Chapter 19 The Bones’ Story

Before the words had even left his mouth, I suddenly felt something kick me in the face with enough force to almost knock me out. Then, I heard a series of sounds close by that sounded like bones were being crushed. I didn’t know what was going on so I hurriedly lit the torch in a panic and then looked around. Lao Yang was wrestling with something off to the side, the scuffle causing him and his opponent to roll into one of the nearby corpse heaps. The entire row of orderly bones was smashed to pieces and human skulls went flying all across the ground.

I immediately rushed over to help him, only to find that I couldn’t do a thing at all—the opponent wasn’t big but it was very powerful. Even Lao Yang, who weighed over fifty kilograms, couldn’t seem to hold it down. Their two bodies continued rolling around wildly on the ground, the rampage so intense that I couldn’t get close at all. In fact, I knew I’d probably end up getting kicked if I was careless. After making several more futile attempts to enter the fray, I had no other choice but to stand on the outskirts and watch.

After a while, Lao Yang started to lose strength and the thing almost managed to escape several times. When I saw that he couldn’t go on any longer, I called Master Liang over and the two of us threw ourselves on top of Lao Yang, crushing both him and the thing under his body. Lao Yang didn’t expect me to pull this kind of stunt and started shouting as our weight pressed down on him, “Fucking take it easy! My spine feels like it’s about to break!”

I continued pushing down on Lao Yang hard, pressing all three of our combined weight down onto the thing below. When I saw that it was no longer moving, I asked him, “How is it? Is that thing dead?”

Lao Yang squeezed out a few words from between clenched teeth, “I don’t know! But if you don’t get off, I’ll fucking die!”

Seeing that his face was bright red, I quickly rolled off of him. Lao Yang stood up, let out a long sigh, and then said to me, “Y-you’re too fucking ruthless. Even if seven or eight of us could pile on top of each other when we were kids, it’s not like you can do that now. Fortunately, my spine is tough; otherwise, I’d be paralyzed from the waist down!”

I told him that he was being ridiculous and that I wouldn’t have needed to dog-pile onto him at such an old age if he could’ve handled that thing properly on his own. His waist hurt? Well, I didn’t have it fucking easy either.

When he heard this, Lao Yang rubbed his waist and cursed at me for being so heartless. I simply ignored him and turned to Master Liang, “Speaking of which, what the hell is that thing? Why is it so strong even though it’s so small? Let’s take a closer look.”

After I said this, all three of us pulled ourselves together and peered at the place where that thing was lying. All we could see was a gray furry mass among the pile of bones. It was about the size of a lynx and was still trembling after being flattened by our combined body weight.

Lao Yang picked up a human femur bone and turned the gray furry mass over. When I finally got a good look at it, I couldn’t help but curse. Shit! After all that commotion, it was just a big rat! The three of us looked at each other in silence and then burst out laughing. No wonder we couldn’t find the attacker no matter how hard we looked just now. The rat must have crawled its way into the empty eye sockets of the nearby skeletons after attacking us, thus leaving no traces behind. And we, like a bunch of dumbasses, thought that we had encountered a ghost. It was a situation where we had let our imaginations run wild and ended up scaring ourselves stupid.

But on second thought, I couldn’t shake the feeling that something was off. This rat was just too fucking big. I didn’t know what breed it was, but it must have gotten so big because it grew up eating the dead bodies here. Moreover, there was no telling how many of these rats were still in this cave. If we ended up running into a group of them, we’d definitely be screwed.

Lao Yang and I were clearly thinking the same thing because his smile suddenly turned into a frown and he said, “Not good. Now that we crushed this rat king to death, there’s no telling if his rat grandkids will give us trouble for it. I think it’s better to ditch the crime scene and quickly get out of here.”

I nodded in agreement. Lao Yang turned and started walking forward, but after taking a few steps, he suddenly said, “Crap! Which way should we go?”

I looked up and saw that because of the scuffle just now, everything had been turned upside down and we had completely lost our sense of direction. The path in front and behind us now looked exactly the same and there was no way to tell where we had come from or where we were going.

Although I vaguely felt in my heart that I could figure out the right direction to go in, the feeling was so weak that I didn’t have any confidence in it at all. And once I hesitated, this feeling disappeared without a trace.

Lao Yang looked back and forth more than a dozen times but couldn’t figure out which way to go. In the end, he said to me, “Forget it. Let’s just cast aside our morals for now and climb over the bodies.”

I looked at them, but I still couldn’t shake the feeling that something was wrong so I wanted to ask for Master Liang’s opinion. But when I turned around, I found that he wasn’t listening to us at all and was instead focused on cleaning up the bones scattered all over the ground.

Finding it a little odd, I grabbed Lao Yang and motioned for him to take a look. The two of us then craned our necks, trying to see what the older man was doing.

The battle with the giant rat had destroyed more than a dozen of the nearby corpses. The bodies had long decayed to the point that they were like sand, so once they were hit, they immediately crumbled into small bone fragments, leaving a mess on the ground. For some unknown reason, Master Liang picked up the remaining intact bones from the ground and set them aside one by one.

Even though I said intact, most of these bones were still just fragments. I figured the rats probably used them as tools to sharpen their teeth. They were all jagged, and some were so worn that you couldn’t even tell which part of the human body they belonged to.

Lao Yang, seeing that Master Liang was completely engrossed in his thoughts, became curious and asked him, “Master Liang, what the hell are you doing?”

The older man hesitated for a moment, and then turned his head and said, “It’s amazing! Although that rat caused some problems, something good came out of it. I’ve discovered a huge secret.”

When I saw the way his eyes were shining and his indescribable excitement, I immediately felt surprised. What kind of secrets could these bones hold?

Master Liang motioned for us to kneel down next to him and then picked up one of the bones while saying, “Gentlemen, take a look at this. Do you see anything?”

Lao Yang and I exchanged a glance, not understanding what kind of trick he was trying to pull. Then, a strange smile appeared on Lao Yang’s face and he said to him, “Are you messing with us? We buy and sell dead people’s things, not the dead themselves. Just give it to us straight so we can hurry up and get going.”

Master Liang smiled embarrassedly before saying, “Sorry, I’m just so excited that I can’t think of what to say. Give me a moment to find the right words…ah! Here, look at this part of the bone. Examine it carefully.”

I took the bone and looked at it, but all I saw was a very smooth notch at the place he was pointing to. The notch and bone were the same color so the damage must have occurred a long time ago. But even though Master Liang told me to look at it, I still couldn’t figure out what he was trying to say.

Master Liang looked at my confused expression and said, “It doesn’t matter if you don’t understand, I’ll just tell you guys. This bone is a human collarbone, and it’s located here—” he pointed to the base of his neck. “This small notch is called an old bone injury and it was caused before death. You can see that whatever caused the notch was very sharp, and the bone didn’t heal at all. This means that the person died not long after receiving this wound.”

When Lao Yang heard this, he still didn’t think there was anything special about it. “How is that a secret?” he snapped impatiently. “It’s a shame that the bones have wounds but let’s hurry up and go. The torch is about to burn out.”

Master Liang quickly waved his hands and said, “Give me three more minutes and I’ll finish explaining!”

When I saw how excited he was, I knew that he wouldn’t give up until he had explained it clearly to us. Lao Yang’s rambling was only wasting time so I gave him a look, warning him to stop interrupting, and then turned to Master Liang and said, “Ignore him. Hurry up and speak.”

He swallowed and said, “Where was I just now…? Oh, the person died not long after receiving this wound. Based on this, it’s reasonable to assume that this wound is what caused this person’s death. The reason why it’s located in this position is because someone cut the deceased’s carotid artery with a blade, using a downward motion. Since the blade was so sharp, it ended up nicking the bone.”

I still felt a bit puzzled after hearing this and asked, “If it’s as you say, then the owner of this bone had their throat slit?”

Master Liang smiled strangely and shook his head, “This isn’t the only one. All the other bodies here also died the same way. Look at these seven collarbones; they all have similar cut marks on them. Generally, when sacrifices took place in ancient times, the sacrifice was made to kneel in front of the sacrificial offerings, and then the priest would cut their throat from behind. But it looks like the people here all had their throats cut from the front, so I don’t believe that they were sacrifices. Instead, it seems like they were killed in battle.”

After Master Liang said this, he looked at me with a fire in his eyes. I could feel all of my hair standing on end as I stared right back at him. What’s wrong with this man? I silently wondered. If they died in battle, they died in battle. Is there really a need to be so excited?

“Master Liang,” I quickly said, “is this the big secret you were talking about just now?”

Master Liang lowered his voice, pretending to be mysterious, “No, no, this is just a prelude to the big secret. What I’m about to say next is the main topic.”

As he spoke, he pulled out another thing from the pile of corpse fragments and said to me, “The big secret is hidden in this thing.”

I took it and glanced down, only to find that it was some indescribable thing. It almost looked like a conical bamboo hat or a piece of armor, but since it wasn’t bone, it had to be a burial object. I held it up and looked at it carefully under the torchlight. “Is it a bronze piece of armor?” I asked in surprise.

Master Liang nodded, “Not bad.”

At this time, I didn’t know whether I was infected by Master Liang’s excitement or if it was my own intuition, but I vaguely felt that what Master Liang had said might really be something earth-shattering.

I immediately felt myself break out in a cold sweat as Master Liang continued, “This style of armor appeared after the Han Dynasty. Look at this piece. It doesn’t have any lining, which means that it was summer armor. This in turn means that the man died in the summer. But the strangest thing is this—” he carefully peeled off a piece from the armor fragment. “Look, this piece is inconspicuous but it’s the key. Young Wu, you’re a sensible person. I’m sure you can tell what this is at a glance.”

I was already feeling cold all over, but when I took a closer look, I immediately realized that this inconspicuous thing was nothing more than a small piece of silk. It had probably gotten stuck to the armor fragment by the corpse liquid when the corpse was rotting.

All of these things that Master Liang had shown me belonged to people from the Han Dynasty. But how could they appear in a burial pit of the She people, who had died out thousands of years ago?

Master Liang looked around the area and said, “If my theory is correct, then this place isn’t actually a sacrificial pit but a battlefield, and all of the corpses here can be divided into two groups: one is the guardian of this ancient tomb and the other is an army of Han soldiers.”

<Chapter 18><Table of Contents><Chapter 20>

****

The licensed version on one page: the man died from a broken neck
The licensed version on the very next page: the man died from having his throat cut

Excuse me, those are 2 completely different ways to die…