Chapter 24 Death Plunge

I froze in shock while thinking to myself, what’s going on? How can this face crack? Is its skin dry or something? But before I could take a closer look, the monster pulling my leg suddenly gave a hard yank, making me stumble. The thing was so strong that I couldn’t resist at all, so I stopped struggling and jumped down. As I fell, I grabbed a nearby bronze branch with one hand and raised the gun in my other hand. Placing the muzzle against the monster’s throat, I pulled the trigger and blew its head off with a loud bang.

The recoil was so strong that I almost lost my grip on the branch, but I clenched my teeth and held on. Once I was more stable, I looked down to confirm that the shot hadn’t missed. Sure enough, the creature’s headless body had been thrown off the bronze tree by the force of the shot, but its hand was still latched tightly around my leg. As a result, the body’s dead weight ended up pulling me down.

It was impossible to bear the weight of two people with just one arm, so I clenched my teeth and lowered my head, trying to find a branch that I could place my feet on. Once I did that, I could figure out a way to get this corpse off of me. But at this time, the monster with the cracked face suddenly hung upside down, wrapped one paw around my throat, and lifted me up. It felt like my neck was being squeezed by the Band-Tightening Spell on Sun Wukong’s golden headband.⁽¹⁾ I couldn’t get a single breath of air in and my face immediately turned red. Feeling desperate, I raised the gun in my hand and smashed it against that thing’s head with all my might.

If someone were hit hard in the face a few times, they would definitely be injured. This was especially true for the monster, which was clearly dazed after receiving my fierce blows. It kept shaking its head and trying to dodge, but I managed to hit the crack in its face with a heavy blow. It let out a strange cry, suddenly released its hold on my throat, jumped onto the branch above my head, and frantically clawed at its face.

Now that I had lost my support, all the weight returned to my hand again and I lost my grip on the branch. I fell straight down for more than one meter before I was able to latch onto a protruding branch and stop my descent. When I looked up, I saw that the monster’s face had completely shattered and turned into small white fragments that were starting to flake off.

Soon, all these white fragments began to fall like snow. I caught one of them and took a closer look, only to find that it was actually stone. Were these things statues? I looked up again and saw that beneath the crumbled stone face, there was actually a face covered in yellow fur.

I took a closer look at the face and suddenly realized who our opponents were. “Lao Yang!” I shouted, “I know what these bastards are! They’re monkeys, big fucking monkeys!”

Lao Yang was still in the darkness below and couldn’t really see what was going on, but I heard him shout back, “Monkeys, my ass! How can monkeys have human faces?! That doesn’t make any sense!”

“They’re not faces!” I yelled. “They’re masks! These monkeys are wearing stone masks with human faces on them!”

I could see Lao Yang climbing up from the darkness below, his clothes practically in tatters. “Never mind what they are!” He shouted at me. “What about these monkeys? Can we beat them?”

I looked towards him and saw a bunch of shadows moving in the darkness below. I couldn’t tell how many of these masked monkeys were chasing after us. I climbed up a few meters, opened the box under the gun’s barrel, and saw that the red cartridges had been used up and there were only a few blue ones left. They probably weren’t filled with small lead pellets but larger steel balls. This kind of ammo worked well at long distances but wasn’t as good as buckshot. When I saw the monkeys quickly climbing up, I hurriedly squeezed the butt of my gun with both hands and fired two shots down below.

The lethal force of the steel balls was greatly reduced as they spread out in the air, but they were still effective at covering a wide area. The monkeys closest to us were covered in blood, and many of those in the distance were also hit. If I fired five rounds in quick succession, I figured I could kill all of these things.

The monkeys seemed to be intimidated by the gun’s firepower and all slowed down. Taking advantage of the situation, I quickly turned and followed Lao Yang, the both of us trying to catch up with Master Liang. The monkey with the broken mask saw us, bared its teeth in fright, and then jumped to the side as if it were flying. Lao Yang looked at me in surprise before saying, “Holy shit, they really are monkeys. What’s going on here?”

I also found it very strange. Who put the masks on these monkeys? For what purpose? There were neither eye nor mouth holes on the masks so how did these monkeys survive?

Master Liang had already climbed more than ten meters away from us and was now lying on a branch, panting for breath. We soon caught up to him and found that he was practically comatose. Fortunately, the branches there were dense so he could lay there without falling off. The torch had fallen about halfway below him and gotten stuck between three branches.

Lao Yang went over to pick up the torch, raised the pistol in his other hand, and shot down the maskless monkey. He was going to throw the pistol away since it was completely out of bullets now, but after he raised his hand to do so, he seemed to change his mind and stuck it back in his belt instead. Once that was done, he raised the torch and waved it below, trying to use the flames to push the approaching monkeys back. The frightened monkeys retreated to where the torchlight couldn’t reach them, but as soon as the torch moved away, they immediately pressed closer again, not even giving us a chance to catch our breath.

Lao Yang waved the torch around for a long time, but instead of driving them away, their encirclement actually became smaller and smaller. I tugged at Master Liang to try and get him to come back to his senses, but he just lay there like a gelatinous blob. “Leave him!” Lao Yang shouted. “We can’t hold them off any longer. Let’s go!”

I was feeling extremely anxious and wanted to kick Master Liang down the tree, but he wasn’t a vicious person so I really couldn’t bring myself to do it. I tugged on him and tried to lift him up, but his butt ended up slipping between two branches, which made the whole situation even worse.

Lao Yang, who continued swinging the torch around to keep the monkeys at bay, turned and shouted at me, “Damn it! What the hell are you doing? This guy isn’t one of us. If things had gone well for him earlier, he might have already killed you in cold blood. Your preferential treatment of prisoners needs to fucking end here!”

I reloaded my gun and fired off two more shots, the loud bangs accompanied by five monkeys sent flying through the air. As the other monkeys retreated nearly six meters away from us, I dumped out the spent cartridges and replaced them with the remaining two. But just as I was about to fire, Master Liang suddenly grabbed my hand and said weakly, “These things are afraid of fire…use…the signal flares…”

When I heard him say this, I suddenly came to my senses. Lao Yang reacted quickly and took out the flare gun before asking me, “Where exactly am I supposed to aim? It’s useless to hit them directly!”

I grabbed the flare gun from him, aimed it at the rock wall across from us, and pulled the trigger. The flare shot out like a bolt of lightning, hit the rock dozens of meters away, ricocheted back, and hit the bronze tree. It bounced around the branches two or three times before suddenly exploding in the middle of the gathered monkeys, burning them all with its extremely high temperature. Instead of waiting for the first shot to go out, I fired two more off until the whole space was suddenly lit up with a dazzling white light.

Lao Yang was blinded by the sudden bright light and almost fell off the tree. I immediately grabbed his head and pushed it to one side while shouting, “Don’t look! We’re too close! This is a hundred times more powerful than the light rays from welding. It’ll burn our retinas!”

The three of us closed our eyes at the same time, but it still felt as if the light was piercing through our eyelids. Although we couldn’t see, we knew that the monkeys were driven mad by the bright light because we could hear them erupt into chaos below, followed by the smell of burning flesh.

I didn’t know how long it took before the bright light finally dimmed, but once it did, I squinted and looked down. My eyes were burning and my vision was very blurred, but I could see that all of the monkeys were gone. Lao Yang had tears pouring from his eyes and was desperately rubbing at them with his hands while Master Liang had completely passed out. If I hadn’t been gripping his collar, I knew he would have definitely fallen off the tree.

I was relieved to see that the monkeys were gone. I didn’t know whether it was because they were afraid of the heat or the bright light, but if they had looked directly at the light, there was a ninety percent chance they would’ve been temporarily blinded. I figured it would take them about half a month to fully heal. When I thought of this, I couldn’t help but sigh in relief. I patted Master Liang until he came to his senses and then grabbed his arm, lifted him up, and tried to drag him up after me. But it was useless. All I managed to do was prop him upright; I couldn’t move him from his original spot at all.

After lowering him back down, I went over to check on Lao Yang. He was squinting his eyes and muttering curses, but he could finally see again. “You should fucking warn a guy before doing something,” he complained. “If I go blind because of you, I’ll definitely kill you.”

I cursed, “Shit, you still have the face to say that? I saved your fucking life, you know? Besides, you’re not blind, are you?”

Lao Yang looked at the area below and said, “Alright, alright. I’ll admit that this trick really worked. But did the monkeys run away or did they all burn to death?”

I told him that it was unlikely they had all burned to death. They probably made a temporary retreat and might climb up again later. But since we had finally found a way to deal with them, we didn’t need to be afraid anymore—there were still a few flares left, so it should be enough to save us a few more times.

I thought of how finely crafted the masks worn by the monkeys were, and how they were carved to look just like real people. Were they related to the realistic stone statue we had seen on the cliff? But why did they attack us?

I had read a novel before about some ancient civilizations that had trained gorillas to guard mines. After the destruction of these ancient civilizations, these gorillas continued to pass on their killing techniques to the next generation. In this way, the descendants of these gorillas were still guarding the remains of the mines thousands of years later and would slaughter any expedition teams that came near.

But the creatures we just encountered were monkeys. They obviously weren’t as clever as gorillas so they couldn’t do such complicated things. I wanted to ask Master Liang about it, but I could tell by the expression on his face that it was pointless to ask—the man was on the verge of collapse. If he didn’t rest soon, I was afraid he’d keel over and die.

We stayed in that spot for more than ten minutes, only daring to breathe a sigh of relief when we didn’t see any more monkeys appear below. Lao Yang took out some food and told us to eat, but we both refused. It wasn’t a matter of hunger right now but a lack of rest. Even if he gave me pure glucose, I knew I still wouldn’t be able to walk.

I leaned against a few branches with my head pillowed on my backpack and started to doze off before I knew it. Lao Yang and Master Liang were also sitting in a daze and didn’t try to stop me. But just as I was about to fall asleep, a series of crashing sounds suddenly came from above, quickly followed by the whole bronze tree shaking violently, as if a huge monster was climbing down.

Oh no, I thought to myself. We just got rid of the monkeys and now something else has appeared. Is King Kong coming down from above? As I was trying to figure out where we could hide, a black shadow suddenly fell from the sky like a lightning bolt and landed in the space between three branches, splashing a foul-smelling liquid all over my face.

The impact was so huge that the whole bronze tree shook, nearly sending me plummeting to the ground. All three of us were scared to death and stood there frozen for a long time before we finally reacted.

Lao Yang was the first to calm down. He raised the torch up and called us over to see what fell. When we took a closer look, we found that it was actually a person. His body was stuck between the branches of the bronze tree and his limbs were twisted at an unnatural angle. His eyes were wide open, his face was covered in blood, and his ribs were poking out of his body. It was clear to see that he had fallen to his death from a great height.

Lao Yang leaned the torch closer to the body to illuminate its face and suddenly cried out, “Fuck, it’s that bastard, Uncle Tai! No wonder we never saw him. He was in front of us the whole time!”

Master Liang’s whole body was trembling as he leaned over, looked at the body, and then pressed down on Uncle Tai’s chest. A stream of blood poured out of the corpse’s nose and mouth. Master Liang sighed and said, “He fell to his death from a great height. All of his internal organs are crushed. But how could he fall so carelessly?”

I looked at Uncle Tai’s legs. The bones were sticking out, and practically his whole body was twisted at an unnatural angle—probably the result of hitting those bronze branches as he fell all the way down here. Master Liang pressed on his limbs again and took a deep breath before saying, “Gentlemen, it looks like the top of this tree is still far away. Based on how Uncle Tai’s bones are all broken, he must have fallen from a height of about a hundred meters.”

I couldn’t help but cry in my heart. We were already exhausted after climbing about fifty or sixty meters in our mad dash up the tree just now, but the top was still that far away? How were we supposed to make it? And even if we did climb to the top, we probably wouldn’t have any strength left in our bodies. One wrong move and we’d probably end up like Uncle Tai—a broken bag of bones.

Master Liang and I must have been thinking the same thing because we both had pained expressions on our faces.

Lao Yang, on the other hand, didn’t feel disheartened by the news at all. Seeing us like this, he patted me on the shoulder and said that a few hundred meters was nothing. If we were covering that distance on the ground, then it would be over in a matter of seconds. All we were doing now was climbing it, so there was really nothing to worry about. I told him to fuck off. If we listened to what he said, then it would only take us thirty minutes by bike to reach the top of the 8,848-meter-high Mount Everest. Did he not understand that what we were dealing with now wasn’t a battle of friction but of gravity?

Lao Yang waved his hand as if to say that he didn’t want to argue with me and then went to Uncle Tai’s backpack and dumped the contents out. As he poked through the items to see what we could use, I immediately felt overjoyed—in Master Liang’s team, Uncle Tai and the young man named Pockmark were the ones carrying the main equipment. It seemed that most of the things were there, including bullets for the pistol, several detonators, a flare gun, and even some rope. But the thing that made me the happiest was the flashlight we found. I recalled the cave we were in before with the thousands of corpses and how I was afraid that the torch would go out. Shit, I really wanted to snatch this flashlight up and kiss it a few times. High-tech goods were the best!

Lao Yang loaded the bullets into the pistol’s magazine, put everything back into the backpack, slung it on his back, and said to us, “That group of macaques must still be down there. We can’t stay in this place for long. Let’s rest a bit and then quickly head towards the top. Everyone’s climbed the 1,300 meters to Mount Tai’s peak, right?⁽²⁾ It’s basically just a one-day round trip. This is just like it; nothing special at all. Just think of this as a sightseeing tour.”

Master Liang, whose complexion had improved a little bit, gave a wry smile and made a walking gesture with his fingers while saying, “Brother Yang… to go up Mount Tai, all you have to do is walk, whereas here, we have to climb straight up and down. How can you possibly compare the two? Moreover, you get to see the beauty of the Five Sacred Mountains there, which includes strange rocks and a sea of clouds. What’s there to look at here?”

Lao Yang kicked the bronze tree’s trunk and said, “I was just making a fucking analogy. Although this bronze tree can’t compare with the scenery at Mount Tai, it’s at least spectacular, yeah? You two just need to hang on a little longer and don’t be discouraged. After all, victory is just around the corner. Let’s hurry and pack everything up, grit our teeth, and climb to the top in one go. The scenery will definitely be worth it.”

I rubbed my lower leg, which had already begun to swell, and told him that it wasn’t that I lacked motivation, there just really wasn’t anything I could do even if I clenched my teeth so hard I bit through my lips. Granted, I could still squeeze out some strength if I really needed to, but Master Liang was practically half-dead. Instead of rushing us and only being able to move for a few minutes, it was better to let us rest a bit first.

Master Liang gave me a grateful look while Lao Yang sighed, saying that it was fine, but we would have to throw Uncle Tai’s body down the tree. He felt too uncomfortable with it staring at him.

I didn’t feel anything special when I saw Uncle Tai’s twisted facial features and lifeless eyes, but the fact that his eyes had popped out of their sockets really was a bit scary. At this time, I wasn’t too concerned about the sensitive topic of the morality or immorality of the situation. Instead, I was more focused on helping Lao Yang carefully lift Uncle Tai’s body from the branches.

After falling from such a great height, it was inevitable that you would hit a bunch of the protruding bronze branches along the way. The only good thing was that Uncle Tai didn’t fall directly to the ground down below. When I lifted his body, I found that Master Liang’s assessment had been right—Uncle Tai’s whole body was abnormally soft, as if all of his bones had been broken. As we moved him, a large amount of blood gushed from his broken body and flowed down along the branches and into the grooves on the bronze tree. Then, the blood flowed down along the grooves towards the base of the tree.

When Master Liang and I saw this phenomenon, we both froze in shock. Master Liang immediately told us to stop, turned on the flashlight we had taken from Uncle Tai’s backpack, pointed the light at the grooves, and looked at the bronze branches again. “Gentlemen,” he said to us, “I think I know what this bronze tree was used for!”

<Chapter 23><Table of Contents><Chapter 25>

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TN Notes:

(1) The “band-tightening spell” recited by the monk Tang Sanzang in the classical novel “Journey to the West” causes the headband worn by Sun Wukong (aka the Monkey King) to contract, which causes him unbearable pain. It’s meant to correct any bad behavior, such as killing people. Here’s a research article someone did. Pic of the headband:

(2) Mount Tai is a mountain of historical and cultural significance located north of the city of Tai’an. It’s the highest point in Shandong province, China. The tallest peak is the Jade Emperor Peak, which is commonly reported as being 1,545 meters (5,069 ft) tall (so Lao Yang was way off lol).

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Love how Lao Yang’s like “We might have almost died and are completely exhausted but look at this wonderful view” and then Wu Xie and Master Liang are over here not having any of his shit ahahahaha