Chapter 49: Nezha's escape
After the meeting at the hall, all the people then received gold and provision, but they would not allow saying goodbye to other people. The secret passage was to be kept as a secret and only the parents were allow to sent their children off.
However, the patriarch did not call for his third son to send Nezha off. He knew his son and believed that it would be a problem if his third son knew about the escape route. He was considering to let the parents ran with their kids but he decided to steel his heart as that would add too much risk factor on the chance of successfully escape.
The number must not be too low here on the mountain and the people who knew about this must be as low as possible. Even his close servants must be killed to keep the secret, as the death did not talk.
The patriarch led Nezha and group to the secret passage, he found that the door was already open and mocking himself with the people about his senile easing their tension.
This should be a serious situation at another time as the secret passage was of an utmost secret of the sect that could not be known to anyone outside the patriarch and a hand-chosen of people.
But for now, everyone did not care at all that the secret door was fully opened. All their thought were about the chance to survive. Nezha with his mother on his back said goodbye to the patriarch and proceed forward.
The secret passage was dark with no windows to provide any light, people needed to hold their own torch. The passage hole was a circle led to the natural cave below, the stair was built in a spiral shape alongside the wall.
With no windows, the air in the secret passage was terrible…. No. In fact, it was good. Not as good as the outside as the building of Akkee sect was on top of the mountain but it was better than cave in his memory.
A bit of sulfur smell was added to the passage but it was overall fresh and dry and while there was a smell of sulfur mixing as expected of the inactive volcano the air was not to the point of poisonous and breathable.
Nezha surprised a bit because his thought about secret passage was different from what it actually was. He remembered about the cave in his previous life where its air was mostly damp because of high humidity that would result in the cave smell a bit moldy.
Akkee sect secret passage was built using the old cave of the mountain with the entrance built by using earth magic and bomb, the first generation built this place as a last resort when the sect was surrounded by the enemy with no way out. The passage would connect with the natural cave, that was causing the air to enter and circulate freely in the route.
Nezha was like many other people who thought that cave had a bad air with was often moldy, unhealthy, low in oxygen and saturated with toxic gases, that true but that was not likely the case.
This wrong belief came from the image people get by combining natural caves and mines. In the miner, due to the human who made artificial hole similar to a natural cave that disturbed the natural system, that often made air circulation slow or uncomfortably flow and needed aid to maintain the air to ventilate.
They added the way to allow air inside so that the health of the miners working in them was able to operate and to channel out wasted rock produced during the mining process. Also, the mine often get saturated with gases contained in the rocks that freed by the excavation work result in human death.
To prevent human loss, in the old time when there were no high-tech reliable measuring instruments the canary birds were regularly used in coal mining as an early warning system to notify miners of toxic gases such as carbon monoxide or asphyxiant gases such as methane in the mine. The gases would kill the bird before affecting the miners.
Another thing that confused people was the ancient site of the old civilization underground passage and sewers but that was another human works.
However, natural caves were unlike artificial hole. Natural caves were a complex structure of nature that had communicated with the surface through a system of fractures and small conduits, so the air inside a cave was mixed and there no problem with a lack of air or oxygen. In fact, cave air was somehow often very clean than the outside in the modern world, so much so that many caves were transformed to cure respiratory illnesses.
A little bit of note was that caves were different, not all caves were the same. Some famous dangerous caves such as Cueva de Villa Luz were very dangerous with toxic water and air polluted by hydrogen sulfide or sewer gas, a rotten egg smell like gas we all know that is was dangerous to play with. And there also bat caves, some superhero was very lucky that he did not infect with rabies and histoplasmosis.
Nezha led the people at the front and walked through the passage carefully, he remembered his experience with bat cave in the past life. Bats would go out of their cave in an uncountable number, a shocking sight for every child. It was good that he saw it when he was old enough to not cry at the sight, that picture could make trauma for a child as Bru** Way** had in Nolan version.
Nezha did not know that one of Akkee sect patriarch job was, simply speaking, a janitor for the passage. The duty was to check that the map was the same, the air flow was still in good shape and the bat was not making the passage it home. Sine the first generation, every generation patriarch must do a throughout check once a year, some may postpone or disregard their duty but the current patriarch always did it with care. It was good that the former one told the current patriarch before he went for a duel with a rising star of magician world at that time.
Nezha did not need to learn this at all, the passage was built and maintain for one purpose and today it finally achieved its purpose.
CREATORS' THOUGHTS 
patsahas
patsahas Cave was beautiful, I once visited a cave that led to a beautiful green space surround by cliff on all side.
But bat cave was terrible, I once saw numerous bats flying out of their cave. A really scary sight.
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