Duan Pengfei shone his flashlight into the broken crack of the coffin. He could vaguely see a corpse lying inside, dressed in clothes made of wool-like material, but couldn't make out any further details.

　　Duan Pengfei wanted to pry open the crack with something to investigate, but he didn't have a suitable tool at hand, so he had to give up.

　　Professor Chen, adjusting his glasses, looked at the coffin from all sides. He could only roughly judge the overall shape of the coffin, which was somewhat similar to the coffins found in the Xiaohe Cemetery: wide at the bottom, narrow at the top, and pointed at both ends, like a coffin boat.

　　Lingering here for too long wasn't a good idea, so Fatty suggested finding Liu Kaimin first, before worrying about getting out.

　　Fatty led the group towards the stone gate, passing through a long corridor. The corridor had a vaulted ceiling, but the walls on both sides were made of greyish-black rock and soil. The two seemed extremely mismatched and uncoordinated, as if someone had plastered soil on both sides of the corridor, a temporary construction.

　　Walking along the corridor, they came to a gentle slope. From the slope, they arrived at a larger stone chamber. Inside, more than twenty coffins were neatly arranged, all with the same shape as the ones they had initially seen.

　　Although both stone chambers contained coffins, they felt completely different. It was clear that the coffins in the stone chamber where Fatty and the others were currently located had been deliberately placed.

　　Wang Tienan slapped his forehead and said, "Ah! I know, this is a multi-coffin outer chamber (a room containing multiple coffins)."

　　Wang Tienan pointed in the direction of the stone chamber they had just come from and continued, "That stone chamber might be a hub for transporting coffins from the outside. After the coffins were sent underground, they were moved here by people."

　　What Wang Tienan said made sense. Professor Chen was also seeing this method of transporting coffins for the first time. Generally, ancient tombs use a tomb passage to carry the coffins into the burial chamber. After the transportation is completed, the tomb passage is sealed with huge stones, and the exterior is disguised to prevent others from seeing that it is a tomb. But this design uses quicksand to transport the coffins, and after transporting them underground, they must be neatly arranged. Did they leave living people in the tomb specifically to do this work?

　　There was a stone door on each side of the stone chamber. Duan Pengfei peeked through the stone door and found that the structure of the adjacent stone chamber was exactly the same as the one he was in, and it also contained more than twenty coffins neatly arranged. Several connected stone chambers were all like this.

　　Duan Pengfei sighed, "It doesn't feel like an ordinary ancient tomb. How could there be tombs of this scale in the Gobi Desert?"

　　Professor Chen nodded, "Building tombs of this scale under the desert is indeed not common. There are no relevant records in existing historical research."

　　Wang Tienan curiously pushed the wooden board covering a coffin. The board actually moved. Wang Tienan pushed harder, knocking the coffin lid off all at once.

　　Professor Chen wasn't very happy with Wang Tienan's behavior, because archaeological work is meticulous. Treating cultural relics so roughly could cause irreparable damage. However, Professor Chen didn't stop him. When the archaeological team set out, there were ten people in total, eight Chinese and two foreigners. During the scientific expedition, some died and some disappeared. Only the four of them, teacher and students, were left. He didn't know if they could get out smoothly later. Thinking of this, Professor Chen didn't want to play the role of a strict teacher anymore, and no longer blamed his students.

　　Lying in the coffin was a mummy, wearing coarse wool fabrics and sheepskin, and sheepskin boots sewn with thick thread. The hair was more than a foot long, yellowish-brown, and the skin was reddish-brown and elastic. The eyes were large and deep-set, the nose was high and narrow, and the chin was pointed, as if asleep. It looked like it had the characteristics of a typical Western race.

　　Because the mummy was well-preserved and the face was clean, Wang Tienan, who saw the true face of the mummy first, was taken aback. He thought there was a living person lying inside.

　　Fatty, Rui, Professor Chen, Duan Pengfei, and Liu Xiaojuan all gathered around, observing the female corpse in the coffin.

　　Fatty couldn't help but sigh, "Good heavens, this is the first time I've seen a real mummy."

　　With that, Fatty reached out to take off the necklace around the mummy's neck. There was a large gemstone on the necklace. Professor Chen slapped Fatty's hand back and said, "This is a cultural relic, don't touch it."

　　Fatty sheepishly retracted his hand, glancing awkwardly at Professor Chen's stern face, like a primary school student who had made a mistake. In fact, it wasn't surprising that Professor Chen reacted like that. A Chinese-American with an American background reached out to take a cultural relic in a tomb in front of a group of Chinese people. Anyone would have slapped him.

　　Duan Pengfei didn't want the atmosphere between the two parties to become too tense. After all, Fatty had helped him many times, so he stepped forward to smooth things over, "Mr. Peter, don't mind, we are also considering this from the perspective of protecting cultural relics..."

　　Fatty waved his hand, indicating that he didn't mind.

　　Professor Chen thought that there were so many coffins here, and they should all contain mummies like this. If they could be transported out, the mummies in these coffins would greatly enrich the historical materials for studying ancient China's Western Regions.

　　But the situation was critical now. They could barely protect themselves, let alone move cultural relics.

　　Professor Chen said regretfully, "What a pity."

　　Duan Pengfei and Wang Tienan rummaged through the coffin, seemingly looking for something. After searching without success, Duan Pengfei said, "Strange, there are no burial objects in the coffin."

　　Fatty muttered in a low voice, "You won't let me take the necklace, but you're allowed to touch the burial objects."

　　Duan Pengfei actually wanted to find burial objects such as written texts in the coffin, not wealth. However, there were no burial objects of any kind in the coffin.

　　Wang Tienan couldn't restrain himself and opened two more coffins in a row. The condition of the mummies inside was similar, and they were also well-preserved, but without exception, there were no burial objects, and the clothing was like everyday wear, not burial clothes.

　　Professor Chen gently pressed the facial skin of one of the mummies. The mummy's skin rebounded slightly. Then Professor Chen gently bent the mummy's finger. The finger was stiff, but the joints could still move slightly.

　　Professor Chen marveled at this and said, "These mummies are very well-preserved, even more so than those discovered twenty years ago in the sun tombs on the north bank of the Peacock River's ancient riverbed."

　　Because the camera was lost and there were no archaeological tools at hand, Professor Chen took out his personal notebook from his pocket and recorded the process of discovering the mummy and its preservation status. At the same time, he also recorded the mummy in the form of sketches on the side of the text. Fatty and Rui were very impressed by this scene. The older generation of archaeologists could still find ways to carry out archaeological work under difficult conditions. This perseverance and persistence were worthy of respect.

　　Because Professor Chen was immersed in the study of the mummies, everyone was embarrassed to urge him. Duan Pengfei and Wang Tienan followed Professor Chen to study the details of the mummies, surrounding the coffin and turning the mummies inside over and over.

　　Although Liu Xiaojuan also studied archaeology, she was never interested in things like mummies, so she pulled Rui to shuttle back and forth between several stone chambers, intending to see if there was anything else. Fatty was worried, so he followed the two of them to check the structure of the ancient tomb.

　　This trip actually led them to discover something else.