Chapter 173: Heaven and Earth Divide & Eternal Unresolvable Mystery

Countless mouth-monkeys pounced on me, tearing at my muscles. I struggled violently, unwilling to give up until I had exhausted my last ounce of strength, but in my heart I was already in despair. In such a situation, even if the Old Man of Heaven himself came, he couldn't save us.

As I was putting up a desperate fight, suddenly there was a jolt all around, and we were both thrown off balance. The monkeys clinging to me were stunned for a moment, then in an instant they all slid off me and scrambled frantically toward the opening of the crevice.

I turned my head and saw the same scene on Fatty's side. Instantly, all the mouth-monkeys retreated from the crevice, as if they had seen a ghost.

Fatty was covered in wounds and also baffled. We exchanged bewildered glances. Fatty muttered to himself, "What's going on? Not going to eat the food they caught? Are they complaining I'm too greasy?"

The commotion of the mouth-monkeys wasn't over yet. The monkeys outside the crevice, without any pause, climbed back into the mouths of the human-headed giant birds. The human-headed giant birds began to move, taking off one after another and disappearing rapidly, as if they had received some order or spotted a terrifying natural enemy, fleeing wildly.

I handed the gun to Fatty and asked him to reload, then I carefully approached the opening of the crevice. Not daring to go out, I poked my head out to look and was instantly stunned. The human-headed monster birds were flying into the sky one by one. Soon, not a single one was left around us—they had all fled. The surroundings suddenly became quiet, leaving only the two of us.

This was really damned strange. I signaled to Fatty to come out. We looked around, feeling a bit unaccustomed to the sudden turn of events right before death. I said to myself, "God, even if you really don't want me to die, you could at least give me a better reason."

I muttered to myself, "What exactly are they afraid of? Even such monsters have natural enemies?"

Before I finished speaking, Fatty patted me—he had seen something.

I turned around and saw that the human skin sealing the massive bronze door had somehow all burst and fallen off. The two enormous bronze doors had shifted open slightly, and a pitch-black narrow gap had appeared between them.

My heart leaped into my throat, and cold sweat broke out all over me. Such a huge door had opened by itself. The violent tremor just now must have been the reaction when the door opened. With such a heavy door, who could have opened it? Who was inside?

According to Wang Zanghai's account, this underground giant door was described as a passage for an evil god to travel between hell and the mortal world. Inside the door lay eternal evil—in short, nothing good. Now that the door had opened, was the evil god from hell planning to come out and walk his dog? This was a completely unpredictable scene. In an instant, my mind raced through a dozen possibilities: demon or corpse? Run or stay and see? If run, which way?

At that moment, my train of thought was extremely clear. I even began to admire this tortured mentality I had developed.

But after the door opened, there was no further movement—neither did the door continue to open, nor did anything come out. After standing dumbfounded for a long time, Fatty asked me, "Should we go take a look?"

I thought about how all these mysteries lay within this giant door. Wang Zanghai had also gone in to look and came out safely, which meant that entering the door shouldn't be an immediate life-threatening danger, but we would see sights we could absolutely never imagine. With so many riddles, perhaps we could unravel them all by taking just a few steps.

But if we entered and the door closed, with such a huge bronze door, even if a thousand people were here, they couldn't push it open. We would definitely be trapped and die inside. Then what value would knowing the secret have?

This was essentially a choice between leaving safely or taking the risk to get answers.

After weighing the pros and cons repeatedly, I still couldn't bear the mystery that had tormented me for almost a year. I had to go in and see—what exactly was the demonic realm that Wang Zanghai had seen back then? What mysterious force lay behind this secret that had lasted for over a thousand years and entangled three generations of my family?

I looked at Fatty, and he felt the same way.

Fatty picked up his pistol and retrieved a few magazines from the corpses and debris all over the ground. Then he wiped the blood off his face and signaled for me to go with him.

The door was too huge. What appeared as a narrow gap from a distance was almost wide enough for a truck to drive through at close range. Moving such a multi-ton giant door even this tiny distance required an incalculable amount of force.

Suppressing the excitement in my heart, I walked up to the giant door. I smelled a strange odor blowing from the gap, and my heartbeat suddenly accelerated. A feeling between tension and unease grew stronger. Our hands were covered in cold sweat, and even our legs felt weak.

Fatty first shone his flashlight inside. As soon as the light entered the door, it vanished completely, illuminating nothing. Wang Zanghai had mentioned that when he secretly came here back then, the initial section inside the door was a void, and one had to use a strange lighting tool called "true fire." We speculated it was definitely a rhino-horn candle, which would allow one to see the scene inside.

At this thought, I couldn't help but freeze. I said to myself, "Wrong—we don't have such equipment. Even if we go in, we'll see nothing but pitch black. I wonder if we can cross that void and reach the demonic realm?" Fatty hadn't thought of that yet. Seeing me stop, he thought I was scared again and asked, "You coming or not?"

Just as I was about to speak, I suddenly saw several flames flickering to life in the darkness within the bronze door's gap. It seemed something was coming out. Just as I was about to pull Fatty to look, he reached out to pull me instead. I turned my head and saw beneath us, from the stone crevices on the floor of the rift valley, a pale blue mist beginning to rise, like clouds of fog, surging upward rapidly.

We stepped back a few paces and found that all the stone crevices around us were emitting pale blue mist at an astonishing speed. In almost an instant, mist began swirling around our knees and below, and our vision became blurred as if covered by a layer of mist, which kept rising. Soon the flashlight beam was almost useless.

Immediately after, we heard a series of antler horn calls coming from one end of the rift valley, melodious and echoing several times through the canyon. Countless faint black figures, following the sound of the antler horns, formed a long line and appeared in the mist at the end of the rift valley.

For a moment, I couldn't react. The people here were either dead or had fled long ago, no longer a threat. How could so many people suddenly appear? Was there another team here? But that didn't seem right either—there were way too many people.

Fatty beside me had already turned pale, as if he understood what was happening. His mouth stammered, and it took him a while to finally get the words out: "Yin soldiers borrowing the road!"

Yin soldiers? I was very puzzled and wanted to ask him, but unexpectedly he covered my mouth and made a gesture signaling absolutely no talking. We put down our flashlights and retreated directly, hiding behind a large rock.

The procession walked toward us at a leisurely pace. I could even see the shadow of banner flags carried by

As I watched, an involuntary shiver ran down my spine. The people at the front of the procession were wearing tattered armor from the Yin-Shang period, carrying flagpoles, while behind them others bore horns. Despite their heavy loads, they seemed to float as they walked—completely silent and unnaturally fast. When I looked at their faces, I nearly bit my own tongue off. Every single one had an absurdly elongated face; their entire heads were twice as long as an ordinary person's. All wore blank expressions, their complexions deathly pale.

The procession passed before us like ghosts. No one noticed us. They marched straight into the gap of the bronze giant door. Every soldier looked exactly the same, as if they were made of paper.

Neither Fatty nor I dared to speak. We just wanted them to pass quickly. Then, suddenly, Fatty's hand—which had been covering my mouth—jerked. I quickly focused my gaze and saw that Poker-face was actually among the procession, dressed in the same armor. His normal human face contrasted so starkly with the monstrous faces around him that we recognized him instantly. I nearly screamed. Had Poker-face died, and his soul been taken by this group of ghost soldiers?

Looking again, I saw that Poker-face still had his black gold ancient knife strapped to his back and was holding a strange seal-like object in his right hand. His way of walking was completely different from the ghost soldiers around him. I immediately knew he was still alive.

Then what did he want to do? Could it be...? A bold idea suddenly struck me—was he trying to blend in with them?

That guy was crazy! My heart immediately began to race. A long-unfamiliar fear surged into my chest, and my breathing quickened. I wanted to go up and stop him, but Fatty held me down firmly, not letting me move.

I saw Poker-face notice us. He turned his head and looked right at Fatty and me. Then he gave a meaningful smile and mouthed two words: "Goodbye."

Then he walked into the bronze giant door, vanishing into the darkness in an instant. I stared, dumbfounded, my head feeling like it was about to explode.

Soon, the entire troop of "ghost soldiers" had entered the bronze giant door. The ground suddenly trembled, and the enormous door slammed shut, fusing into a single seamless whole.

I sat down on the ground, a feeling of powerlessness instantly dizzying me. What was going on? What exactly did Poker-face want to do? Were those really Yin soldiers? Fatty ran over to retrieve the flashlight, also looking at the giant gate with a shocked expression, somewhat deranged.

But there was still no time for us to be dazed. The surrounding mist gradually dissipated, and we immediately heard the sporadic cries of strange birds, coming from the end of the rift valley, growing louder and louder.

Fatty suddenly snapped out of it and shouted to me, "Hurry! Those birds are flying back. This time we definitely won't be so lucky."

When Fatty called out, it was like being splashed with a bucket of ice water. I immediately snapped to attention, turned around, and followed Fatty toward the other end of the rift valley, the direction where Panzi and the others had fled.

The rocks in the rift valley were like hills, extremely difficult to climb. We hadn't crawled far when the cries of the strange birds were already very close. I couldn't help praying inwardly: if I had died just now, that would have been that; but if I escaped this ordeal only to die in the same place, it really wouldn't be worth it.

Our wounds had gone from pain to numbness. They say when you're tense you forget pain, but now I couldn't even feel my own feet, and couldn't run fast even gritting my teeth. Fatty and I had to support each other, struggling to run forward. We couldn't stop; if we stopped, it would be impossible to muster the strength again.

Thus we scrambled and crawled, running deeper and deeper. Soon I was almost unconscious, unaware of what I was doing.

Climbing over a boulder the size of a small hill, we saw a three-way fork ahead. Three huge fissures in the mountain appeared before us. This was quite imaginable in a rift valley. I was a bit dazed. What to do? Which one to take? We had originally thought the rift valley would go all the way to the end, and we would meet Panzi at the exit. We had no food or water on us. In such a state, even if all three paths led out, if we couldn't reunite with them, we would still be dead.

When we reached the fork, we suddenly saw an extremely ugly arrow carved on the edge of one of the huge fissures, indicating the correct direction.

Fatty cursed, "That Old Panzi is indeed lazy; can't even make an arrow look a bit prettier."

I hadn't expected them to leave arrows for us. I said, "Who cares about that? As long as it works!"

We couldn't say more, gritted our teeth, and plunged into the fissure.

The fissure here was much narrower than the rift valley. The strange birds wouldn't fly as smoothly inside; the chance of being hunted was much smaller. As soon as we entered, we felt much more at ease.

Soon we saw the light of a flashlight ahead. My heart suddenly tightened. I thought to myself, given their pace, they should have run far deeper by now. Why is there a flashlight here? Could they have encountered an accident and died here?

After just a few steps, we saw Panzi and a few foreigners, loaded with bullets, walking back—seemingly coming to rescue us. Upon seeing us, Panzi was overjoyed, then stunned, and asked, "Just you two? Where are the others?"

I said, "Don't ask. Too tragic. Let's go quickly. Those birds are still following."

We could hear the cries here, but we couldn't see the situation above at all. Without flares, using a flashlight to look at the strange birds was useless.

Panzi waved his hand and immediately turned back. The last person lit a cold flare to lead the way ahead. Seeing how injured I was, a foreigner carried me on his back. The group quickly retreated into the depths of the fissure.

I hadn't been carried by someone for a long time and felt very unaccustomed to it. But the cold flare illuminated a large number of murals on the rock walls around the fissure, suddenly sparking my interest. Unfortunately, we were running too fast to look at them carefully.

The mournful cries gradually weakened; it seemed the strange birds were giving up the chase. In fact, as soon as we saw Panzi, we felt much calmer, knowing we probably wouldn't die. The people he brought were all good shooters from A Ning's team, so even if we actually got into a skirmish, we wouldn't be at a disadvantage.

Thinking of A Ning's team reminded me of A Ning. I asked Panzi if he had seen her.

Panzi said, "Don't worry, that pretty girl was knocked unconscious and carried back."

We ran for a very long time. The fissure grew narrower and narrower, until finally we could only pass through single file. The air suddenly became warmer, and we slowed down. Then two people appeared ahead—night watchmen. Seeing us return, they cheered.

I was about to ask why the temperature was rising here when I saw Panzi's camp, with several hot springs nearby. Instantly I completely relaxed. A feeling of weakness spread through my body, and I almost fainted on the spot.