Chapter 415: Stone Shadow: Bloodstains on a Strange Iron Plate

"Blood?"

"Yes, definitely blood. Someone poured a large amount of blood onto the iron plate, and more than once. The blood built up layer by layer—each layer dried before the next was added. It must have been poured many times to get this thick." I said, looking at the patterns on the plate and instantly understanding what was going on. "Look at these grooves. I've seen something similar before. These are blood channels. This isn't an ordinary iron plate—it's a sacrificial altar."

To test my theory, I immediately took out my water bottle and began pouring water onto the iron plate. I was very careful; under the light, the water looked like some kind of ancient mysterious liquid, shimmering with a yellow glow, and the patterns spread rapidly.

Seeing how the water flowed, I was almost certain these patterns were designed. The way the water moved along them had an oddly harmonious beauty.

The water seemed alive, blooming into a marvelous figure on the iron plate, then following the surrounding grooves down the sides. Strangely, after passing the edges, it didn't drip to the ground but flowed along the side to the bottom of the plate, continuing along the bottom patterns toward the hub.

This was due to water's surface tension. Blood has more impurities and greater tension; red blood clinging to the bottom of the iron plate would have flowed even more beautifully.

"So that's how this thing was used." Xiao Hua had seen the world and wasn't surprised. "Do we need to pour that much blood on it too?"

That I didn't know. I touched the iron plate; the dampened bloodstains were starting to dissolve. They felt relatively fresh—probably splashed here when the Old Nine Gates came in back in the day.

Grave robbers don't follow such elaborate blood rituals, and in a place like this—even though it's not an ancient tomb—bringing blood in is still considered unlucky. If the Old Nine Gates had poured blood on this iron plate when they entered, there had to be another reason. We had no clues now; maybe we just had to try it.

I thought maybe there was a mechanism under the plate that could be activated by blood.

It wouldn't be hard to figure out. The mechanism might have used the stickiness of blood, employing blood as a medium through these grooves. I believe ancient technology could easily achieve that. With cleverly designed grooves, the flow rate of water or other liquids would be completely different.

I was about to send Xiao Hua out to have someone below bring up some blood, but Xiao Hua touched the dissolving bloodstains and suddenly asked, "Wait. What kind of blood do you think this is?"

"What kind of blood?"

"If it's pig or dog blood, that's easy. But if it's human blood, that's a problem. And look at the volume—it's not something one or two buckets can handle. Getting this much blood in here is a major undertaking."

I thought about it—yeah, if it was human blood, that would be troublesome. But I didn't think the Old Nine Gates were that twisted, and I didn't believe ancient mechanisms could distinguish between blood types with such precision.

Neither Xiao Hua nor I had much blood to spare. If we needed human blood, we'd be lucky to scrape together a cup between us. I thought for a moment and said, "Pig blood and human blood are similar. How about we get some pig blood and try?" Xiao Hua shook his head. "Too much trouble." He considered for a while and said, "Let's just haul a live pig up here."

Hauling a live pig up—that sounded like a good idea. First, there were all those hairs outside; carrying buckets of blood up there would stir up those black hairs, and God knows what would happen. A pig is easier to transport. Second, a live animal would keep the blood from clotting. But when I thought about the actual scene—suspending a pig off such a high cliff—that was practically performance art.

When the message went down, the men below were stunned. They confirmed it several times, and a long silence came through the walkie-talkie—they clearly had no idea what we were doing. Xiao Hua ordered them to do it immediately, and they finally said they'd try. It wasn't until the next day that we heard a pig squealing on the walkie-talkie and knew they'd managed it.

Pigs are common in rural areas, but subduing one and getting it deep into the mountains was a hassle. Credit to the guys for making it happen.

Xiao Hua and I used all our strength to hoist the pig up to the cave entrance. When we looked at it, it was a fattened hog, so scared it couldn't even struggle anymore.

The two of us untied the pig and stuffed it into the cave. An unbearable stench hit us—the pig's filth hadn't been washed off, and the aged smell was nauseating. Because a day had been wasted, we were impatient and didn't care about the details. We tied the pig's limbs and hung it on the rope, hauling it in like cargo.

Back inside the cave, we prepped first by scraping away the accumulated blood crust on the iron plate with a shovel, revealing the original surface and making the patterns clearer.

After examining everything, I realized that all the patterns on the plate formed the shape of a flower. I also noticed that certain parts of the plate had obvious repair marks. The plate itself was very old, but the patched areas—the bumps and rust—were relatively recent. Apparently, someone had repaired this plate not too long ago. Xiao Hua looked above the plate, and we saw a stone hook on the cave ceiling, as thick as a forearm, clearly carved for hanging something. So we threaded a rope through the hook and hung the pig upside down.

The pig seemed to be recovering and started struggling and squealing loudly, piercing our ears. The thin rope was stretched taut like a guitar string; I was afraid it might snap.

Since the cave ceiling wasn't high, the pig's head hung very close to the iron plate, making it easy to bleed. Xiao Hua looked at me, took out his dagger, and handed it to me, saying, "Go ahead?"

I was stunned and said, "I've never killed a pig."

He gave me a wink and a smile. "You haven't killed one, but do you think I have? This knife is sharp. Just slit its neck."

I snapped, "Then why don't you do it?"

"I can't bring myself to do it," he said. "Stabbing an animal about your own size isn't something anyone can do."

"Damn, do I look like someone who can do it? Do I look like a butcher?" I cursed. But Xiao Hua stared at me firmly, his look saying he absolutely wouldn't go.

I took the dagger and looked at the pig. I really hadn't thought about the killing part beforehand. Xiao Hua is from the underworld; I figured killing a pig wouldn't be a problem for him. How did this end up on me? The pig was squealing like a stuck pig—irritating. I gestured a couple of times and felt overwhelmed, knowing I couldn't do it either. "How about we have your guy bring the butcher up too?"

"The locals all say this mountain cave is haunted. That's impossible—they'd never dare come up."

Xiao Hua said, "How can you be so useless?"

"You've got no room to talk." I looked at the pig and laughed bitterly, thinking how good it would be if Fatty were here—though I had no idea if he'd be willing to kill his own kind.

We were deadlocked, neither willing to play the butcher. So we had to haul up one of Xiao Hua's men again. That guy was ruthless—back in Chengdu, he was known for his blade work. When we explained the situation, he refused too, saying, "A pig's blood vessels are thick. One cut and the blood jets everywhere—it'll be a mess. To bleed it, you need a tube." He found a liquor bottle, downed the contents in a few gulps, drew his machete, chopped off the bottom, then trimmed the neck and mouth into a point, and shoved it into the pig's neck.

The pig let out a miserable cry, and blood poured out through the bottle's opening. Countless streaks of red began to crawl across the patterns on the iron plate.

I felt a wave of nausea and couldn't bear to look anymore. I'd seen plenty of disgusting, rotting corpses before, but never with such a sense of revulsion. The process of killing made my heart tremble.

Five minutes later, the pig had stopped struggling and was extremely weak. The blood flowed through the grooves, dyeing the entire iron plate—which we had cleaned—back to a dark red. The way the blood filled every pattern on the plate should have been eerily beautiful, but I didn't look closely. What worried me was that the iron plate hadn't changed at all; it was still spinning as before.

Xiao Hua said this iron plate was designed to guide the blood into the mechanism below. Even though the plate was covered in blood, it would take some time for the blood to flow down to the lower parts.

Sure enough, after another three or four minutes, the rotation of the iron plate suddenly changed, stuttering a few times, and then stopped.

Xiao Hua and I immediately assumed defensive postures, ready for any mechanism to activate, when from beneath the iron plate came a series of ancient, muffled sounds of iron chains scraping against each other. Then, these ancient sounds began to echo from within the walls of the cave.

I was greatly alarmed, listening to the rapid noises from all around the cave walls, and thought to myself, damn, could the entire interior of these walls be filled with mechanisms? If so, then the iron plate was driving a large-scale machine. A large mechanism would certainly not be simple; it would inevitably trigger some major upheaval. After all, if you only needed to drive something weighing less than a hundred kilograms, you wouldn't need such a commotion.

Just as I was about to warn everyone to be cautious, the change occurred instantly. From three sides of the cave walls, inside the cavities that had originally held ancient texts and bamboo slips, sudden movement arose. All the bamboo slips were pushed out, and then, slowly, one by one, strange "things" extended outward from the depths of the cavities.