Chapter 121

Main text Chapter 122 Corpse Drift

That female corpse was dressed head to toe in plain white mourning fabric; for some reason it was visible even in the dark water. When the flare had just gone out, I could only see a vague silhouette—she lay face‑up, arms outstretched and slightly drooping behind her. The corpse slowly rose from the bottom, and as the distance between us shrank, the facial features of the white‑clad corpse began to faintly appear.

The corpse's body was wrapped in a faint blue light—a light without warmth, symbolizing death and ice‑cold. At a glance it felt bone‑chilling, like the ghost‑fire in a graveyard. I didn't know whether this was a corpse or a female ghost, why it would suddenly float up from the water.

I tried to slow my racing heart, but the inexplicable panic in my body would not go away. I thought, 'Those who come bear no goodwill; the well‑meaning do not come.' She seemed to be wearing ancient costume, not modern attire, and had suddenly risen from the deep water beneath the Xian King's Tomb—she was certainly not benevolent, so we must strike first. I reached for the black donkey's hoof, intending that when the female corpse drew near from the bottom I would suddenly act, shoving the hoof into her mouth; if she were not a zombie but a spirit, I would greet her with glutinous rice tinged with cinnabar.

Shirley Yang and Pangzi shared the same thought; each took up a device and silently watched the female corpse rising from the water, waiting to strike.

Who would have thought that the corpse, lying spread‑eagled and slowly drifting up from the water below us at an angle, would suddenly vanish into the dark water—in the blink of an eye. Looking again at the bottom, it was pitch‑black; the gloomy blue light that had enveloped the corpse disappeared like the flare's glow, swallowed by formless darkness.

Yet that inexplicable sense of panic vanished just as quickly. I initially thought only I felt it, but seeing the expressions of the other two told me they felt exactly the same—we had all been gripped by a sudden wave of panic. The three of us stared at each other, wondering what was going on. Whether she was a demon or a ghost, if she had come straight at us we could settle the matter with a life‑or‑death clash; that would be better than her appearing and vanishing soundlessly, which makes her intentions even harder to fathom.

Our upper bodies floated on the surface while everything below the chest was submerged; the depths below were unfathomable, as if we were swimming in a bottomless dark abyss. Pangzi couldn't help worrying: 'Lao Hu, do you think that corpse is the kind we usually call a "dead floater" (a corpse drifting in the water)?'

I shook my head. 'Who knows whether it's a dead floater or a water ghost, but the chances lean more toward a water ghost; otherwise how would the corpse emit that eerie blue cold light? I've never heard of phosphorescent ghost‑fire in water.'

Pangzi and I have always been daring, yet there is one thing we have feared all our lives, because a past incident left an impression too deep to forget. Ages sixteen or seventeen are a crucial stage in forming one's worldview and values; events of that period often shape a person's entire life.

So whenever I mention a female ghost, Pangzi and I immediately think of the legend of the water ghost that grabs legs. In summer, children used to love swimming in rivers or ponds, and adults would often scare them for safety, saying there was a female ghost in the river who snatched substitutes, using ghostly claws to seize swimmers' ankles; once caught, no amount of one's own strength could break free, and the victim would drown to death in the depths, becoming a resentful spirit in the cold deep water. However, Pangzi and I never believed this as kids, because by first grade we already knew that anything snagging a person's foot in the water is waterweed, not a ghost's hand.

But later, when we were sixteen or seventeen and had become Red Guards, constantly raising a ruckus everywhere to struggle against ox‑demons and snake‑gods, one evening during the three‑fu period the weather was scorching, as if fire had fallen. We were worn out from the commotion and happened to pass an abandoned small reservoir. The site was roughly in the area of present‑day PingX (the grass radical with a 'lei' character underneath). When we returned home at night, the old reservoir's bottom had a lot of mud, but the water above had a circulation system and was relatively clean; however, the reservoir was deep, not easy to sound the bottom. Some people, unable to bear the heat, wanted to jump in for a good swim, while a few others hesitated, holding back on whether to go swimming.

Just then an elderly lady in a white jacket came over and greeted us: 'Come swim in the water—this water is a cool world; beneath the surface lies another realm. My grandson plays and swims in there every day.'

Hearing that someone played there every day meant there was no danger, so the whole group jumped in to swim. When we surfaced, the lady in the white jacket had already disappeared.

Another kid who was with us said his brother had gone missing, but we weren't sure who his brother was, because aside from a few of us who knew each other, the rest of our group were revolutionary comrades who had spontaneously gathered during the revolutionary struggles—i. e., during mass brawls—and there were many of us, so we couldn't keep track of who was who. We therefore asked the boy what his brother looked like and what he wore.

But the child was too young; after rambling for a while he still couldn't make it clear, so we didn't take him seriously, assuming there was no such person at all—or that his revolutionary resolve wasn't firm enough, he had given up halfway and gone home to eat. We then scattered like birds and beasts, each heading home.

I never expected that two days later we would pass that small reservoir again and see many people busy draining it. It turned out the boy had told his parents about his brother's disappearance after swimming; the boy's father was a head of logistics in the military district, leading a party to look for his son. Pangzi and I loved to watch a spectacle, never shirking effort to see what was happening, and since we had stumbled upon this, we naturally had no reason not to look.

After the reservoir was drained, sure enough there was a teenage corpse about our age, swollen and blanched from soaking in water. His body was tangled in a large mass of waterweed at the bottom, and his left leg was being pulled by a hand that had stretched out from the weeds. Everyone was puzzled, wondering where all that waterweed had come from.

There shouldn't be any waterweed in a reservoir at all, but after we scooped it all out and cleaned the area, we found a white skeleton—this very set of bones, completely rotted away at the bottom, had grabbed the ankle of a Red Guard with its hand, and that was how he had been drowned alive in the reservoir's depths.

At that time it was the age of materialists; nobody dared believe in ghosts in this world, and even if they did, nobody would admit it, so they could only chalk it up to coincidence. That half‑grown boy must have accidentally kicked his foot into waterweed while swimming, and just happened to encounter someone who had drowned long ago in those weeds; as they struggled, they became entangled.

As for the bruises on his leg where the corpse had seized his ankle—five deep marks that no one could explain—while the white‑clad old lady who had lured us into the water was said to be a hidden agent. The story spread widely in our area, with many versions, but Pangzi and I were among the few who had actually witnessed it. Although we didn't believe in ghosts back then, the sight of that water‑logged, rotting corpse made me nauseous for three months, unable to eat properly.

That truly is an indelible memory; now, seeing a female corpse suddenly rise from the bottom and then vanish like a ghost or a specter, I naturally feel uneasy. Although the corpse disappeared underwater, we are quite aware that it's merely because the light went out and our vision can't reach that far—the eerie corpse still exists in the dark, cold depths and will surely reappear sooner or later; what will happen then, only the gods know.

These thoughts flashed through my mind; the more I dwelt on them, the more uneasy I felt, so I had to get through this gloomy, dark stretch of water as quickly as possible, and I began to paddle forward with all my strength.

Following the gently forward‑flowing current, I passed through a vast fossil forest and finally saw ahead a semi‑circular earthen mouth, its diameter small enough for only one person to pass; half of the opening protruded above the water surface, groundwater flowed through it, and beyond lay another cave.

I said to Shirley Yang, 'These underground caves link one after another; I don't know how far we still are from the Xian King's Tomb, but since we've already entered, we might as well push straight to the end and tidy up after we get out.'

Shirley Yang nodded and said, 'Judging by the mountain‑range trend between the Lancang and Nujiang Rivers, the longitudinal depth of the Insect Valley should not exceed thirty‑to‑forty miles; I've just reckoned the distance we've already covered, and it's more than two‑thirds of the way, so it won't be far.'

Inside the cave mouth the rock walls were smooth as ice; shining a searchlight on them made the stone emit a flickering red reflection. The cavern was horn‑shaped, widening the farther in one went, and many plant roots and stems hung down from the ceiling, dangling in mid‑air. The fossils formed from the ancient forest were even more densely packed, their shapes extremely bizarre; all these elements mixed together, making the terrain inside the cave extremely complex.

I and Pangzi retightened the airbag and backpack a bit, preparing to quickly pass through this area; the air here seems far less smooth than another cavern outside, the humid, sultry atmosphere is strong, mosquitoes begin to increase, the water flow also lost that cool feeling, making people's breathing become exceptionally heavy.

In the underground cavern, there actually is such a lush vegetation belt; water seeping from the valley drips down continuously along the plants' vines and stems, falling into the water; in the whole petrified forest, it seems as if it is constantly raining, everywhere is the sound of water droplets falling into the river, hesitating the cavern's arched structure makes the droplet sounds very ethereal, quite like the sound of monks striking a wooden fish in a temple, adding some mysterious atmosphere to the originally silent cavern.

We could only endure the scorching environment and continued forward for about several hundred meters; our speed had to slow down, because the fossil trees in this cavern are getting thicker and we must swim around them; in the pitch-black cavern, the water flow is chopped up by those huge fossil trees into disjointed pieces, forming many vortices and turbulence, so we can no longer rely entirely on the water's direction to judge our position; once we deviate, we must reorient with a compass, which is especially troublesome.

Ahead on the water surface there were many floating aquatic plants, blocking our progress on the water; we had to take out an entrenching shovel and continually push aside these floating aquatic plants; duckweed and the water plants had grown many mosquitoes, water spiders, leeches, which constantly flung themselves at our faces.

Just as we were fed up, we suddenly heard a buzzing buzz buzz of insect wing vibrations coming from ahead; I instinctively pulled my submachine gun out of the waterproof bag; to see what they were, Pangzi had to set off another illumination flare; in the light we saw that ahead, completely blocked by the hanging plant roots and vines, were countless huge black flying insects, resembling dragonflies but without eyes, numbering in the tens of thousands, like a dark cloud passing by, hovering back and forth around that patch of plant roots.

No one has ever seen this kind of insect; it may exist only in the special humid environment underground; insects are the largest group in the world, and about one-third of their species have yet to be recognized by humans.

However, these flying insects that look like black dragonflies appear not to attack people, but such a massive swarm inevitably makes one's scalp tingle.

I felt the situation was not right; the air was sultry, as if there was a restless danger brewing, so I asked Shirley Yang what kind of insect those flying bugs were.

Shirley Yang said: "It seems I've seen something like this somewhere; it's a kind of black tick mosquito that only exists in hot, humid sources, but that kind of insect is at most the size of a fingernail cap, whereas the flying insects opposite are as large as big dragonflies in a valley…"

Before Shirley Yang could finish speaking, she stopped, because we three saw a water spider the size of a fist crawling past from ahead; the ordinary water spiders we have seen are extremely small, able to stand on the water surface with their legs without sinking, but how could this one be so large?

Seeing such a huge water spider, all three of us felt shocked, our skin tingling; before we could think further, another two water spiders, also fist-sized, swam forward and climbed onto a nearby ancient tree fossil that had collapsed, broken, and lay horizontally on the water surface.

Pangzi exclaimed in amazement: "How are the bugs here getting bigger and bigger? There's no such huge water spider outside."

I suddenly seemed to think of something and said to Shirley Yang and Pangzi: "Have you noticed that this cave's stone walls are unusually smooth, also have a great curvature, and are reddish, quite like the gourd we saw in the mountain god temple; could we not have fallen into that gourd……

Shirley Yang looked around, examined the nearby plants and insects, and said to me and Pangzi: "We must figure out one problem: are the insects and petrified trees in this cavern getting bigger and bigger, or are we three ourselves getting smaller and smaller?"