Chapter 32 Secrets in Caves

There were piles of old wooden boxes, several of which had been opened. There was a lot of straw in them—all rotten and blackened—which had mortar shells nestled in them. All the oil paper that was torn looked completely rusted.

On the other side, I could see several mortars and shotguns that had been neatly placed.

It appeared this was the guy who had bombarded us earlier.

“A lot of them are useless,” the guy suddenly said as he watched me looking at everything. His voice was so faint that I still couldn’t tell if he was a man or a woman.

I turned to him and he handed me a military porcelain cup that was full of boiled water. I was surprised that he could speak. I figured I could accept it if he only made some strange sounds, but now he was making sounds that were so easy to understand. Then I realized that he was a human being. It was common to have a physical disability and not have a bad voice.

“You…” I didn’t know what to say.

“Wu Sanxing, you got old too.” He looked at me and seemed to be smiling, but any expression on that face seemed very strange. “No matter how old you get, there’s always someone who will recognize you, unlike me.”

I paused and suddenly realized that I was wearing Uncle Three’s mask. I was surprised that he could call out Uncle Three’s name, but that must’ve meant this guy actually knew him.

“Do you know me?”

“Well, after thirty years, you probably didn’t think I was still alive.”

“Who are you?” It suddenly dawned on me why he had brought me here. If he really knew Uncle Three, then he would’ve also been surprised to see him suddenly appear in the wild mountains.

I reflexively stared at his face, trying to figure out who he was. But I was Wu Xie and had none of Uncle Three’s memories, so I quickly realized that it was futile.

“I never expected to meet you again in such a place.” His pronunciation was very strange. It was a strong dialect that wasn’t Guangxi, but I couldn’t tell where it was from. “You certainly don’t recognize me.” His misshapen hand was flipping through the debris pile on one side and I noticed that his nails were yellow and very thick.

This was the man who had tried to steal the box from me in Poker-Face’s “former residence”.

Now I understood.

He dug for a while, took something out from the debris pile, and then tossed it to me.

I barely caught it and found that it was a small object folded with a thin coin. I couldn’t see what it was but it appeared to be a five-pointed star.

In the past, when aluminum coins were put on railway tracks, the passing trains would press them into aluminum foil, which could be folded into various small things. When my father took me to see the trains when I was younger, he often pressed several for me. But the coins were still valuable at that time, so this kind of thing was generally only done by relatively rich people.

If he was giving me this thing, did that mean Uncle Three would remember who he was when he saw this? It seemed that the other party had some kind of close relationship with Uncle Three.

My mind was racing as all the information pieced together the many stories in my head. Who was this person?

He knew Uncle Three and participated in the archaeological team’s project, so was he also a descendant of the older generation and Uncle Three’s peer? A scene popped into my head: a young man took part in an archaeological team’s project but got caught in a trap after entering the mountain. His body festered all over and others thought he was dead, but he survived and was rescued by young hunters from a nearby village. He was treated with herbs and then recovered, but became disabled and lived in seclusion in the mountains, continuing to survive. In order to protect others from such harm, he played tricks in the mountains and scared many people away. However, more and more bad people were attracted by the legend of treasure, and then the heir of the archaeological team finally appeared. He watched and waited for the perfect opportunity to show himself, while also feeling very conflicted because he had now become a monster. While threatening the team and trying to scare them off, he suddenly ran into his good friend XXX, who grew up with him. Now they had recognized each other and were ready to start mutually complaining…

What would happen next? Was he going to try and persuade me that this was dangerous and turning back was the only way? If I listened, then I would have to obediently go back. But how was that possible? I was certain I wouldn’t listen, and then he would turn against me and eventually kill me, or just watch me take risks and let me die. If it was a sad ending, then he might reluctantly become my guide and we would enter the Zhang family’s ancient building together. In the end, he would die to save me. But before he died, he would tell me, “You see? I told you so long ago. You must get out alive!”

I shook my head and got rid of these cliché TV drama ideas. Of course, such a thing wouldn’t happen in real life. In fact, he probably didn’t plan on seeing me at all and was at a loss as to what to do. Maybe he just wanted to catch up with me for old time’s sake.

But this man had used mortars to attack us. I wasn’t sure if he knew I was part of the team at that time, but judging from the merciless things he had done, he wasn’t afraid to hurt others and had no qualms with killing people.

If that was the case, then I couldn’t relax too much. I knew too little about him. In case he and my Uncle Three had been enemies for a long time and I hadn’t said a word just now, I would probably be killed. His pants were bulging, so I knew he had to be a guy.

I pretended to think and then made a slightly shocked expression, “Is that you?” I made my expression look downcast, “How did you become like this?”

“Can’t you guess?” He took a sip of water and suddenly asked, “Which side are you on now?”

What? What does this sentence mean?

I wanted to slap my own mouth. I suddenly felt like I was under a lot of pressure. This kind of dialogue was too jumpy and contained too much information. Only people with a very deep understanding of the situation could continue the conversation. I didn’t even know what kind of question he was asking. If it went on like this, I would definitely reveal the truth.

“On your side.” I thought for a while and figured this would be the safest answer.

But as soon as I finished speaking, he unexpectedly began to laugh strangely, “Wu Sanxing, will you be on my side? What happened outside to make you like this?”

At this point, I was already throwing caution to the wind, so I drank some water and said, “Times have changed.”

“Then you also agree now that all these things shouldn’t be known to the outside world?”

“No,” I said.

He didn’t continue speaking, and the atmosphere fell into a deep silence.

“What exactly happened to you back then?” I asked tentatively.

I had been thinking about this sentence for a long time. Based on his attitude, Uncle Three certainly didn’t participate in the activities here. This person’s appearance must have been caused by entering the Zhang family’s ancient building, so Uncle Three probably didn’t know the details of what had happened here. As a result, it was safer for me to ask this question.

“They gave up,” he said. “They gave up on me, but they certainly didn’t expect that I would survive.”

“You’ve been in these mountains for so many years?”

“Where else could I go?” He asked.

I looked at the debris around him, noticing a lot of modern supplies that wouldn’t have been left by them at that time. “I’m very familiar with these mountains and there’s a village outside if I’m hungry. And I still have these things.” He pointed behind him. “When they left, they dropped everything here in order to carry the dismembered bodies. I use mortars as traps and can hit a lot of good things.”

“Have you ever thought of going out to find us?”

“In this mountain, I’m safe. I can’t walk out of this village alive.” As he said this, he stood up. “Come with me.”

He took a burning branch from the bonfire and walked into the cave, which was more than ten meters deep. When I walked close to the bottom, I found a big pit that was about three or four diameters and emitting a strange smell.

He threw the branch into the bottom of the pit, illuminating piles of bones that were all yellow and mixed into the mud at the bottom. I didn’t know how many there were.

“These people have been looking for that place for decades. They must not have realized that they would die by my hands.”

I was shocked, “Did you kill all these people?”

“They’re dead as soon as they enter the building anyway. Rather than die in that demonic place, they can die by my hands. There can be no more dead people in that building. If there are more dead people, then there will be enough food.”

I looked at the pit and then at the fire outside. The two places were only a few meters apart but the bodies had been thrown into the pit. Wasn’t he afraid of the stinking odor of rotting flesh? They should’ve at least been buried. This man was clearly crazy. Did he like to watch the corpses rot?

He kept a certain distance from me, looking like a ghost again with the firelight behind him. “There’s nothing anyone can do if it’s full,” he repeated.

I didn’t quite understand and was just about to start asking questions when I suddenly heard a strange sound come from the bottom of the pit, as if there was something else down there.

What? Are there wild animals in the pit? These bodies didn’t rot to the bone, but were eaten?

As the burning branch at the bottom of the pit grew dimmer and dimmer, several skulls rolled out of the darkness.

“What’s in there?” I finally asked.

Before I could finish asking, something rolled out of the darkness, and I couldn’t help feeling dumbfounded.

It was Fatty. He was stripped naked with his hands and feet firmly tied up. His mouth had also been tied with a cloth and he rolled in the mud like a pig at the slaughter.

“Why is he here?”

“I saw him in the village. He’s your man, so I didn’t do it,” the man said. “He was looking for you around here during the day.”

“Quick, let him go,” I said.

Ghost pulled out a knife from his waist and threw it into the pit. Fatty immediately rolled over and grabbed the knife against his body. Then, he quickly cut the rope, tore off the cloth covering his mouth, shook all his fat, and rushed toward the side of the pit, “I’ll kill you!”

He had barely rushed up when Ghost pulled Fatty’s “Doraemon” from behind his back and pointed it at Fatty. I immediately made up my mind, “One of my own, one of my own.”

“One of your own?” Fatty looked at me. “Master Three, you have too many contacts. You also have business dealings with aliens?”

“It’s a long story, it’s a long story,” I immediately said while giving Fatty a wink.

Fatty was obviously very angry. Anyone who was stripped and thrown into the mud definitely wouldn’t feel comfortable at all. He cursed more than a dozen times before he calmed down and shouted to Ghost, “Where are my clothes, you son of a bitch?”

Ghost walked back, found some clothes in the mess, and then threw them to Fatty.

Fatty grabbed me and asked, “What’s going on?”

“I don’t know, don’t ask,” I mouthed at him.

Fatty scolded Ghost, “Monster, I was walking on the road just fine when you got me with your fucking sneak attack. Hope you have the fucking nerve to practice with me alone.”

Ghost ignored him and asked me, “Since you’re on my side, why are you here?”

I sat down and ran through the whole story in my head for a while. Then, I gave him the rough idea that my nephew’s friend was trapped in the Zhang family’s ancient building and I had to save him.

“Is that group of people… are they related to you?” He bowed his head.

“Have you seen them?”

“One of them was a young man with a sword,” Ghost said.

I quickly nodded, “Yes.”

“They’re dead,” he said. “They entered the building and are no longer in this world.”

I glanced at Fatty, who was trying to rub the mud off. He wasn’t listening at all and just kept swearing.

“Impossible,” I said. “He’s seen them before. They’re still alive and…”

“You don’t believe it?” Ghost drank some water, “You two come with me, I’ll show you the truth about this place.”

<Chapter 31> <Table of Contents><Chapter 33>

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Updated 2/14/2021