Chapter 20 Fire Dragon Array

I recalled the legend of Narrow Ravine and how a silent Northern Wei army had disappeared in these mountains. I already had a general idea of what must have happened back then: this silent army was actually a detachment of mute soldiers, which may have been the Northern Wei Dynasty’s “mute army” that Master Liang had mentioned before. These soldiers would never reveal any secrets so the emperor asked them to carry out disgraceful tasks, such as robbing tombs.

A thousand years ago, the descendants of the Serpent Kingdom disappeared after intermarrying with Han Chinese and other ethnic groups, but a small group of them continued to proliferate and guard the tomb of a certain chief in this cave. I didn’t know how, but the Northern Wei army must have learned that there was a tomb in this mountain.

These Han soldiers must have entered the mountain, broke through the maze-like caves, and entered this sacrificial pit. The descendants of the Serpent Kingdom fought to the death, but they were no match for their opponents’ advanced equipment and ended up being completely slaughtered.

It was obvious that most of the bodies here were the remains of the She people, so if we were walking in circles, it was probably because the gathered ghosts were still guarding the tomb of their ancestors and preventing us invaders from approaching.

If that were really true, then it was going to be difficult to pass through here. But if we went back, wouldn’t that just make this whole trip a big waste of time? I didn’t want to give up, but if there were ghosts here playing tricks on us, then we had no chance of winning.

The torch gradually became dimmer and flickered a few times, the flame now as small as a candle flame.

Lao Yang didn’t try to push us to keep moving since he knew that it was impossible to reach the ancient tomb’s entrance using ordinary methods. Plus, whether there were ghosts here or not, we simply didn’t have enough time since our torch was about to go out.

“Since this is a battlefield,” Master Liang finally continued, “it’s impossible that the bodies were tampered with, which means that this isn’t a corpse array. I guess the ghosts really have been messing with us. This is essentially a ghost-hitting-a-wall kind of situation.⁽¹⁾ Do you guys know any way to get past it?”

Lao Yang sighed helplessly. “My Shanxi cousin said that when you encounter this kind of thing, you can escape it by tying a red thread around your left foot, but we don’t have anything red on us. Should we just dye a thread with our own blood?”

I immediately vetoed the idea, “No way. If this place is filled with the scent of our blood, I bet things will take a turn for the worse. Let’s think of something else.”

“Oh,” Master Liang suddenly said, “my master once said that the phenomenon of ghost-hitting-a-wall has to occur in a dark environment. Don’t we still have a few signal flares left? Fire one off and we’ll start running down the path as fast as we can. I figure it’s better than using a torch. At least this way, the ghosts won’t be able to confuse us again.”

It made sense to me. After all, as long as we knew where we were going, we couldn’t get lost no matter what.

When I gave Lao Yang a meaningful look, he sighed and took out the flare gun while muttering, “What a waste.” Then he raised the gun above his head and fired.

As the flare soared into the air like a meteor, I reflexively followed its trajectory, waiting for it to start burning. But to my surprise, as soon as this meteor took flight, it suddenly hit something with a loud bang, bounced off, and fell straight back down to the ground.

I couldn’t help but gasp as soon as I saw it. You idiot, I thought to myself. How could you forget you’re in a cave? If you fire a signal flare straight up, it’ll obviously hit the ceiling before it starts to burn.

The flare fell down quickly and didn’t ignite until it had almost reached the ground. This was a phosphorus pentoxide flare used by expedition teams. It could burn for about fifty seconds at a very high temperature. As soon as I saw how close it was to the ground, I knew that things were about to get bad. And sure enough, it only took a few seconds after it landed before flames started popping up on that side.

I kicked Lao Yang and cursed him for being so thoughtless. Fortunately, that place over there was all bones; otherwise, we would’ve had to run back to put out the fire. But before I could even finish the thought, Master Liang grabbed my hand and shouted, “Gentlemen, we’re in trouble!”

Looking back, I saw that a wall of flames had suddenly shot up at the place where the small fire had started just now. And in an even more incredible turn of events, this wall of flames was spreading along the path between the corpses at an alarming speed. At that moment, it was like a fiery dragon was crawling along the path in the dark cave, and everywhere it went, the crackling sounds of heated bones could be heard.

When Master Liang saw this scene, his face turned pale and he quickly crouched down to pick up a handful of dirt from the ground. After smelling it, he shouted, “Kerosene! The dirt here is saturated with kerosene!”

I was shocked when I heard this, but I also squatted down and grabbed a handful of dirt. Sure enough, Master Liang was right. I couldn’t help but tremble as I hurriedly told Lao Yang to put out the torch. I was completely horrified—I never would have expected this corpse array to be hiding such a powerful trap. It was probably the last line of defense set by the She people here to protect the things in the ancient tomb, but unfortunately, they didn’t have time to use it back then, and we were the ones who ended up triggering it.

It was a miracle nothing bad had happened while we were wandering along this path. If I had accidentally dropped the torch to the ground at any point, we all would have been burnt to charcoal.

The fire dragon in the distance didn’t show any signs of diminishing at all. In fact, it had even split off into two paths at some point, the flames shooting up to a height greater than that of a person. Now that the whole cave was illuminated brightly, I looked around and found that I could finally see the layout clearly. This corpse array consisted of a bunch of interconnected paths that all converged to a single point. This meant that the fire dragon would make its way to us sooner or later, so we had to find a place where we could avoid it.

I looked around anxiously and saw that the open space we had been trying to reach was actually about a dozen meters to our left, but there was a wall of fire blocking our path. The dirt in that open space didn’t look like it was burning so it seemed like a good place to take refuge. At this time, the fiery dragon’s head was already rushing towards us, and there was no time to think, so I shouted at the other two, “Stop standing there staring like a bunch of idiots! There’s the pit! Let’s make a fucking run for it! We can think about the rest later!”

The two of them finally reacted and rushed towards the open space, stepping on the piles of corpses in their haste to escape. Even I was surprised to find that I had potential in hurdling—I was able to vault across those stone figurines in one go. Only a few seconds had passed but I soon found myself in front of the wall of fire, a wave of scorching hot air practically smacking me in the face.

I wanted to break through it without stopping, but as soon as I got closer, I could smell the stench of my own hair burning. I hesitated and tried to stop, but unfortunately, I had too much momentum going and couldn’t brake at all. I closed my eyes and screamed as I jumped headfirst through the wall of flames. Luckily, I was moving at a fast speed, but my body still felt hot so I immediately dropped to the ground and started rolling to try and put out any flames that were clinging to me. Then, Lao Yang and Master Liang also broke through the wall of fire and rolled on the ground to put out the flames that were burning their clothes.

At this time, I already knew why the ground here looked like it sloped downward—the original top layer of soil had been shoveled away. But I didn’t have time to take a closer look after I stopped rolling around because a screaming Lao Yang suddenly crashed into my side.

I hurriedly took off my jacket and helped put out the flames clinging to his body. Once they were extinguished, I helped him up and saw that he was more or less fine, but his eyebrows had been burned off. I turned to check on Master Liang and saw that he was still rolling around on the ground, but the flames on his body wouldn’t go out. I figured it was because he had fallen on the ground several times and his clothes had absorbed some of the kerosene from the dirt. I rushed over, pressed him down on the ground, and started covering him in dirt until the flames finally went out.

Master Liang screamed as white plumes of smoke rose from all over his body. Lao Yang and I peeled his clothes off and saw that several places on his back were charred black, but fortunately, he was covered in a layer of cold sweat that partially protected him. Overall, his injuries weren’t too serious. I opened my canteen and poured half of the contents on his back to help cool him down and then looked up to see what our current situation was.

The open space we were in was completely surrounded by the wall of fire as chaos ensued on the other side. A wave of heat rolled in and hit us, causing all the hair on our bodies to curl up and many of the nearby bones to burst. The bones, probably due to the gas inside them expanding from the heat, continued to burst nonstop, sending bone fragments flying high into the air. As soon as I saw this, I knew that our situation was hopeless—the cave full of corpses would soon be completely burned to the ground and we were currently in a low-lying area. Moreover, it wouldn’t be long before the oxygen in this place ran out. If we didn’t suffocate to death, we’d definitely burn to death.

Just as I was really starting to panic, Lao Yang suddenly grabbed me and shouted, “Something’s wrong! G-grab your weapon! King Yama is here to collect us!”

I didn’t know what he was talking about, but when I turned around, I suddenly saw six or seven giant rats jump through the wall of flames in a crazed panic. Seeing that they were headed straight for my face with bared fangs, I quickly ducked down to avoid them. Lao Yang didn’t wait for them to come at us again and fired off a shot, sending one of them flying. I raised our extinguished torch and used it as a club to send a few more of them flying as well. But at this time, more than a dozen more rats came rushing through the wall of flames as fast as lightning. Too close to dodge this time, I ended up getting several scratches on my back and immediately fell to the ground. As Lao Yang fired a few more shots to push them back, I looked up and saw… oh God. On the other side of the wall of flames was a crowd of rats of varying sizes, all staring at us with bloodshot eyes.

Not good! Not good! I kept repeating to myself. The rats that had already jumped through the wall of flames were deterred by the sounds of the gunshots and didn’t dare approach for the time being. But those outside the wall of flames, seeing that the place where we were standing didn’t seem to be burning, were bound to risk their lives and rush in one by one, effectively increasing their numbers. In a few minutes, they would realize that they had an advantage in numbers and would swarm us, eating our flesh until we were nothing but bones.

I didn’t think it was worth putting up a fierce fight here, so I grabbed Lao Yang and told him to leave the rats alone for a while. The most important thing right now was to find a way out of this place.

At this time, Master Liang shouted at us, “There’s a grave robbers’ tunnel over here!”

We turned around and saw a small, inconspicuous hole in the center of the pit. I didn’t know who dug it, but I wasn’t one to look a gift horse in the mouth. Lao Yang quickly pulled the magazine out of his gun and counted the number of bullets left before shoving the gun into my hands. Then, he pulled Master Liang onto his back and walked to the center of the pit. I followed after him, holding his gun in one hand and the homemade gun in my other hand.

We had only made it a few steps when the nearest rats suddenly let out piercing screeches and rushed towards us as fast as lightning. I raised Lao Yang’s gun and fired four shots in a row, hitting three of them at once. The other two rats were already right in front of my face, so I had no other choice but to lift the homemade gun in my other hand and fire. There was a loud noise and then the two rats flew into the air, reduced to nothing more than minced meat.

<Chapter 19><Table of Contents><Chapter 21>

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TN Notes:

(1) Remember, ghost-hitting-a-wall is a Chinese folk phrase that describes a situation where you get lost and end up going in circles. The idea is that when traveling in remote areas, a person is obstructed by walls that ghosts have placed in front of them, thus forcing that person to wander in endless circles.

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Wu Xie this whole chapter: