Chapter 78: Qinling Divine Tree: Jiazi Gully

He nodded and said, "Looking at the handwriting, it should be him."

I wasn't surprised by the content; someone with mental issues could write something even more absurd. But the tone of the letter seemed to be actually persuading Lao Yang not to go tomb raiding, which was really strange. So I asked him, "Was it you who told him about this deal of ours?"

"No, I don't know how he found out about this either. I haven't been in touch with him for a long time." Lao Yang also frowned. "And this letter has no postmark. It wasn't sent through the post office but was placed directly into my bag. I have no idea who put it there or when. Don't you think that's a bit strange?"

"What, do you really think your cousin is a yin person who can raise little ghosts to spy on information?" I laughed. Although I believed there were many things in this world we couldn't explain, the idea of raising little ghosts was something from cultivation novels—too absurd for me to accept.

Seeing that I didn't believe him, Lao Yang snorted, waved his hand, and indicated he didn't want to discuss it. For a moment we had nothing to say, and we both fell silent.

The next morning, we decided to bypass the village and set off directly. First, I was afraid those people might have already left, so I didn't want to delay too long. Second, from Lao Yang's perspective, this village was probably the last supply point for various groups. If we, as unfamiliar faces, went in, it might cause trouble. We returned to the fork, took the right path, crossed a mountain stream, and saw a few small tile-roofed houses in the distance. We went around and saw the village. Inside, several old men were eating flatbread and fried dough sticks at the village entrance. Both Lao Yang and I loved that food, so we couldn't resist and changed our minds, wanting to go into the village to buy some hot breakfast. Lao Yang led me in. I noticed he seemed quite familiar with the village and found it strange. When I asked, he had to confess that he had been here before and had even hired a guide, but it was so long ago that he had forgotten. Coming back this time, he wanted to ask that old man. Seeing his sly look, I couldn't tell if he had really forgotten or had planned it deliberately. Anyway, I now held reservations about everything he said and wouldn't easily believe him. We wandered around the village a few times and came to a two-story tile-roofed house. He pointed at an old man with a white beard sunbathing there and said, "That's him, Old Liu Tou."

Old Liu Tou was an outsider. He had fled conscription when he was young and settled here, becoming an old hunter. He was over eighty but still in good health. Almost all the expeditions—survey teams, archaeological teams, tomb raiders—who went into the old forest would have him guide them a few times at the start. He was happy to make a living this way; first, it paid well, and second, it gave him status. When we found him, he wasn't surprised, just shook his head and said, "No, no. You can't go into the mountains at this time. I won't lead the way, and you shouldn't go either."

I was puzzled and asked him, "Why can't we go into the mountains? It's clear and crisp autumn weather, the perfect time for hunting. If not now, when can we go?"

He told his son to bring me two sets of flatbread and fried dough sticks and said, "I'm not saying you can't go into the whole mountain. It's the place you want to go that you can't enter."

Lao Yang and I exchanged a glance, astonished. We hadn't said anything yet, so how did this old man know where we were going? Lao Yang said, "Uncle Liu, we actually haven't decided where to go yet. Why are you making decisions for us?"

"What?" Old Liu Tou laughed. "Aren't you coming back to go to that place you visited last time? That's good. I thought you were like those other people, wanting to go back to Jiazi Gully."

I was startled. Could "those other people" be the ones led by the old man who called himself Uncle Tai? Had they come to this village to ask Old Liu to be their guide? Lao Yang obviously thought the same. He gave me a look and continued, "Why can't we go? What happened there?"

"This time of year, that place is especially eerie. There's a lot of ghost activity." Old Liu Tou said. "Last time you went, I was afraid of scaring you, so I didn't tell you. That place is actually a plank road for yin soldiers. If you encounter them passing through, they'll take you along with them, and your soul will be taken. It's very sinister."

I had never been to that place and didn't know what the geography was like. I found it amusing, but since we had already learned the whereabouts of those five people and it coincided with the route Lao Yang had taken last time, it was really lucky. I couldn't wait any longer, so I pulled Lao Yang up to take our leave. The old man probably had few guests, so he was very hospitable and insisted we stay for a meal. We insisted on leaving, so he had no choice but to pack us a few meat dishes. I initially thought it was too much trouble and didn't want them, but when I saw there was roasted pork, I remembered I'd been eating nothing but dry rations for days. My stomach betrayed me, so I accepted. We walked quickly out of the village, eating our flatbread and fried dough sticks while listening to Lao Yang talk about Jiazi Gully. That place is actually a crevice between two cliffs—what we call a "line of sky." Lao Yang told me that through Jiazi Gully, there was a small valley, rarely visited by humans. The tomb they had discovered was inside there. Moreover, judging by the current situation, there should be more than just that one burial site in that area.

That place, because of its very distinctive landform, was why Lao Yang was so confident from the start that he could find his way back. I was half-convinced, but since we had come this far, there was no point in doubting him. Following his memory, we walked on and soon saw the big mountain he had mentioned. The mountain had an interesting shape, like a goldfish with big eyes. At the positions of the goldfish's eyes were two caves, said to be called Eagle's Cave, full of eagles. Of course, that was probably impossible—eagles aren't social birds and wouldn't live in caves. We didn't dwell on the name. The mountain with the line of sky in the middle belonged to the same ridge as the goldfish mountain, so Lao Yang spotted the place at a glance. We walked along that low ridge, following the terrain. The northern slope had sparse trees, probably due to a forest fire or mudslide. As we walked, we scanned the terrain ahead and soon saw what Lao Yang called Jiazi Gully. The Qinling Mountains are truly a wonderful place, especially those areas untouched by tourism, with many marvelous sights. When I saw what they called Jiazi Gully, the name suggested a low-lying area, but actually the terrain was very spectacular. To put it plainly, it was like a giant rock that had been split by a sharp sword, forming a thin crack in the middle. The bottom of that crack was Jiazi Gully. Because the cliffs were extremely high, the "line of sky" here was different from those on low hills. Looking up, you could only see a very thin ray of light at the distant zenith, as if the entire sky had condensed into a single line. Unless you experienced it yourself, you couldn't grasp even a fraction of it. When we first entered Jiazi Gully, we found that the bottom was not as narrow as it seemed from afar, and the light was good. Since the starting point of the cliffs wasn't very high, what we saw above wasn't a line of sky but rather a "pole of sky." Lao Yang recalled that passing through Jiazi Gully would take at least an afternoon, and there were strong drafts inside, making it inconvenient to light a fire. So we stopped at the entrance, lit a campfire, and started lunch. We put the dishes the old man had given us into leftover canned food and heated them over the fire, eating them like hotpot. The mountain folks cooked with a heavy hand, so the taste wasn't great, but compared to what I'd been eating for the past few days, it was infinitely better. Lao Yang and I wolfed it down and soon finished all the roasted pork. I wasn't full yet, and remembering there was some stir-fried chicken with bamboo shoots, I decided to finish that off too. But when I reached back for the bag with the food, it was gone. I searched around but didn't find it. Puzzled, I asked Lao Yang, and heard him curse: "Damn it, Lao Wu, when you eat, just eat—don't spit bones into my collar."

I realized something was wrong. When I had been eating just now, I had swallowed almost all the bones. How could I have thrown them out so wastefully?

Just as I was wondering, another bone fell from the cliff above. I looked up and saw more than a dozen large golden-furred monkeys that had somehow climbed onto the cliff above us. One of them was holding the bag with my stir-fried chicken and bamboo shoots, eating the chicken inside. From the way it ate, it had probably never tasted anything so delicious—it almost devoured the bag along with it.

Soon, it had eaten everything clean, then climbed down, its eyes fixed intently on our backpacks.

I thought, this is bad. These monkeys probably think our packs are full of food and are about to rob us. What a