Chapter 5.16 Waterfall (Extra)

The stomachache was unbearable, and the pain of my cramping intestines was enough to interrupt all thought. Unless there was a greater pressure bearing down on me mentally, this kind of pain was really tortuous to endure when the mood was so peaceful.

I used to not care about it before, but all my ailments had increased tenfold after the tension had loosened, as if they were getting revenge for the past ten years. This also confirmed my theory that I was the type of person who became stronger under mental pressure.

I stopped and let them go down first, telling them that I would catch up later. Lei Benchang knew that something was wrong when he brushed past me and saw my pale face, but Fatty was already slipping away. I figured he knew what I was going to do.

When their headlamps disappeared down the passage, I could finally drop the façade and start looking around. I needed a natural depression or two, after which I could break off all the salt clusters on the wall and sprinkle them on top. After it dried, there shouldn’t be any evidence left.

With a solution in mind, my heart finally stabilized. I used the headlamp to look around inch by inch, but there wasn’t a deep enough depression on the stone wall. Even if there was, it was above my head, and it wasn’t like I could go against gravity.

I took a deep breath, pulled out the rock pick from where it was hanging at my waist, and started hitting the salt clusters under my body. There was a thick layer of them on the rock here, and I didn’t know how thick the salt actually was. If it was thick enough, I could probably dig a salt pit instead.

As my mood worsened, I started moving a little faster and hit the clusters a few times. I ended up knocking a whole one off and it rolled down the tunnel. “Be careful,” Fatty scolded from below. “My hairstyle cost eighteen hundred yuan.”

I dug through the crushed salt cluster and found that the salt layer was as thick as a palm. I thought I would see another layer of rock after removing the cluster, but I immediately found that that wasn’t the case. There was an obvious man-made object under the salt that looked like a perfect right-angle board. After I dug some more, I found that it was actually a rusty old bronze plate.

I looked around and used the rock pick to knock out more of the salt clusters around me. I was surprised to find that copper plates had been embedded everywhere on the rock tunnel’s surface. The copper plates and rocks merged together to form the tunnel walls here. The plates were just like patches that were stuck to the wall’s surface one by one.

I knocked on the copper plate with my pick, and immediately knew that the area behind it was hollow. I put my ear up against it and finally understood what Poker-Face had heard earlier. The strange sound mixed in with the wind was coming from under the copper plates. It appeared to be the sound of water, which sounded more turbulent than wind.

The copper plate’s surface was pitted, and there were a lot of rust bubbles due to the corrosion. There were other places that were full of green copper clusters, while some were blue, and others were a strange red color.

I knew that copper rust was different from iron in that it formed bumps, while iron became scaly.

I looked at the thousands of layers of rust and used my fingernail to scrape a few away, finding that the copper plate had rusted through. I intuitively knew that these bronze plates were products of the Tang or Song Dynasties.

There were copper pieces on the plates that appeared to be densely patterned tadpoles. Two abstract fish with cloud-patterned scales had been placed side by side about every meter or so. There was a round shape in front of the fish heads that seemed to be the sun. These patterns didn’t seem to serve any kind of function, and must have been the default pattern on the bronze grinding tools. The copper plates varied in size, and some had even been cut. I touched the copper and found that it felt a little warm.

I endured the stomachache and shouted at the others not to leave yet. I hurried down and told them to also look at the surrounding salt clusters.

Fatty and Poker-Face knew that I had found something as soon as they heard. After hitting the salt clusters a few times, Fatty’s eighteen-hundred-yuan hairstyle was covered in dust and salt grains. It wasn’t long before they exposed a huge bronze plate, which had been made into a curved pipe. It was much bigger than the small ones I had just seen.

I went down and carefully observed the joint between the copper plate and the rock with my headlamp. At this time, I realized that the plate wasn’t actually a patch.

These rocks went through the copper pipe’s inner wall, which made it one whole piece.

We started hitting the rock even harder and knocked chunks of stone off the tunnel’s wall, finding that there was a complete copper pipe embedded in the rock wall. The rock seemed to have formed at a time when water still traveled through the pipe. There were all kinds of sediments in the water that adhered to the pipe wall, and a millennia of dirt had wrapped around the pipe’s inner wall. It was just like those patients whose arteries became blocked with plaque.

No wonder it’s so dry here, I said to myself. None of the water vapor in the whole mountain could penetrate at all. But red copper had been greatly admired in the Tang and Song Dynasties and the usage of bronze had gradually declined. Why was the copper pipe here bronze? Did I get the wrong dynasty?

But red copper only gradually became more popular during the beginning of the Tang Dynasty. Bronze still had the most mature production and craftsmanship. This kind of large copper pipe was definitely easier to construct with bronze.

Fatty knocked on the copper pipe. We were all positive that the other side of the pipe’s wall was hollow. This copper pipe hadn’t been inserted into the rock stratum, so there might be a huge hanging cliff or deep pool of water on the other side of the wall.

Poker-Face put his ear to the copper pipe and Fatty immediately copied him. After listening for a long time, I asked them what they heard. Fatty shook his head, “Maybe a waterfall?”

I crawled over to his position and listened. There was a sound on the other side that was very faint. I didn’t know how thick these copper pipes were. There could be a thick layer of salt and gravel on the other side that was making it difficult to hear, but the subtle sounds I heard were very hard to figure out. If it was a waterfall, then it definitely wasn’t just one. There could be countless huge waterfalls rushing right below us.

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