Chapter 166: Second Mute Bottle

(After relentless effort, because the content was too explosive, I still couldn't post the uncensored version—sorry, everyone.)

I sat on my own backpack. The medic from A Ning's team bandaged my wounds. The injury on my hand was especially bad; it took three stitches to close it up. I'd cut it when I was yanked off the stone beam by the fetal corpse. Though I wasn't exactly pampered as a kid, I'd never done heavy labor, so bumps like this easily hurt me. If it were Panzi, he probably wouldn't have any problem.

The medic disinfected me and told me not to get it wet or use the hand for anything. I nodded and thanked him. Then he went to look after the others.

After I fell from the stone corridor, A Ning and her team were utterly shocked by my "way of appearing." At first, A Ning didn't even recognize me. (Actually, I was filthy and disheveled—it was already impressive that she could tell it was me in the end.) It wasn't until Fatty called out to her from the stone beam that she reacted, and she was so stunned she couldn't speak. She stared at me with an incredulous look.

The two groups stood frozen for a long time before slowly reacting. I moved a bit, anxious to see whether the man they were carrying was my Third Uncle. But as soon as I stirred, the people surrounding me all instinctively backed away several steps, as if they'd seen a ghost. A few even reflexively raised their guns again.

Fatty and Panzi had just relaxed on the beam, but now they had to quickly raise their guns again. I immediately put up both hands to show I meant no harm. A Ning also quickly waved her hand and told her men, "He's one of us. We've worked together before. Lower your guns." She had to repeat it several times before her men reluctantly lowered their muzzles, but a few of the foreigners were still tense, staring fixedly at me.

I saw the veins bulging on their faces—clearly their emotions were already heavily strained. Another scare and these people might collapse. So I didn't dare make any more moves and just stood there, unsure what to do.

A Ning frowned. From her expression, it was obvious she had no idea we were here either. She looked up and asked me, "You… how did you get here…"

Fatty laughed from above. "This is like the White Lady looking for a mate—fate brings people together from a thousand li apart; without fate, you could be naked and hugging and still complain about each other's rough skin. What if I said we were just passing through? Would you believe it?"

With that, he and Panzi jumped down from the stone beam. Several people in A Ning's team recognized Fatty and cried out in surprise. Obviously, Fatty's appearance here stirred up some bad memories for them.

Fatty walked over to us. Probably because he'd worked with these people before, the atmosphere eased a bit. The tense individuals finally relaxed, released the safeties on their guns, and cursed. One muttered to himself, "Great. Running into the wrong people in the wrong place."

I remembered the first time I met Fatty and thought how fitting that description was. I almost laughed.

Fatty glared at the man, then greeted a few others he seemed to know. A Ning was about to question him, but Panzi and I couldn't hold back anymore. We ran over to the foreigner carrying the man on his back to see if it was really Third Uncle.

The foreigners seemed wary of me. When I ran over, they all moved far away. But the one carrying the man didn't seem afraid. Seeing that my target was the person on his back, he set him down on the ground. I rushed over and hurriedly flipped open the climbing hat covering his head.

Under the hat was a haggard, stubbly face. I almost didn't recognize him. I felt it looked like Third Uncle, but after a closer look, I let out an "Ah!" and nearly shouted.

It really was Third Uncle, who had been missing for so long—that old fox!!! In just a few months, he seemed to have aged decades. His hair was streaked with gray. At first glance, I couldn't even identify him.

Honestly, I wasn't mentally prepared for this reunion. I'd thought I'd finally see Third Uncle in a tomb chamber, and he'd explain everything to me, or he'd show up to rescue me when I was in danger. But here he was, suddenly appearing so casually in A Ning's group. I saw him clearly, yet I couldn't believe it.

Was I really seeing Third Uncle again? Had I found him? I stood frozen, not knowing how to react, unsure if I was dreaming or hallucinating. Third Uncle seemed dazed, his eyes half-closed; I couldn't tell if he could see me. But I noticed that when he heard me call out, he had a slight tremor. His cracked lips moved weakly, as if asking, "Nephew?" Then he went still. Suddenly my heart ached. An indescribable feeling surged up. Seeing the old guy safe relaxed me, and the anxiety of being without a backbone vanished. But at the same time, a surge of extreme anger rose up—I wanted to push him down and beat him senseless. Mixed together, I don't know what expression I wore, but it must have been ridiculous. Off to the side, Fatty seemed to be arguing with A Ning about something, but I didn't have time for that. Panzi saw Third Uncle like this, shook him a few times, and then unbuttoned his clothes. When I looked, I was stunned: inside Third Uncle's clothes was all slime. On closer inspection, his chest was covered in festering sores, with countless hard-headed centipedes lodged under his skin. It was obvious he'd tried to pull them out, but their tails broke off at a touch, leaving the centipedes inside. The wounds wouldn't heal and had all festered over time.

Panzi grabbed the foreigner next to him, ready to punch him. Others held him back. Panzi struggled and shouted, "What the hell did you do to Third Master! How did you make him like this?"

I saw the horrified expression on the foreigner's face when he looked at the wounds and knew he probably hadn't known either. But Third Uncle's condition was too awful. Trembling, I asked the foreigner, "Where did you find him? How did he end up like this?"

The foreigner almost vomited. He turned his head away and said, "Down in the coffin well here. We just found him—we thought he was dead, then realized he was still alive. The leader said this old man knows a lot and we had to take him with us. I had no idea he had these things on him, or I'd never have carried him!"

"It must be you!" Panzi was furious. "I've seen it in Vietnam. Those Vietnamese monkeys use this trick to interrogate prisoners—they learned it from you Americans! You bastards must have tortured Third Master! I'll kill you!"

The others had gathered around us. I waved my hand to calm Panzi down. "It's not them. If they'd done it, they wouldn't be so panicked, not knowing that dead centipedes attract more of their kind."

A Ning came over, took a sharp breath, and immediately called the medic. A few people busily straightened Third Uncle out. Just then, I felt Third Uncle secretly slip something into my pocket. His movement was fast—in an instant I felt my pocket shift. I froze for a second, and my heart stirred.

My mind buzzed. I immediately understood that Third Uncle might be conscious. I was both startled and relieved. Startled because he was faking unconsciousness, and I didn't know what he was up to. Relieved because being able to make such a small move meant the old guy wasn't near death yet. I glanced sideways—everyone was stunned by his wounds and hadn't noticed. So I kept supporting him without changing my expression, but I squeezed his shoulder firmly to signal that I knew something was in my pocket.

Third Uncle's gaze drifted again. The medic wiped his wounds with alcohol, cut the skin with a sterilized army knife, and used tweezers to pull out the centipedes inside, then drained the pus. Since it was too cold here and ice could form easily, Panzi and I lit a smokeless stove and kept warming Third Uncle.

There were sixteen wounds in total. A few centipedes were still alive when pulled out; they were thrown directly into the fire to be burned. Finally, the wounds were stitched up. Panzi watched the whole process intently, and I couldn't even catch his eye to signal him. I was preoccupied, but leaving abruptly under these circumstances would have been inappropriate. I was burning with curiosity to know what Third Uncle had put in my pocket, so I just had to wait.

Eventually, all the problems were dealt with. The medic covered him with a blanket and let him sleep to the side. Panzi asked how he was. The medic sighed and said, "I've done all I can. Now he has an infection. I'll give him an antibiotic shot later, but he already has a high fever. I don't know if he can hold out until we get out. It depends on his will. Don't disturb him—let him sleep."

That gave me an excuse to pull Panzi aside. Only then did I realize that I was also covered in injuries from my fall; I could barely stand.

After the medic bandaged me up, he went to check on others. A Ning's team had about sixteen or seventeen people. The cold flames had gradually died out, and the surroundings were terribly dark—I couldn't count them clearly. Fatty was pulled aside by A Ning again, talking nonstop. I couldn't see what was happening over there. I wanted to drag Panzi somewhere private, but Panzi seemed dazed, just sitting next to Third Uncle, slow to react.

I was really annoyed. At a critical moment, he was useless. I had to find a way to avoid the people around me on my own.

A Ning's team was divided into two groups: one resting the injured, the other descending the coffin well. These people didn't seem hostile to me, probably because Fatty knew them. But maybe because of how I'd driven off the centipedes earlier, everywhere I went, they looked at me with strange eyes. The circular tomb chamber was so open that there was nowhere to hide.

I steeled myself and walked over to the fetal corpse I'd stomped flat, pretending to crouch down and examine it. That way, no one gathered around to watch me.

The fetal corpse looked like a giant mantis shrimp. Its features were all mashed from my stepping—I got goosebumps just looking at it, but I couldn't care less. I pulled out the thing from my pocket and saw it was a small slip of paper.

I looked back to make sure no one was behind me, then nervously unfolded it. A few lines were written on it. I gasped in surprise. The first half of the text wasn't in Third Uncle's handwriting. From the shape of the characters, it seemed to be Poker-face's writing. It read: I'm going down.

That's far enough. You need to turn back now. Going any further is beyond what you can handle.

Everything you want to know is in the copper fish with the snake eyebrows.

The signature surprised me even more—it was actually that strange symbol we'd seen... So this was definitely left by Poker-face. What on earth does it mean?

Below that was Third Uncle's very scribbled handwriting, which looked like it had been scratched in with his fingernails, but it was still legible—just one line.

We're only one step away from the truth. Give the copper fish to Old Man Wu under A Ning to decipher. It's fine—the most critical thing is with me. They won't dare to do anything to us.

Obviously, when Third Uncle got here, he must have found this note from Poker-face somewhere, and it was definitely meant for us. It seems Poker-face wanted to stop us from going down. From the note's meaning, it seems there's another passage that leads to a very dangerous place. And Third Uncle obviously wasn't having any of it. This is really maddening—what the hell does that old guy want? What critical thing does Third Uncle still have? And those strange marks from Poker-face—if he didn't want us to go down, who were they for? Were they for himself? My mind started wandering. Actually, during this time I felt more and more clues were emerging, but because all the previous mysteries were so jumbled, any new idea just made things even more chaotic. I thought about the marks in the underwater tomb—when Poker-face saw those, he knew he'd been there before. Now he was carving marks—could it be!! He knew he would lose his memory? So he left his marks in advance so that when he came again, he could remember by seeing them?

It was too confusing. My head started to hurt again. Just then, A Ning and Fatty called out to me. I was startled and turned to see them waving me over. So I decided to stop thinking, folded the note, stuffed it back in my pocket, and walked over.

A Ning handed me a canteen. I took a sip. She said, "I've talked with Mr. Wang. We're officially ready to cooperate. What do you think?"

"Cooperate?" I saw the shape of her chest through her tight clothes, remembering what happened on the boat. I didn't dare look directly at her. I recalled Poker-face's warning and Third Uncle's words, and suddenly didn't know what to say. Finding Third Uncle had actually brought me some peace—though that peace was partly selfish, since it meant we could get out. What I really wanted was to escape this place. But as Third Uncle said, we seemed to be very close to the truth. It seemed Third Uncle himself had his own riddles. If we rescued him, he might not know anything either. If we could forget, fine. But if not, knowing Third Uncle's personality, he'd definitely come again. Could I just sit back and do nothing? After thinking it over, I gritted my teeth and said, "What kind of cooperation? Let's hear it. To be honest, I really have to think twice about cooperating with you."

Seeing my expression, she smiled and shook her head. "About that—I didn't get a chance to say goodbye to you on the island. Thank you for saving me. Out there in the sea... I had my reasons. I never meant to harm you."

I recalled what happened in the underwater tomb, sighed, and thought to myself, "Like I'd believe that." I lit a cigarette and said, "If you really want to cooperate, tell me what this is all about. What were you looking for at the bottom of the sea? And what are you doing here?"

Fatty chimed in, "Yeah, we need to be open with each other to get things done."

A Ning looked surprised. "You don't know? Your third uncle didn't tell you? You guys... just ran around blindly without knowing anything?"

I gave a bitter laugh, thinking that if Third Uncle had told me everything, I wouldn't give a damn about his fate. I shook my head. "He didn't say. I've been flying blind the whole time."

A Ning furrowed her brow and looked at me for a long time. She seemed to realize I wasn't lying. "No wonder. I always thought you were someone special—couldn't tell you were faking. So you really don't know anything."

At that moment, I felt something was off. Why was this woman suddenly coming to us to cooperate? They had so many people and resources, while we only had three. Why did they need us? Even if it was because I could drive away the centipedes, they could just kidnap me. Unless—I looked around—their situation was dire, or they had no other choice?

A Ning saw my expression and probably guessed what I was thinking. She didn't call me out on it, just sighed. "Actually, we little players don't know much either. We're just doing our boss's bidding." She waved for us to sit down and called over another foreigner. A Ning introduced him as Kirk, a Sinology expert specializing in Dongxia. He knew the most about the whole affair, so we could ask him. The foreigner shook my hand and said, "Originally we were under strict confidentiality, but given the current situation... ask whatever you want."

My heart skipped a beat—"What situation?" I repeated my question.

He nodded. "Unfortunately, I can't tell you our boss's purpose. To be honest, I'm just a team leader. A Ning and I only know that we need to enter a place, retrieve something, and we're done. What the higher-ups want to do with it, I really don't know. So I can tell you the targets in the underwater tomb: there were two. One was a jade seal—you Chinese call it the Ghost Seal, said to be able to summon an army from the underworld. The other was the structural map of this underground palace. Unfortunately, we didn't get either. In the end, it was A Ning who went in and brought back a few things."

"Ghost Seal?" I nearly jumped. "You mean the Ghost Seal of King Lu Shang? In the underwater tomb?"

Hearing us talk about the Ghost Seal, Fatty got interested too and came over. A Ning seemed to dislike Fatty but couldn't do anything about it.

Kirk nodded. "Yes. I'm sure you've heard some of it. After King Lu Shang's tomb was looted by Wang Zanghai, he replaced the Ghost Seal with the snake-eyebrow copper fish. We always thought he took the Ghost Seal into his own tomb, but we could never find it. As for the structural map of the Cloud Summit Palace, it probably ended up in your third uncle's hands. We still don't know how many times that old fox has tricked us, but we still have to cooperate with him—his intel is much more accurate than ours."

I nodded with a bitter smile, feeling the same way. Fatty said from the side, "So when A Ning went to the seabed with us, what did she bring out?"

Kirk opened his mouth to speak, but A Ning stopped him and said, "Say what should be said, and don't talk too much about what shouldn't."

Fatty snapped, "What's that supposed to mean? Is that your attitude toward cooperation?"

But Kirk didn't seem to care much about A Ning's warning. He laughed and said, "Even if you don't tell them now, you'll have to bring it out eventually. Besides, having those things now won't do you any good."

A Ning glanced at us and stamped her foot, looking reluctant. "After all the trouble I went through to get those things, you're getting them for nothing."

(At that time, I found it very strange that A Ning and her team were so cooperative. Later, when I talked to Third Uncle about it, he said that by then A Ning and her people were at their wit's end. She had no choice but to cooperate with you. After all, they were amateurs. No matter how good their equipment and technology, they couldn't compare to me, the half-assed grave robber. But she was very clever. She actually wanted to tell you everything, but she still held back bit by bit, trying to pry something out of you in exchange. That's called being an old hand in the game. You're lucky that I deliberately didn't tell you anything; otherwise, she'd have gotten it all out of you, and my plan would have been ruined.) She then took a stack of things from her pocket and handed them to me. I thought she was about to pull out some artifact, but when I took it, I saw it was a stack of photos of murals. I flipped through them one by one. She warned me not to mess up the order. I looked at a few carefully and realized I had never seen these murals before. "Where were these taken?"

Kirk said, "On your dive to the seabed that time, from the main burial chamber. These are narrative murals—very important. You can look at them and see what they depict."

I counted—fifteen murals in all, each with variations, clearly connected, but there was no obvious causal link between them. I saw scenes of climbing snowy mountains, looking down at hills, rock climbing, and soldiers fighting. None of the individual scenes seemed to have any direct connection.

Kirk could tell from my expression that I didn't understand. He took one out and showed it to me. "This is the first one. What do you see?"

The scene showed several people dressed in Jurchen attire tying up a Han Chinese man. "A prisoner of war on the battlefield?" I asked.

"You could say that. But can you guess who the prisoner is?" Kirk smiled mysteriously.

I studied the photo carefully and realized the prisoner looked very much like Wang Zanghai as depicted in the porcelain paintings. "Wang Zanghai? The Jurchens captured him?"

Kirk said, "Right. That's the first one. What does it mean? It means Wang Zanghai might have been forced to build this place—he was abducted."

I suddenly saw a clue and looked at the other photos. "And these ones?"

"They all show what happened to Wang Zanghai after he was taken by the Dongxia people. We can't fully decipher them, but we've guessed most of the earlier photos."

I looked closely at a few and suddenly noticed something off. "This one..."

Kirk glanced at it and nodded. "Sharp eyes. This one is also crucial. Notice—this is the imperial tomb inside the volcanic crater. When Wang Zanghai was captured, the tomb already existed and was very dilapidated."

I let out an "ah." Then the imperial tomb above us—wasn't it built by him? Kirk said: "We've studied it. The overall style of the imperial tomb above is at least from the Yin-Shang period, but he forcibly changed it to Ming style. The Dongxia people captured him not to build the imperial tomb, but to renovate it, because after so many years, the tomb was no longer usable."

"So the underground palace and all that—were they already here?" Fatty asked.

Kirk nodded: "We used these photos to find the old path leading here. But there are still some photos we can't understand, like this one."

That was a mural of countless demons bursting out from stone—the last third one. Another one actually depicted a black, soft-bodied creature-like thing, crawling up from a huge cliff everywhere, with people above pouring something down.

I was tense and let out a sigh of relief. Just as I was about to sit down and take a closer look, A Ning suddenly reached out her hand to me and said: "Alright, we've finished talking about our matters. You can look at the photos anytime. Now, shouldn't you tell us something?"

"Tell you what?" I asked, puzzled.

"I've told you everything about me. Now about you and Wu Sansheng..." A Ning looked at me: "You're not going to be more stingy than a woman like me, are you?"

I thought to myself, that crap you said was like saying nothing—you didn't even touch on the key points. You still think I'm the naive Wu Xie from before? At that moment, my mind turned and I asked her: "Is there someone here called Old Dead Wu?"

A Ning nodded, confused: "What? You know him?"

I pulled two copper fish out of my pocket and waved them in front of them. "Everything you want to know is inside. If Old Fourth Wu isn't dead, tell him to come out!"

In that instant, I saw Kirk almost fall to the ground. A Ning's eyes went straight, and she stammered: "Heavens! You actually have two... fish!" As I moved my arm, their eyes followed me.