Chapter 123: Main text Chapter 124 The Secret of the Mountain God

Main text Chapter 124 The Secret of the Mountain God

This situation is not surprising; this gourd-shaped mountain cave, while overall naturally formed, is highly likely to have been created by intense geological changes in ancient times, but within the fossil forest inside the gourd cave, many traces left by ancient people exist, and judging by the ancient carvings revealed on the fossil altar, it can almost be determined that even before the construction of the Xian King's Tomb, this mysterious cave was regarded by the local indigenous people as an extremely important place.

Human ancestors, in the Stone Age when heaven and earth were first split, already had the tradition of knot-tying for record-keeping; as civilization developed, stone carvings, rock paintings, reliefs and other direct forms of expression became the most effective means of traditional civilization, and at places where important rites were held, large amounts of pictorial information were left behind, giving later generations the most direct enlightenment.

Ancient forefathers, over long ages, used realistic or abstract artistic methods to draw and carve patterns or symbols on rock, which recorded every aspect of ancient human society's life; and the fossil altar we discovered in the gourd cave beneath the Insect Valley records the secret activities of ancient people worshipping the mountain god here.

First to catch the eye is the best-preserved panel on this altar; although called intact, only relatively so—after thousands of years of erosion, a large part of the relief has become blurred, the stone carvings employ a grinding technique: first chisel then grind, lines are relatively coarse and deep, the grooves are smooth, and some spots still retain the original color.

One can roughly see that in the carving on this stone slab there is a tall, black-faced deity with big ears and a high nose, coarse hair on the face, holding a skull in its mouth; the appearance is simple yet strange, easy to remember.

Pangzi pointed at the black-faced deity on the fossil altar and said, 'Hey, this black face, doesn't it resemble the idol enshrined in the mountain god temple at the entrance? It's just missing its two attendant yaksha demons; so this gourd cave is his turf—I don't know where this brat comes from.'

Shirley Yang said, 'The appearance is somewhat different, but the essence is the same; it's probably the same figure. However, the image in the mountain god hall has the style of Qin-Han stone carving, looking ethereal and unworldly, quite influenced by the central plains Han civilization sphere, whereas the carvings on this altar everywhere reveal a primitive barbaric freehand style; they should date back at least three or four thousand years as primitive relics. Roughly before the Warring States period, they are traces left by the southern frontier aborigines; perhaps the mountain god temple at the entrance was crafted when the Xian King's Tomb was built, shaping the deity's image according to local legend. Moreover, we cannot yet be certain whether it is a mountain god or a shaman; let's look at the rest.'

Pangzi continued clearing the remaining carvings with an engineer's shovel; he made out a part, Shirley Yang looked at another part, but most of it had become unrecognizable, and the sequence was jumbled, making no sense; after looking for a while we actually found no further valuable information.

I also felt a hidden anxiety, holding a flashlight to illuminate Pangzi and Shirley Yang on one hand while staying alert to any movement around us on the other; stopping awkwardly in the middle of the cave is no trivial matter, for hidden dangers abound. The elusive underwater female corpse, the unusually large toad, and those huge flying insects—though we have not yet suffered a deadly attack, we still have not clarified whether our bodies are shrinking, or if some change has occurred from venturing deep into this gourd-shaped cave.

The constant consumption of equipment and energy forces us to exert ourselves fully to pass through this cave as quickly as possible, yet this strange cavern is fraught with danger; the deeper we go, the wider the cavern becomes, and its plants and insects are far larger than those outside, as Shirley Yang said: insects are the strongest life-form and lethal species on Earth, they have not dominated the planet solely because their size is too small; if we continue onward in the cave, those flying insects need only grow threefold, and should we be unlucky enough to be bitten, we would surely die, even a Golden Immortal of the Great Luo could not survive.

One could say that just when we were hesitating between advance and retreat, we discovered a fossil altar, which suddenly became of great significance; now we can only pin our hopes on it—if we can find some clues on the altar to assess our situation step by step, we can decide whether to press forward with the adventure or must turn back, and also think of other ways to seek a passage into the Xian King's Tomb.

I could wait no longer, so I told Shirley Yang, 'I recall that Tang dynasty geomancy master Yuan Tian Gang's 《X Tian Lun》 (with a six above and the character for 'brother' below) once described the scene of ancient people sacrificing to the mountain god, which bears considerable resemblance to here; the stone altar in this cave is likely not the only one, we might as well look nearby—perhaps we will gain something.'

Shirley Yang had me look at the stone carving she and Pangzi had just cleared out, and said to me, 'This is the final part, two pieces joined together; thank God, we can still make out a rough picture—come and have a look.'

Seeing Shirley Yang's face look somewhat odd, I could not tell whether she was pleased or worried, seeming more doubtful, I therefore handed the wolf-eye flashlight and the sword‑vital‑energy rifle to Pangzi, bent down, and went to examine the carved stone relief on the altar.

I steadied myself and observed closely; the artwork is rugged and substantial, the composition simple, the poses natural, yet the expressive quality is strong—at that moment an exceedingly bizarre scene unfolded on the water surface of the fossil forest: a group of natives with feathers in their heads, riding small boats, each holding a long pole; those poles and the wooden boats we had seen after passing through the burial trench, though we did not know their purpose then.

Only see that the wooden boats were tied with many large toads, likely captured by these natives nearby and bound tightly with rope; the large toads have big mouths, their expressions show extreme fright, as if they are terribly anxious about the fate awaiting them, all straining to struggle; though the carving is simple, it is extremely vivid, allowing one to grasp the scene conveyed by the stone carving, which is filled with a tragic atmosphere of large‑scale ancient sacrifice and slaughter.

Several feather‑crowned natives, under the command of a leader wearing a buffalo‑horn helmet, simultaneously lifted a large toad with a long pole, raised it mid‑air, and inserted it into a hole in the stone wall of the fossil forest, from which billowing black vapor rose.

Behind it another wooden boat carried several shrunken toads, displaying a look of dying without closure, their round bodies now withered; moreover, the color of the dead toad carving differs from that of the live ones, appearing lifeless, mournful and horrible, fully illustrating the gap between life and death.

Having seen only this, I recalled what I had witnessed inside the mountain god temple: the black‑faced mountain god flanked on left and right by a mountain ghost attendant each—one touching a fiery‑red stone gourd, the other grasping a lively hopping toad—thus showing that the deity guarding the great mountain dwells in a gourd‑shaped cave; moreover, the local people, under the guidance of a shaman, capture great numbers of toads to offer to him.

I asked Shirley Yang, 'Then it means we haven't shrunk; rather, this cave truly is gourd‑shaped, trumpet‑like—we entered through a narrow opening like the gourd's mouth, and now we have reached the front half of the gourd's belly.'

Shirley Yang nodded, 'You are only half right; although the front carvings are blurry, I have discovered some depictions of the local terrain inside—the entrance we came through is the gourd's base, an artificially chiseled opening, and the great gourd cave's history far predates the Xian King's Tomb; if we wish to pass through this cave to reach the Xian King's Tomb at the gourd's mouth, we must drill into the hole where the natives used a long pole to lift a large toad inside, and it is possible that the mountain god lord is still waiting for us within.'

I was momentarily stunned, completely frozen: 'What does the mountain god lord want us for? Could he intend to eat us like a diseased toad?'

Pangzi said to Shirley Yang, 'You don't need to scare us; besides Chairman Mao, who have we ever obeyed? I'll march in with my submachine gun and take a look—if he kindly clears a path for us, fine; otherwise, if he angers the old man, without a word I'll first gun him down with a burst, and thereafter this gourd cave will bear the surname Wang instead of Hei.'

I came to my senses and told Pangzi, 'You're talking nonsense; ancient feudal superstition can't be taken seriously—I don't believe in any mountain god; I dug earth caves for years on Kunlun Mountain and never unearthed a mountain god; I think it was merely some wild beast living in the cave back then, and the local ignorant, superstitious masses, oppressed by the ruling class and weighed down by three great mountains, took that creature as a deity—such precedents are commonplace in Chinese history, too many to count.'

Pangzi, thinking it over, said, 'That also makes sense—otherwise how could we say knowledge is power? If it really were an animal being worshipped as a mountain god, it might be a python or the like; in these deep mountains and old forests, that sort of creature dominates, we often see snakes eating frogs, so it's likely an old python or a large snake.'

I and Pangzi at once felt our ambitions deflated, feeling heroes had no place to exert themselves, but Shirley Yang said, 'Don't jump to conclusions yet—look at this final carving; the underwater female corpse is exactly what we just saw with our own eyes, and that cave over there may not be completely empty.'

Only then did I recall that there was still one more carved stone relief; upon seeing it I realized: a black‑faced, ruthless deity—though called a spirit, his face shows not a trace of vitality, but rather a faint, hard‑to‑detect yin aura; around him stand countless women, obviously corpses, lying flat on the ground face‑up, arms outstretched, hanging to the sides, legs bent in an arc, as if moving on reversed joints, the traits of these female corpses match exactly those we saw earlier, the underwater female corpse that surfaced then vanished; to call them corpses is insufficient—they are more like wraiths, for otherwise the instant we saw one we would not feel such intense resentment; I exclaimed in shock, 'Could that be a corpse cave? Have a few‑thousand‑year‑old old zongzi become spirits and taken up residence there?'