Chapter 407: Stone Shadow: Dual Lines

Over the next two days, I lived like a gecko or one of the Qiang medicine gatherers who once lived here. Since it's not directly relevant to the main matter, I'll keep it brief.

From a climbing rookie with only some brutal experience, I gradually learned to crawl independently along the cliff face using those ropes. We worked from top to bottom, searching cave by cave. The actual process was quite interesting, but impossible to describe. Most of these caves were not deep; many were genuine fissures in the mountain, looking like caves but only an arm's length deep at most. Few were large enough to accommodate a person, but even so, we found incomplete skeletons in quite a few caves, some with their hair buns still clearly visible. However, most of the skeletons were scattered, evidently pecked at.

Thinking back on their resolve in cutting the ropes, I found their conviction admirable at the time. But now, seeing those bones and hollow skulls struck me as utterly ridiculous. I wonder what their state of mind was in their final moments. Perhaps a few, driven by hunger to hallucination, achieved the best outcome their efforts could have earned.

Surprisingly smoothly, by the morning of the second day we found the cave where they had discovered the silk manuscript. The reason we were certain it was this one was the obvious traces of artificial reinforcement around the entrance. The cave was only half a person's height, deeper than all the others, but still visible to the back in one glance. Inside sat a skeleton in a cross-legged posture.

"Skeleton" might not be quite the right term, because the corpse retained a complete human shape, though it wasn't a dried mummy. The body maintained its form mainly because it wore an iron garment.

This kind of thing was a ritual item used by folk practitioners of Daoism. It was said that in the ancient Shu region there was such a custom, meant to suppress one's various desires. I'm no folklorist and don't know the details, but I felt it was quite a feat for him to have climbed so high burdened by that rusty iron.

The iron garment looked like a chainmail frame, but was made of old iron. The entire suit was rusted into a single piece; the bones inside had long since collapsed, only the outer shell preserving the posture at death. Around the skeleton, the black cave walls had many hollowed-out depressions, apparently where the silk manuscripts had once been stored. Now they were completely looted.

I have no idea who this person was. Judging from the dried hair bun on the skull, there was almost no white hair, so he wasn't old. Where did he come from? What stories did he have? What was he thinking before he died? Every time I see a corpse, I always find myself wanting to know these things.

Because our bodies almost completely blocked the light from the cave entrance, Xiao Hua turned on a flashlight. Xiuxiu had hinted to us that a major accident occurred late in the excavation process back then, but nothing here looked like the scene of a major accident. Besides, the project back then was enormous—could so many people have come just for this one cave?

Even though they needed to search every cliff face here, that shouldn't have required mobilizing the entire Old Nine Gates. Such an unprecedented mobilization must have been led by someone who judged the situation demanded it. And a judgment that could gather all the Old Nine Gates should have been correct.

What we were seeing now had to be just an illusion.

Sure enough, behind the ancient corpse we found the stone wall covered with strange, cracked mud stains. Scraping off the mud, we were shocked to see concrete.

The back wall was built from local mountain stone mixed with concrete. Seeing concrete in a place like this felt unacceptable. Obviously, before they left back then, they had completely sealed this place off.

"Did your grandmother mention this situation?" I looked at the concrete, which made me somewhat worried. Could this kind of sealing mean there was some enormous danger inside that had to be contained? But the old lady hadn't told us, hadn't even mentioned the place was sealed.

"They were the first to pull out back then. Sealing this place must have been done after the Huo family left, by the ones remaining," Xiao Hua said. "If she wanted to get something done, she wouldn't resort to tricks like this."

Saying this, he picked up a stone and struck the concrete-and-stone wall a couple of times. The wall didn't budge, but a lot of the surface concrete chipped off, revealing that the color of the concrete inside had changed to a dark red.

Calling it red, it was actually a yellowish brown leaning toward deep brown, very much like rust water. I picked up a fragment and sniffed it—no peculiar smell.

Although I couldn't be sure, I immediately realized this might be blood. The old lady had told us that a huge calamity had occurred during the exploration here. Bloodstains proved we were in the right place. But the way the blood appeared like this struck me as problematic.

I had seen similar traces before, on slaughterhouse tables. That year when Third Uncle and I went to buy New Year supplies, I saw it. This kind of aged bloodstain is actually more oppressive than fresh blood.

However, as Xiao Hua kept smashing, more and more concrete fragments fell, and I noticed something off. Whole chunks of concrete inside were all this color—the deeper we went, the darker it got, approaching true red. And, maybe it was psychological, but I began to smell blood.

Xiao Hua also showed a startled expression. He struck a few more times, turning out a few stones, then stopped and cursed, "Tch."

I looked at the hollow he had smashed. All the concrete inside was red, as if it had been mixed with blood plasma.

If someone had been injured or died, there couldn't be that much blood. And besides, the blood had soaked through the concrete—how could it penetrate so deeply?

"Could it be that back then, they mixed dog blood into the concrete for something like warding off evil?" I asked Xiao Hua.

Xiao Hua turned over the concrete chunks on the ground and said, "The deeper we dig, the deeper the bloodstains go, and the more severely the concrete is soaked. But the surface isn't that stained, meaning the blood seeped from the inside out." He touched the blackened concrete. "The inside wasn't exposed to oxygen, so the iron in the blood wasn't oxidized, and the color didn't fade."

"Seeped from the inside?" I wondered what could cause that. A bad feeling swept over me, and suddenly I thought of the blood corpse tomb.

Xiao Hua struck a few more times with the stone. The blood-soaked concrete wasn't very hard, but once the loose surface layer was gone, more and more rubble appeared inside, and we couldn't break through any further. So we hauled up stone hammers and other equipment from below and began to chip away the stone bit by bit.

This mixture of concrete and stone was equivalent to modern roadbed concrete, with excellent compressive strength. We could only break the concrete in the gaps between stones and pry the stones loose, making slow progress. In the cramped space, we were soon drenched in sweat. Due to coordination errors, we kept hitting each other's fingers and heads with the hammers, suffering miserably.

I don't know how long we dug. Outside it was pitch black, when suddenly I cracked open a stone and saw a piece of bone emerge from the concrete.

Xiao Hua and I exchanged a glance, immediately sped up our chiseling, and cleared away the nearby stones. A strange skeleton was revealed from within the rock.

It was a completely decomposed but not disintegrated corpse. We only uncovered a little—just enough to see the skull and one arm bone—the rest was still embedded in the concrete. The bones were yellow, nearly crumbling into powder. It was definitely human remains, but there was something different: the bones were covered in a layer of strange "fuzz." Looking closer, we saw it was a mass of "hair" like mold, sending chills down the spine.

I leaned in for a closer look and immediately pushed Xiao Hua back, telling him not to touch. I don't know when it started, but every time I see hair, all my defenses go up. I stepped back a few paces myself.

It really looked like "hair," but when you pulled at it, you could see it was connected to the bone. Almost every bone had it. The hair seemed to grow right out of the bone, because the decayed hair was very brittle and broke into short pieces at the slightest touch, stuck to the bones by the rotting corpse fluid. There was a lot of it.

Xiao Hua put on gloves, picked up the hammer, and began to strike the skull embedded in the concrete. Two blows shattered the crown. Using the claw end of the hammer, he pried out fragments of the skull and shone the flashlight inside. The cranial cavity was also packed with that hair-like stuff.

"Not good," Xiao Hua clicked his tongue.

I immediately realized that the heavy losses they suffered back then weren't due to any accident. It seemed they had encountered something—something eerie. I had found it odd earlier: with such a formidable team, even if they ran into very clever trap mechanisms, it wouldn't cause a "huge calamity." The Old Nine Gates weren't random grave robbers; even if one or two died, people with their skills and experience would have quickly found a way to escape. But sometimes, no matter how good your skills are, they're useless.

I felt a bit creeped out. If so, opening this hole was extremely dangerous. We didn't know what was inside, but there were bound to be more corpses behind. If while we were chipping away a Corpse Lady crawled out, we'd be in for it. And I had no idea how that hair grew into the brain.

I shared my concerns with Xiao Hua. After thinking it over, we had to put on clothes, wear two or three layers of gloves, put on goggles, and wrap our faces completely with bandages, looking like severe burn victims. Only after ensuring no skin was exposed did we continue digging.

Now even the sweat was gone—all the moisture was trapped inside. Within ten minutes, every private part of my body started protesting. I had to scratch while carefully excavating around the corpse, as meticulously as an archaeologist.

As expected, a second skeleton was almost immediately discovered, virtually embracing the first. Then right away, a third skeleton appeared in the same spot, also embracing the first. Like the first skeleton, all these bones were covered in that kind of hair.

Continuing to dig down, further in it was all piled up with stones, cement had completely not been poured in here, there were no large cement-pouring equipment on the cliff, and with manual pouring, the cement couldn't be forced into the depths of the hole. This made excavation very convenient, and more skeletons were unearthed following the second and third ones, which made people wonder—all the skeletons were holding each other. At first I thought they were fighting, but as I dug, I realized they were pushing the person in front forward, as if trying to push that person out.

I suddenly could reconstruct the scene from back then: people outside were pouring cement in, while people inside were crushed by rubble, screaming "no," trying to push the person ahead out, but countless strands of hair spread through the gaps in the stones, engulfing them. They wailed, the pressing rubble making it impossible for them to move forward, writhing in despair and pain, cement was driven in from outside using a ram-like spike, the pressure crushing the gravel, crushing them, their blood pooling together, flowing toward the surging slurry.

This was no longer a scene that could be described by mere death. Those old comrades of the past ended up dying like this; no wonder Old Nine Gates were so terrified they wouldn't even talk about it. Xiao Hua frowned at me, pulled open the plastic bag covering his head, and used his fingers to comb back his sweat-dampened hair, then said, "You're right. The sealing of this cave didn't happen after Granny Huo left. They sealed the entrance immediately after the incident occurred, which is why there's such a shocking scene. Granny must have known about this—why didn't she say anything?"

"Not necessarily," I said. "Maybe after she left, the remaining people still couldn't give up, still tried, and that's how this problem arose."

Xiao Hua shook his head: "Do you know how much time and effort it takes to install a cement tank system on a cliff like this? The cement tank started pouring before they even had a chance to escape this cave. That suggests—"

He hesitated, and I immediately understood what he meant: "This was a premeditated situation. The cement tank was a safeguard. They anticipated this kind of danger, so before going in, they had everything ready. If something went wrong inside, they would seal themselves in."

"They did it voluntarily." Xiao Hua looked at that skeleton. "That makes me feel a bit better."

"But, looking at them like this, if they did it voluntarily, why are they in such a state? Like sugar-coated hawthorns on a stick, one pushing the other," I said.

"Then what do you think it should be like?" Xiao Hua shone the flashlight on me.

"For example, six people are in a narrow cave when suddenly something goes wrong, facing the threat of death. They instinctively run toward the entrance, but lumps of cement are already shooting in. At that point, they should be scattered, each one frozen in cement one by one, each person's pose different, the distances between them different, not like this, one connected to another," I said. "Besides, they were all seasoned men. I think at a time like that, knowing they were doomed, they would have given up early, not made such desperate attempts to survive."

Xiao Hua shone his flashlight on those skeletons, was silent for a moment, then slowly said, "Makes sense. So what you're saying is, they weren't voluntary, but with such a big machine and so much cement outside, wouldn't they have known what it was for?"

I thought to myself, not necessarily—there are too many explanations that could make sense for this alone. For example, this group was coerced, or maybe they did this to send something out. But that wouldn't explain the other thing.

Thinking it over, I felt there was only one possibility that could explain both things simultaneously. I said to Xiao Hua, "What do you think—why didn't the old lady tell us the cave was sealed with cement?"

"I don't know, maybe she thought it was dishonorable or..." Xiao Hua thought for a moment and shook his head. "Alright, I admit it's damned hard to explain, but I know she's very goal-oriented. She wouldn't toy with us or deceive us. If she knew the cave was sealed with cement and didn't tell us, then our lamas would have stopped, and her plan couldn't have been carried out. She couldn't have been that arrogant."

"Right," I nodded. "For her not to tell us, the only reasonable explanation is that she genuinely didn't know. But she participated in the events back then—she couldn't have not known. That leaves only one explanation."

"What are you trying to say?"

"These bones, these people—they're not from Old Nine Gates, buddy," I said. "Damn it, after Old Nine Gates left, another group of people came here, entered, triggered the mechanism, and got sealed inside. And it wasn't too long ago, which is why the blood is still red."

"Oh, you're saying we're not the first ones here after Old Nine Gates?"

"Probably. And looking at the scale of this group," I picked up a piece of cement, "setting up a cement tank system isn't something ordinary people could pull off. It was also a very large team with deep backing."

Xiao Hua leaned against one wall of the cave and sighed: "And they knew there was danger inside, set up the cement tank in advance. So these people must have some connection to back then." He looked at me. "Someone couldn't let it go."

"Right, someone couldn't let it go," I nodded. We were silent for a moment. These people's bones were twisted and shattered, unrecognizably rotting here—we couldn't get any more information from them. But I felt a wave of nausea. What kind of thing could make so many people, time and again, make such meaningless sacrifices? After a moment of silence, Xiao Hua said, "Regardless, from the look of things, they still failed. We'll have to continue the unfinished business. And they triggered the mechanism, Old Nine Gates triggered it once, and they triggered it too. That means the mechanism inside isn't temporary. Whatever they ran into, we'll definitely run into too. There must be something related to this 'hair' inside the cave. We need to be extra careful."

My mind flashed with an image—if hair grew out of my cranial cavity, the tips of the hair threading through my brain, my brain would turn into a clump of hair tangled with soap and unknown grease, like what you pull out of a drain. I'd rather die. Thankfully, I quickly brushed that thought aside.

After that, Xiao Hua handed me the hammer and told me to keep digging. He would usually chat with me, but this time, neither of us had any interest in talking.

Soon, we unearthed a few more skeletons. After that, it was all rocks, with no more skeletons found. We worked for three hours, digging out nothing but stones.

I suddenly wondered if the people who sealed the cave had filled the entire cave, making what we were doing the work of fools. But thinking about it, that couldn't be the case, and besides, I had no other choice now. No matter how long it took, I had to keep digging.

In fact, by the end, I didn't even know how many hours I had dug. I was already physically exhausted, dying of sleepiness, but Xiao Hua didn't suggest taking a break, and I felt awkward bringing it up. Just as I was in a daze, there was a "crash," and the stones ahead suddenly gave way. The upper half of the stone wall collapsed, revealing a pitch-black opening.

I was still holding that last "keystone" in my hand, stunned for a long moment before I realized I had broken through. Xiao Hua and I exchanged glances, then he raised his flashlight and shone it into the cave. Behind the stone wall was an extension of the cave, but I couldn't see the bottom at all. Twenty meters away, on the ground of the passage, there were clay pots one after another, stretching all the way to the end of the passage.

What was hair-raising was that on every clay pot grew a melon-sized spherical object. When I shone the flashlight on them, I saw that they had hair growing on them—these spherical things looked like tiny human heads sprouting from the clay pots, densely packed throughout the cave. I couldn't help it; goosebumps rose all over my body.