Chapter 78

These past few days have been sweltering; even sitting still left me drenched in sweat, until finally heaven unleashed a downpour so heavy the rain seemed to smoke, finally bringing relief to the scorching city.

The Pojia Garden antique market after the rain was extraordinarily lively; due to the weather, amateur collectors and antique enthusiasts who had stayed home for days flocked in to rummage for treasures.

Da Jin Ya was busy negotiating with an old regular customer, while Pangzi was pitching our embroidered shoe to a foreign couple with blue eyes and big noses, telling them: "How about it? Take a sniff inside this shoe with your nose—it smells just like Marilyn Monroe from your America; this is the fragrant shoe worn by China's Ming Dynasty Marilyn Monroe, the... the famous courtesan—do you understand?"

This foreign couple, who knew a little Chinese, were clearly interested in this delicately crafted Oriental embroidered shoe; Pangzi seized the moment to lionize his asking price, opening his mouth to demand twenty thousand yuan, a sum that frightened the two foreigners into turning and walking away; foreigners who often come to China know how to haggle, and seeing this couple didn't understand bargaining, Pangzi realized they were first-time visitors, so he hurriedly called them back, claiming to promote Sino-foreign exchange, and said that, while upholding the Five Principles of Peaceful Coexistence, he could offer them a discount.

I sat nearby smoking, utterly uninterested in the bustling scenes at the antique market; after returning from Shaanxi, I had gone to the hospital for a check-up, and neither the marks on Pangzi's back nor mine showed anything special—no illness was detected.

Moreover, I felt nothing unusual lately; business has been booming, money rolling in, the Heliang Jade raw stone we brought back from Shaanxi sold for a price that should make one laugh awake in dreams, and we acquired several genuine, valuable Ming Dynasty burial objects, nearly every transaction yielding profits multiplied several times over—but whenever I thought of Professor Sun's words, it felt as if a great mountain weighed on my back, leaving me breathless; each time I dwelled on it, I grew anxious and could summon no interest in anything.

That detestable, hypocritical Professor Sun simply refused to tell me what this symbol meant, and though he alone held the expertise to decipher ancient encrypted texts, I could not resort to force or compel him to speak.

Although the dragon bones unearthed in Tian were damaged, Professor Sun surely left a backup; how might I devise a way to return to Shaanxi and retrieve them for inspection? Only if I could confirm that the mark on my back bore no relation to the eyeball of Jingjue State's Ghost Cave could I rest easy—but during that conversation, whenever I mentioned "Ghost Cave," Professor Sun reacted as if possessed, so much so that I later dared not utter those two words to him again.

The more Professor Sun concealed and evaded, the more I felt this was tied to Jingjue's Ghost Cave; if unresolved, disaster would sooner or later strike; since he openly refused to help, I had no choice—I would have to resort to certain measures, for I could not spend my life bearing this eyeball-like red mark.

Summer is a season prone to drowsiness; I had been sitting on a rocking chair watching things to guard against petty thieves (Buddha's sons) making off with a few items, but my mind wandered, and I unknowingly fell asleep.

I had a string of strange dreams: at first, I dreamed I married a mute girl as my wife; she gestured to tell me she wanted to go see a movie, and somehow we ended up at the cinema, entered without tickets, and watched a film with no beginning or end, incoherent, nothing but explosions and landslides; as it played, my mute wife and I realized the cinema had turned into a cave, misty within, as if harboring a bottomless abyss—I gasped in terror and tried to warn my mute wife: "Bad! This place is the 'Bottomless Ghost Cave' deep in the desert—we must flee!" But she remained unmoved, suddenly shoved me into the cave, I plunged into its depths, and saw at the bottom a huge eye staring at me...

Suddenly my nose felt cold, as if pinched—I woke from the dream to see a seemingly familiar figure standing before me, that person pinching my nose with a finger; I opened my eyes just in time to meet her gaze—I had still been dreaming of a terrifying giant eye, not fully awake, when suddenly seeing someone look at me startled me so much I nearly toppled from the rocking chair.

Focusing, I saw Shirley Yang standing before me, Pangzi and Da Jin Ya beside her, laughing so hard they could barely straighten up; Pangzi roared: "Lao Hu, daydreaming again? Drool's dripping down your chin—you must be dreaming of taking a wife."

Da Jin Ya said to me: "Master Hu's awake—this isn't Miss Yang just arriving from America, is she? She said she has urgent business to discuss with you."

Shirley Yang handed me a handkerchief: "Only a few days apart and you've picked up another ailment? Drool flowing like a river—quick, wipe it."

I didn't take her handkerchief, wiped my mouth with my sleeve, then stretched mightily, rubbed my eyes, and only then managed to say to Shirley Yang: "Your eyes... ah, right!" My drowsiness had vanished completely; suddenly recalling the eyeball-shaped red mark on my back, I hurriedly told Shirley Yang: "Exactly—I've been thinking these past days how to find you; I have something urgent to tell you."

Shirley Yang said to me: "I also have something important—this place is too noisy; let's find a quiet spot to talk."

I quickly rose from the rocking chair, told Pangzi and Da Jin Ya to keep minding the stall, and followed Shirley Yang to a Dragon Pond Park near the antique market.

Dragon Pond Park had not yet been renovated then; it was small, and even on holidays, few visitors came; Shirley Yang pointed to a quiet stone bench by the lake and said: "This place is nice—let's sit here and talk."

I told Shirley Yang: "Usually only couples courting by the roadside sit here; if you don't mind the appearance, I don't either—this little spot is truly nice, perfect for a tryst." Saying so, I sat down.

Shirley Yang, born and raised in America, though long immersed in the Chinese community, didn't quite grasp my meaning and asked: "What? You mean only lovers are allowed to sit by the lake?"

I thought the cultural gap between our nations was too wide to explain easily, so I said: "The people's rivers and mountains belong to the people—whoever sits on this long orange bench sits; let's not worry about that." And I sat down.

I asked Shirley Yang: "Has Professor Chen's illness improved?"

Shirley Yang sat beside me, sighed, and said: "The professor is still undergoing treatment in America; the trauma he suffered was too great, and his treatment has so far shown little significant progress."

Hearing that Professor Chen's condition remained unchanged saddened me; after a few more casual words with Shirley Yang, I turned to the main topic—certainly not about repaying money, and as I had expected, it concerned the sudden appearance of the eyeball-shaped red mark on my back.

Not only I and Pangzi, but Shirley Yang and Professor Chen also bore this strange mark; of the five who survived the Xinjiang expedition, besides these four, there was also a Uyghur guide, the desert's old fox Anliman—did he too develop this red mark?

Shirley Yang said: "On Old Man Anliman's body, it will not appear, for he has never seen the Ghost Cave; I believe this mark must be connected in some way to the eyeball of the Ghost Cave tribe."

Regarding that mysterious people, too many secrets remain unrevealed, but these unknown secrets—including that 'Ghost Cave' whose destination is unknown—have already been eternally buried beneath the yellow sands, never to see daylight again.

I told Shirley Yang everything I had learned in Shaanxi's ancient Tian from Professor Sun, hoping she might derive some judgment from it—whether this symbol truly is the curse brought upon us by the Ghost Cave.

After hearing this, Shirley Yang said: "Professor Sun... is his name Sun Yaozu? His name carries great prestige in Western archaeological circles; he is one of the few world-renowned experts in deciphering ancient scripts, skilled at interpreting ancient symbols, codes, and encrypted graphical information; I have read his works, know he and Professor Chen are friends, but I have never met him in person; in 1981, a batch of artifacts was unearthed from the tomb of the Egyptian Pharaoh Karotap Lafayou, among them a scepter carved with many hieroglyphic symbols that many experts could not interpret; a French expert who knew Sun Yaozu wrote to him for help, received his valuable advice, and ultimately identified the scepter as the Yellow Springs Staff said in Egyptian legend to be inscribed with underworld texts—this discovery shocked the world at the time, and from then on Professor Sun gained worldwide fame. If he claims this symbol is not an eye but some kind of symbolic pictograph, I believe that must be most reasonable."

I inwardly gasped—unexpected that Professor Sun's eccentric temperament and peasant-like attire belied such stature; indeed, the sea's depth cannot be measured—I asked Shirley Yang: "Whether I take this as a symbol or as writing, what matters most is whether it is auspicious or ominous, and whether it relates to that accursed relic of Jingjue State?"

Shirley Yang said: "I have already found some leads on this matter in America—do you still recall the Prophet's Revelation in the Zaghala Mountains? It mentions that among our four survivors, one is a descendant of the Prophet's people—and that person is indeed me; my maternal grandfather passed away when I was seventeen, quite suddenly, leaving no words behind; on this trip back to America, I examined some of his relics, among them a notebook, where I found many astonishing clues that fully confirmed the truth of the Prophet's Revelation."

It seems events are unfolding exactly as I feared—truly, what we dread comes to pass; that nightmare-like Ghost Cave, which we avoid at all costs, instead clings to us like a medicated plaster—have we been cursed by the ancient Jingjue State? That ancient city, together with all of Zaghala, has not already been forever buried under the yellow sands?

Shirley Yang said: "Not a curse, but more troublesome than one—Zaghala... let me tell you from the beginning what I know."