Chapter 15 Rest

Lao Yang reloaded the flare gun and fired another shot at the place where the first flare had gone out just now. Once the area was relit, I saw that it was a twenty or thirty square meter open space in the center of the cave without any corpses. The light from the flare wasn’t enough for me to see if there was anything special down there, but one thing was for certain: this open space sank downward, so it was probably a pit.

Lao Yang, who had calmed down by this time, pointed to the pit and said that the sacrificial pit he had seen three years ago was similar to this one in that it also had this kind of empty space in the middle. The bronze branch that they couldn’t dig up had been located in the center of this pit.

The flare went out again, returning the cave to darkness once more. Lao Yang wanted to fire another one off but I immediately stopped him. We had already seen enough of what we needed to just now so there was no need to waste our limited resources.

“What should we do now?” Lao Yang asked me. “After going through all that trouble, it turns out that this is what the so-called underworld looks like. Maybe this is also a place where they offered up sacrifices. Should we go down?”

I thought about it and said, “Boss Li’s ‘A Collection of Rivers and Trees’ says that there are good things in this tomb. It shouldn’t be wrong, especially considering how we managed to get here just fine after following the iron chain. The treasures he talked about before are most likely somewhere below, and the most suspicious place is that open space in the middle of all those corpses. I think we still have to go down and take a look, but places where bodies are piled up have always been full of strange phenomena. We have to be prepared to deal with even the most troublesome situations.”

I wanted to tell them about the things that happened in Shandong, but after thinking about it again, I decided that I didn’t want to frighten the two men to death. So, I changed my mind and started talking about something else.

Lao Yang obviously didn’t want to go down at all, but he couldn’t back down since he was the one who suggested coming here, so he had no other choice but to give a reluctant nod.

I recalled what I saw just now. To reach that open space, we’d have to climb down the cliff and pass through the rows of corpses. The distance between the stone bridge where we were standing and that open space was about two hundred meters so it shouldn’t be a big problem. But the real question was how we were supposed to climb down this twenty-meter-high cliff. We didn’t have any rope and I wasn’t sure if we’d be able to climb down with our bare hands…we’d definitely have to think carefully about our course of action.

In addition, we didn’t know if there were any zombies down below. There shouldn’t be many well-preserved bodies since most of them had already dried up or become skeletons, but in the flare’s light just now, I noticed that a bunch of corpses had very sinister expressions on their faces. These expressions looked so exaggerated that they couldn’t possibly be human. The whole thing left me feeling confused on what the situation was like down there.

As I was lost in thought, I suddenly heard the sound of something falling down.

I looked back and saw Master Liang trying to sneak his way back up the stone steps.

Lao Yang immediately pointed his gun at him and shouted, “Take one more step and I’ll shoot your leg and throw you over the cliff.”

As soon as Master Liang heard his voice, he was so frightened that he took off running. Lao Yang fired a shot into the air, the thunderous roar echoing loudly throughout the whole cave.

Master Liang was so frightened by the sound of the gunshot that he stopped, ducked his head down, turned to us, and said, “Don’t shoot! Don’t shoot! I won’t run again, ok?”

Lao Yang cursed at him, “Who would fucking believe you? Get back over here and squat down. If you run again, I’ll finish you off!”

Master Liang walked back dejectedly, crouched down beside us, and said with a gloomy expression on his face, “Gentlemen, as you can see, I’m just an intellectual who decided to go along with Old Tai’s plan to swindle a client from Guangdong. In terms of sentencing, this is only my second offense so you guys should just let me go. You’re on the verge of making it big while I don’t even have the strength to truss a chicken. If I follow you guys, I’ll only be a burden. In fact, one wrong move from me might put you guys in danger.”

Lao Yang saw that he was holding his backpack in his hand and immediately became furious. He pointed at it with his gun and said, “You really think we want to take you with us? If you want us to let you go, leave the backpack and be on your merry way.”

Master Liang looked at the bag in confusion, “But…this bag is mine. There’s a saying that a gentleman—”

Lao Yang raised his gun and said, “I’m not a gentleman, I’m a beast. You can’t reason with me.”

I figured this Master Liang was quite skilled, so if we let him go and he happened to meet up with Uncle Tai and the others, that was tantamount to adding to the enemy’s numbers. But if he stayed with us, we might have a chance to control the situation. Seeing that Lao Yang was going to keep talking, I interrupted him and turned to Master Liang, “Our situation is still unclear, but even if you had a full set of equipment, an inexperienced person like you wouldn’t be able to make it out of here on your own. Why don’t you come down with us and take a look? If there’s anything good, we’ll give you as much as Old Man Tai was going to give you. If the three of us act together, our chance of survival is much greater. Just look at all the negative energy in this place. If you run into a lonely ghost when you’re by yourself, no one will come and save you.”

Lao Yang immediately added, “If you don’t want to go, feel free to leave. But you have to leave everything behind and take off your clothes…”

When Master Liang heard me say that I would also give him a share of whatever treasure we found, I could tell by his expression that he was already starting to waver. Then, Lao Yang came in with his intimidating words and pushed him over the edge. “Don’t say goodbye just yet,” he immediately said. “It seems we have some things to discuss. Since you two gentlemen think so highly of me, it would be rude of me to refuse. In fact, my knowledge and your experience are a perfect match for each other.”

When I heard this, I couldn’t help but feel amused. This guy was the type to go wherever the wind took him, quickly switching sides and changing his mind to adapt to whatever situation he was faced with. Grandpa had been right, humans were dangerous. The world truly was full of all kinds of people.

We took Master Liang’s bag and poured the contents out, looking for anything that could be useful such as ropes and lighting equipment, but his bag mainly contained food and clothes. Master Liang said that all of their important equipment was carried by Uncle Tai and Pockmark. He only had the flare gun in case they got separated and he needed to call for help.

Without ropes, we had to climb down the cliff like geckos. But it was so steep here that I didn’t know if it would even be possible for us to climb. I set off one of the few cold fireworks we had left and threw it down the cliff. As it fell all the way down, its light illuminated a bunch of places where we could place our hands and feet. I knew the climb wouldn’t have been too difficult if we had long-lasting light sources, but we obviously weren’t lucky on that front.

Outside, it was already around eleven o’clock at night. We hadn’t stopped moving since we set off so we decided not to go down tonight. We would take the chance to get a good night’s rest and treat our wounds before climbing down tomorrow. Otherwise, we’d be going into that pit highly fatigued. If something were to happen inside while we were in such a state, I had no doubt that mistakes would be made.

We didn’t know whether Uncle Tai and that fat Guangdong guy were dead or alive right now, but they had also been carrying guns earlier. If we happened to run into them, another fierce fight would inevitably break out, so we had to stay on guard.

I originally wanted to ask Master Liang about the others’ history, but after thinking about it again, I decided that it wasn’t appropriate to ask right now. Plus, our current relationship was so tense that he would definitely refuse. The only way we’d hear the truth was to ask him when he was more relaxed.

When I shared my thoughts with Lao Yang, he nodded in agreement but said, “This place is too fucking creepy with all those dead bodies down below. Let’s go back up and rest at the sacrificial altar.”

I also agreed with him, so we climbed up the stone steps again and went back to the altar.

Lao Yang built a fire, emptied one of the old food cans out, filled it with water, and then put it on the fire to heat up. After soaking some of the dry rations in the water to soften them up, we divided them equally and ate them. Once we were all full, we ate some chocolate to increase our blood sugar.

Lao Yang was very sleepy after eating, so I told them both to get some rest while I watched over the fire. Lao Yang said that there weren’t any wild animals here so I didn’t have to worry about it, but I quietly told him that I mainly wanted to keep an eye on Master Liang. Although he looked like a weak and cowardly man, those were the types who often had hidden depths. If we both fell asleep, he’d probably end up showing his true colors.

“If you’re that worried, I can just knock him out,” Lao Yang offered.

I quickly waved it off. If he hit him too hard and caused brain damage, then we’d really be in trouble.

Lao Yang didn’t push the matter and just went to sleep. I pulled out the homemade gun that had been hidden under my clothes, flicked off the safety, and then tucked it into my belt. Once that was done, I boiled another can of water to clean my wounds. Before we had gone over the edge of the waterfall, my hands had been badly burned. If I didn’t treat them properly, I knew they’d definitely become infected.

After these things were taken care of, I woke Lao Yang up and then went to sleep myself. But my aching body and painful, itchy wounds felt so uncomfortable that it was hard to sleep peacefully. When I finally woke up, I found that I had only slept for five hours and I felt even worse than before. Even my nose was stopped up.

Lao Yang gave me some warm water to wash my face, which made me feel a little better. As we ate breakfast, I noticed that Master Liang didn’t seem to be as guarded as he was yesterday, so I asked him some roundabout questions about Old Tai and the others’ backgrounds.

Master Liang already knew our names, so after giving me a look that seemed to say he knew what I really wanted, he rolled his eyes and said, “Young Wu, since we’re all in the same group now, I won’t hide anything from you. There were five people when we first came here, but only Uncle Tai and Pockmark specialized in this kind of thing. I was just following Boss Li and Boss Wang. First, I wanted to see how goods were excavated, and second, the two bosses asked me to pick out the most valuable things in the tomb first. If we’re being honest here, I’m not as bad a person as you think I am.”

When Lao Yang heard him say this, he immediately said, “That’s odd. There were only four of you earlier so what happened to the fifth guy?”

“The one you’re talking about is Boss Li,” Master Liang explained. “When we came down from the passage earlier, he went to the pool to wash his face. When we found him later, something had already bitten his head off…”

Lao Yang and I were still eating so we quickly told him to stop talking about it. We were already aware of what happened to Boss Li, but if Master Liang went into further detail, I knew we wouldn’t be able to continue eating.

Noticing that he seemed more willing to tell us the whole story now—he appeared to be the type who was quick to adapt to any situation—I took the opportunity to ask him for some background information on his two bosses.

Master Liang stood up and said, “Although I don’t know much, when it comes to their backgrounds, you guys will be shocked when you hear who they are. They’re no ordinary antique dealers. Listen carefully, I’ll tell you in detail…”

<Chapter 14><Table of Contents><Chapter 16>

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Hooray, we’re a little over a third of the way through Vol 2. ＼(＾▽＾)／