Chapter 467: Strange Shadow in the Wall

The situation inside was exactly as Fatty had described, though the ghostly figure hadn't explained how these tunnels worked.

But I could roughly guess that these mechanisms must have taken advantage of human psychology and the natural fissures in the mountain. Maybe if I went deeper, I'd find more clues.

Using this tunnel entrance, we could enter the tunnel that Fatty had gone through with so much difficulty. We hunched over and went in. Since both the ghostly figure and Fatty had said there was no danger inside, we walked quickly without any worries.

As we went along, we shone our flashlights on the tunnel walls, searching for that unusual shadow the ghostly figure had mentioned.

The walls of the entire tunnel were a translucent green. We had wrapped our flashlights in the green cloth the ghostly figure gave us, like an X-ray light that could see through things. Clearly, this kind of stone was especially good at letting green light pass through.

In this light, we could even see the skin of some shallow human figures. I hadn't looked at these things carefully before, and now all I saw were shadows.

The faces of these things were especially strange—the smaller the shadow, the more human-like the face, but if the shadow was larger, the face would be very long.

In the green stone, they all had their eyes closed, as if sleeping.

Fatty told me not to get too close to the stone. The ghostly figure had said that these things would gather where it was warm, so we couldn't stay in one place too long.

As we went along, we were straining every nerve to look, afraid of missing a single shadow, but we walked a long way without seeing the "unusual" thing the ghostly figure had described.

"Hey, does this one count as unusual?" Fatty followed a policy of "better to kill the wrong one than let one go." Whenever he saw something strange, he'd say, "Look at this shadow—it looks just like Zhao Benshan. Could this be it?"

"I don't think that ghostly figure would have any way of knowing about Zhao Benshan, so he can't have thought this shadow was a problem," I said.

"Then what about this one?" Fatty pursed his lips at another shadow, one in a swimming pose. "Doesn't this look like a dog paddle?"

"I think 'unusual' definitely isn't a matter of finding shapes in the clouds. It can't be that simple, otherwise every shadow here would be a problem." I said, starting to feel a bit worried that maybe the ghostly figure had overestimated our ability to tell the difference.

Fatty shook his head, saying that under those circumstances, the ghostly figure wouldn't make that kind of mistake—the guy was a former spy; "imprecise descriptions" were impossible for him.

I had to trust that. The two of us continued on, looking at each shadow one by one. Soon our activity became a test of imagination.

"Look, this shadow looks like it's holding in a fart."

"Look—whoa, those are big boobs. Hey, why is there a tail down there?"

At first it was kind of fun, and it helped ease our anxiety.

But later, after we'd seen too many, we lost even the desire to talk. We just mechanically looked at one shadow after another.

I don't know how far in we went. We hadn't seen Xiao Hua or his group, nor had we found that shadow, and the tunnel seemed endless.

Just as we were about to fall into a trance, we saw a shadow! Fatty and I were jolted awake at almost the same time. We both shuddered and looked at each other. I realized that what the ghostly figure had said was absolutely right—we had found it.

And indeed, if you were paying attention to the shadows, this one absolutely could not be missed.

It was definitely a shadow that felt extremely strange.

We saw this shadow inside the rock wall. Its arms and legs were extremely long, longer even than the shadow's own height. Going by the proportions we'd seen, it was as if five snakes were twisted together to form this human-shaped shadow, or like a dancer in long flowing sleeves.

"Arms that hang past the knees—that's Liu Bei, man," Fatty muttered. "Twenty heads tall. Damn good figure."

"Why is this shadow different from the others? Is it a deformed one?" I thought to myself, a little nervous as I moved the flashlight forward.

Unfortunately, this shadow was quite deep in the rock. When I shined the light, it was just a dark silhouette.

"What do we do next?" Fatty asked me. "What did he say? I forgot."

"Take the spot where this shadow is as the central point, and use oil. Where's our oil?"

Fatty pulled out his canteen and handed it to me. "Here. Use it sparingly."

"No problem. If we run out, we still have you, right?" I said. I took the canteen and immediately started pouring the oil onto the ground.

"You lunatic! My precious fat is not for you to use for such lowly work!" Fatty cursed. "Besides, we don't have any rendering equipment."

As soon as the oil hit the ground, it began to seep in. I noticed that the rock surface, though it looked like it had been crudely chiseled, actually had patterns that were meaningful. The oil quickly spread and flowed toward one place.

"There's a way," Fatty said. We followed the direction the oil was spreading, walking slowly forward. After just a few steps, we suddenly saw a small side entrance appear in the tunnel wall ahead. It was very small, and we had to bend over to enter.

"Amazing. How come we didn't see this before?" Fatty said. "How did this opening appear?"

I leaned close to the side entrance. The opening was wet, and when I touched it, I found it was very sticky. I felt puzzled, and then a flash of lightning struck my mind. I suddenly felt like I understood the mechanism at work here.

But when I thought about it more carefully, I couldn't figure it out again. Just as I was standing there dazed, I suddenly saw a white light shining from inside the side entrance, as if someone had turned on a flashlight.

I was startled and immediately looked. Deep in the tunnel, there was a white light source, not as bright as a flashlight. It was far away, and the glare made it hard to see clearly.

I shone my flashlight in that direction to cancel out the white light. The beam went in about a dozen meters, but I didn't see anyone inside. Fatty saw it too and called into the cave, "Who's there?"

When I moved the flashlight away again, the white light went out.

"What was that just now, fireflies?" I asked.

"If it were fireflies, that'd be awesome. That light was so bright, the bug would have to be huge—at least as big as my shoe."

"Then what was that light just now? Could it be will-o'-the-wisp?" I said. "That white light was too solid; it definitely felt like a man-made light source."

"That's where you lack imagination," Fatty said. "From my life experience, that light just now should be from a cell phone."

"Xiao Hua's phone?"