Chapter 17: Seven Stars: Cave

Of course, reason kept me still; Fatty used Panzi's gun to poke at that hand, trying to get it off my shoulder, but as soon as the gun reached out, the hand coiled around it like a snake and yanked backward; Fatty wouldn't let go, jerked his big butt, and started a tug-of-war with the hand.

I quickly went to help; Fatty alone was very strong, and with me added, we could only just match that slender arm; when we could barely hold on, Panzi raised his hand and tossed his military knife to Fatty; Fatty cursed, sliced upward fiercely, and scraped a piece of skin off the hand; the severed hand suddenly let go, flailed wildly, and fled into the darkness; the movement looked very snake-like to me; this time both Fatty and I lost our balance and fell flat on our backs.

Fatty bounced up like a fat pig, chased after it, and saw a very deep crevice; he tried hard to squeeze in, but although the inside was spacious, the entrance was too small for his build to crawl in; he waved his hand in frustration, angrily tried to pry off the stone bricks; unexpectedly, the stone wall that looked very solid came off easily in his hand, and he quickly said, "Look! There's a big hole here!"

We crowded over; Fatty shone his Wolf-Eye and sure enough, there was a hidden world inside; the hole was pitch black, leading to who knows where; we really hadn't expected that in the dark part of the wall there was such a tiny passage; no wonder those corpse beetles could appear and disappear mysteriously last time.

Panzi felt the surface of the hole and said puzzledly, "Looks like it was dug by hand. Could it be a passage for those corpse beetles to move around?"

"You mean these corpse beetles are inside?" Fatty had been about to crawl into the hole to check, but hesitated when he heard Panzi say that; Panzi said softly, "Don't worry. When that young man was treating my wound just now, I smeared some of his blood on my own hand. Look," he pointed to a bloodstain on his hand, "just put some of your saliva mixed with it on your face. It'll definitely work!"

I couldn't help laughing: "You're too damn unscrupulous. At least he saved your life!"

Panzi smiled sheepishly and said, "I don't know why, but when I saw his blood dripping on the ground, I felt I shouldn't waste it." Fatty didn't understand what we were talking about and asked, "What? Is that young brother's blood that powerful?"

We both nodded and explained the situation in the corpse cave to Fatty; he immediately became very interested in the blood on Panzi's hand and exclaimed, "That's great! In the future, when I go grave-robbing, I can be awesome too. Damn it, if anyone dares to blow out my candle, I'll make them kneel on the coffin lid." He spoke as if he wanted to cut the blood off Panzi's hand.

Panzi said to me, "I don't know what the purpose of this little hole is, but since we can't get out of the stone tunnel maze, I think this is also a hope. Should we go in and take a look?" I looked at the small, drafty hole, which could only fit one person, and felt it was a bit rash to go in blindly, but if we didn't act, we'd only die here waiting. So I nodded in agreement. Fatty took off his belt, tied it to his foot, and said to Panzi, "You hold this belt. I'll lead the way."

Without another word, he hunched over and was the first into the hole. Then Panzi grabbed the belt and went in too. I watched them disappear into the darkness, swallowed my spit, said "God bless," and with a hardened heart, crawled in as well.

Fatty crawled extremely slowly at the front; some places he could barely pass; he had to take a breath and shrink his butt to squeeze through. Panzi was struggling behind him, directly facing Fatty's butt, and said, "Don't you dare fart!"

Fatty was panting heavily up front and had no strength to reply; seeing that even this talkative guy was silent, I knew he was really exhausted. Like three bugs, we inched forward; I don't know how long we crawled, but suddenly Fatty whispered, "There's light!" and suddenly sped up. Panzi's wound was pulled tight and he yelled for him to take it easy. Fatty crawled extremely fast—it was a miracle that someone his size could achieve that speed in such a hole. I saw the light getting stronger and thought, could we really be this lucky? Was this small hole leading to the surface? Finally, Fatty was the first to crawl out. As soon as he got out, I heard him shout in shock, "Holy shit!!! What the hell is this place?"