Chapter 320: Water Buffalo Head Gully

We wanted to help search the mountain. Agui initially didn't agree, but after much persuasion we were allowed to follow. Agui's young daughter was called Yuncai, and he told her to stay with us and not get separated. The villagers gathered about twenty people, lit torches and flashlights, and led the hunting dogs toward Buffalo Head Gully.

The mountain path was pitch black all around. We shouted and let the dogs sniff the clothes to track.

The forest farm here had all been logged once, so the path ahead wasn't hard to walk, but the area had abundant rainfall and there were many water pits on the mountain, all full of mountain leeches. It wasn't until we reached the protected forest area that the path became difficult. However, these mountain people were all hunters, experienced, and they walked without any strain. For us, such a mountain path was really like a leisurely stroll compared to Tamutuo. The group walked deep into the mountain.

As I walked, I asked Yuncai what the situation was around Buffalo Head Gully and whether the old man might be in danger. Yuncai turned back and said: "That's the boundary between the main protected forest area and our village's forest protection area. Yangjiao Mountain is in the main protected forest area, Zhoudushan Mountain is in the forest protection area, and Buffalo Head Gully is between them. Behind Yangjiao Mountain is the deep, old forest. The forest farm staff set up signs at the pass telling us not to go in, so except for the old hunters of the past, we generally don't go to Yangjiao Mountain, and as for the forest behind Yangjiao Mountain, I've never heard of anyone going in."

Agui said behind me: "In the village, the one most familiar with Yangjiao Mountain is probably only Old Man Pan Ma. As for the forest behind, it's said that only the foot traders of ancient Yue dared to walk it. In ancient times, the jade people of Vietnam, to avoid customs taxes, would travel through the forest for a month to come sell jade. Who knows how many were buried deep in these mountains."

The jade trade was the most lucrative, cruelest, and most mysterious commercial trade along the ancient Sino-Vietnamese border. I had heard of the horrific struggles between the Vietnamese and Myanmar jade gangs. To go from rich to poor overnight or the reverse was so common here it couldn't be more ordinary. Under such enormous interests where one bet could win ten thousand, humanity had no place at all.

Agui said this place wasn't far from the most prosperous jade trading sites. The jade merchants from Banai to Guangxi did small business with some bosses from Guangdong; they were the most down-and-out group of jade people, and thus particularly fierce. Especially during the Qing dynasty, the Vietnamese came over in batches, half merchants, half bandits, and were a local scourge.

I thought to myself, if that was the case, if we could find the remains of those Vietnamese jade people in the forest, maybe we could find the raw jade they brought with them. These days, high-quality raw jade was very rare, and jade prices were ridiculously high. The jade quality back then was much better than now. If we found one or two good pieces, they would be worth more than any burial object. But then I thought again: those Vietnamese jade people valued this jade more than their own lives back then. Taking it now would be a great injustice, different from tomb robbing, and might bring bad luck.

It was before midnight when we finally entered the gully. The person who found the bloodstained clothes pointed to a tree and said the clothes were found on the tree. He first saw blood sticking to the trunk, looked up and saw the clothes. At first he thought it was a night owl killed by a wild cat, but later realized it wasn't.

We shone the flashlight on the tree. This kind of copper-cased flashlight had almost no illumination ability, but we could confirm there was nothing else up there. Apparently, after climbing the tree, Old Man Pan Ma had left the bloodstained clothes behind.

Old Man was nearly eighty. Although he used to be an expert climber, logically there was no reason for him to climb a tree for no reason. Clearly he had encountered some danger. I asked Yuncai what fierce animals were here. Yuncai said a long time ago she heard there were tigers, but now in the mountains, the most formidable thing might be leopards.

When I heard that, I thought tigers were absolutely gone now. Leopards are good climbers. If it really was a leopard, that would be trouble. Moreover, leopards have the habit of hanging their food in trees to hide it. It was possible that Old Man had already met with misfortune.

However, Yuncai said that leopards were all in the deep mountains, and the mountains here weren't deep enough; the probability of encountering a leopard was too small. Old Man hadn't brought a gun. Why would he come so deep into the mountains? I thought of the scene in "Zhang Ga the Soldier Boy" where he hid a captured pistol in a bird's nest. I wondered if Old Man Pan Ma was using the same trick, but there was no bird's nest on the tree. We searched around the tree for a while and found nothing. We could barely see some bloodstains, spreading in several directions. The dogs we brought came in handy. The hunters all carried guns. After loading the bullets, they split into several groups to search further off. I followed Agui's group toward Yangjiao Mountain.

Buffalo Head Gully was long and deep; no one had ever walked to its end. The middle section of the gully was the pass where Yangjiao Mountain and Zhoudushan Mountain met, showing a tropical forest momentum, very similar to the feeling of Tamutuo, which made me very uncomfortable. I kept hearing a "cluck cluck" sound intermittently, breaking out in a cold sweat, but there was no help for it—I had come of my own accord, so I had to grit my teeth and follow.

The mountain dogs were quite fierce, standing taller than me when on hind legs. Although they were all mongrels, they were well-trained. They soon caught the scent and led us deep into the valley.

The journey was silent. By the time the crescent moon was overhead in the small hours, the dogs seemed to have found the target. We stopped near the pass of Yangjiao Mountain. It was a slope on the mountainside, sparsely wooded due to mudslides. The slope was very steep, and the soil was wet and slippery, as soft as a layer of snow. We used branches as walking sticks to keep our balance. Every now and then we would step wrong and a whole patch of mud would slide down.

The hunting dogs pulled us, and we struggled half-crawling to a tree. There they stopped pacing and barked wildly at a large patch of grass behind the tree.

Yuncai was a little scared, and my heart also tightened. If Old Man had encountered a leopard, the thing in the grass might be too gruesome to look at.

Agui stepped forward and parted the grass with a branch. Under the flashlight, there was no corpse, only a large stone. We went over and found it was a fragment of an ancient stone tablet, quite old, with clear signs of weathering and erosion, the surface all worn smooth.

Agui and the others parted the waist-high weeds around to search. Suddenly a hunter let out an "aiya" and sank down.

We rushed over and pulled him up. We saw a mud pit hidden in the grass, seemed to have been washed out by rain, with mud still in it. Looking down into the pit, I exchanged a glance with Poker-face, and our hearts both skipped a beat. In the pit we could vaguely see several rotten logs wrapped in mud. From the shape I could basically tell it was a broken coffin.

This was a crude ancient tomb that had been washed out.