gouzi's voice rang out.
Only then did I push open the tripod lid and climb out from inside.
"That was too close, I almost lost my little life!" Old Pizi patted his chest, still looking shaken.
"Old Pizi, look at what this is?" I pulled out my phone and showed him the photo I'd taken inside the tripod.
"Where did you find these characters?" Old Pizi asked in astonishment.
"Right on the inner wall of the giant tripod!" I answered him.
"These characters represent the five notes of *gong*, *shang*, *jiao*, *zhi*, and *yu*, but it's too short—it's not a complete melody, just a tune fragment! Perhaps the other tripods have them too!" Old Pizi said.
After that, we inspected the remaining eight tripods, and sure enough, all of them contained seal script representing the five musical notes.
We took photos of the seal script inside every single one.
"If only we had a musical instrument! The tunes formed by these five notes must hide some unknown secrets," Old Pizi said with a sigh of regret as he flipped through the photos on his phone.
A musical instrument!
Hadn't I just picked up a Bone Flute inside the giant tripod?
I immediately pulled out the Bone Flute and handed it over to Old Pizi.
"Where did you get this?" Old Pizi asked me with a face full of surprise.
"Right from that giant tripod just now!" I replied.
"It's fate, this is truly destiny!" Old Pizi beamed with joy.
With that, he held the flute in his hands and began trying to play it, following the five-note scale recorded in the seal script on the tripod.
A strange, shrill tune echoed through the space, sounding piercingly sharp, much like the chirping of some strange insect.
It made anyone who heard it feel deeply unsettled.
"Squeak... squeak..."
Soon enough, that familiar sound echoed from directly above our heads.
Subconsciously, we all looked up.
Suspended upside down right above us was a dense, swarming sheet of black bats.
They were all crying out in eerie screeches.
Terrified, I thought these bats were about to attack us.
Just as I prepared to dive back into the giant tripod, Old Pizi stopped me with a single glance.
He kept playing that strange tune on the Bone Flute.
As his mastery of the melody grew, those bats actually began to circle and dance in flight right above our heads.
The bats were actually dancing to the tune of the Bone Flute.
Was our luck simply defying the heavens?
We had actually found a Bone Flute capable of controlling bats.
After that, Old Pizi changed to a different tune, and the bats that had been circling overhead instantly flew off in all directions.
"It looks like the tunes recorded in the seal script on the giant tripods are meant to command these bats! Excellent—with this thing, we're safe!" Old Pizi said, his face glowing with excitement.
There were nine giant tripods in total, meaning there were nine distinct tunes.
They could issue nine different commands to the bats.
However, since the bats had all scattered just now, we couldn't test them out one by one.
Still, a few bats that had crashed and died against the tripods during the commotion remained on the ground.
Old Pizi picked up one of the dead bats, squeezed its abdomen firmly, forced some viscous fluid out from its beak, and began smearing it onto his own clothes.
"You two do the same. With the scent of bats on us, even without the Bone Flute to control them, they won't attack us anymore!" Old Pizi told Lu Gouzi and me.