Chapter 237: Snake Swamp Ghost City (Part 2) Chapters 34/35/36: Snake Bones

If he had shown even a hint of hesitation when he acted, I might have been mentally prepared and at least wouldn't have screamed, but this guy was too decisive. With such disgusting bones and so many bugs, he could still reach in without changing expression—anyone else would have been caught off guard. Luckily, he had the conscience to smear blood on my sleeve, or else I really would have been done in this time.

After calming down a bit, I found that in the blink of an eye, not a single bug was left around. I was amazed at his power, but at the same time, I felt frustrated.

In the Qinling Mountains and on the snowy peaks, I had long felt that my blood also had this ability. I didn't know why it seemed ineffective against these bugs here. Could there be a difference between Poker-face's blood and mine? Was my blood not potent enough?

Poker-face held what he had fished out of the bones under the miner's lamp and examined it closely. I moved closer and saw it was a green object about the size of a fist. He stuck his hand out into the heavier rain, rinsed it, and brought it back. I was surprised to find that I had seen this thing before—it was a twisted old-style copper flashlight.

A quick look told me it was from the 1980s or 1990s, after the reform and opening up. The copper casing was rusted green all over. When I unscrewed the back cover, the batteries inside were rotting like a moldy bowl of eight-treasure porridge.

I was extremely puzzled. How could something like this appear here—inside this animal skeleton? Could this be a human skeleton?

While I was pondering, Poker-face reached into the skeleton again. This time, no more bugs crawled out. He closed his eyes and felt around inside, and soon he grabbed something. It seemed to be a large object, and he used both hands to pull it out.

My throat tightened when I saw it. It was a section of a human hand bone, already decayed and full of holes, filled with black grime from some decomposed substance.

"This…" I was at a loss for words.

"This is a large tree python that ate a person. This flashlight belonged to that person," Poker-face said expressionlessly. "And it was a woman."

I saw what looked like a string of ornaments stuck to the hand bone and knew Poker-face was right. A strange feeling welled up inside me. I got excited and started thinking of many things.

The terrain of this oasis was peculiar. It could only be discovered after a heavy rainstorm when the underground river Ankala Zha surfaced. Rainfall in the Qaidam Basin was as rare as winning a lottery. If an oil worker or explorer happened to find this place during a rainstorm and then barged in and got eaten by a giant python, that was possible but unlikely. The other possibility gave me chills: Could the body inside this python be one of Wenjin's caravan members from back then?

After all, Wenjin had given up on entering the Queen Mother's Palace at the last moment and returned on her own. But what happened to Huo Ling and the others who did enter the Queen Mother's Palace ruins? Even she didn't know.

Poker-face must have thought of this too. He glanced up at A Ning and the others, then said to me, "Go up and ask them to come down and help. Dig out this snake skeleton and find out who's inside."

I acknowledged and turned to climb up a bit while shouting to those above. I saw that Fatty was already climbing down. When he heard me call, he quickened his pace, jumped down beside me, and asked what was wrong.

I said there was a big discovery, then called out to Panzi and A Ning twice, getting them to come down too.

Everyone gathered around the snake skeleton, and I told them what we had found. They were all very surprised. A Ning immediately tensed up and went over to look. Fatty said, "No wonder I felt someone calling me just now. So there's a senior who sacrificed himself here. What a coincidence! Let's dig him out and pay our respects."

By now, the rain had eased. Though still heavy, it was no longer the vicious whiplash it had been. We were already soaking wet, so we didn't worry about it anymore. As for me, I carefully protected the sleeve stained with Poker-face's blood. On the road ahead, this thing might save my life.

We climbed onto the huge plant's body. It had been okay when there were just two of us, but now with more people, it couldn't hold up. Fatty and I had to put our other feet on some branches to keep it from collapsing. We used our daggers to cut away the dead vines wrapped around the snake corpse.

If it had been sunny, digging would have been easier, but now in the rain, whenever I lowered my head, rainwater dripped down my bangs and into my eyes, and I couldn't see clearly. We kept having to shake the water off our hair to see what was underneath.

Still, more hands made light work, especially Fatty. He worked boldly, without any concern that his knife might cut into the senior's remains.

Soon we had cut away a larger opening in the vines, revealing a huge section of snake skeleton. Fatty cursed, and I was a bit surprised too. When we had talked about a snake earlier, I hadn't realized it would be this big. Judging by the diameter of the bones, this snake was as thick as a person. A snake that big could swallow a person in less than a minute.

When we tugged at it, we saw the rest of a twisted human skeleton among the coiled snake bones. The giant python must have just swallowed this person when it died, or else the bones would have been spit out. The skeleton still had some clothes that hadn't completely rotted, but they were too decayed to tell what they had originally looked like. Panzi, copying Poker-face, leaned down and fished out something from inside: a belt buckle with only a few rust spots, as if it were stainless steel.

He pulled it out, scraped it with his knife, and handed it to me. We gathered around, and I saw a few numbers engraved on it: "02200059".

I was startled and immediately looked at A Ning: "That's your company's registration number. This is one of your people!"

02200059—according to A Ning, this string of numbers was a mysterious set hidden in the last Warring States silk manuscript. After Wang Zanghai deciphered it, he couldn't figure out its meaning and called it the "Will of Heaven," using it as his own password. Why Tie Miansheng had hidden this strange set of numbers in the final manuscript, and what adventures lay behind it, might have more to it, but it's not relevant to what we're going through now, so I won't go into it here. A Ning's missionary boss, Jude Kao, was fascinated by Wang Zanghai, so through his connections, he used this number as the identifier for his resource company. All of A Ning's team's equipment and vehicles had this number. Such company markings are very important for establishing who first discovered something in international expeditions. Now even my belt had this number. In other words, this belt buckle was evidence of which team the deceased belonged to. At first, A Ning didn't understand what I meant. She took it and looked carefully, and her face went white: "This…"

"It's your company's identifier, isn't it?" I asked.

A Ning nodded. It couldn't be clearer. Ignoring the fact that the plant body was already shaky, she jumped into the gap we had dug, crouched down, and shone her miner's lamp on the skeleton. The others didn't know what I was talking about. Fatty asked what identifier, so I repeated what she had told me.

After hearing it, Fatty checked his own belt, but his and Panzi's belts were their own. My gear was from A Ning, so only mine had the mark. Fatty looked displeased and turned to A Ning: "Hey, Miss Ning, are you screwing with us again? Your people have already been here!"

A Ning shook her head: "Impossible. There's no record at all in the company. If we had been here, with our resources, we wouldn't need to cooperate with you."

"Then how do you explain this?" Fatty demanded, holding up the belt buckle.

A Ning turned and gave him a cold look, clearly annoyed: "I don't know! Keep quiet for a moment. Let me look at this dead person first, then I'll explain to you!"

Fatty was choked speechless and started to get angry. Panzi had never trusted A Ning either, so he looked at me to see my reaction.

I actually believed she really didn't know. Though A Ning had a history, this wasn't a critical moment, so she probably wouldn't lie to us. And if they really had been here, as she said, her team wouldn't have fallen apart before reaching here. So I signaled Panzi to stay quiet. I'm still somewhat idealistic—since we were all on the same road, it was better not to let relationships get too tense.

I glanced at Poker-face to see his reaction, but he showed nothing.

At that moment, for some reason, I suddenly remembered a line my grandmother had written in my grandfather's notes: "Those who stand with you in danger may not necessarily share your prosperity, and those who betray you in danger may not necessarily be unfit for friendship. The world is unpredictable—let this be a mutual encouragement, husband and wife."

This was a line written inside a notebook, probably advising my grandfather to distance himself from his old rough-and-tumble friends.

Later, it proved how perceptive my grandmother was about people. Although these men had gone through mountains and seas together, raiding tombs and panning for gold, and were sworn brothers with my grandfather through life and death, after they got rich, most of them really drifted apart. This one had a conflict with that one, this one fooled around with that one's wife—there were even fights and killings. My grandfather ended up not knowing how to mediate. He finally lamented that in society, without life-or-death worries, having a brother watching your back became less important.

A Ning and Poker-face really fit my grandmother's words.

Fatty was about to say more, but I stepped in to smooth things over, telling them to stop asking and go examine the skeleton instead.

The vines were tangled in the snake bones, and the human corpse was twisted into a pretzel shape, making it hard to find anything more. A Ning reached her hand into the bones, searching around its neck for something, but clearly found nothing.

"No name tag!" A Ning found nothing else and climbed back up, pulling a necklace from her own neck to show us. "I joined the company in 1997. From that year on, we all had to wear these on projects, copying the U. S. military, so we could identify the bodies. This corpse doesn't have one, so it must be from a team before 1997. It seems it is indeed someone from our company..." Her expression was very serious. She paused and then added, "I really haven't gotten any information about this team in the company. I don't know why she's here! This doesn't make sense."

"Miss, but corpses don't lie. Don't tell me this python swam to your company, ate someone, and then came back," Fatty said grumpily.

I looked at the skeleton, my mind filled with extreme doubt. This really was unlikely. From everything A Ning did, I could tell how much effort they had put in to get precise clues about this place. If people from their company had already reached here before 1997, then why would they need so much effort to come here again? Just as I was thinking, Poker-face, who hadn't been listening to our argument and had been examining the corpse, let out an "Mm."

His sudden words startled us all, and we immediately looked at him. He was staring intently at the snake skeleton, and I didn't know when, but a surprised expression had appeared on his face.

My mind exploded. It was incredibly rare to see him make such an expression; he must have found something extremely strange. We all quickly crowded around to see what had happened.

But following his gaze, we didn't see anything unusual that would strike us as odd. After looking for a while, Fatty raised his head and asked him what was wrong, and not to scare people so late at night.

Poker-face ignored Fatty, instead turning to look at A Ning, and said to her, "This is too strange. It looks like your corpse..."