Chapter 287: Mark

I shook my head, my mind a chaotic mess like boiling mud: "I don't understand, what does he mean by 'left by him last time'? Has he been here before?"

Third Uncle traced the symbols with his hand. "That's right. I've seen this mark more than once in these ruins—it's everywhere. I followed these marks to get through the rainforest as fast as possible and reach the camp you found. But back then I wasn't sure the marks were left by that young fellow. Now that the handwriting is confirmed to be the same, there's no mistake. This young fellow definitely came here before, and it was quite some time ago."

"But how is this possible?" I lost my words for a moment, wanting to ask questions but having no idea how to frame them.

I'm familiar with rubbing transcriptions; I have an extremely sensitive eye for handwriting, especially carved writing, so I could be sure the symbol was indeed carved by Poker-face. But the stone lichen on it couldn't lie—it really wasn't carved recently. Looking at it this way, the only explanation was that Poker-face had been here.

Was it from before he lost his memory? Could he have been part of Wenjin and Huo Ling's survey team back then?

Impossible—he had already completely lost his memory during the Xisha incident.

"I don't know for now either, but I told you, this young fellow is no ordinary person. Clearly his past is unfathomable, and everything he does has a reason," Third Uncle said. "But I figure if we just follow these marks, we'll find out where he finally ended up, and maybe we'll also find a way out."

I felt like my brain couldn't function, but I truly knew nothing about Poker-face's past. If he really had been here, it was entirely possible in terms of timing. At that moment, though, I noticed Third Uncle's eyes fixed on the direction Black Blind had gone as he spoke.

I asked him what was wrong. He made a gesture for me to be quiet, waited until Black Blind had left, then lowered his voice and said to me, "I'm really pissed off at you. You really shouldn't have come this time."

Seeing him suddenly change the subject and speak so softly, as if wary of Black Blind, I was taken aback.

Third Uncle continued urgently, "You son of a bitch, you really have no sense of the situation. Your Third Uncle is not what he used to be. All the men this time are people I called up temporarily from the underworld. On the surface they call me Third Master, but they don't actually listen to me. They're only good for backup, and I have to watch out for them turning against me. I can barely handle things on my own—coming along is just asking for death."

I suddenly understood why Third Uncle had looked so helpless earlier. Panzi had told me about this situation, but I hadn't expected it to be this serious. I immediately lowered my voice too: "I couldn't help it. You told me to…"

Before I could finish, Third Uncle shot me a warning glance. I turned around and saw that Black Blind had already returned. Third Uncle asked him, "How is it?"

"They're coming down. I told them to send the equipment down first." Black Blind grinned. "They asked what to do about that fat bastard. Should we leave him up top and have someone look after him? Taking him along is unrealistic… Little Third Master, you don't look so good."

What Third Uncle had just said caught me off guard, and it probably showed on my face. But I still had the presence of mind to cover it up: "The smell here is too awful."

Third Uncle thought for a moment and said, "We can't leave him behind—absolutely must not split up. Tell them all to come down first, then we'll find a place to figure out what to do about that fatty."

"Got it." He said. "Little Third Master, come out and give a hand. This guy's a big piece of work."

I nodded and said, "I'll be right there as soon as I'm done here." Then I watched Black Blind go out.

I exchanged a look with Third Uncle. His expression was also odd, and I thought to myself that I really hadn't expected things to have reached this point. It seemed Third Uncle was having a really hard time.

To be honest, my impression of Black Blind wasn't bad—though the guy seemed a bit crazy. Clearly, I knew far too little about the ways of the underworld. Third Uncle continued in a low voice, "Don't argue with me. I really can't look after you this time. You have to be careful on your own. I'm so pissed I could die. If we get out of here, I swear I'll go straight to your dad and file a serious complaint against you."

Seeing his expression, I knew he wasn't joking, so I nodded. He said rapidly, "I'll make it short. Remember, these people are all tough characters from Changsha. Only men like them dare to take on a job like this. That Black Blind is a bannerman—I don't know his real name, but on the street they call him Black Blind. That's one crew. The other crew is led by that guy called Mop. Those men used to be scattered grave robbers, desperadoes. You need to be especially careful with that bunch. Don't treat them like my old crew, and don't say everything that comes to mind."

I kept nodding. Third Uncle glanced outside. Just then Black Blind called out a few times, and Third Uncle patted me to tell me to watch myself.

I stopped talking and followed Black Blind out. By then I still hadn't fully processed everything. I helped out while thinking it over, and only then did I truly grasp how troublesome the situation was. The fact that Third Uncle had to go to such lengths just to speak to me privately clearly meant this crew was already on guard. Something must have happened before this.

I understood nothing about the ways of the underworld, and I couldn't dwell on it now. I just had to try my best to act as if nothing was wrong. I told myself I'd just have to watch and wait.

Fatty was lowered together with Mop, both tied together. It was hard to handle the two of them. Once they were pulled inside, the stench of urine from both of them was so strong it was almost nauseating. Then, one by one, the people from above came down.

Mop was still quite polite. He cursed a few times in Changsha dialect, then nodded and smiled at me, calling me "Little Third Master" this and "Little Third Master" that. But I immediately felt it was very different from how he'd acted up above. Looking at these people, I thought their expressions seemed fake. I couldn't tell if it was just my imagination or if there really was something going on.

I pretended not to notice anything, but I was now on high alert. I had no mind to think about what was going on with Poker-face.

Four or five hours later, everyone had descended into the lower well shaft. We sorted the equipment, picked two men to carry Fatty, and began moving deeper into the shaft, following Poker-face's marks.

Third Uncle handed me a short double-barreled tiger-head shotgun—a side-by-side double—the same model as the one I used for skeet shooting, just a bit lighter. It held two rounds and fired lead shot. This was probably the best weapon Third Uncle could get his hands on. We'd used similar ones at the Seven Stars Lu King Palace—I'd bought them off the black market for about five thousand each.

Against large animals, this thing could only hinder and deter, but it should be pretty handy against those cockscomb snakes—one blast could take out a big group. I wondered why Panzi hadn't brought one. His short rifle was really outdated.

Thinking of Panzi worried me. I didn't know how he was doing. He should be safer in that temple than here, but if his fever flared up again, it might be really bad. If he were here, Third Uncle wouldn't have to worry so much.

I reminded Third Uncle about the relief carvings we'd seen earlier. Besides storing water, those tunnels were used to raise the cockscomb snakes. On my way through the rainforest, I hadn't seen too many cockscomb snakes—just a few concentrated sightings—so obviously their territory was in these tunnels. We had to be extra careful.

Third Uncle said there was no way to fully guard against these snakes—being extra careful was useless.

The tunnels rose and fell. The environment here felt very similar to the Lu King Palace. Could it be that the Western Zhou inlay passage wasn't an inlay passage at all, but a drainage shaft?

Impossible to guess—because in Shandong, there's enough rainfall that they wouldn't need such a complex underground water storage system. If they had, heavy months of rain would have flooded the place. This was probably just a coincidental similarity. We hadn't gone five hundred paces when the shaft forked. Third Uncle shone his miner's lamp—one branch went up, one went down. The upper branch was probably the upstream shaft, water coming from above and merging with this one to flow down the lower branch. We searched nearby and immediately saw Poker-face's mark on the lower shaft.

Third Uncle couldn't hide his excitement, but I could now see that his excitement was a bit forced. I had to pretend to be very tense too. Without hesitation, he waved for us to continue.

Traveling through this kind of shaft was extremely monotonous. The surroundings were all brick—no relief carvings, nothing man-made—just rough stone. The light from our miner's lamps danced on the walls, unchanging for long stretches.

The first segment took a full three hours. We passed fork after fork, saw many marks left by Poker-face. The process was dull, so I won't go into detail. We passed many reservoirs. The only thing I found interesting was that as we descended, the reservoirs got bigger and bigger, and there wasn't a single sound around us—it seemed there were no snakes here at all.

This was somewhat unexpected, and also a bit of a relief. Still, I felt something was off. This silence seemed to hide something.

To make a long story short, we walked until evening without any trouble. Our tensed nerves finally began to relax. That night we could only line up side by side in the shaft to rest. We lit several fires. During dinner, Fatty woke up for the first time.

Third Uncle gave him an injection to stabilize him, then fed him something. I asked him what exactly had happened, but he still didn't have the strength to speak. He only said a few words before quickly falling asleep again.

But I was already relieved; snake venom poisoning isn't a serious injury. If he could wake up, it meant he was mostly out of danger. Sure enough, by the next morning when he woke up, his complexion had somewhat recovered. Although he still couldn't walk, with someone's support he could stand up. Looking around, he asked me weakly what had happened.

I said, "You'd better thank me this time. It's rare that I didn't abandon you or give up—it nearly killed me to save you. How are you going to repay me for this new lease on life?" Fatty, who could always stir things up, bummed a cigarette from someone and said with a listless look, "Damn it, I've saved you how many times? You save me once and pull this crap. I'm telling you, this doesn't even settle the score." Then he asked where we were.

I gave him a rough account of what happened afterward. He didn't react much. I asked him what had happened between him and Poker-face in the end. He said they were chasing and got separated. That young master was too fast—he couldn't keep up. Later he heard snake sounds. Like me, he thought Third Uncle's men might still be alive, but he wasn't as reckless. He crept over quietly, but when he parted the grass, he got bitten immediately.

That matched what I had guessed. He said, "That young master is probably going to get caught too. Damn snakes are too weird. God bless him—he's smarter than both of us."

Third Uncle was still pretty happy to see Fatty and handed him a cigarette. I guessed it was because Fatty was, after all, one of their own. But Fatty was gloomy when he saw Third Uncle. He said, "Third Master, look at what a mess you've dragged us into. You've got to pay me extra when we get back, or I'm not doing this."

After that, the others chimed in, joking around. The atmosphere seemed perfectly fine, as if no one noticed the bitterness in Third Uncle's smile.

Fatty recovered quickly. I told him to drink more water. The first time he urinated, it was black, but gradually it started to clear up. He really had a good constitution. His complexion grew ruddier, and by the time we were ready to set out, he could basically stand and move on his own.

I helped him along as we continued, still advancing bit by bit like the day before, going down one reservoir after another. We realized that this water storage system was probably net-shaped: the deeper we went, the simpler the structure, but the shafts and reservoirs grew larger.

Finally, we stopped at the sixth reservoir. It was enormous—so big that a stone pillar requiring three men to encircle had been erected in the middle to prevent collapse. The entire reservoir was dry, and from what we could see, it was about half the size of a football field.

Fatty no longer needed my support, but he still hadn't fully recovered his strength. Once he sat down, he was panting heavily, drenched in cold sweat.

We didn't stop because we needed rest. Traveling through the shafts felt like strolling on a sunny beach compared to trekking through the rainforest—not tiring at all. But when we reached this reservoir, we found it covered with withered roots that almost blanketed the entire space. The branching shaft openings were all hidden beneath the roots, which were covered in bizarrely shaped fungi. We couldn't find a way forward.

I found it strange. We were already deep underground—how could these roots grow here? Was there really a tree with such long roots in the world?

That "Mop" guy took a look and said, "These aren't roots—they're mycelium. This reservoir would be a great place to grow mushrooms." With that, he told his men to cut down the mycelium and look for the marks Poker-face had left.

I went closer to examine them. They looked a lot like roots, but they were very soft and covered in black fuzz, clinging tightly to the shaft walls. They didn't look like they'd taste good.

As we searched, someone suddenly screamed and fell over backward. We immediately aimed our guns in his direction and saw that after he cut away a patch of mycelium, a carved stone face appeared on the shaft wall behind it.

I recognized what it was right away and laughed loudly in retaliation for them mocking me when I got scared by the fake person. They stared at me in confusion. I picked up a piece of gravel and threw it at the face. Immediately, the moths that formed the face were startled and flew up.

When the guy saw that, he let out a long breath, and everyone started laughing.

Those moths might have flown into the shaft by accident. There might also be snake shed here to attract them. I told them to be careful—there could be snakes nearby. I went over to where the moths had gathered into a face and searched. Sure enough, deep in the roots, I saw a large sheet of something like a white burlap sack. But what surprised me was that this pale snake shed wasn't many pieces—it seemed to be a single whole.

I used my shotgun to lift the snake shed and found it was from a huge snake, as thick as a water bucket. The shed had double-layered scales.

Third Uncle came over and touched it. His hand came away with slime, and his face turned pale. He yelled, "Damn it, get your guns ready. This thing is fresh—this skin was just shed!" He urged the people looking for the shaft opening to hurry up, saying we couldn't stay there long.

I immediately went to help too. I used my knife to cut the mycelium, pulled it away, and shone my miner's lamp at the shaft openings. Based on our experience, Poker-face would carve a mark somewhere near those openings.

After a busy while, we still hadn't found it, and everyone was getting impatient. We had checked almost all the lower shaft openings, leaving only the ones near the top of the reservoir. I thought to myself, this time it might be at the top. The top had no slope; it was nearly vertical. We'd have to climb up by gripping the gaps in the shaft wall.

There was a thin, small guy there—the most agile. Without hesitation, he volunteered to climb up. We shone our flashlights to light his way. He grabbed the cracks in the rock with one hand, hacked at the mycelium with a machete in the other, and then swung his body over, gripping the cracks like a rock climber.

I thought to myself, there was no way I could do that. If we found the mark up there, how was I supposed to get in?

He checked a few shaft openings and called out, "It's here!" We all breathed a sigh of relief. Third Uncle told him to tie the rope immediately, and we started climbing up one by one. After just three or four had climbed up, the small guy called out again from above: "Third Master, it's not right. There's another one here. There's more than one mark."