Chapter 7.13

He Jianxi covered his nose and looked at the person in front of him.

It had been a week since Little Brother Zhang and Zhang Haiqi went to Southern Xinjiang, and he had finally met the person whom Zhang Haiqi had asked him to wait for.

He was a middle-aged man in his thirties who was carrying a large basket on his back. There was a straw mat in the basket, which he pulled out and placed on the large rectangular tea table in front of He Jianxi.

This was File No. 001 after the South Sea Archives had been rebuilt. He Jianxi poured the other man a glass of water and checked his train ticket. He really was from Southern Xinjiang.

Something must have happened in Southern Xinjiang, so Zhang Haiqi paid special attention to it. The money she had saved was used to purchase files and she tried her best to collect anything related to what had happened there.

The straw mat seemed to have been buried in the ground for it gave off a strong musty odor that smelled of soil. He Jianxi saw that the thirty-year-old man was neatly dressed, but his skin was dark and he seemed to be in the sun all year round. His eyes were cloudy but piercing.

He Jianxi swallowed and tried to say calmly, “Let’s start.”

The middle-aged man took three sips of water before putting down his teacup and saying in Northwestern Mandarin, “Mawei Mountain is on the edge of Gongbang. Four years ago, the hunters there captured the first wild boar. This thing came out of its stomach after it was opened.” The middle-aged man pulled a strange thing out of his breast pocket and handed it to He Jianxi.

He Jianxi took it and saw that it was a strange bone that was covered in strange, dark red bumps. The moment he took it, he realized that it was very heavy.

“Those hunters go hunting all the time and have captured many things, but they had never seen this kind of bone before. No animals have this kind of bone.” The middle-aged man continued, “Mawei Mountain is inland and there aren’t any lakes or rivers around it. There’s only spring water. They put the bone aside until one day, a foreigner went there to build a church on Mawei Mountain. He saw this bone and told us that it was a Long Human bone. He said that there was a Long Human in the mountain, and the wild boar must have eaten the Long Human’s body.”

He Jianxi had never heard of “Long Human” before and figured that it was probably the phrase the missionary had come up with when he was trying to translate what he knew into Chinese.

“Over the next few years, the hunters captured wild boars and wolves and found these kinds of bones in their stomachs one right after another. Each bone looked stranger than the last,” the middle-aged man said. “The hunters were very scared and took the bones they had collected and began connecting them together. They wanted to know what was living in the mountain. But the more they put all the bones together, the more frightened they became.”

The middle-aged man spread the straw mat out on the table. He Jianxi saw that the straw mat had been wrapped around some broken bones, which had all been glued together with mud to form a strange shape.

It was a spinal column, but the vertebrae joints were much longer than that of any animal he had ever seen. The middle-aged man put seven or eight broken vertebrae together to form a complete spine that was more than three meters long.

He Jianxi took a few steps back. He initially thought that it was a giant snake, but the middle-aged man connected some other bones together and a leg appeared. This leg bone was longer than any creature He Jianxi had ever seen before.

This was a humanoid creature with a very long body and extremely long hands and feet. It looked like a giant stick insect.

“Is this a Long Human?” He Jianxi took a shuddering breath.

The middle-aged man said, “The people in Mawei Mountain are very scared right now and many of them are starting to leave. Even the hunters dare not go deep into the mountain anymore. I came out to buy guns. I’m about to enter the depths of the mountain with a few men to see what’s going on and find out where this thing came from.”

He Jianxi felt cold all over as he looked at the bones. He noticed that the middle-aged man kept staring at him, so he gave him the money and thought to himself, are the two Zhangs dealing with this kind of strange thing every day?

<Extra 7.12><Table of Contents><Extra 7.14>

****

Merebear note: I’m just over here wondering when Bigfoot went to China ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)