Chapter 111

The "ghost signal" deep in the mountains and forests was something I first heard from my comrades in the signal corps when I was in the unit. They mentioned it just to scare Shirley Yang, but I never expected to find a clear, abnormal transmission of a death-coded signal beneath the wreckage of a US C-type transport plane. Calling it the legendary "ghost signal" is somewhat inappropriate, as a ghost signal specifically refers to faint, mysterious radio waves received from wireless frequencies. This sound, however, is clearly not a radio signal but a conventional material signal emanating from within.

In the primeval forest before dawn, it was as if shrouded in the dark shadow of the grim reaper's wings—no wind, no rustling leaves, so silent that even a pin dropping to the ground could be heard. I sat in the treetops and listened several times; there was absolutely no mistake. Over and over, again and again.

Pangzi beneath this tree also heard this strange "dit-dit-dah-dah" signal. He craned his neck, constantly looking up at the tree. Since I was in the middle of the canopy, I could tell the sound wasn't coming from the top of the cabin but from where the two old husband-and-wife trees' trunks met the aluminum fragments of the transport plane.

Since we don't understand this mysterious phenomenon of "ghost signals," and since living people naturally feel some fear toward things from another world, we hesitated to act rashly. We only turned on the "Wolf Eye" flashlight to shine on the source of the sound. The more we looked, the more eerie it felt—even strangely shaped old bark looked like ferocious corpses in the dark.

I whispered to Shirley Yang beside me: "Could it be that an American pilot fell into a tree hollow? His distress signal from the brink of death still echoes around this tree?"

Shirley Yang shook her head: "No. When I just searched the cabin wreckage, I examined every inch carefully. There were no crew remains, no parachutes, so I concluded they bailed out before the crash. The nose hit the mountain and was completely destroyed, then this section of the cabin fell onto the canopy. How could the signal come from inside the trunk?"

I said to Shirley Yang: "Just before you shot that great horned owl, the signal meant SOS, then paused, then suddenly became DEDO. Is there some connection? Besides the US Air Force pilots flying this C-type transport, who else in these remote mountains knows Morse code?"

Shirley Yang hasn't had my supernatural experiences, but she isn't a strict materialist either. She's told me more than once that after death, people go to heaven, which is the end of life's journey. So from that angle, she believes in the soul. She told me: "That initial SOS distress code I heard might have been my mishearing—it was probably just the owl pecking at tree lizards inside the cabin, making it sound messy and disconnected. But now you've heard this signal too—it's completely different, with a very regular rhythm. And it's repeated many times without error..."

Hearing it with my own ears, coming from not far inside the trunk, so clearly, I couldn't help but believe the legend of the "ghost signal" was real. I told Shirley Yang: "Although this signal is very regular, it doesn't sound like a mechanical signal emitter. It's more like dripping water, but much duller. Maybe we guessed right—there's a dead person inside the trunk..."

Shirley Yang said: "Scientists have experimented and found that the electromagnetic waves generated by the human soul should be below 7V. Even such weak energy could possibly persist long-term in specific environments or magnetic fields. But most importantly, what intention is this death code conveying? Is it a warning? Or a threat?"

Based on my experience, if in such a situation one only thinks of escaping, that's not a good choice. Constant suspicion and fear will make every blade of grass and tree seem like an enemy, disturbing one's mindset—ironically making accidents more likely. Now is the time to summon courage, find the root cause, and get to the bottom of it, so I can put my mind at ease. Besides, dawn is coming soon; the night will pass, and once it's light, there'll be nothing to fear.

So I leaned on a branch and stood up, telling Shirley Yang: "Guessing wildly won't help. Let's go check—see if it's really some vengeful spirit. We'll decide what to do after we understand it."

Shirley Yang nodded in agreement, swapped the magazine in her "Chicago Typewriter" for a fresh one and handed it to me. This submachine gun is too heavy for her to handle smoothly. We adjusted the focus of the headlamp on our climbing helmets, checked the safety ropes on our helmets once over, and made sure they were secure.

I pulled the magazine from the submachine gun, saw it was fully loaded, then tapped the magazine twice on my helmet with a "ding-ding." This gun is notorious for jamming, so I had to make sure the bullets were firmly seated to avoid a misfire at a critical moment. I reinserted the magazine, cocked the bolt to chamber a round, waved at Shirley Yang, and we split left and right, grabbing the branches on the old tree, following the "ghost signal" sound to where the transport wreckage met the canopy.

With everything so quiet, the closer we got, the clearer the "dit-dah" sound became. The more I listened, the less it sounded like an electronic signal. Beside the cabin wreckage, after a careful search, the beam from the headlamp on our climbing helmets converged on a spot on the trunk. To prevent any accidents, Shirley Yang stood slightly ahead, and I took position half a meter behind her to provide cover. Using the headlamp's light, she confirmed the sound came from here. This "dit-dit-dah-dah" was highly unusual.

I aimed the Thompson submachine gun's muzzle at the target to prevent anything like a great horned owl from drilling out and hurting her. If anything seemed wrong, I wouldn't hesitate to pull the trigger—the "Chicago Typewriter" with its. 45 caliber isn't for show; its violent rate of fire would tear any jungle beast to pieces.

Seeing I was ready, Shirley Yang took out her Soviet-issue "paratrooper knife," held it in hand, aimed at the tree trunk thickly covered with vegetation, and slowly began cutting away, peeling off the thick moss and vines layer by layer. After just a few strokes, she discovered it was actually a natural tree hollow.

This tree hollow was only about the size of two fists put together. Over the years, it had become completely sealed by parasitic plants growing on the tree. Without breaking through this natural camouflage, it looked no different from the rest of the trunk—just uneven, lumpy green moss.

Those parasitic plants were extremely dense and thick, layered upon layers, some already severely rotted. A knife scrape would turn them into something like green slimy mud, hard to clean completely. Shirley Yang carefully inserted the tip of her "paratrooper knife" deep into the moss. The sensation from the blade tip felt like hitting a hard object.

Shirley Yang and I exchanged a glance—both full of surprise. Neither of us had expected such a small hollow here. Even if there were a hollow, it shouldn't be this tiny if a person or animal were making noise inside. Such a tiny hole on this old husband-and-wife banyan tree—there must be many of them, big enough only for a squirrel to pass through. But squirrels couldn't possibly live in this forest, so we could rule them out entirely. A lizard slightly smaller than a squirrel is a very quiet animal and also couldn't be the source.

Moreover, judging by the thickness and decay of the parasitic moss on this tree, it couldn't have formed in a short time. As I was about to examine it more closely, the trunk behind me suddenly shook—Pangzi had climbed up for the second time. This time he didn't wait for my reminder; he directly clipped his safety line onto himself first.

I was about to ask why he wasn't guarding below instead of climbing up, but I saw his face was pale with fright. Few things scare Pangzi, but he stammered: "Old Hu, I***……This forest is eighty percent haunted—I have to stay with you guys. Just now, his mom scared the hell out of me!"

Seeing he wasn't joking, I knew only something directly threatening his life would make him tense (unless it involved money). I hurriedly asked what happened—had he seen something?

Pangzi collected himself and said: "Just now I was under the tree, looking up at you two climbing around. It was too dark to see clearly—just the faint glow of your helmet lamps, blurry and indistinct. I got bored, so I decided to smoke a cigarette to perk up. Suddenly I heard a woman crying nearby—her sobs were awful, scared the hell out of this old man. I even held my cigarette butt backwards, nearly burned my tongue. There's definitely a female ghost—you listen… you listen… here it comes again."

Shirley Yang was using her "paratrooper knife" to chip away at the rotting plants inside the hollow, almost done but not yet had time to see what the hard object was. Hearing Pangzi say there was a female ghost crying nearby, she stopped her work, and together we cocked our ears to listen to the surroundings.

We had only been paying attention to the "ghost signal," but now, listening quietly, we indeed heard intermittent sobbing all around. Behind "Cover Dragon Mountain," there was no wind, so it couldn't be the wind. The sound was extraordinarily mournful and kept drifting unpredictably—east one moment, west the next. In the pitch-black darkness, it made our skin crawl.

I, Pangzi, and Shirley Yang immediately formed a T-shape on the tree canopy: I held the Thompson submachine gun, Pangzi used his "Sword Threat" automatic rifle, and Shirley Yang raised her Type 64. This gave each of us a 120-degree defensive arc, mutually supporting each other.

That sorrowful crying circled us twice, then split into three paths, swooping down from midair toward us. This time I heard clearly: it wasn't a female ghost—it was nightjars wailing. Turns out it was those damned owls' kin, but this time not just one or two—their calls indicated larger bodies, likely coming to take revenge on us. Though we had guns and ammo, fighting these nocturnal sky-haunting spirits in the dark put us at a disadvantage.

Shirley Yang could no longer afford to conserve flares. She felt in her pouch and pulled out a signal pistol—*thud*—a flare shot up from the treetop, hanging a harsh white light over the forest that lingered, illuminating everything like a snowfield.

We were also dazed by the intense white light from the flare, squinting through the glare as we prepared to search and shoot targets, when suddenly the forest fell into deathly silence—except for our heartbeats and breath, every sound vanished.

The few owls that had attacked were dazzled by the flare's light, fled into the distant darkness, and vanished without a trace. The "ghost signal" that had made our scalps tingle also disappeared—no sound at all, not even the morning birdcalls that should have been there. All animals seemed to have died out.

Before I could even express surprise, almost as those sounds vanished, the horizon's cloud peaks rose ruggedly, a streak of dawn broke through the gap, and the first ray of morning light spilled into this strange forest.

It seemed that at the exact moment of dawn, the mountain valleys and forest's demons and monsters all fled to avoid the sunlight, rushing back to their lairs to hide.

We remembered the hole in the tree trunk and turned to look—sure enough, on the trunk beneath the C-type transport, there was a greenish hole. Inside, a piece of smooth, deep-red stone glowed faintly in the morning light, while the surrounding moss had been scraped away by Shirley Yang's knife.

Before I could figure out what was happening, suddenly the treetop beneath my feet went *crack-crack-crack* and snapped off. It turned out this horizontal, thick banyan branch had borne most of the weight of the transport's cabin. Because we had just gathered together in haste to prepare for the owl attack, our weight was too concentrated—this is a major taboo when moving in trees. Adding our three weights, especially Pangzi's, the old banyan, already severely malnourished, couldn't take the strain. The upper half of the trunk split in two, and the aged tree split completely apart.

Fortunately, our safety ropes were still fixed to the main trunk of the old banyan. Though we took a jolt to the trunk, we didn't fall straight to the ground—today this rope has saved us no fewer than three times. Above us, the C-type transport, having lost its main supporting branch, slid directly down to the base of a large tree over twenty meters high, crashing with a huge, mournful sound.

We looked up and could see inside the split trunk of the old tree. After a moment, Pangzi said: "What is this? Looks valuable…… I think this time…… we really…… really struck it rich."

Then that familiar yet strange signal sound suddenly flashed again from within the split trunk……