Chapter 38

Main Text Chapter Thirty-Eight: The Rift

Smoke, mist, and dust filled the air; the ground was littered with black rubble from the blast. I poked my head out and shone my flashlight on the mountain cleft after the explosion—it was completely sealed, the black snakes outside couldn't get in, and escaping the way we came wasn't easy either.

Among the four people around us, Pangzi's condition was the best—he only had a few scrapes on his hands from the rubble. Professor Chen remained unconscious, and Ye Yixin, hit by the blast wave, held her breath in her chest and also fainted.

I reached out to check Ye Yixin's breath—oh no, she wasn't breathing. I thought, this is bad; she was already frail, the blast wave hit her and she held her breath, needing urgent rescue.

At that moment, the three of us who were conscious—Pangzi, Shirley Yang, and I—had our ears temporarily deafened; we couldn't recover quickly, so we couldn't communicate by speech.

I gestured for Shirley Yang to quickly give Ye Yixin artificial respiration, but then I saw blood flowing from Shirley Yang's nose and hurriedly reminded her to stop the bleeding.

Shirley Yang casually tore a piece of cloth and stuffed it into her bleeding nose, then wrote a few characters in blood on her palm, pointed at Ye Yixin, and when I shone my flashlight on Shirley Yang's palm I saw she had written "CPR".

"What does that mean?" I couldn't understand, was it saying Ye Yixin couldn't be saved? So I shook my head at her.

Shirley Yang, seeing I didn't understand, could only ignore her own still‑bleeding nose, lower her head, place both hands on Ye Yixin's chest, and press down firmly.

I then understood she meant I should give Ye Yixin artificial heart compression; just as I was about to take over, Ye Yixin let out a soft grunt, gasped upward, and kept coughing dryly, so I quickly had Pangzi fetch the water bottle for her to drink a few sips.

Seeing Ye Yixin improve, Shirley Yang raised her head, pressed on her own ear bone, and stopped the bleeding from her nose.

The situation had just stabilized, I hadn't even had time to worry about our current state when a new crisis appeared: the so‑called Ghost Cave lies inside the Zhagelama Mountain's interior, the black Zhagelama Mountain is like a black hollow shell, and our present position may be somewhere within that shell.

Due to the cavity inside the mountain, over thousands of years enormous internal tension has built up, causing the mountain body to crack with many large and small fissures; the blast force from the recent yellow explosive struck the mountain, squeezing those originally tiny cracks, pressure mounting until it produced a domino‑like effect.

Although I could temporarily hear nothing, I could feel the mountain's vibration; the narrow crack above my head gradually widened, countless fragments of rock rained down, and the situation showed signs of worsening.

While shielding my head from the falling small stone fragments, I called out for the others to hurry away; the fissures inside the mountain kept widening, and more and more stones fell from the crack, so we could only temporarily climb upward along the fissure—each segment we climbed filled behind us with debris; if we lingered even a moment we would either be crushed or buried alive, so we gritted our teeth, risked our lives pulling each other, and continued climbing toward a relatively safe spot.

Step by step, I didn't even know how far I had crawled; my hands were torn by sharp stones into a bloody mess, everyone breathed hard, feeling as if their hearts might leap out of their throats, thirsty and exhausted, still carrying the unconscious Professor Chen and the exhausted Ye Yixin; finally I had no strength left, could no longer move my legs, so I simply closed my eyes—let myself be buried alive, I won't run anymore.

Unexpectedly, the spreading of the fissure inside the mountain then stopped; the ground behind us over a meter away was completely buried, we collapsed where we lay, gasping for air, wanting water but feeling reluctant to drink it.

After a while, Pangzi said, "Lao Hu, are we dead or alive right now, damn it?"

I looked at the surrounding black stones and said, "I think it's much the same; even if we're still alive for now, we'll probably die soon."

Pangzi, possibly exhausted and a bit delirious, also said to Shirley Yang beside him, "Miss Yang, I've already said my farewells; in a moment we two will report to King Yama, you will go see your God, you have a long journey—take care."

Shirley Yang said, "For God's sake, what time is this? Can you two stop spouting nonsense? Ah… I can hear now."

I opened my mouth, moved my jaw up and down; although I still had a bit of ringing in the ears, I could now hear something. Everyone took stock of the water bottles and gear—my water bottle had been lost in the chaos, Ye Yixin had been unconscious when entering the city and carried no bottle, and the rest together amounted to less than two bottles of water.

I said, "Although the reality may be hard to accept, I still have to tell you this: we are now inside the Zhagelama Mountain's body, all exits are blocked, we don't know if the air circulates; if not, we'll suffocate within half an hour, the remaining explosives are also lost, and with our own strength we probably can't get out. Our team has suffered deaths and injuries; outside only Old Man An Liangman remains, that old fox is slippery—if he sees the situation turning bad he might have already slipped away, so we shouldn't count on any outside rescue either."

Pangzi said, "If that's the case, thinking more won't help; my throat is smoking, we still have two bottles of water—let's each drink our share first, then talk about other things."

I divided the water in half, giving one half to Ye Yixin and Professor Chen, and the other half we three drank separately.

Shirley Yang only took two sips, then couldn't swallow more; after a moment's thought she said, "If we really are going to die here, I think it's all my fault—if I hadn't insisted on looking for whatever the Exquisite Absolute Ancient City is, none of this would have happened, nor would I have dragged so many people into it. I really…"

I waved my hand to cut her off: "You can't say that; we Chinese have an old saying, 'People die for wealth, birds die for food.' Pangzi and I brought this on ourselves—if we hadn't been greedy for your forty thousand dollars, we wouldn't be in such dire straits. Moreover, Professor Chen and his crew make their living doing this; even if you hadn't funded them, they would still have tried every means to seek the Exquisite Absolute remains."

Having said that, I suddenly recalled something Shirley Yang once told me—she used to dream repeatedly about that Ghost Cave, even dreaming of the iron chains on the queen's coffin, and she said she once vaguely saw a huge thing lying on the coffin in her dream but couldn't make out what it was; isn't that exactly the corpse‑flower hellflower growing on the coffin?

At the time she said it, she claimed she believed it was a dream sent by her missing explorer father; now, thinking back, this is quite suspicious—could Shirley Yang have precognitive abilities? So I asked her about it.

Shirley Yang shook her head and said, "Before, it seemed there was a voice constantly calling me, urging me to come to the Ghost Cave in Zhagelama Mountain; but when I actually saw the bottomless Ghost Cave with my own eyes, I realized my father's expedition team had never been to the Ghost Cave—they likely died somewhere in the desert. Yet why would I see in a dream a place I've never been? I just can't figure it out."

Pangzi exclaimed in surprise, "What else could there be? Maybe you were the queen of the Exquisite Absolute Kingdom in a past life, and now you're revisiting your old stomping grounds…"

Before his words even faded, the mountain transmitted another series of cracking sounds—it seemed the earlier shock hadn't dissipated and another round was coming; we had rested a while, facing death we naturally weren't willing to just wait for it, when we saw a large crack open ahead, the beam of our flashlight swept inside and it looked as if someone was actually sitting in there.

At that moment, the big and small rocks produced by the mountain fissure fell like raindrops; there was no time to examine them closely—seeing a passage, we just lunged in. Shirley Yang led the way with her flashlight, Pangzi hoisted Professor Chen onto his back, I dragged Ye Yixin backward, and we all slipped into the freshly opened crack ahead.

Before we could even make out where we were, we first felt difficulty breathing; the interior was filled with dense dust, and having been sealed for years it had no circulating air, so we hastily put on our gas masks—just then a thunderous boom sounded behind us, dozens of huge black mountain rocks tumbled down and blocked the entrance.

Seeing the retreat cut off, I turned back to survey the surroundings and found we were in a square stone chamber only about ten or so square meters in area, with an ancient large stone box placed on the floor; this stone box was utterly unlike the black stones commonly seen throughout the Exquisite Absolute Ancient City—it was dull‑gray and profoundly archaic, its shape unique, something we had neither heard of nor seen before.

The stone box is over half a meter tall and more than a meter long, its workmanship extremely precise, with several stone carvings etched on its surface—I don't know what they were for.

We were so focused on examining that strange stone box that we failed to notice two people sitting cross‑legged on either side of it; when we drew near and suddenly shone our flashlight on them, we all jumped in shock, our flashlights dropped to the floor, the stone chamber plunged into total darkness, and all we heard was Pangzi shouting, "Two zongzi!"