Chapter 25 Meet Up

I took a deep breath as Fatty continued to knock very fast. My nose was full of a damp, fishy smell and my throat was itchy. I suppressed my inner panic and slowly closed the lighter’s lid.

The tomb passage returned to darkness.

As I rubbed my upper arms to ward off the cold, I slowly heard the noisy market sounds in the depths of the tomb passage gradually become clearer. It seemed like a large group of people were headed in my direction.

The voices that were becoming clearer and clearer sounded like the local dialect, which I couldn’t understand. There were arguments, shouting, and even laughter.

I broke out in goosebumps, not sure if it was because I was cold or because I was scared. Fatty’s knocking was mixed in with those sounds and urged me to, “Go towards the sound. Don’t turn on the lights.”

There was a distance of about three or four stories between us now, but the fact that he could also hear those voices indicated that the sources were connected.

As he was knocking, I heard another tapping sound coming from a deeper place. It was disorganized but very calm, which meant it had to be Poker-Face responding to us.

I listened to the two tapping sounds, certain that it was Poker-Face who was making them. As Fatty and I tapped back a reply, I hoped to hear the tapping of a fourth person. But Poker-face and Fatty’s sounds were the only thing I heard.

I tapped out a question to Fatty, “How’s Liu Sang?”

“I don’t know,” he replied. “Let’s meet up first.”

I sighed in my heart, hoping that Liu Sang could handle himself. “Why can’t we turn the lights on?” I eventually tapped back.

Knowing that they were both alive had me feeling a little relieved and I took a deep breath to calm my shaking hands. As I started to relax, I noticed that I was feeling colder and colder.

It took a long time for Fatty to respond. It was obvious that his answer was too complicated, so he had to think about how to word it. His knocking was very confusing, but I was able to guess what he was trying to say, “There’s something on the tomb passage wall. It’ll see us.”

The tomb passage wall? I frowned. The wall was full of those sea cockroaches, so I hadn’t paid much attention to what was on it just now. “It’ll see us”… was there something under the sea cockroaches? After thinking about it, I didn’t dare approach the walls. I had the sudden feeling that something was standing there in the darkness.

Fatty continued to knock, “I still have eighteen detonators. If we can’t meet up, I’ll find somewhere to set them off. Keep tapping so we know each other’s positions.”

I told myself this was the only way, so I stood up and warned Fatty, “There’s something wrong with the thunder god statues. Don’t touch them and just keep moving.”

Fatty paused and tapped back, “Are you serious? I already took one. It’s gold-plated.”

I secretly scolded the old bastard for not being afraid of death as he got older.

I quietly moved forward in the dark, stopping every ten steps to knock on the ground and tell Fatty my position. Poker-Face would randomly join in whenever we communicated. I slowly found that I was moving much faster than Fatty and I realized that he probably really was carrying a thunder god statue on his back. I held my forehead and sighed.

As I moved further along the tomb passage, the noisy market sounds became clearer and clearer and Fatty’s knocking was getting closer and closer. I realized that the sound was coming from all directions because it was resonating in the tomb passage. I couldn’t tell which direction to go in at first, but I walked a certain distance and the sound was suddenly all too clear. It almost sounded like it was right beside me now and I was a little afraid to move forward.

Fatty also stopped, so I tapped out to him, “The sound seems to be all around me. I have to figure out what it is before I go.”

Fatty didn’t reply back this time, so I knocked again slowly. He finally responded, each knock slowly coming one at a time. After three minutes of this slow knocking, the following message was relayed:

“I’m among them,” he said.

Our knocking method was only focused on relaying information in the simplest form possible. I couldn’t talk to Fatty about stocks or Broadway, but we took into account most of the situations that would happen in a tomb. The tapping sound for this “them” that he had mentioned was something we had carefully designed to mean that there was something non-human here. Whatever he had seen, it wasn’t something he could describe.

I broke out in a cold sweat and dropped to the ground. There didn’t seem to be as many sea cockroaches here, so I put my ear to the ground and listened to what was going on below.

A clear, market-like sound came from below, and it almost sounded like it was directly beneath me. I tapped very lightly, “What is it?”

Fatty’s response came back slowly, “I-don’t-know-but-their-mother-won’t-even-recognize-them-once-I’m-done-blowing-them-up.”

I paused. At that moment, I heard Fatty knock a “three” and my sense of foreboding increased. Fatty then knocked a “two” and I suddenly understood what was going on. I leaped towards the wall and starting running like crazy. There was a loud noise and then the ground exploded with a flash of light. The whole ground sank, the rock under my feet turned to gravel, and my head suddenly knocked against something sharp. I immediately turned over and tried to get up, but I was too dizzy and shaky, and my nose and mouth were full of blood.

I touched my face and found that the blood was flowing from my head to my temples and down the bridge of my nose. My ears were ringing and I couldn’t hear anything at all.

I dazedly watched as the second detonator went off less than two meters away from me. As the fire burst into the air, I finally saw what the situation was. All around me, the tomb passage’s walls were full of ceramic “little people”, each one about as high as my knee. They seemed to form a kind of sea market on the tomb passage wall. Fatty was far away from me, but I immediately noticed a “thing” on the back of his neck.

It turned out to be a thunder god statue.

It was completely deformed and looked as if it were alive as it hid on his back and covered his ears.

I paused before immediately touching the back of my own neck. I felt rough skin lying on my back.

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