Chapter 357: Person in Stone

At the first moment I recognized it, I thought it was my own shadow, but when I moved, I found that the shadow didn't follow me.

The three of us felt as if we had fallen into an ice cave, staring at the human figure in the jade vein, barely able to stand.

"What the hell is that?" I whispered.

"Only ghosts know," Fatty replied in the same tone, then paused, "Looks... looks like a person?"

"How could it be a person? If it were a person, how did it get inside this rock wall?" I said.

Fatty looked at me and shivered as he asked, "Have you ever heard the legend of the fish in the stone?"

As soon as he finished, I broke out in goosebumps all over.

The fish in the stone is a common story in weird tales: a piece of intact mountain rock is opened, and inside it's hollow, with water and a live fish swimming in it.

No one knows how the fish got into the stone, and no one knows how it survived, since there's no food inside the rock.

This phenomenon is often considered a miracle—if the fish didn't enter from outside, then the stone itself produced it. Legend says eating such a stone fish grants immortality, but some say it kills you instantly.

The legend of the fish in the stone is widespread, appearing in many places, and doesn't seem made up. Fatty suddenly bringing it up now—I of course knew what he meant, but knowing it and actually believing it could apply here were two different things.

"Impossible," I said.

"If a fish can be in a stone, why can't a person?"

I drew in a cold breath, staring at the human figure in the stone, still shaking my head. "Impossible. It must be just a shadow that looks like a person."

"Whether it is or not, we'll know once we splash more. What's written on the ground says there's more than one," Fatty said.

We immediately repeated the trick, quickly splashing water all over the four walls. As all the rock became wet, I felt my skin crawl as I discovered that the nearby rock was indeed filled with human-shaped shadows in various poses.

The inside of the cave wall seemed to be completely embedded with people.

I counted them, and the number matched exactly what was recorded on the ground.

"This is really seeing ghosts!" Fatty sat back down. "No wonder they needed Secretary Lei's involvement. What the hell is going on?"

"Could it be a Kunlun fetus?" I recalled the theory about heaven and earth giving birth to spirits. Could this be a precious cave where the jade had somehow humanized under a mysterious force? Fatty shook his head: "The Kunlun fetus is just a legend anyway, and it's supposedly huge mountain bodies. These shadow shapes are weird—I don't think they're anything good. And..." He looked toward the rack with the iron figurine lying on it. "I might have been wrong earlier. Look at the poses of these shadows. Don't they look a lot like those iron figurines?"

I was too stunned to speak. Fatty continued, his face pale, "I know this is terrifying, but seeing all these tools—they're all iron-casting tools—suddenly made me think of this possibility."

I stared at the human shadows. "You mean those iron figurines weren't transport tools, but were used to seal up these shadows they dug out?"

"Probably more than that," Fatty corrected. "Those iron figurines are probably what they made after processing them. They might have first drilled holes in the rock wall, then poured in molten iron to freeze whatever was inside, and finally chiseled them out."

I thought of the countless iron figurines I'd seen in the basement of the ancient building, and my whole body broke out in goosebumps. If that were true, how many of these things had they dug out here? I forced a laugh: "This is all just our speculation."

Fatty's face was still pale, clearly frightened by his own idea. He added, "Actually, there's one way—we could smash this rock right now and see what the shadow inside really is." He pointed to the stone hammer nearby.

I touched the rock wall in front of me—it was very thick and not easy to break. Suddenly I remembered old legends about sealing demons. In ancient times, wasn't it said that heaven liked to seal monsters under mountains? Holy crap! What if these shadows were monsters? If so, letting them out would be asking for trouble. A fierce curiosity rose in me, mixed with that same dread, and I shook my head: "The old craftsmen went to all that trouble to deal with them, which means the real bodies of these human shadows must be horrifying and unlucky, even dangerous. Better not to mess with them."

When Fatty heard me say that, he turned to Poker-face, as if seeking his opinion.

Poker-face stared intently at the shadows. Instead of answering him, he said to us, "We... are actually the same as them."