Chapter 404: Stone Shadow: Running Water

I didn't know what "nest" meant; I felt maybe I had misheard, maybe it was "trough" or some other character. But just then it started raining, and at the pickup area people were coming and going. We didn't want to stay long either, so we didn't ask further. We loaded the stuff onto the small truck and drove into the Chengdu city area in the drizzling rain.

The small truck was even smaller than my Jinbei, with wheels only as big as a washbasin. It felt light and floaty when driving. Xiao Hua told me to bear with it; in the city we would use this small vehicle, and for the later mountain dirt road we would switch to a yellow sand truck, because the road there wasn't good. I thought to myself, sure enough, this line of work—no matter how glamorous you are at the trading post, when you get to the location you still have to be like a thief. This trade seems like playing seesaw amidst noise and humility; it's rare that everyone is so open-minded.

Chengdu is a really great city. When I was in college, I had classmates from here who would talk about Sichuan's beauties and snacks, making our mouths water.

The truck took us into a small alley in the northern part of the city. Crossing a main street, we could see the front of Sichuan University. The area was full of old yellow cement houses, whose exteriors seemed to have undergone some old-city renovation, with a few decorative touches here and there that made the antiquity seem usable, yet fundamentally incomplete. On closer inspection, the old houses remained old houses. At the end of the alley, there was a small guesthouse with no signboard, only a wooden board with the word "accommodation" written in red hanging at the entrance, swaying in the wind.

We parked the car and went in, bypassing the shabby front desk (if that thing could even be called a front desk), and suddenly found ourselves in a wide-open space. The corridor was decorated with very refined European-style furnishings, the flooring entirely solid wood, and oil paintings hung along both sides. Xiao Hua told me this was their base in Chengdu. This guesthouse didn't operate for the public; if you came and asked, they'd always say there were no rooms. The sign was just a front; inside were associates coming and going from all directions.

We each went to our rooms, took a bath, and relaxed. Then a local associate from one of the Sichuan branches took us to eat Han Baozi (Han-style steamed buns), and we wandered through a few old streets. For a late-night snack, we went to a beef tallow hot pot place. Damn, it was the first time I knew you could have hot pot for a late-night meal. To combat the numbing spiciness, I drank six or seven bottles of beer while eating to rinse my mouth, but still my scalp went numb, and I almost passed out.

The funniest thing was when I couldn't find the bathroom in the restaurant. I asked a girl—maybe because I'd drunk too much and my tongue was slurred, I said "Where's the toilet?" as "Where's the toilet at?" She immediately got angry and yelled in Sichuan dialect, "I'm not a toilet, you know!" Xiao Hua laughed his head off.

That was a typical whirlwind tour experience—getting a taste of the local flavor in the fastest time. I was the guest, Xiao Hua the host, so he habitually gave me a quick tour. The next morning, we left Chengdu early, got on the expressway, and drove without much conversation. By this time, I had long grown used to such long journeys. Xiao Hua didn't intentionally try to chat with me, but for some reason, I didn't feel any strangeness or awkwardness. Perhaps it was because our backgrounds were so similar; I seemed to see another side of myself in him.

And so, we each stared out the window or dozed off, watching the mountains, the clouds, the sky. The scenery slowly changed—the mountains got higher, the roads narrower. Every time I woke up, I found the surroundings more and more wild. That evening, we switched to a yellow sand vehicle with better off-road performance and officially entered the mountain roads. We drove through the night in the darkness.

Finally, on the morning of the next day, as I woke up from the bumpy ride and got out of the car to get some air, the first thing I saw was the legendary four consecutive snow-capped mountains.

"Four Girls Mountain," said the driver in Sichuan dialect. "The Alps of the East."

I stood at the edge of the winding mountain road—one more step and it would be a bottomless abyss. The view ahead was extremely clear. I gazed at the lush green peaks in front, and beyond them the pure white, majestic snow mountains. Deep green and snow white had never been so harmonious; only nature could blend such different yet matching colors. Everything was shrouded in mist and clouds, beautiful enough to make one tremble.

Yet this beauty didn't feel imposing; instead, it seemed very soft and mysterious. Four Girls Mountain, standing there lonely, what are you thinking?

I couldn't help but feel strange about my sudden burst of sentimentality. I'd been to many beautiful places with Fatty before, but every time I started to feel something, Fatty would crack a joke and ruin it. This time, being separated from him, the feeling was so different. Maybe I was suited for writing something mawkish, rather than being a down-to-earth tomb raider. "This is the eldest sister, this is the second, the third, and that's the youngest—the youngest is the tallest and most beautiful, over six thousand meters high," the driver continued. "We call them the Four Girls. This area is all Qiang and Tibetan people. The place we're going has many Qiang people. Remember not to sit on their doorsteps or touch their tripods."

"What's a tripod?" I asked.

"Every Qiang family has a stove stand that looks like a tripod. They call it 'ximi.' On the ximi hangs an iron pot, and underneath is a fire—an eternal fire that never goes out, a fire that spread from the flame given by their fire god tens of thousands of years ago. So that fire is very sacred. One time, a friend of mine spat into the fire, and then…" Xiao Hua said while brushing his teeth, "I had to buy over a hundred sheep to get him out."

"You've been here before?" I found it a bit strange.

He smiled at me. "Long story. It's something of my own—you wouldn't want to know."

Looking at his expression, I felt even more sentimental, but then I took a breath of fresh air and thought that being a bit sentimental early in the morning wasn't so bad.

For the last stretch, we had to rely on motorcycles. We called a few locals to drive motorcycles, haggled over the price, unloaded all the gear, and arrived at the village closest to the road. In the village, we looked for leftover laborers who hadn't gone out to work, hired three or four people, pretended to be photojournalists, and had them help with carrying and lifting. We also chartered a few motorcycles to transport everyone to another village deeper in the mountains.

Back when Old Lady Huo came here, this place was truly deep in the old forest. Now it was much better than then. Although we still encountered many troubles, on the third day after arriving in Sichuan, we finally reached the vicinity of the cliff they had mentioned earlier. The nearest township was only half a day's journey away. At that time, Fatty and Poker-face should still be on the road heading into the mountains in Banai, Guangxi.

This feeling was very similar to Banai, except for the climate and local customs, which gave me some peace of mind. We carried all our equipment closely on our persons using mules and advanced along the base of the cliff. Soon we discovered caves appearing on the cliff face, one after another, some places densely packed. "Some caves are hidden by trees, but actually there are even more up there," the locals told us. Such cave-ridden rock faces were everywhere on the surrounding mountains. The locals called them "fairy grubs"—I don't know if that's how it's written, but it sounded a bit eerie.

I asked Xiao Hua, "Well? Do you know which cave is the one where they found the silk manuscript back then?" Xiao Hua shook his head and said, "The old lady didn't come up here herself back then, and after so many years, even if they left marks, they're probably all gone. All I know is that it should be in the middle section, and very high up—we'll have to search." With that, Xiao Hua started to have the others unpack the gear and began sketching the entire cliff face, numbering all the caves they could see.

"Search?" I looked up at the cliff and felt a bit dizzy. How could we search like this? Climbing up and down would be exhausting. And besides, I suddenly felt that these caves looked so familiar. So many of them—why did they look so much like the meteorite full of holes from the Queen Mother of the West's place?