Chapter 462: The Truth of the Mountain

The shadowy figure didn't even raise a torch as he led us out of the cave, and we followed him up along the massive rock face.

Fatty had put his clothes back on, his collar all muddy; he was tired of cursing and kept gesturing to me, asking if he should subdue the man. I shook my head. The way this shadowy figure moved with such agility and maintained his distance with an air of composure gave me a very strong feeling that even in his current state, his skill was still above ours.

Think about it — this man had stayed in the mountains for so long without leaving, obviously wary of everything in the human world. There was no way he would drop all his guard just because he saw an old friend. Despite how casually he walked, his vigilance must have been extremely high. If Fatty tried to make a move, I doubted the chances of success were very good.

I couldn't say this to Fatty, so I just ignored him and instead told him everything that had happened. Fatty said, "Damn, I tied him up really tight. How did he get free? I didn't think that guy was such a handful. You okay — your face?"

"Maybe he was carrying a knife," I said. "Not searching him was a mistake. We were too rushed."

"It was bone shrinking," the shadowy figure said, turning back. He was far away but clearly heard us clearly. "Wu Sansheng, you wouldn't have forgotten that, would you?"

My heart stirred. I knew I couldn't say anything careless, so I immediately put on a tough front: "No, I was on guard. It wasn't bone shrinking."

He didn't say anything more, and I gave Fatty a look signaling him not to say anything on his own.

After walking for over ten minutes, we came to a concave hollow in the rock face. Inside the hollow were all pottery jars. The shadowy figure picked up a branch from the side, stuck it into one of the jars, and lit it. Then he scooped out a basin of water from another jar and splashed it against the wall.

I more or less knew what he was trying to do, so I immediately helped. Soon the water had seeped into the rock.

He leaned the burning branch against the rock wall, and we immediately saw that the entire rock face was covered in strange shadows.

After being soaked, the whole rock face took on a translucent quality, like jade.

"Those are the stone people," Fatty said. "Damn, so many of them. What if they all got out?"

"Do you know how many of these things are inside this rock? Do you know what their true origins are?" the shadowy figure asked Fatty.

Fatty shook his head. "Aren't these things the mountain gods of these hills?"

The shadowy figure shook his head and looked at me. I didn't show whether I knew or not; I just touched the rock wall, pretending to be deep in thought.

"This has to start with how this demonic building was constructed," he said. "Back then, when we did the archaeological research on this building, we came up with several hypotheses. We believed that in the Guangxi area, there are a large number of underground karst caves. The Zhang family's ancient building was likely built using one of these cave systems, a deep hidden cave that extended deeper into the underground mountain range. But later, after various surveys of the mountain body here, we found that the cave system was far too complex. Given the scale of construction in the style of the Lei family blueprints, an enormous amount of manpower and resources would have been needed to build such a massive building inside the cave."

I thought to myself, I was right — he was indeed from the archaeological team. My guess was almost spot on.

At first, they thought it was indeed impossible — that this was just a drum-tower group burial tomb of a prominent Zhang family branch, not an emperor. The Zhang family in Guangxi — setting aside the question of financial resources (since it's hard to estimate how much wealth such a tomb-robbing family could have), it was a matter of convenience. As long as it wasn't an emperor, carrying out such a massive project secretly in those times would have been very difficult.

But when they explored the mountains, they discovered a surprising issue: the vegetation on the mountains here was very strange.

Especially the vegetation around Yangjiao Mountain — it was different from that of other places, particularly the types of trees. The trees there were all excellent materials for wooden structures.

When I heard this, my heart skipped a beat. I already realized what he meant. I said, "I heard that there was a big fire near Yangjiao Mountain during the Ming Dynasty." "Yes," the shadowy figure said coldly. "It was all part of their plan."

The ancestors of the Zhang family ancient building, as early as the Ming Dynasty, had already planned to move the Zhang family's remains to be buried in this mountain. So during the Ming Dynasty, they burned down the forests here and planted timber that would be usable several hundred years later.

What kind of spirit was that? What kind of terrifying family would plan on a scale of centuries?

"After these trees were planted, they grew for several hundred years, covering the entire mountain around Yangjiao Mountain. When the craftsmen came, they used local materials. You'll notice that there are a lot of shrubs here, because they were very careful when cutting down trees, felling them evenly among the groves."

But even if all the timber could be sourced locally, transporting it into the underground caves was almost an impossible task.

Because such large-scale construction required entire beams of timber. These massive pieces of wood couldn't possibly fit through such narrow cave passages. The best method would have been to use an underground river — just throw the timber into the water and let it flow into the cave. But such conditions were rare. They searched everywhere for an underground water system, but the terrain here was too high — part of the highest elevations in all of Guangxi — and they simply couldn't find an underground river.

"You would never guess how the Zhang family transported the timber down," the shadowy figure said. "Right under this rock face, there's a vertical deep shaft, going almost straight down from the top to the bottom."

"Tunnel-digging technique," I said.

The shadowy figure nodded. "Extraordinary craftsmanship. The question is, how was that shaft dug? Even with a lot of people, digging a shaft like that back in those days would have taken many, many years.

All the timber was lowered into the underground cave through this shaft. Moreover, they found many strange iron tools in the crevices of the mountain body here. These iron tools were like very long spoons, channeling a lot of rainwater from the mountain into those crevices. We believe this was to accelerate the dissolution of the limestone inside the mountain — a measure set up back in the Ming Dynasty. We also found traces of the same iron tools near the mouth of that shaft. Do you know what that means?"

I shook my head. He said, "This shaft was formed by thousands of years of rainwater erosion. They placed a copper ball at the mouth of the shaft and set up a mechanism. After knocking off the surface rock, the inside was all easily dissolvable limestone. The copper ball was extremely heavy. When the rainwater was concentrated by these mechanisms to wash down into this shaft, the rock below would decompose and weaken. The weight of the copper ball itself would crush the rock in sheets. Over nearly a thousand years, the copper ball sank continuously, finally breaking through this dome."

When you want to dig a hole in some mountain a thousand years from now, and you have a thousand years to do it, many things become quite easy for you.

As I listened, a chill grew deeper inside me. Was this possible? My first reaction was that it was too far-fetched, but what I knew told me it was absolutely possible — and the time required might even be less. If the water flow was steady and contained certain chemicals, dripping through a rock could take only a few years. That was also why landslides were frequent in many areas.

I had woken up at the foot of a mudslide slope. There was a lot of vegetation here, so logically the mudslide shouldn't have been so large. Obviously, the rock here originally had many crevices. That premise was sound. But what was most terrifying was not that — it was that anyone could have conceived such an idea.

What we wanted to understand was — what kind of people were they? What kind of life did they lead? And what was the purpose of such a terrifying design?

"I believe they certainly wouldn't have chosen just one place like this. With a thousand-year plan, there are too many possible changes along the way. This place might have been one of the sites they selected," the shadowy figure said. "There are quite a few such places in Guangxi, but the ones that could avoid tourism and industrial development and remain desolate wilderness even after many years — there's probably only the heart of the Thirty Thousand Mountains here."

"Did you verify all of this?" I asked. In university, they taught that relying on mere speculation wasn't feasible. The shadowy figure simply said, "No need. Listen to me finish, and you'll believe it."

"Almost all of our conclusions could be reconstructed from facts, but when we got to this point in the explanation, there was a big problem." The shadowy figure patted the rock beside him. "How did this stone get placed on top of the mountain? We did a lot of research on this stone, and soon discovered a very terrifying truth. From there, I discovered the truth about this mountain." He said, "Now watch closely. I'll show you what this mountain really is. And why I said that once they entered the building, they were already dead."