Chapter 5: Seven Stars: Water Shadow

"Oh, my little master, don't scare me either. I'm big, but I'm most afraid of things I can't name. If it were a bunch of bandits, even I, Da Kui, wouldn't blink. But this thing—I don't even know what it is. Look, my legs have gone weak."

I thought staying here was no solution, and a very unpleasant premonition kept flickering in and out of my mind. I didn't know if it was the oppressive cave playing tricks on me or something else, so I said, "No matter what it is, the most important thing now is to get out quickly. We're going against the current now; heading back will definitely be faster than when we came. I think we've only been in this cave for less than ten minutes—getting out shouldn't be a problem."

"Right, right, Third Young Master is right," Da Kui quickly agreed. "Third Master, just say the word. At worst, we'll climb over the mountain after we get out, and I'll carry all the stuff—I'm strong. A day or two's delay won't make much difference, right? We'll just dig the tunnel a bit faster and make up for it."

Third Master glanced at that Poker-face again and asked, "Brother, what do you think?"

Poker-face said indifferently, "If we want to go out now, I'm afraid it's already too late. Since those two let us in, they must be absolutely sure we can't get out."

"If we don't go out, are we supposed to wait here until we die of old age?" Panzi looked at him. Poker-face glanced back at him, then actually turned his head away and closed his eyes to rest. Panzi, snubbed, had no choice but to say to Third Uncle, "I think we definitely can't go forward. Look at A Kui—he'll be scared to death. So let's go backward. The way in isn't complicated; we might make it out. And if we really run into some tricky formation, we'll figure it out then!"

"That's the only way," Third Uncle nodded and said to Panzi, "Light a miner's lamp in front and behind. Load those shotguns. A Kui and I will use them as poles. Panzi and Big Nephew, watch the rear. Brother, you help guide the way." We all agreed. Panzi took out another miner's lamp and shone it behind us. The cow on the second boat, startled by the light, mooed. Panzi cursed, "Third Master, we have to drive the cow into the water, otherwise we can't pole the boat."

Because the miner's lamp had been shining forward earlier, we hadn't paid any attention and had completely forgotten about the boat we were towing behind. Seeing it now, we were horrified. Those two old thieves had really thought things through. The cave was so low the cow couldn't even stand up, let alone be driven into the water. With the equipment load and the cow, the boat was already sitting deep in the water. If we got on, we wouldn't be able to pole it, and it might even sink. That tow boat behind us was like a plug, blocking us in.

At that moment, I faintly heard the strange sound again from deep in the cave, and it was noticeably closer than before. The sound was like countless little ghosts whispering, extremely unsettling. Everyone fell silent, and the atmosphere became eerily intense. Suddenly, all my attention was drawn to that sound. Several times I tried to pull myself away, but I was immediately drawn back in. I sensed something wrong—this sound was tricky! Even though I knew it, I couldn't snap out of it. My head was filled with nothing but that sound. Just then, someone gave me a savage kick, and I lost my balance and fell into the water.

Immediately, the sound in my head vanished. Almost at the same time, I saw Panzi fall in too. Then Third Uncle and Da Kui, and finally Poker-face jumped in with a miner's lamp. In the water, the sound was much more muffled, so it didn't affect us. But seeing things with the naked eye underwater was very blurry. Even squinting, I could only make out rough shapes. Poker-face pointed downward and shone the light. The water wasn't very deep; I could see a layer of white sand at the bottom. He swept the light around—no plants, no fish, nothing. I couldn't hold my breath any longer. I surfaced, took a breath, and as I wiped the water from my eyes, I suddenly saw a bloody face hanging upside down, its two eyes glaring at me.

I stared at him, and he stared back. I recognized him as the middle-aged man who had poled our boat. Looking up, I saw only his upper half remained. On the cave ceiling, a huge black insect was gnawing at his intestines, occasionally twitching. I was petrified. Wasn't that a giant corpse-eating beetle? My god, how many dead bodies did it have to eat to grow that big! Panzi's head emerged beside me, but he wasn't as lucky. Before he even knew what was happening, the insect screeched, tossed the corpse aside, and lunged straight at his head, its huge pincers digging into his scalp.

Panzi was quite a man. In that situation, I saw his left hand flip—somehow a military knife was already in it. He jammed the blade under the insect's pincer and pried one of them out. If it had been me, I'd have been dead by then. The insect let out a screech from somewhere, and with only one pincer left, it lost its grip. Panzi punched it away. All this happened in a flash. Panzi didn't even spare me a glance; he just shoved the insect right in my face.

I cursed inwardly. This Panzi was too unscrupulous. Usually, he talked about how he'd have my back, but now at the first sign of trouble, he threw that deadly thing right at my face. He had a military knife, but I only had my bare hands. I was done for. The insect was merciless; it hooked its sharp claws into the skin of my face. I gritted my teeth, trying to shake it off, but its claws had barbs, latching firmly onto my clothes, some even digging into my flesh. The pain brought tears to my eyes.

Just then, Poker-face surfaced. Seeing I was about to lose it, he rushed over, thrust two fingers into the insect's back, and with a yank, pulled out something white and stringy like spaghetti. That pitiful insect, which had been dominating just a second ago, was done for before even a second passed. I tossed the corpse onto the boat, feeling like I'd just woken from a dream.

Da Kui gave Poker-face a thumbs-up: "Brother, I, Da Kui, respect you. That big insect, and you just ripped its guts out. I've got to hand it to you!"

"Get out," Panzi said, wincing as he nursed two bloody holes in his head, though fortunately the wounds weren't too big. "Look at your lack of education. That's the central nervous system. One move from him, and the insect's paralyzed!"

"You mean it's not dead yet?" Da Kui, who had one foot back on the boat, put his other foot back into the water at that.

Poker-face flipped onto the boat in one smooth motion and kicked the insect aside. "Can't kill it yet. We need it to get out of this corpse cave."

"Was that sound we heard earlier from this insect?" Third Uncle asked him. Hearing the insect screech a few times just now, it didn't seem like it.

Poker-face turned the insect over. We saw a fist-sized, hexagonal, sealed copper bell attached to its tail, implanted who knows when, already completely green with patina. Each of the bell's six sides was densely engraved with incantations. Panzi, while bandaging his head, kicked it with his foot. The hexagonal bell suddenly started ringing on its own! The sound was the same as what we'd heard earlier, though that time it was ethereal, as if drifting from the underworld. Now it sounded much more real. So this bell was the source of the sound, but it needed a hollow echo to bewitch people. That hexagonal bell must have had a very delicate mechanism, surviving for a thousand years without rotting—probably made of something like gold or silver. But how could it start ringing on its own? As I puzzled, the bell rang more and more intensely, as if a trapped spirit inside was desperate to escape its sealed vessel. But it was so small that it struck me as almost ridiculous. Panzi finished bandaging his wounds, as practiced as if he got hurt every day. Annoyed by the clattering bell, he tried to stomp it flat. Unexpectedly, the copper casing had already corroded badly. With a crack, he crushed it. A foul green liquid spurted out.

Third Uncle was furious. He wanted to hit Panzi, but remembering the two holes in his head, he stopped himself, lest Panzi end up like the bell. Instead, he cursed, "Can't you keep your foot still! That thing was a divine artifact at the very least, and you've ruined it with one stomp!"

"Third Master, how was I supposed to know it was so fragile?" Panzi protested, feeling wronged. Third Uncle shook his head in frustration. He used his military knife to pick through the bronze fragments. Inside was a cluster of small bells of various sizes and shapes, like a honeycomb, all attached to an intricate hollow ball. The ball was covered in holes and had been crushed. Inside was a large green centipede, its head flattened. The green liquid came from the finger-thick centipede's body, squeezed out by the stomp.

Third Uncle used the knife tip to turn the hollow ball over, revealing a tube that connected to the part attached to the giant corpse beetle. He said, "I guess when the centipede got hungry, it crawled through this tube into the beetle's body to eat. How did anyone come up with such a symbiotic system?"

The half of the boatman's corpse floated on the water, bobbing up and down. Third Uncle sighed, "Serves them right. They must have wanted to strand us alone in this corpse cave, wait for us to die, and then come back to salvage our goods. Who knows what went wrong today? They ended up dead at this giant beetle's hands. They deserved it!"

"This is what they call 'without coincidence, there'd be no story.' Looks like we're pretty lucky," I said.

Panzi shook his head. "The claws of that thing wouldn't have the strength to tear a person in half in such a short time. If it had that kind of strength, my brains would already be scooped out. I say there can't be just one of these. This one must have snatched the corpse after it was dismembered, trying to hog the meal."

Da Kui had been feeling pretty relaxed, but hearing that, he couldn't help swallowing.

"Don't panic. Didn't this young master just say it? We have to rely on this thing to get out of this cave! Let's put this giant corpse-eating centipede on the bow of the boat and let it clear the way for us. This thing has been eating corpses all its life, and its Yin energy is extremely heavy. It's the bane of zombies and the like. In a corpse cave, it's probably the king here. With it on our boat, we'll definitely be able to get out." Third Uncle said, "Come on, let's not retreat. I want to see what kind of place lies ahead, a place that can produce such a huge insect."

Hearing what my Third Uncle said, I thought it made sense. Figuring we'd already spent quite a while in this cave, the oppressive feeling of not even being able to raise our heads was too much. The few of us took out folding shovels from the luggage behind us to use as boat poles, propping ourselves against the stone walls and rowing forward.

As I rowed, I studied the cave walls on the side. Suddenly, I had a question, so I asked Third Uncle, "Look, all of this is solid rock. How did the tomb raiders of ancient times dig this out? Even now, it would probably take several hundred people to dig such a deep cave."

Third Uncle said, "Look at how round this cave is. It's extremely old. I reckon that whoever dug this cave back then must have been an official grave robber—someone from a specialized military unit for tomb raiding. It seems that finding the tomb marked on the map won't be as easy as we thought."

"Third Master, how are you so sure that tomb is still there? Look, if an army came and dug such a long tunnel, it's hard to guarantee they didn't take everything!" Da Kui said, "I think maybe when we go in, there won't even be a single coffin board left."

My Third Uncle grunted and said, "If this tomb had already been robbed thousands of years ago, then there's nothing we can say. But you have to understand, this cave is indeed marked on the map. That means this robbers' tunnel already existed when the tomb owner was buried. The age of this tunnel should be earlier than the ancient tomb we're looking for. Moreover, there's definitely more than one tomb in this area. Who knows which tomb this robbers' tunnel was dug for?"

"So that means," I could already feel the chilling implication of my Third Uncle's words, "everything we're encountering now—the giant corpse-eating centipede, the age of the hexagonal bronze wind chimes—their owner might be even older than the Warring States period?"

Third Uncle shook his head, "I'm more concerned about why our tomb owner would choose to set his burial site next to another robbed tomb. Isn't that a major taboo in feng shui?"

The Poker-face suddenly waved his hand, signaling us to be quiet, and pointed ahead. We saw a patch of green phosphorescent light deep in the cave where our miner's lamp couldn't reach. Third Uncle sighed, "We've reached the place where corpses pile up!"