Chapter 40: Main Text Chapter 40: Ancient Prophecy

Main Text Chapter 40: Ancient Prophecy

Ancient Prophecy

Pangzi didn't understand, he asked: "What is not human? What is not human? Not human, could it be a monster?"

I said: "That's not what I mean, I'm just saying it like this. We've been together for almost a month, living day in and day out—don't we know who each other is? This kid-prophet just spouts nonsense; ancient people were ignorant and backward—we've seen everything, how could we take these scribble-like drawings as fact?"

I said that, but I didn't really think so; at this point I needed to keep my wits about me—many things in this world are utterly unpredictable. Whether this prophet's ancient prophecy actually applies to any of us, damn it, only heaven knows. Thinking of that, I felt for a black donkey's hoof in my hand, just in case.

I again asked Shirley Yang: "Could you have missed something? Originally there were five human figures carved there; with age, maybe a piece flaked off, leaving only four—could that be the case?"

Shirley Yang pointed to the carving on the stone chest and said to us: "This stone chest is fairly well preserved, with no signs of flaking; this clearly shows four people. Look, the symbol for a person is very simple—a circle for the head, a few thin lines for the limbs—doesn't that clearly depict four people?"

I examined it carefully, and indeed as Shirley Yang said; she then had me look at the first few carvings on the stone chest. These patterns are very simple—I could grasp them at a glance. The first picture shows a child pointing at the sky, with many people on the ground fleeing in all directions; those fleeing people seem to be ordinary commoners.

The second and third pictures each depict a tornado that blew down many houses; the people who had previously taken shelter all safely escaped the disaster, gathering before the child in worship—it seems the child could foretell natural disasters and misfortunes.

The fourth picture on the stone chest shows the child standing beside two adults, with an old man kneeling on the ground. The lines of these figures are reduced to the utmost simplicity: the old man is represented merely by a circle for the head below which a few strokes form a beard. Though the composition is simple, it makes the meaning easier to understand.

The two adults in the picture are clearly much taller than ordinary people, and their carving is far more delicate, not the rough work used for ordinary figures; these two are likely the ancient sages of legend. The old man kneeling on the ground is evidently their servant, and the skeletal remains of that old man in the stone chamber should be his.

It seems Shirley Yang is completely right—the owner of this stone chest is a prophetic child. As I examined the carvings one by one, each stone picture displays the achievements of this youthful prophet.

When I saw the last picture, a chill ran down my neck. In this stone painting, an old and a young figure sit beside the stone chest, while inside the tomb chamber four people stand. Their depictions are as ordinary as possible, as simple as possible—you can't tell their height, build, gender, or age. One of those four is in the act of reaching out to open the stone chest.

This is the final stone painting on the chest; there's nothing after it. What secret does the stone chest hide? Most importantly, the chest shows no signs of having been opened before, and it is still sealed with cowhide lacquer.

I turned back to look at the other four people: Shirley Yang was supporting the foolishly grinning Professor Chen, while Ye Yixin had fainted, her chest rising and falling rapidly; without medicine to treat her, Pangzi sat on the ground, helplessly shaking his head at her.

That's right—there are definitely five of us. If the prophecy were truly accurate, why do we clearly have five people while the stone pictures show only four? My mind raced through every possible scenario, but I came up with nothing.

Could it be that among the five, one is not human but possessed by ghosts or demons? Even as Pangzi said, that Shirley Yang is the reincarnation of the Jingjue Queen—I think all that is nonsense, ridiculous; I don't believe in reincarnation at all.

So could the discrepancy lie in this ancient prophecy? I asked Shirley Yang what dynasty this prophet-sage belonged to.

Shirley Yang said: "According to the Record of the Western Regions of the Tang Dynasty, the ancient sages of the Western Regions should date to the sixteenth century BCE; in the Central Plains that was the Xia-Shang period, the first era of civilization in the Western Regions, about a thousand years earlier than the era of the Thirty-Six Kingdoms of the Western Regions."

I did the math and was secretly astonished—I hadn't expected it to be that ancient. That makes it even harder to take those prophecies carved on the stone chest at face value; moreover, there are no other prophetic stone carvings on it. Perhaps the prophet was muddled back then and simply missed a figure; even the most precise calculations can't avoid error, let alone a prophecy that has spanned thousands of years.

I again asked Shirley Yang: "Can we tell from the prophetic stone carvings outside the chest what will happen after we open it? Will there be any danger?"

Shirley Yang shook her head: "There are no further hints, but we're trapped in this palm-sized place—no way up to heaven, no way down to earth—so all we can do is open the stone chest and have a look. Since the prophet foresaw that we would unintentionally end up here, he might point us toward a way out."

Pangzi, growing impatient, strode over, shoved me and Shirley Yang aside, and said: "You two have been studying for half an hour and got nowhere—what the hell can a little brat like that predict? Look at me, it's just a broken chest, not even locked… Right, didn't the prophecy say one of the four people would reach out and open the stone chest? Let's follow that—Lao Hu, come over and lend a hand; we'll do it together." As he spoke, he moved to pull open the chest's lid.

Almost at the same moment, the unconscious Ye Yixin suddenly twitched, kicked out her legs, and then lay still.

We could no longer pay attention to the stone chest; we rushed over to check her. A pulse test showed no signs of life whatsoever. She had already been suffering from acute dehydration, had been trudging along, and had endured a rough time in the ghost cave of Zage Lama Mountain—she was constantly at risk, and it was remarkable she had clung to life this long, but we never expected her to run out of oil and die so suddenly at this moment.

The three of us stood speechless for a moment; Shirley Yang embraced Ye Yixin's corpse and burst into tears. I sighed, about to offer a few words of comfort, when I saw the perpetually mad and grinning Professor Chen rise from the ground, walk to the stone chest, and with a single reach pull open its lid.

We three stared, dumbstruck—everything matched exactly the prophet's prediction on the stone chest: we entered with five people, one suddenly died, and then someone reached out to open the chest. People often describe Zhuge Liang's foresight as divine, his plans miraculous, but I think even Old Master Kongming couldn't have been this accurate; the precision of this prophecy is simply terrifying.

Shirley Yang feared that the addled Professor Chen might cause further trouble, so she quickly grabbed his sleeve and had him sit on the ground to rest. Their relationship was like that of an uncle and niece; seeing Chen Professor again so mad and foolish, she felt a pang of sorrow and couldn't help but burst into tears.

I know Shirley Yang is extremely competitive and never shows weakness before anyone; today, in front of me and Pangzi, she shed tears twice in a row, clearly heartbroken to the extreme. The pressure she bears today is truly too great; I don't know how to console her, so I just let her sit beside Professor Chen and sob.

Pangzi and I walked over to the stone chest that the professor had opened, to see what lay inside. The chest's two front doors had been pulled open, and the cowhide lacquer sealing them peeled away as well.

All I saw inside were two small stone doors, likewise covered with cowhide lacquer and engraved with three stone paintings. Looking at those three pictures made me break out in a cold sweat; I couldn't utter a word for a long while.

Pangzi glanced at them twice, still didn't get it, and asked me: "What's depicted in these pictures? Lao Hu, you're not scared silly by some stone drawings, are you?"

I took a deep breath, tried to steady myself, and told Pangzi: "These pictures are also the prophet's predictions…"

Pangzi hurriedly asked: "What does the prophecy say? Does it tell us how we can get out of this damned place?"

I forced down my racing heart and whispered to Pangzi: "The prophecy says that among the four people who open the second-layer stone chest, one is an evil spirit…"