Chapter 317: Fire

At that moment, I only had a sense of foreboding, but deep down I still told myself it couldn't be such a coincidence—wooden old houses catching fire in this weather was highly probable. Yet that unease grew stronger, until it nearly choked me.

I followed the child, running toward the blaze. The closer I got, the worse I felt. When I finally reached the scene, I could hardly believe my eyes. Thick black smoke was billowing from Poker-face's stilt house. The flames were raging, waves of heat surging skyward, making it impossible to get close. It was clearly beyond saving. The hillside behind the stilt house had also caught fire, the shrubs charred black, and the flames were still spreading upward.

Villagers were rushing from all directions, scrambling up the mountain to fight the fire. Having experienced wildfires ourselves, we knew the terrifying consequences once a mountain fire got going were unimaginable. So prioritizing the mountain fire was absolutely the right call.

The fire seemed to have started up on the mountain. Poker-face's stilt house stood at the foot of the hillside and had been caught in the blaze. But I stood there frozen, knowing it wasn't as simple as that.

The fire was too intense. We had only been at the stream for a short while. Even if it had been struck by lightning, it couldn't have spread this fast. Most telling was the strong smell of kerosene permeating the air.

There were no fire hydrants here. The only firefighting equipment was buckets, and there weren't many of them. They were scooping water from cisterns. By the time the mountain fire was put out, Poker-face's house would be completely burned down, nothing left. In desperation, I wanted to charge in, but Fatty grabbed me, saying it was hopeless. Going in was too dangerous. It wasn't worth losing our lives here.

My mind was a complete mess. I fell to my knees. Suddenly, a figure flashed past. Before we could react, we saw Poker-face dash toward the burning house and roll into the crawlspace beneath the stilt house.

Fatty and I were terrified. We knew that charging into a fire without any protection meant severe burns, no questions asked. It's not like you could avoid the flames—the temperature at the heart of a fire reached over a thousand degrees. Stay in there even a second and you'd be cooked.

Fatty immediately yelled for help! We rushed over. Within five or six meters of the house, a blistering wave of heat hit us. My body hair instantly curled and shriveled, and my eyebrows and hair crackled. I gritted my teeth against the burning pain on my skin and dashed to the side of the house. I crouched down and immediately realized it was impossible to get in. The heat inside surged out like a dragon's breath. I lay down and barely managed to see—there was wet mud on the ground, and Poker-face, covered in it, was crawling inward.

I couldn't look any longer. The heat made it impossible to keep my eyes open. We had to scramble back out, rolling and crawling. The firefighters nearby rushed up and grabbed us.

Just as we were helped up, a loud crash came from inside the fire. Then Poker-face rolled out from the crawlspace of the stilt house, steam rising from his body. He staggered to his feet and ran toward us. People immediately threw water on him, and someone muttered, "Crazy, absolutely crazy."

I ran over. He was covered in mud from under the house. I couldn't tell if he was burned, but I could see several patches of black ash on his left hand—clearly he had recklessly reached in with his bare hand. I yelled, "Do you have a death wish!" Fatty helped him up and asked, "How is it?"

He was expressionless, and said coldly, "Everything is burned." He looked at the people fighting the fire. "The whole place reeks of kerosene. Even the floorboards burned through."

The implication was clear. Fatty also glanced at the firefighters, then looked at me with a grim expression. "Xiao Wu, it seems this village has some issues."

Seeing Poker-face's injuries, I had no mind to think about that. Someone nearby shouted at me, "Take him to the village clinic and find a doctor. Burns can be serious or minor. That house was empty—why did you try to save someone?"

We found a local kid to guide us, and after bringing Poker-face to the village clinic, the kid told me to wait while he went to fetch the doctor. Still shaken from before, I couldn't help scolding Poker-face. Fatty told me to stop being annoying and to be careful not to be overheard. I shut up, but my chest felt tight, suffocating. I didn't know what to say.

Poker-face seemed completely unconcerned about his injuries, just staring blankly into space, lost in thought. The atmosphere was frozen.

I don't want to describe the depression. No one expected this to happen. If I had known, I would rather have been caught and beaten on the spot than not go in first. Now it was too late for anything. It took four hours to extinguish the fire. Many people were burned. Soon a barefoot doctor arrived, applying herbal medicine to the wounds. Poker-face was checked—fortunately, because the mud under the house had insulated him, although he had many burns, none were serious, except his left hand which was fairly bad. The barefoot doctor seemed experienced and wasn't nervous. He applied the herbs slowly, saying if they kept changing the dressings, no scars would remain. Mountain fires were common here in summer, and the villagers had generations of experience with burns.

None of us spoke. Back at Agui's place, when we cleaned up, my eyebrows and hair were singed and falling off in clumps. It was a miserable sight.

Poker-face sank into complete silence. The room was filled with the strange, pungent smell of burn ointment. I blamed Fatty a little, saying if he hadn't insisted on coming back first, and if we had just steeled ourselves and gone in right away to get the photos, this wouldn't have happened.

Fatty got angry, saying how could he be blamed for this. Since someone set the fire, we must have been watched from the start. It was only a matter of time before something happened. This time they burned an old house. If we had seen the photos, the next thing they burned might have been us. Besides, under those circumstances, no one would have been reckless enough to barge in. Climbing into someone's house in broad daylight was too bold.

I had pent-up frustration with no outlet. I really couldn't blame Fatty, but hearing him say that made me inexplicably furious. I barely held back the urge to argue with him, banging my head against the wall a few times to calm down a bit.

Fatty clicked his tongue and said to me, "I think there was no way for us to avoid this. I bet it was all planned out, otherwise we wouldn't have been this unlucky. That crazy guy who stole the box—I think he was probably in on it, part of the same crew that set the fire. Think about it—he made such a racket when he stole the box, even deliberately knocking on the floor to get our attention. He must have wanted to lure us out." He paused. "Then his accomplices were outside. Once we came out and saw them, we'd be too scared to go back in. As soon as we left, they burned the house… Damn it, that's got to be what happened."

That made sense. I nodded. So they must have spotted us by surprise and urgently lured us out. If they had known our plan in advance, they would have taken action earlier, not so hastily and extremely.

If that was true, then the arsonists were most likely those villagers watching us from the hillside earlier… Who were they? I had never seen them before. They shouldn't know me either.

"They definitely didn't know what we were looking for," Fatty said. "If they knew we were after the photos, they could have just taken the photos and burned them. There was no need to burn down the whole house. But these guys aren't smart either. They showed their faces. I don't believe we can't get them. Do you remember what they looked like?"

I had a vague impression, but from that distance I couldn't really identify them all. It would be difficult. I sighed.

If Poker-face hadn't suddenly thought of that box, we would have seen the photos directly, and this wouldn't have happened. But then the box would have been buried under the charred ruins, never to see the light of day. A mistake turned out not to be a complete failure. Thinking that, I felt a bit relieved. Heaven never seals off all exits. And after the house burned, I knew one thing: someone in this village definitely knew something, and it wasn't trivial. At least that was a lead.

But I wondered if that group would do anything next, whether they would target us. Fatty said they probably weren't out to kill us—otherwise they wouldn't have bothered burning the house; they could have just killed us directly. Still, we needed to be careful and stay alert from now on.

Despite that reasoning, Fatty was still uneasy. He went to Agui's yard and brought back a few sickles, hiding them under the bed for self-defense. He also set up some cups hanging on the doors and windows, so they'd fall and make noise if the door or window moved.

At that moment, I felt restless and had a premonition—since someone was obstructing us, something would also go wrong with Agui's help in finding that old guide from years ago. Someone didn't want us to continue investigating.