Chapter 64 The Ultimate Secret

As we walked over, we saw from a distance that there really was a person lying in front of the old woman.

Little Brother? An ominous thought flashed through my mind, but I immediately knew that it was impossible. It wasn’t that he wasn’t here, it was that he couldn’t be here.

The person was completely covered in that glue-like black mud and surrounded by several vines. When Fatty tore them off, three bronze chains were revealed.

It was these three chains that affixed the person here and prevented them from being washed out with the mud earlier.

The person was curled up and looked very fat. We weren’t even sure if they were a real person.

“What the hell is it? Is there really a diarrhea god here?” Fatty asked. “Did it collapse and die here?”

“You mean to say that those things from just now were produced by this person? Then how long did he have to work at it?”

“Haven’t you heard the song, ‘I want to pull for another five hundred years’?” Fatty asked. Zhang Haixing sighed and looked at the ceiling, obviously speechless.

“Don’t do that, old sister,” Fatty said. “These jokes aren’t a reflection of our professional skills but help liven the atmosphere.”

“Cut the crap and let’s see what it is,” Zhang Haixing said. “Aren’t you tired of acting like a comedic duo?”

“Artists are very daring.” Fatty gave me and Zhang Haixing a look before he reached out and touched the person.

The person’s body was hard and their skin didn’t appear to have any indentations. We could clearly see Fatty exerting strength in his hand, but there weren’t any changes.

“Petrified,” Fatty said, obviously relieved. “It’s not alive, and even if it was, it can’t move. We can even get away with peeing on him.”

“Are you sure? Maybe it’s Diamond Brother.”(1) My heart felt like it was about to leap out of my throat but I still forced myself to make one-liners.

“We’ll know just by looking at its face if we’re dreaming. If we are, I hope it’s Astro Boy.” Fatty imitated tearing a mask off his face as he said this. He and I glanced at each other, neither one willing to reach out and make a move.

Zhang Haixing looked at us, “Aren’t you fucking funny? Do you want to go get a cup of milk to strengthen your courage and then come back?” As she said this, she stretched her hand towards the person’s face.

Fatty quickly grabbed her, “If this is a place belonging to a god, the glory of lifting the veil belongs to me. I recklessly follow Mr. Naïve and often suffer losses. I can’t let my reputation take a hit this time. Get out of my way.”

“Quit your nonsense and stay back. This auntie doesn’t care about your reputation,” Zhang Haixing said angrily.

Fatty made an absolutely non-negotiable expression and stared at her for a long time.

Zhang Haixing was too lazy to fight with him and eventually pulled her hand back. Fatty sighed and mouthed, “You’d better be one of the Seven Fairies. Chang’e at best, Zhinu at worst.”(2)

Contrary to what Fatty believes, this definitely isn’t a god, I thought to myself. There’s no way the Diarrhea God would stay in his own excretory organ. This is at most a ringworm stuck in the rectum. As soon as the thought flashed through my mind, I knew right away that I was too nervous and the pressure was making my mind wander.

After hesitating for half a day, Fatty slowly began to wipe the black mud from the person’s body.

The mud on the person’s face immediately came off, and Fatty used a flashlight to illuminate it, revealing white bones underneath.

Fatty continued to wipe the mud off, and soon, a strange face appeared in front of us.

It wasn’t stone or fossil but something like jade. It was a translucent white with many black veins inside of it.

There were a lot of cobweb-like things wrapped around the face, and when we used one of our flashlights to touch them, we found that they were petrified. But with some effort, we discovered that those things weren’t very strong and could be broken.

The person’s face was badly chapped and lined, which made it obvious that this was an old man. The clothes at the neckline were all rotten and must have been washed away by the mud just now. Only some fibers and some silver Tibetan jewelry that didn’t easily rot were still on the body.

“Spider-Man?”

“No, it’s a cocoon.” After Zhang Haixing said this, she suddenly started wiping all the black mud from the body.

A translucent corpse appeared in front of us, the clothes on its body still miraculously intact.

He was wearing a leather garment that had been soaked and hardened by the mud.

“Is he Tibetan?”

“No, he’s Han Chinese.” Zhang Haixing lit another cigarette and pulled a piece of jewelry from around the man’s neck—a jade pendant. She handed it to me, and I could see that it was crafted in the Han style.

“Can you tell what age it is?” I asked. The style of the jade was very simple and there weren’t enough details for me to make a guess.

Zhang Haixing shook her head and said, “It’s pointless to know what age it is, even if we know who he is.”

“Ok, let me sum it up: behind this bronze door, there’s a corpse of a Han Chinese bound to the ground with chains. Is this ‘the Ultimate’ that your patriarch mentioned? It’s kind of weak.”

“No, this man must be an outsider. You see? Those bronze chains are real iron, and they were driven into the ground. We have to take a closer look.”

He looked just like a real person curled up in such a natural position like that. He was also very fat. Even though all of the fat had collapsed on the ground, it was hard when we pressed down on it.

“He’s shedding his skin here,” Zhang Haixing said while shining her flashlight on the jade man’s chest. We found that all of the black lines converged into a black mass on his chest.

“Do you know what this is?” I asked her in surprise.

“I’ve come prepared. I’m not completely ignorant of what we might see. This is a corpse jade. It’s a strange jade formed when corpses are petrified under specific circumstances. We’ve opened many tombs over thirty centuries and have found some similar situations. The corpse jade has a long evolution time and needs a stable environment. In other words, it takes a specific environment to petrify the corpse very quickly and even maintain the corpse’s basic shape. It’s just that most of the corpse jade will encase the whole body inside. This one is very special. I’ve never seen a situation like this.”

“I think I’ve seen it before.” Something flashed through my mind, but I couldn’t remember when I had seen such a thing. “Then why is it here?”

“I don’t know. I only know that in our family records, corpse jade always seems to take shape in the chest cavity. You see this black mass? With the corpse jade we’ve seen before, this kind of thing was scattered throughout the whole body, but there were signs of accumulation in the chest. In this one, almost all of the black is concentrated in the chest cavity so that means that this corpse jade must be very old. Come on, let’s knock on its chest to see what’s inside.” As she spoke, she took out her mountaineering pick.

Fatty waved to her from the other side of the corpse, “Don’t bother. Come over here. This place is already broken.” As he said this, he lifted the corpse up with gusto and told us to look at its back. The cobweb-like things were all broken and crumbling, and the fragments fell down with a loud crash.

The corpse didn’t seem to be too heavy, as Fatty was able to hold it up by himself. When we took a closer look, we saw that there was a big hole in the corpse’s back that was filled with black jade residue. There were fragments still under the body, but we could see that the chest cavity was empty.

“It’s empty, absolutely nothing. Maybe it’s just a natural phenomenon.”

“It’s not what you think.” Zhang Haixing’s expression changed. “Did something come out of the body?”

“What would it be?”

“I don’t know, but it must have been in the mud just now and got swept away,” Zhang Haixing said.

“Not necessarily.” Fatty’s expression had also suddenly changed, and he pointed his flashlight to one side of the cave while pulling his gun out.

I remembered how he felt not too long ago and also grabbed my gun.

We looked back and immediately saw that a black shadow had appeared out of the darkness at the place where Fatty had been looking at before. This thing, which was half bent over and crouching in the darkness, seemed to be looking right at us.

<Chapter 63><Table of Contents><Chapter 65>

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TN Notes:

(1) Character from 1987 Chinese cartoon show Calabash Brothers. He is a fusion of all 7 brothers created when they utilize a magical lotus sent by a mountain spirit. He has all their powers (except for the youngest) and is incredibly powerful. I’m blanking on an American equivalent to give you guys. Transformers but not really?

(2) In ancient Chinese folklore, the Queen Mother of Heaven has seven “fairy daughters,” which are referenced in many tales involving romance with mankind. They are star maidens. Chang’e is the Lady in the Moon and Zhinu is the Weaving Maiden who helps maintain universal order.

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AHHHHHHH You all should’ve seen my face when Zhang Haixing asking if something came out of the body. I’m over here screaming DROUGHT DEMON BITCH! DIDN’T YOU LEARN ANYTHING FROM THE UNDERSEA TOMB?!!!! lol You know that’s totally not it but that was the first thing that popped into my head. I’m also wondering if Wu Xie saw the corpse jade in the bronze tree (I might be getting the drama and the books mixed up. Pretty sure Lost Tomb 2 had a corpse completely encased in jade when Wu Xie was having his weird telepathic thing with Poker-face under the bronze tree). This “big reveal” of the bronze door also has me wondering if Poker-face is just like chilling in a bronze cave for 10 years. Hope he brought some entertainment~~~~~~ ahahahaha

Updated 1/12/2022