Chapter 81 Anomalous Situation

I carefully examined those horse-like faces and found that they seemed to be the same ghost soldiers I saw under Changbai Mountain before, or rather, they all had some characteristics of the ghost soldiers— not only those long faces, but also the proportions of their facial features were the same. I immediately felt uneasy, silently wondering if I was inside the bronze door right now. Did I go around and enter the door from the other side or something?

Is that what Poker-Face did behind the bronze door for ten years, enjoying a banquet? What kind of banquet was it to make people linger for so long?

By this time, I could no longer see Black Glasses. He must have completely walked into the darkness. I was anxious to meet up with Fatty and then chase after him, so I quickly said to Fatty, “I’m above you. What’s the plan?”

“Find a way to get us up there.”

“It’s too damn high! How am I supposed to do that?” I asked angrily.

“You’re Wu Xie, you’ll figure it out,” Fatty responded.

I cursed to myself, wondering what had happened recently for everyone to have so much confidence in me. Or, maybe they had no other choice but to rely on me; otherwise, their group would be destroyed. So, even if they didn’t believe it, they still said it anyways.

“Why hasn’t Xiuxiu said anything?” In order to avoid any accidents, I decided to check on everyone’s situation first. But as soon as I finished asking, I immediately heard Xiuxiu’s voice say, “Can’t speak. Holding my pee in.”

“Ok.” I said to her, noticing how strained her voice was. “Fatty, you must have a lot of qi in your dantian⁽¹⁾ to be able to talk like this even while holding it in.”

“Don’t be ridiculous. When I saw the light from your flashlight just now, I already let it out in order to talk to you. It’s dripping down my leg now, but I definitely feel more relaxed. I advised the others to do the same, but they’re too proud.”

I looked around to see where I could find a rope, and as a result, my eyes landed on all that hair covering the ceiling and hanging right next to me.

I thought for about three seconds before stretching my hand out and pulling on it—the strands were still resilient. How many years had they been hanging up here? The small houses in the shituolin, the top of the cave covered in hair, and the long tables set up below were all giving off an extremely primitive vibe. I felt like they had existed here since the Neolithic Age.

Even though people from the Neolithic Age had turned into fossils by now, could their hair have survived? I couldn’t remember whether the main component of hair was protein or something else, but even if it could be preserved to this day, in this kind of environment, it should have turned to dust as soon as it was touched.

But as I was pulling on these strands of hair now, I found that they were actually very strong. Was it not hair, then, but something like hair?

Or maybe this hair was still attached to something living?

I grabbed the hair and began searching for its origin, wanting to know where it came from and how it was hanging from this cavern ceiling.

Upon closer inspection, I saw that all the hair was coming out of the cracks in the stone ceiling. But these hairs weren’t simply stuffed into the cracks; they were hanging from ivory hooks that had been placed in the cracks. The hair hung from hook to hook, just like hanging curtains.

When I untied the hair from the nearest hook, it started to sag down, but the other two sides were still stuck on hooks in the cracks.

It’s hard to describe the situation clearly, but I realized that all the hair here wasn’t cut into separate segments, but part of one very long continuous strand. It had been hung from the hooks in the ceiling section by section, making it look like separate segments.

And judging from the condition of the hair, it all came from the same origin—after all, everyone’s hair was different, including Poker-Face’s, Fatty’s, Xiao Hua’s, and even Black Glasses’ hair—which meant that it all belonged to the same person..

I looked at the direction the hair seemed to originate from and found that it was in the opposite direction of the crevice I came out off. All the hair seemed to converge in that direction, which was the same direction Black Glasses had been heading toward when he disappeared. It was pitch black over there, but I knew it was the end of this banquet hall, where the host’s main seat was located.

My God, was there a large table over there that the host of this banquet was sitting at, with hair far exceeding human limits? And because there was so much hair, it had to be hung on the ceiling of this tall cavern?

“I have good news and bad news for you,” I said to Fatty.

“Just tell me if you have a plan. If not, just leave. When you burn joss paper for all of us next year, remember to ask the shop owner for a discount on the mock ingots and candles. Just say it’s considered a group discount.”

“No, listen to me. The good news is that I can lower the hair down from the top of the cave to save you guys. It’s very tough and long, so it can be used as a rope. I don’t have to braid it or tie it together to make it strong enough.”

“Then what’s the bad news?”

“Think about it. If this hair can be used, then it means that the owner of this hair is still alive. With so much hair, what do you think this thing is?” I looked at the darkness where the hair seemed to originate from and wondered what kind of creature this banquet host was. “If you guys pull on its hair to climb up here, what do you think will happen?”

“What’ll happen? I don’t know, romance?”⁽²⁾

I hope that’s all it is, I thought to myself before starting to lower the hair down. In fact, the distance from here to where I first came in was just about right—as long as I pulled the hair, it would slip out of the hooks in the ceiling and fall towards Fatty. The more I pulled, the lower the hair would drop down.

Slowly, the hair began to get closer to Fatty. It was only when it finally reached him that I dared to breathe a sigh of relief. “Damn, so much hair,” Fatty said. “Is it safe?”

“Isn’t it a little late to be asking that now?” I asked, a little out of breath after all that pulling. Seeing that Fatty could reach the hair, I found an ivory-filled stalactite and tied the hair to it—I was worried that the hooks in the ceiling wouldn’t be able to bear Fatty’s weight.

But at this time, I suddenly noticed that something was wrong—the hair around me was obviously being pulled by something. Then, a strange pale thing suddenly appeared in my field of vision.

It was very tall—much taller than the average person—and had a huge pale face. It was hanging upside down from the top of the cavern, and when I shined my flashlight towards it, I found that it was about four meters away from me, and most of its body was covered by the hair.

I noticed almost instantly that it was a woman, and she was clearly the owner of this hair, because the hair on her head was hanging down in an endless curtain.

“Should I climb up?” Fatty asked from below.

“Just wait,” I said, swallowing thickly. “She’s already here.” As soon as I finished speaking, the woman rushed right towards me.

I immediately let go and jumped into the abyss, grabbing onto the hair that I had just lowered down to Fatty and the others. As I slid straight down, I shouted, “Fatty, change tactics!”

“What tactics?”

I slid down onto the table below, landing so heavily that everything on the table shook. Wincing in pain, I asked Fatty, “Do you have a gun? We’re fighting!”

But before I could finish speaking, the hair tangled around me suddenly lifted up, and I was dragged into the air by some force. In that brief moment when I was being pulled up, Fatty thrust something at me, which seemed to be some kind of weapon.

<Chapter 80><Table of Contents><Chapter 82>

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TN Notes:

(1) The dantian region is your pubic region, a point two inches below the navel where one’s qi resides.

(2) Not sure if 爱情 is a typo or not. Maybe Fatty was thinking along the lines of Rapunzel, where the prince climbs up her hair to reach her?