Chapter 14 Deep Pool

I blearily opened my eyes and found myself lying on a cold, flat surface, surrounded by darkness. I touched my wrist and found that the flashlight that had been tied to it had disappeared.

There was the sound of running water coming from somewhere off to the side. What is this place? I silently wondered.

I took a deep breath as fragmented memories suddenly began to flash through my mind—the waterfall, the hot column of water, the corpse on the chain…Then, I had a sudden moment of clarity as everything that just happened finally surfaced in my mind.

It seemed that after letting the current carry me over the edge of the waterfall, I had fallen into a pool below the cliff. The water was freezing cold, a stark contrast to the boiling water from above. I remembered that when I fell into the water, I felt all the noise around me suddenly disappear, but then I couldn’t remember anything after that. I figured it was because I had hit something when I fell into the water and knocked myself unconscious. Hitting the water at a bad angle after falling from a height of dozens of meters was no different from falling on a concrete slab, after all.

I checked my body over but found that I was still soaking wet. After falling over the edge of the waterfall, did the current below drag me to this place? Or, did I simply die and was now in the underworld?

I tried to get up, but when I raised my head just a little bit, it suddenly slammed into something so hard that I saw stars. I quickly stretched my hand out and touched it—it seemed to be some kind of hard, flat surface. I couldn’t help but feel surprised at how low the ceiling was here. Did the current carry me into some kind of rock crevice or under a low-hanging rock?

But after feeling around a small, one-foot area, I realized that this wasn’t the case at all—I was surrounded by nothing but rough wooden boards. I tapped on them and found that the space behind them was hollow. In such a small space, the only things I could do were lie down and turn over; I couldn’t even lift my head or stretch.

I pushed up against the boards, wanting to see how thick they were, only to find that I could actually move them. When I gave a harder push, there was a small bang and then a light suddenly appeared in the darkness. I raised my knees, gently pushed the boards away, and sat up, slightly stunned at the sight that met my eyes.

I was in a white marble stone chamber, with torches in all four corners that brightly illuminated the surroundings. I looked at the ceiling above my head and saw two pythons intertwined with each other. I glanced back down and found that I was actually sitting in a coffin, the coffin lid lying nearby from where I had shoved it away just now.

Fuck! What is this place? Who put me in this coffin?

I climbed out of the coffin and looked around, feeling more and more confused. The white marble chamber, along with the carving of the two pythons on the ceiling, seemed very familiar. After thinking about it, I immediately realized that it looked almost exactly the same as the tomb chamber in the undersea tomb.

That was impossible…right?

As I walked around, I noticed even stranger things than that. At some unknown point, my clothes had changed into a rubber suit similar to the diving suits worn in the 1980s. This surprised me even more—where the hell did such old-style clothes come from?

I took one of the torches that were hanging in the corner and then walked out of the tomb chamber. When I saw the corridor outside, I couldn’t help but let out a quiet exclamation. My God, the straight corridor of white marble and the three jade doors sitting at the end really were the same as the ones in the undersea tomb!

What was going on? How did I get here? My hair stood on end and my thoughts became chaotic. Was this a tomb chamber that was very similar to the one in the undersea tomb, or did I never make it out of that undersea tomb after all? Jesus, what the hell was going on?

I rubbed my face hard, raised the torch, and carefully looked at my surroundings, trying to find any flaws. If this really was a similar tomb chamber, then there would definitely be some kind of difference.

There was a wooden platform above the corridor that was very similar to scaffolding. It was covered with wooden boards to form a simple and crude overpass through which one could pass through the corridor without triggering any of the traps below. I didn’t know who built it, but I climbed up carefully and went to the opposite side of the corridor. The jade door in the middle was lit with torches but the doors on the left and right sides were both dark.

At this time, I suddenly remembered Lao Yang and how he had also let the current carry him over the edge of the waterfall. I had fallen into the pool at the bottom and was unconscious for such a long time before coming to this strange place, so what exactly had happened to him?

As I pondered over it, I walked towards the door where the firelight was coming from. The light leaking out from the gap at the bottom of the jade door was quite bright, but when I reached the door, I suddenly heard a noise coming from the other side. I pressed my ear up against the door and heard someone cough.

Then, a voice said, “What should we do? Should we open the coffin or not?”

Another voice, sounding very hesitant, replied, “Sanxing said not to touch the things here for the time being. Let’s listen to him.”

I was immediately stunned as soon as I heard the voices of these two people. The first speaker was Poker-Face, but I didn’t recognize the second speaker. And they had also mentioned my Uncle Three. What, was Uncle Three here?

But there was one more surprise—I immediately heard a third person say, “Wu Sanxing is still sleeping right now. What does it matter if we open it and take a look? I’m on Young Zhang’s side.”

I didn’t quite understand what they were talking about, but the third person was undoubtedly a woman.

What were they discussing? It sounded like Poker-Face wanted to open a coffin while someone else was hesitant because of Uncle Three’s warning. And then a woman came forward to support Poker-Face. I couldn’t help but feel confused—did Poker-Face already find my Uncle Three?

As I was thinking about it, I leaned down to the crack in the door to see who was talking inside, but unfortunately, my view was limited. All I could see was a woman’s back. She was wearing a diving suit the same color as mine, had a very petite figure, and wore her hair in a thick braid.

At this time, I suddenly heard a fourth voice say, “What about Qi Yu? That guy really knows how to mess around. I don’t know where he ran off to. Are we going to just leave him here?”

When I heard this, I couldn’t help but freeze. I seemed to recall seeing the name Qi Yu listed among the names in Uncle Three’s notes so it wasn’t surprising that it sounded familiar…wait, that wasn’t right.

I suddenly felt very uncomfortable. Qi Yu wasn’t a name that I would easily remember just because I saw it once in a notebook. If anything, it seemed as if I had heard it often. I couldn’t shake the strange feeling in my heart.

At this time, the woman blocking my view stepped aside to make room, and I saw Poker-Face standing beside a black coffin. He was holding a crowbar in his hand and seemed to be hesitating over something. Then, another woman suddenly came into my field of vision. When I saw her face, I was so surprised that the torch almost slipped out of my hand and fell to the ground.

Wasn’t this person Chen Wen-Jin? God, what the hell was going on here? Although I hadn’t actually seen her in person before, Uncle Three had a lot of photos of her. I had seen those old photos so often during the Chinese New Year that I would be able to recognize her at a glance. There was no doubt about it; I definitely hadn’t seen wrong.

All of my doubts had piled up to the point that I almost wanted to push the door open and go in, but at this time, another unfamiliar male voice said, “This undersea tomb is too big. It won’t be easy for us to find him. I think we’d better forget about it. We can just carve a mark along the corridor so that he’ll see it and know to follow it to find us. Young Zhang, you might as well do it.”

Poker-Face nodded and raised the crowbar to start carving when there suddenly came a loud roaring sound of water from the room on the left. It was so loud and sudden that it startled me.

Everyone in the room turned to look, and the man asked, “What was that sound? It seems like it’s coming from next door!”

“Come on! Let’s go and take a look!” Poker-Face lowered the crowbar and immediately ran towards the door. Realizing that I was about to be discovered, I quickly turned and hid in the room on the right. As soon as I put the torch on the ground and stomped it out, I saw the group of people running out of the middle door and rushing through the jade door on the other side. Then, I heard a woman cry out, “Look, there’s a pool here!”

As I stood there hiding behind the door, I couldn’t help but feel extremely surprised. The situation just now was exactly what Zhang Qiling had described when he told me the story of what happened after Uncle Three fell asleep in the undersea tomb twenty years ago. But why did it feel like I was experiencing it for myself? Was this all an illusion or had I simply gone crazy?

As darkness returned to my surroundings, I took a few deep breaths and moved to relight the torch. But at this time, someone holding a fire stick suddenly appeared in my field of vision. The person climbed down from the wooden platform hanging over the corridor, secretly hid behind the jade door on the left, and then peered inside. When I took a closer look, I found that it was a younger version of my Uncle Three. He seemed very upset and had a deep frown on his face.

After a while, Zhang Qiling’s and the others’ voices gradually faded away, a clear sign that they were probably walking down the spiral staircase towards the bottom of the pool. Uncle Three blew out the fire stick and then quickly slipped through the jade door. Although I felt slightly alarmed when I saw this and didn’t even know whether I was dreaming or hallucinating, I knew that I had to catch up with them no matter what. But as I quickly moved to try and sneak into the door on the left to take a look, I caught movement out of the corner of my eye, and then Uncle Three suddenly came out of the door again. He grabbed me by the throat and whispered, “So it was you who was following me!” After saying that, he suddenly tightened his grip around my throat.

Knowing how desperate my situation was, I wanted to shout, “Uncle Three! It’s me, your nephew!” But I couldn’t make a sound at all. In the end, I had no other choice but to try and loosen his grip by pulling at his fingers.

As I was thrashing my head around, I suddenly heard a voice say, “Old Wu, wake up. Are you having a nightmare?”

I shuddered and found that my vision had suddenly gone dark and everything around me had suddenly disappeared. As I dazedly opened my eyes, I found that Lao Yang was shaking me.

So it was all just a dream. I gave a wry smile and touched my neck before sitting up and turning around. I found that I was lying on a rocky beach next to a pool, and there was a small fire burning nearby. The roar of the waterfall was still very loud, but I couldn’t see where it was based on my current position. Lao Yang was propping me up and asking me if I was ok.

I waved my hand and said that I was fine, but I couldn’t shake the strange feeling in my heart. I squeezed the bridge of my nose tightly, secretly wondering why I had such a strange dream. Was it true that thinking about something all day would cause you to dream about it at night?

When Lao Yang handed me a canteen full of water, I took a sip and looked around before asking in a hoarse voice, “What is this place? What happened to me?”

“We’re at the edge of the pool below the waterfall,” Lao Yang replied. “The waterfall is actually right over there. When you fell into the water just now, you fainted from the impact. It took everything I had just to pull you out so you wouldn’t get swept up by the current and pulled under the waterfall’s turbulent waters. You should really thank me. I don’t have an ounce of strength left now.”

I cursed and then tried to stand up. As it turned out, I didn’t have any serious injuries, but it was still a little difficult to walk just a few steps. I looked around and saw that in the firelight, the rocky beach we were on wasn’t very big and appeared to be in the shape of a crescent moon. The black pool of water on the other side was huge, and there were countless stalactites as thick as a leg hanging down from the top of the cave into the water, forming stone pillars of various shapes. There appeared to be several bottomless karst caves around the pool. Some were as big as an elephant, some were as small as a rat, some were set above the water’s surface, and others were set below the water’s surface. With the underground river flowing in and out of this place, it was a typical underground karst lake.

I knew that this kind of geographical environment generally formed during the Quaternary glaciation period⁽¹⁾, and it took thousands of years of gradual expansion and penetration to reach the scale that we were currently seeing. The history of such caves was much longer than that of human beings, but I didn’t expect there to be such a place in Tianmen Mountain.

There were a lot of branches and debris that had washed up on the beach beside us, which Lao Yang had used to start the fire I had seen when I first woke up. He had also dragged some more up and set them by the fire to dry. The water in the pool was freezing cold so I knew I would’ve frozen to death if it weren’t for the fire.

Suddenly remembering Uncle Tai and the others, I quickly asked Lao Yang, “What happened to those guys?”

“I’m afraid those bastards weren’t as lucky as us,” Lao Yang said. “I didn’t see them after we went over the edge of the waterfall. I don’t know if they jumped down like us, but if they did, they either washed ashore somewhere else or drowned.” After a short pause, he added, “But our situation isn’t good either. Not only have we lost all of our equipment, but we don’t know where to go next. As you can see, there are a bunch of branches and forks in the tunnels here. These kinds of caves are famous for being as complex as a maze so it’ll be tricky trying to find our way around.”

After taking a moment to count them all, I found that there were about seven or eight caves above the water’s surface that were within reach, but there were even more caves hiding in the darkness. “I heard that Guangdong fatty say earlier that in order to pass through this area of karst caves, we need to find the iron chain that the ancients used as a guiding line,” I said to him. “This chain is submerged underwater, with one end leading to a secret passage and the other end stuck somewhere in this pool. If we can find it, we can follow it into the depths of this ancient tomb.”

Lao Yang frowned in thought for a while before saying, “Speaking of iron chains, I just remembered something. You know, I was still conscious when we went over the edge of the waterfall. I plunged at least six or seven meters into the pool and saw a bunch of those fucking stone figurines from the passage earlier just sitting there at the bottom of the pool. Although it happened in the blink of an eye, I think I saw a chain lying at the bottom of the pool as well. But instead of going into any of the caves here, it led straight into the turbulent waters below the waterfall.”

I was taken aback when I heard this. How was that possible? If it were true, did that mean that the entrance to the ancient tomb was behind this waterfall, hidden in the rapids?

As I listened to the roar of the waterfall coming from a short distance away, I remembered the scene of us falling just now and suddenly had a flash of inspiration. “That actually makes more sense,” I said to Lao Yang. “If I’m understanding this correctly, then this ancient tomb might not have been built in the world of the living, but is hidden in the world of the dead…”

In other words, the underworld!

Lao Yang didn’t understand what I was talking about, but he was still affected by my somber tone and asked in a low voice, “What nonsense are you talking about? How could such a thing be possible?”

I shook my head and asked, “Do you still remember the legend Old Man Liu told us in the village? The one where the feng shui masters in the Qing Dynasty talked about the Yellow Springs waterfall and the ghost soldiers in the mountains?”

Lao Yang nodded and said, “Of course I remember. It was said that there was a Yellow Springs waterfall in Tianmen Mountain, and this waterfall was the passage between the world of the living and the world of the dead. But didn’t you say that it was all just superstition?”

“Well, it seems that this wasn’t actually superstition but rather a simple misinterpretation of our ancestors’ words,” I explained. “If you remember the waterfall we just fell down, the water was actually a strange yellow color. This is because of the underwater hot spring flowing into and mixing with the underground river water. If my guess is correct, then the ancients saw this yellow water, thought that it was connected to the underworld, and decided to call it the ‘Yellow Springs’ waterfall.”

Lao Yang thought it over for a moment before saying, “It sounds plausible, but it still doesn’t explain everything. Only people who have been this deep in the mountain and seen the waterfall for themselves would know about it. But the layout here is so complicated that ordinary people wouldn’t be able to come this far.” Having said that, he suddenly seemed to realize something and cried out, “Shit! Don’t tell me… were those Qing Dynasty feng shui masters from the legend actually grave robbers like us?”

I nodded and said approvingly, “At last! It’s good to see you still have some logical reasoning left in you.”

Lao Yang became excited and said, “That makes sense. Do you think that most of the legends about the ghost soldiers were also spread during the Qing Dynasty? Could those feng shui masters have deliberately spread them?”

I nodded, “It’s very possible, but we don’t need to worry about trying to figure it out right now. If you recall, there was another saying in that legend: ‘the Yellow Springs waterfall is the gateway between the world of the living and the world of the dead’. If the iron chain really leads straight into the waterfall like you said, then there must be a passage behind the waterfall that leads to the ancient tomb. If you think of it like this, doesn’t that mean the ancient tomb is in the world of the dead?”

Lao Yang blanched and said, “No way. Don’t try to scare me. If that place is really the underworld, then won’t we die if we go in there?”

I couldn’t help but curse, “Shit, I can’t believe you really believe that legend. Do you honestly think that since those feng shui masters were our colleagues, what they said should be taken at face value? I think there are two possibilities: the first is that this may have been a code word at the time to say that this waterfall was the passage between the ancient tomb and the real world; the second was that they saw something in the cave behind the waterfall that made them think they had come to the underworld.”

I paused before continuing, “If it’s the second one, then we may need to mentally prepare ourselves. I’m afraid there might be some horrifying scene back there…”

Lao Yang fell silent for a long time before saying, “Why don’t we just go back…”

I shook my head. It would be a shame not to go in and take a look at it after coming all this way. Moreover, this waterfall was so huge and majestic that it was impossible to climb up it, and there was a high chance of death if we tried to go through any of the surrounding karst caves. As of right now, our best choice was to go to the ancient tomb and then find a way out.

Lao Yang couldn’t convince me otherwise, so he had no other choice but to agree. As we took the time to rest and gather our strength, we began to check our equipment to see how much was left.

In terms of weapons, we still had the gun and Tokarev pistol that Lao Yang had taken from Pockmark, so we weren’t lacking in firepower. With regards to everything else… I opened the backpack I had taken from the corpse at the bottom of the lake and found some canned food—I didn’t know if it was expired or not—baijiu⁽²⁾, a canteen, a pair of gloves, and a large number of paint brushes and oil paints.

Lao Yang thought that they were all useless and wanted to throw them away, but I told him that the baijiu could help keep us warm, the paint could be used to make marks along the way, and the gloves were also useful. Since we had nothing else, it was better to keep them all.

After going through everything again and again, I found that the biggest headache was that we didn’t have any lighting equipment. The battery in Lao Yang’s flashlight had died and I had no idea where my own flashlight had gone. Plus, it wasn’t like we could swim with a torch.

Lao Yang grabbed the pistol and then looked at the darkness all around us before saying, “There’s only one way—let’s pile up all this firewood, make the fire big, and then swim across using the light from the fire. That way, even if we can’t make it to the waterfall, we can still swim back to the fire. What do you say?”

After thinking about it, I knew that this was the only feasible option, so I said, “Alright, let’s take a chance.”

We took off our clothes, stuffed them into the backpack, and then made some short torches using the gloves and some sticks. After putting the torches into the waterproof compartment of the backpack, we built up the fire and warmed ourselves up. Once we were warm enough, we jumped into the water and started swimming towards the roar of the waterfall.

The water was so cold that after swimming just a short distance, I already felt as if all the heat in my body had been sucked away. Fortunately, I had gained a little weight recently so I knew I wouldn’t immediately die from the cold.

After swimming for about five minutes, the roar of the waterfall became louder and louder. Lao Yang and I stopped and tread water, listening to the movements around us in order to try and determine which direction to go in.

At this time, something suddenly cut through the water’s surface not far from us. We quickly turned to look, but the fire was so far away that we couldn’t see what it was.

Lao Yang pulled out the Tokarev pistol, shook the water from the barrel, raised it high, and looked around warily while saying, “Old Wu, there shouldn’t be any of those salmon here, right?”

Chills ran up and down my spine as I thought of how vast the waters here were. But if there really was a killer fish, we would’ve been dead long ago. Just as I was about to tell him this, there suddenly came the clear sound of something moving through the water not far away from us. Feeling a little uneasy now, I said to him, “I don’t know, but let’s swim faster. Fish are afraid of noise, so the closer we are to the waterfall, the safer we’ll be.”

The two of us immediately moved our arms and continued swimming towards the waterfall. By this point, the fire behind us had become weaker and weaker until it was no more than a small dot of light in the distance. With no other choice, we forced ourselves to move forward into the darkness, occasionally calling each other from time to time to make sure we didn’t get separated.

After a while, the current became more turbulent as we gradually approached the waterfall. We increased our efforts, but our speed became slower and slower, and it was harder to swim. I clenched my teeth and tried to throw myself forward a few times but ended up failing each time.

As my physical strength was exhausted little by little and I started to worry about being pushed back by the swift current, I heard Lao Yang shout that it was absolutely impossible to swim like this. The turbulent water in front of us was full of large and small whirlpools caused by the water falling from above. If we wanted to reach the waterfall, we had to stick to the bottom of the pool and dive under the turbulent current bit by bit.

After saying this, he dove into the water and quickly disappeared. I followed him down, fighting against the current with everything I had just to advance a few meters. After diving to the bottom of the pool, I suddenly saw a faint white light.

I recognized it right away—it was my waterproof flashlight! This thousand-yuan thing is really sturdy, I happily thought to myself. I can’t believe it’s still on. I quickly gathered my strength and swam towards it.

There were no creatures at the bottom of the pool, but in my flashlight’s white glow, I could see that a bunch of stone figurines had been neatly arranged below. Some of the human heads that had rotted into white bones had fallen off, but some were still firmly stuck to the stone figurines’ necks. There appeared to be a stone platform in the middle of the pool, along with a body wrapped in white cloth floating in the water above it.

But at this time, I was more interested in retrieving my flashlight so I only gave these things a few quick glances before ignoring them. I slipped my way in between the stone statues, held onto the closest one to steady myself, and then inched my way closer to my flashlight.

But just as I was about to reach it, I felt a stream of water suddenly rush up from behind me. Knowing that something was wrong, I immediately went on high alert, but I didn’t expect something to suddenly slam into me. I saw a white shadow flit past me and hit my hand, which caused me to lose my grip on the stone statue and start to float up.

Not good! I silently shouted to myself as I was instantly swept into the center of the turbulent waters above. The current in front of me suddenly changed direction and flung me to the side with a jerk, turning me end over end in the water until I became so disoriented that I could no longer control my body.

I didn’t know how many times I spun around in the chaos, but I saw that mysterious white shadow dart past me several times.

As my consciousness quickly began to blur, I couldn’t help thinking that I was definitely going to die now, but at this time, my back suddenly slammed into something hard. The pain hurt so much that I immediately came back to my senses. I turned around and grabbed the object, only to find that it was the chain Lao Yang had mentioned before.

No longer caring about my flashlight, I used all of my strength to pull myself along the chain. It only took a few moments to make it to the other end of the chain at the bottom of the waterfall, but I was already out of air by that point. All I could feel was an overwhelming force pushing down on my head from above, shoving me to the bottom of the pool. I didn’t even make it two meters before I found that I couldn’t move anymore.

Luckily, Lao Yang suddenly came up from behind, grabbed my hand, and dragged me forward. While pulling ourselves along the chain, we kicked off of the stone figurines and finally made our way to the area behind the waterfall. Suddenly feeling the pressure above my head disappear, I immediately surfaced and sucked in a big mouthful of air, everything in front of my eyes spinning dizzyingly.

It was dark all around, and only Lao Yang’s heavy breathing could be heard. He coughed a few times and then asked me, “Are you ok? It looks like we made it to the other side.”

I also coughed a few times before responding, “Let’s hurry up and light one of those torches. There’s something wrong with this pool. I’m afraid there’s something ‘unclean’ in the water.”⁽³⁾

Lao Yang continued coughing as he flicked on his lighter and tried to look at our surroundings, but there was too much spray coming from the waterfall so the flame immediately went out.

As we blindly swam forward, I suddenly heard the sound of something moving through the water again. This time, it was very close, as if something was swimming two or three meters away from us.

I immediately became nervous as I remembered the white shadow that hit me in the water before. “Be careful!” I warned Lao Yang. “There seems to be something nearby…” But before the words had even left my mouth, I suddenly felt a cold, slippery hand touch my shoulder.

I immediately screamed in fright as thoughts started racing wildly through my mind. What the hell is it? Did one of those underwater stone figurines come alive? I instinctively dove underwater, kicked the thing behind me away, and then leaped out of the water while shouting at Lao Yang, “There’s a fucking ghost under the water! Quick, shoot it!”

To my surprise, Lao Yang had already flicked on the lighter again and hurriedly turned around to look at me, but I almost wished that he hadn’t—what we saw almost scared us half to death and had all of our hair standing on end. There was a pale human head floating in the water behind me and looking at the two of us with a very sinister expression on its face.

We began backpedaling in fright, and Lao Yang even tried to pull out his gun, but he was so panicked that he couldn’t do it.

That thing’s eyes rolled into the back of its head, its mouth opened wide as if it wanted to say something, and then it suddenly leaped right toward me. I screamed in fright and tried to dodge it, only to find that there was nowhere to go. Then, that head was suddenly pressed against my body.

I yelled hysterically and tried to push it away, but it clung tightly to me without letting go. Then, in the middle of all this chaos, I suddenly heard the head say clearly in my ear, “Save…me…”

I was stunned for a moment and stopped moving, now completely confused. How could a water ghost call for help? Then I quickly grabbed the head and pushed its hair away. After taking a good long look, I almost vomited a mouthful of blood.

Oh my God! This isn’t a water ghost, it’s Master Liang from that group!

The man was so physically exhausted that his eyes were rolling into the back of his head and he was almost unconscious. No wonder his face was so pale. I quickly turned him around, grabbed him so that he wouldn’t sink into the water, and then called Lao Yang for help.

Lao Yang took a closer look at him and recognized him immediately. “Damn it, what’s this guy doing here?” He asked. “How did he even get here?”

“This guy was probably by himself and was afraid to act alone so he’s been sticking close and monitoring us,” I said to Lao Yang. “When he saw us go into the water, he probably thought that we had found a way out so he followed us in. But he didn’t expect us to go to such a dangerous place.” That sound of something moving through water that I had heard along the way was probably him following us.

Master Liang still had his backpack on his back, but it had become so waterlogged that it must have dragged him straight to the bottom of the pool. Lao Yang quickly took the backpack off of him and then asked me, “What should we do with him now? He’s one of them, so if we bring him along with us, won’t it be problematic later on?”

I felt a headache coming on, but I knew we had to bring him with us, whether he would cause problems later or not. We couldn’t just leave him here to sink, after all. “There’s nothing we can do now,” I replied. “Let’s find a place to get out of the water first. We can deal with him later.”

We adjusted our positions and swam a few meters forward until a set of wide, long stone steps appeared underwater. These steps rose out of the water and ended about a dozen steps above the water’s surface. We slowly approached them and then climbed up, finally making it out of the water.

I was so exhausted that I suddenly collapsed on the steps, gasping for breath. Lao Yang, on the other hand, was so excited that he took out one of our homemade torches, poured the baijiu on it, and lit it.

Now that our surroundings were suddenly much brighter, I turned and looked around. As it turned out, this so-called “entrance to the underworld” was just a cave hidden behind a waterfall. It was neither large nor small and seemed to have formed naturally, but there were some traces where people had tried to level it.

Above the steps was a stone platform made of a blueish-green stone that was surrounded by four stone pillars engraved with patterns of birds and animals. A strange tall bronze vessel was placed in the middle of the stone platform. It almost looked like a large gourd bottle that stood taller than my head and was covered in rust spots. There were also patterns of double-bodied snakes and sacrificial rituals carved onto it.

This is an altar, I thought to myself. The She people placed more importance on offering sacrifices than they did on burials, so if we were seeing this kind of thing, then that meant that we were indeed very close to the ancient tomb.

We walked up to the stone platform, put our packs and Master Liang on the ground, and then went to inspect the other side of the stone platform. We saw a stone staircase as wide as ten people and with hundreds of steps winding all the way down to the depths of this cave. The light from our torch couldn’t reach the bottom, so we had no idea what was waiting for us down below. “If this is the entrance to the underworld, then this is the gate to hell,” I said to Lao Yang. “The eighteen levels of hell⁽⁴⁾ are probably waiting for us below. You scared?”

Lao Yang pointed to Master Liang, who was lying off to one side, and said, “I’m not afraid of jack shit. In fact, I can’t wait to go down. But what about this guy?”

The entrance to the ancient tomb was so close that Lao Yang and I couldn’t help but want to go down and take a look right away, but we had Master Liang hanging around like a dead weight. I knew we couldn’t leave him on his own, so we’d have to wake him up first before we did anything.

We stripped him of his clothes and gave him two sips of baijiu. As his face quickly regained its color, Lao Yang pulled his eyes open and said, “Hey, can you talk?”

Master Liang had gradually regained consciousness by this point and knew that his fate was in our hands, so he merely nodded helplessly and coughed.

“Don’t be afraid,” Lao Yang continued. “We’re different from the people you were hanging out with. We won’t do anything to you, but we also have to ensure our own safety. If you behave yourself, we’re willing to take you in. Otherwise, I’ll just shoot you. Do you understand?”

Master Liang nodded again and opened his mouth to say something, but it seemed the words wouldn’t come out.

Lao Yang poured a few more sips of baijiu into his mouth—causing him to cough violently— and then pulled out his belt and tied the older man’s hands tightly while saying to me, “I’m still worried. Those people are all thugs. Let’s just tie him up first.”

Master Liang didn’t have any strength to resist and let Lao Yang tie him up easily so I figured we wouldn’t have any problems with him. We pulled him to his feet, pushed him to the front, and then the three of us went to the other side of the stone platform and walked down the stone steps.

Generally speaking, this Serpent Kingdom didn’t seem very skilled at setting up mechanisms and tricks, but we were still cautious so it took a long time for us to walk down these hundreds of stone steps. Finally, a flat area appeared in front of us, and we came to the bottom of the steps.

We could see a crude black stone bridge at the bottom of the steps, and beyond that, there was a cliff.

This kind of landform probably formed because the dike where the underground river was located had a descending terraced structure, and the mountain rock moved in some places, which caused a series of faults to form.

The area at the bottom of the cliff was so dark that it was impossible to see how high it was or what was down there.

Now we were worried. It would’ve been fine if we had a flashlight, but all we had on us right now was a small torch. How were we supposed to use that small light to see what was below? Lao Yang asked me if he should throw the torch down, but I told him not to bother. Even if we did throw it down and saw what was below, how exactly were we supposed to get down there?

At this time, Master Liang hesitantly spoke up, “Gentlemen, there’s…a flare gun in my bag…”

Lao Yang hurriedly groped around in the bag and found that there really was a flare gun. He looked at Master Liang and said in surprise, “Hey, you’re actually not a bad guy. It’s a good thing you’re so cooperative.”

I checked the gun over to ensure that there was nothing wrong with it and then took the safety off and fired a signal flare from the top of the cliff.

The flare soared into the air with a bang, illuminating a large area enough for us to see the whole cave clearly.

We all looked down and froze.

At first, I didn’t seem to comprehend what I was seeing, but once I did, I felt like I had been blindsided. My mouth dropped open and I could hardly believe my eyes.

Master Liang, who was already standing weakly in front of us, saw the situation below and immediately fell to the ground, nearly tumbling off the cliff in the process. Lao Yang’s face also turned pale and he unconsciously took a step back.

About four meters below the cliff was a large natural cave, which was densely packed with all sorts of things that looked like dried wood. But upon closer inspection, we could see that these objects were actually bones. They lay in rows close to each other but there were also some places where they were piled up in several layers. There were probably at least tens of thousands of them down there.

“What… what is this place?!” I cried out. “My God, isn’t this a mass grave?”

It wasn’t surprising those feng shui masters said that they saw the underworld. This scene was so shocking that whoever saw it would have thought that they were in hell!

But for some unknown reason, I couldn’t shake the feeling that this scene in front of me was a little familiar, as if I had seen it before? I frowned, trying to recall where I might have seen such a thing before. Then, a memory of a similar scene suddenly popped into my head. That’s right! I thought to myself. Wasn’t the corpse cave near the Temple of Seeds in Shandong very similar to this place?

My thoughts suddenly became chaotic and I felt like something was stuck in my throat, preventing me from speaking. Sure enough, there had to be a connection between this place and the corpse cave near the Temple of Seeds in Shandong! Would we also see a crystal coffin and a white-clothed female corpse with long hair reaching the ground in this place?

I quickly looked around, but the flare had already reached the end of its arc and disappeared. At the moment the light went out, however, I seemed to catch sight of a strange place in the middle of all these corpses.

<Chapter 13><Table of Contents><Chapter 15>

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TN Notes:

(1) The Quaternary glaciation, also known as the Pleistocene glaciation, is an alternating series of glacial and interglacial periods during the Quaternary period that began 2.58 million years ago and is ongoing. A glacial period is an interval of time (thousands of years) within an ice age that is marked by colder temperatures and glacier advances. Interglacial periods are periods of warmer climate between glacial periods.

(2) Baijiu, also known as shaojiu, is a Chinese colorless liquor typically coming in between 35% and 60% alcohol by volume. It’s usually distilled from sorghum.

(3) He means something like a ghost or monster.

(4) Unlike Dante’s 9 Circles of Hell, some Chinese myths say there are 18 levels of Hell. Some say that wrongdoers who weren’t punished when they were alive are punished in the hells after death. Sinners feel pain and agony just like living humans when they’re subjected to the tortures. They can’t “die” from the torture because when the ordeal is over, their bodies will be restored to their original states for the torture to be repeated over and over again. The 18 hells vary from narrative to narrative, but some commonly mentioned tortures include: being steamed or fried; being sawed in half; being run over; being pounded or ground or crushed; being cut; having sharp objects driven into their bodies; being hung upside down; drowning in a pool of filthy blood; being left naked in the freezing cold; being set aflame or cast into infernos; being forced to consume boiling liquids; ripping/gouging/extracting of tongue, eyes, teeth, or heart; disembowelment; skinning; gored, mauled, eaten, stung, bitten, pecked, etc., by animals.

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Mwahahahahaha at last! ‘Tis complete! I didn’t mean to take this long to get it out to you guys but I had no will to do anything most of the week. Let’s hope this is the last long chapter like this because I feel dead inside after all that haha. Also, never really thought of it before but I wonder if Wu Xie’s hallucination at the beginning of the chapter was from Qi Yu’s POV since they have such a strong connection