Chapter 444: Fatty in the Crevice

I was both shocked and overjoyed, immediately shouting to the side, "Come quick, pry this crack open! There's one of our own inside!"

As I yelled around, Xiao Hua immediately whistled, "Get the shovels!" With a clatter, a few young men ripped open their bags, pulled out tools, and rushed over, moving very swiftly—obviously Panzi had trained them well.

These people took one look and knew what was going on. Limited by my masked identity, I couldn't participate, so I could only watch from the side. Under Xiao Hua's direction, they immediately used shovels and stone hammers to pry open the crack.

Soon I noticed that although the color of the rock around the crack looked exactly like the mountain stone, it was much softer. After a few pries, the ring of stone around the crack split apart. They brushed the debris aside with their hands, and the crack quickly returned to the width it was when I had crawled out.

Then, trying to widen the opening further became extremely difficult. I was amazed—the sight before me was a kind of camouflage. The ring of rock around the crack opening, which seemed to have grown like a wound healing, wasn't actually stone at all, but a material softer than stone. Yet it looked exactly like stone, even the grain was almost identical.

I didn't have time to examine it closely before Fatty was dragged out from inside. A terribly foul smell came out with him. When they pulled him, Fatty didn't move at all, as if he had completely lost consciousness.

He looked at least a full size thinner than when I had last seen him—almost like he had a waist now. His entire body was covered in dark green sludge, his eyes wide open and staring, as if he were dead. But when I felt his pulse, it was still beating strongly.

A few people frantically carried him to a spot by the lake where the air was better. Fatty was extremely heavy; several times, those with less strength lost their grip and dropped him face-first on the ground, which was heartbreaking to watch.

They finally dragged him to the lakeside and set up a gas lantern. Only then did I fully see Fatty's sorry state. Fatty wasn't good-looking to begin with, and even at his best he looked pretty sloppy, but now he looked like a corpse that had just been dug out of a coffin. His clothes were in shreds, completely covered in green sludge. Xiao Hua fetched water from the lake to rinse him off, revealing skin riddled with egg-sized festering sores.

"Holy shit, this is a sick pig," one of the men muttered quietly.

"Is he dead? Why isn't he moving?" Someone slapped Fatty's face, and I stopped him. Xiao Hua called for someone who knew medicine to come and examine Fatty.

I saw that "Yajie" had come over. She glanced at me, tied up her hair, and bent down to check on Fatty. At this point I couldn't worry about avoiding suspicion; I steeled myself and watched from the side. Under the mask, my forehead veins were jumping, but luckily they couldn't see.

"Yajie" cut open Fatty's clothes. Halfway through, we all saw a shocking sight: Fatty's stomach was covered in countless deep scratches made by fingernails.

Although they seemed chaotic at first glance, I immediately noticed that these marks had a very clear pattern. Yajie used a wet towel to carefully wipe away the blood and grime, searching for fatal wounds. As the blood came off, I saw that the scratches were extremely fine. Lines of blood formed a totem-like pattern on his stomach.

"Is this writing?" someone said. "This fatty has some words written on his stomach."

"Yajie" continued examining the scratches on Fatty's stomach; there were more under his clothes, which were already ruined. She cut them all open, and I saw even more scratches on his lower abdomen. The overall outline of the pattern did look like characters.

These scratches should have been made by a sharp object with moderate pressure across the skin.

I picked up Fatty's hand, and sure enough, I saw that his thumbnails were chewed into sharp triangular points.

It seemed these marks were carved by Fatty himself. Although Fatty was a rough guy, scratching so many lines on his own stomach with his nails wasn't something an ordinary person could do. What was he trying to convey?

The earliest parts had already scabbed over, indicating that the strokes had been made over a long period. The first scratch on his stomach was at least seven days old, while the newest still had blood.

Thinking this, I said to Xiao Hua, "Maybe if we stand up, we can see what it says. Move him aside."

We stepped back a few paces and looked at Fatty from several different angles. I tilted my head but still couldn't make it out.

"Search through his clothes, see if there's anything inside," I ordered the people around. Maybe his clothes would provide some clue.

A few people busily spread out the cut pieces of his clothes to search. Just then, "Yajie" spoke up: "If you need to search, do it farther away. Don't be in the way here."

Only then did I realize Fatty's condition was still unknown. I immediately waved for them to back off. Xiao Hua led the group away.

Worried about Fatty, I lowered my voice and asked Yajie, "Is he in danger?"

Yajie pressed her hand to Fatty's neck and didn't answer. I thought she was counting his pulse, so I didn't dare ask again. After a moment, she let go and said, "So you finally talk to me?"

Damn, my mind buzzed. How was I supposed to respond to that? I was still worried about Fatty and didn't want to turn and run away. A thought flashed through my mind—how would Third Uncle have handled this kind of remark? I knew what he was like when eating, drinking, whoring, and gambling, but I didn't know what his feelings were for this woman, nor how he interacted with women in private.

I was stuck for a long time without answering. She flipped open Fatty's eyelids without looking at me, but still said, "I don't care where you've been all this time. Only those idiots believe your story. I believe you have your reasons for what you do, but since you're back, why didn't you come find me first?"

"Wang Baqiu and Lao Liu..." I hedged.

"It's not like it's just today they've wanted to turn on you," Yajie said. "I couldn't help you? Besides that crazy Pan of yours, you really don't trust anyone, do you?"

"I didn't want you involved this time." My legs were even trembling. I never expected that lying to a woman would be so stressful. I immediately lit a cigarette. But before I could take a drag, she turned and snatched it away, crushing it on a rock. "Since you had throat surgery, don't smoke so much."

I gave a dry laugh. This was no mistress—this was definitely the manner of a legitimate wife. But personally, I thought it was a good thing. If Third Uncle were still alive, he really needed someone to take care of him. It's just that his fate was still unknown.

"You still haven't explained yourself," she said, feeling Fatty's bones.

"It's a bit complicated..." I thought about how to say it. If I told her the truth, that I was her nephew, would she agree to be on my side? Hard to tell. I thought she would even find it hard to believe. What Third Uncle and I had been through over the past few years wasn't something ordinary people could understand. If she thought it was some kind of conspiracy, we'd be in even more trouble. "I think you—"

Before I could finish, she must have pressed some spot on Fatty's body, and suddenly Fatty grabbed her hand. She was startled and cried out in surprise.

Fatty was obviously using a lot of strength; she couldn't break free. Then Fatty began to mutter deliriously, almost convulsively.

His speech was already extremely slurred. I went over, pressed his hand to free hers from his grip, and bent down to listen.

I listened for a long time before I could make out what he was saying. An intense heat instantly made all my hairs stand on end.

The people around heard the commotion and thought something had happened. They all crowded over at once.

"What did he say?" Xiao Hua came in from outside with a medical kit and asked me.

I said, "He said they're still alive, but the situation is very dangerous, and told us to go down immediately to rescue them."

"They're alive. Follow the drawing to save them."

Actually, what Fatty said boiled down to these eight words. He kept repeating them, completely incoherently—you had to be extremely familiar with his way of speaking to understand him. Luckily, I was that kind of person.

For an instant, I suddenly felt a sense of collapse.

Damn it, Fatty had turned himself into a note—he'd come out to deliver a message.

I couldn't tell whether I felt relief, anxiety, ecstasy, or any other emotion. Before this, I had been vaguely worried about the people below and tried not to think about it, because I really had no idea what the situation down there was like. I could only try to keep my emotions in check. Now that it was confirmed, I didn't know what emotion to express.

Fatty kept on talking, entering a state of delirium. I had to lean down and whisper softly in his ear, in my own voice: "I'm Tianzhen. I heard you."

After I said it a few times, his grip on my wrist slowly relaxed. His whole body went limp, and he seemed to sink back into unconsciousness.

"What drawing?" Xiao Hua asked. "Where is there a drawing to follow?"

I looked at Fatty's belly. The marks carved directly into it—now I knew what they were. "Quick, find someone to trace these patterns."