Chapter 9 Well

Kan Jian was speechless for a long time when he saw this spectacular sight.

Xiao Hua gave me a look, and there was a lot of meaning in his eyes. The fact that there were so many ancient wells in the same place in the wilderness was really bizarre.

“Back in those days, Puxian Wannu’s tribe was hidden here. We can assume they wouldn’t hide underground all year round. When times were peaceful, the people in the tribe lived aboveground and needed to dig wells to get water.”

“This is an addiction to digging wells to get water. So many wellheads have been dug that the land looks pockmarked.” I silently counted the wellheads that I could see with the naked eye, and found that there were no fewer than a hundred.

“Did they dig, take all the water out, and then dig the next one?” Kan Jian asked.

“The groundwater is connected, it’s not like a pig bladder.” I went to the closest well, pulled out my Kukri, cut off the dodder, and exposed the wellhead. A lot of the dodder had climbed into the well, but the well wasn’t deep. I could see fallen leaves below, but there wasn’t any water.

Based on the GPS signal on the IPAD, those fish were definitely in this area. Was there water under the fallen leaves?

Kan Jian found a brick and threw it down, but it landed very solidly on the fallen leaves. It was definitely soil.

The well was an ordinary stone well that was surrounded by broken rocks and covered in moss. I wanted to climb in and have a look, but Xiao Hua stopped me.

“Do you want to risk your life like this?” Xiao Hua frowned and looked at me: “You’re not here to die.”

Kan Jian nodded and said, “Boss, let me risk my life and you can take the blame.” With that, he jumped down.

The fallen leaves below were so deep that they reached his ankles. He kicked the leaves aside, and saw a lot of jars underneath, but it seemed like most of them were broken.

When Kan Jian found a relatively complete one and tossed it up, I immediately recognized it. It was a wine made by soaking hericium mushrooms in a jar, which I had often seen in tombs before.

People in eastern Xia loved to drink this kind of wine, so was it possible that these wellheads were used to chill the alcohol? Much of the groundwater here came from the snow-capped mountains and was bone chilling, after all.

“Fastidious. Really fucking fastidious.” Xiao Hua looked at the wellheads with a slightly envious expression on his face.

“You’re a big cancer of the bourgeoisie.”

“There’s nothing wrong with pursuing a little happiness like drinking iced wine in the summer. In this kind of mountain environment, it’s very difficult to endure without such a thing.” Xiao Hua sniffed the jar, hoping to smell some wine.

Kan Jian continued to sift through the jars, but the sand below was dry, indicating that the well water here had been dry for hundreds of years.

As we walked (tripped) through the dodder, we cut the vegetation away from the wellheads one by one, and found that they were all exactly the same. We followed them all the way to the middle of the forest, and suddenly became enlightened when the tree canopies overhead suddenly disappeared. There turned out to be a dry riverbed here.

I squatted down, touched the soil, and found that the river had been dry for many years. The forest on the opposite side was equally dense, but the riverbed was full of gravel and shrubs.

The darkness all around was already pressing in, and the air was getting colder and colder.

“Can catfish swim in such a dry place?”

“Of course not.” I darkly scolded him in my heart, while telling myself that it might be possible if it was a catfish spirit.

“Fuck, then these signals…” Kan Jian scratched his head. “Where are the catfish? There’s no water anywhere?”

Xiao Hua touched his chin and suddenly said, “No, could it be?”

When I looked at him, Xiao Hua said, “Something ate all those fish.”

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