Chapter 33 The Truth of the Mountain

Ghost took us out of the cave without even lighting a torch and then walked up the huge rock.

When Fatty put on his clothes, his neckline was still covered in mud. He was already tired of scolding and gestured at me several times, silently asking if I wanted to subdue Ghost, but I shook my head. Ghost’s previous agility and his demeanor of keeping his distance from us gave me a very strong feeling—even if he looked like this, his skills had to be above ours.

Just imagine, this person had stayed in the mountains for such a long time and didn’t leave. He was obviously aware of his surroundings and found it impossible to fully relax even when he saw an old friend. Although he was walking casually, he had to be very vigilant. If Fatty wanted to attack, I didn’t think the probability of success was high.

I couldn’t talk to Fatty about this, so I ignored him and told him what had happened to me before. “Damn,” Fatty said. “I tied him up tight. How did he break free? Surprisingly, that guy wasn’t a pushover. Is your face alright?”

“Maybe he had a knife on him,” I said. “We didn’t frisk him, which was clearly a mistake. Time was too short.”

“It’s bone contraction,” Ghost said while turning to look back at us. He was far away from us, but clearly heard what we were talking about. “Wu Sanxing, you don’t even know this?”

I knew that I shouldn’t talk anymore and immediately said, “No, I was on guard. It wasn’t bone contraction.”

Ghost didn’t speak again, so I motioned for Fatty not to say anything else.

After walking for more than ten minutes, a cave appeared in the rock face.

When we walked into it, we saw that it was full of clay pots. Ghost picked up a branch from the side, stretched it into one of the pots, and lit it. He then picked up another pot filled with water and poured it on the wall.

I knew what he wanted to do and immediately went to help. Soon, the water had seeped into the rocks.

The lighted branch was leaning against the rock wall and we immediately saw that the whole rock wall was full of strange shadows.

After soaking in water, the whole wall presented a translucent texture like jade.

“These are the stone men,” Fatty said. “Fuck me, there are so many of them. If they come out, we’re done for.”

“Do you know how many of these things are in this stone? Do you know their real origin?” Ghost asked Fatty.

Fatty shook his head, “Isn’t this the mountain god here?”

Ghost shook his head and looked at me. I didn’t show whether I knew or not, just touched the rock wall and looked thoughtful.

“These are all people,” he said.

“I’ll start with how this demon building was constructed. When we conducted archaeological research on it, we made several speculations,” he said. “We believed that there were a large number of underground karst cave systems in this area of Guangxi and that the Zhang family’s ancient building probably used one of these systems to develop deeper into the underground mountain range. But then we carried out various kinds of exploration on the mountain here and found that the dark cave system here was too complicated. With the construction scale of the Yangshi Lei drawings, it would’ve taken too much manpower and material resources to build such a huge building in the cave.”

It seemed that I had guessed right and he was truly a member of the archaeological team.

“At first, we thought it really wasn’t feasible. We figured the Zhang family’s ancient building was just a distinguished family’s tomb and not an imperial tomb. It wasn’t a problem of financial resources—it was really difficult to estimate how much money this kind of tomb-raiding family had—but mainly a matter of convenience. In that world, as long as it wasn’t the emperor, it would be very difficult to carry out such a huge project in secret.

“But after we explored the mountains, we found a problem that surprised us—the vegetation on the mountains here was very strange.

“The vegetation near Yangjiao Mountain was especially different from other places. In particular, the trees there were all very good wood.”

My heart thumped when I heard this and I already understood what he meant. “I heard that there was a big fire near Yangjiao Mountain during the Ming Dynasty,” I said.

“Yes,” Ghost said coldly. “They had it planned for a long time.”

The ancestors of the Zhang family had planned to move the building to the mountain as early as the Ming Dynasty, so they burned the mountain forest and planted wood that could be used in a thousand years.

What kind of spirit was this? How terrible was this family that would carry out a hundred-year-old plan?

“Nearly a thousand years after planting these woods, they grew into a whole mountain forest near Yangjiao Mountain. As a result, the craftsmen could use the local materials after coming in. You’ll find that there are many shrubs here because they were very careful to cut the trees down evenly.

“But even if all the wood could be obtained locally, it was almost impossible to transport it into the underground karst cave. This kind of large building needed whole wooden beams, but it was impossible for this huge wood to pass through such fine caves. The best way, of course, was to use underground rivers, so that once the wood was thrown into the water, it could flow into the hole. But such conditions were rare and undesirable. They looked for underground water systems everywhere, but the terrain here is too high. This is the highest place in the Guangxi mountains so it was absolutely impossible.

“You’ll never be able to guess how the Zhang family transported the timber,” Ghost said. “Right under this rock, there’s a deep vertical hole that reaches almost directly to the bottom.”

“The grave robbers’ tunnel technique,” I said.

Ghost nodded, “Uncanny workmanship. The problem was how to dig this hole. Even if there were a large number of people, it would take many, many years to dig such holes back then.

“All the wood was hoisted from this cave to the underground cave. Moreover, they also found a lot of strange ironware in the mountain crevices here that looked like very long spoons. They brought a lot of rainwater from the mountain into these gaps. We thought it was to accelerate the dissolution of the karst caves, which was also a measure laid out in the Ming Dynasty. We also found the same ironware near the entrance of the cave. Do you know what this means?”

I shook my head and he continued, “This hole was washed out by thousands of years of rain. They set up a copper ball at the entrance of the cave and made a mechanism. After knocking off the rocks on the surface, the inside was full of easily dissolved limestone. The copper ball was very heavy, so when rainwater was concentrated in this hole by the ironware, the rock below decomposed and became brittle. The weight of the copper ball itself would crush the whole rock. So for nearly one thousand years, the copper ball had been sinking continuously until it finally penetrated the dome.”

When you wanted to make a hole in a mountain and you had nearly a thousand years, many things were easy for you.

As I listened, the chill spreading through my body got worse. Was this possible? My first thought was that it was too mysterious, but my experience told me that it was absolutely possible. And it wouldn’t even take that long if the current stayed stable and contained certain chemicals. It would probably only take a few years to drip through a stone. This was also the cause of frequent landslides in many places.

I had woken up under a mudslide slope. There had been a lot of vegetation there, so debris flow wouldn’t logically occur on such a large scale because there were many cracks in the rocks. This premise was true.

But the most frightening thing was, why would anyone have such an idea?

What we wanted to know was: what kind of people were they? What kind of life did they live? What was the purpose of this terrible design?

“I’m sure they didn’t just find this kind of place. Too many changes would have occurred over a thousand years, so this place may have been one of the ones they chose,” Ghost said. “There are many such places in Guangxi, but the hinterland of the Shiwan Dashan may be the only place that can eventually escape the development of tourism and various industries. In a few years, it may be the only place to remain wild. As a result, it’s likely that only the Shiwan Dashan’s hinterland will be left.”

“Have you proven all of this?” I asked him. A lot of things couldn’t be speculated on.

Ghost’s only answer was, “No, but you’ll believe me after listening.”

“Basically, all our theories could be reduced to facts, but when the explanation got to this point, there was a big problem.” Ghost patted the edge of the rock, “That is, what’s going on in this mountain? We did a lot of research on these rocks and soon found a very terrible truth. Then, we discovered the truth of the whole mountain.” He continued, “Now watch, I want to let you have a look at what this mountain really is. Why else would I say they’ll die when they enter the building?”

<Chapter 32> <Table of Contents><Chapter 34>

****

Updated 2/14/2021