Chapter 98: Chi Gu

The mummy's eyes had completely dried and shriveled, leaving only two dark eye sockets. Its mouth was impossibly wide open, revealing broken teeth. The entire face, deformed by dehydration, showed a ferocious expression that was unsettling to look at. And from its teeth, it was clear that this mummy was not a monkey's, but unmistakably a human's.

Old Yang was stunned for a moment and said, "What's going on, Old Wu? Didn't you just say it was a monkey? This... this is clearly a human."

I stammered, "I... I don't know either. When I cracked that mask earlier, I really did see a monkey, a big yellow-furred one. This... this really confuses me." As I spoke, I wanted to lean in and see if it was just the lighting playing tricks.

Liang Shiye suddenly waved his hand, signaling me not to touch the corpse. He carefully straightened up, turned the mask in his hand over, and I saw on the back of the mask, at the position of the mouth, there was a spiral protrusion the size of a fist, like a snail shell, with a small hole on it. Liang Shiye held the mask up to his own face, gestured, then turned to us and said, "It seems this mask can only be worn with the mouth open."

Old Yang asked in surprise, "With the mouth open? That would be like having a respirator stuffed in your mouth—how uncomfortable!"

Seeing the mummy's wide-open mouth, I said to Liang Shiye, "Could there be something tricky inside that snail shell? Smash it open and take a look. These masks were all embedded into the monkeys' flesh, covering their mouths and eyes. They must have had other ways to eat and see."

Liang Shiye inserted his pen into the hole, pried hard, and the "snail shell" cracked open, revealing a piece of something like a crab leg inside. He pulled it out and found it was a worm he had never seen before, already fossilized—if he applied any force, it would break into several pieces.

"It seems this mask wasn't put on voluntarily," Liang Shiye said, frowning. "But this thing is definitely man-made. Look at the patterns on the inside of the mask—they're roughly the same as the cloud-and-thunder patterns on the tree. It must be related to the people who cast this bronze tree."

Old Yang took the mask, examined it with great interest for a while, and said, "This worm should be from the Western Zhou period. Maybe it's extinct now, no wonder we don't recognize it. Hey? Look, it seems this worm is only half there."

Then he looked at us and asked, "Where did the other half go?"

This worm was curled up in the cavity of the mask's mouth protrusion. If that were the case, there was only one possible place for the other half. Thinking of this, I instinctively looked into the mummy's mouth and indeed saw, in the gaping dark mouth, the other half of the worm attached to where the tongue should be. The dried worm body extended all the way into the corpse's throat, going into some organ. Because the mummy's shrunken muscles and the fossilized worm looked very similar, if you didn't look carefully, you would think the worm was the dried tongue.

Seeing this, Liang Shiye's expression changed, and he shouted, "Throw it away, throw it away! My god, throw it away! This mask might be alive!" Then he slapped the mask out of Old Yang's hand, and it flew rapidly into the darkness, hit a branch, and shattered with a crack.

Startled, Old Yang nearly lost his grip and fell. He quickly asked what the hell Liang Shiye was doing, what did he mean by the mask being alive? Liang Shiye coughed, seeming to regret it, scratching his head and pinching his brow, and said, "I'm truly ashamed. How could I be so stupid? Why didn't I think of it earlier? This bronze tree, this sacrificial method—clearly it's not something from our Han people. Ah, I'm such a fool, a complete fool!"

"What the hell are you babbling about?" Old Yang was furious. "What fool? What does it have to do with the mask? Can you just say what you mean?"

Liang Shiye waved his hand and said, "No, listen patiently. I need to start from the beginning. But how to put it? It has to begin with the blood sacrifice we mentioned earlier..."

It turned out that blood sacrifice, as a ritual, was mainly used in the sacrificial activities of ethnic minorities during the Western Zhou period. Of course, the ethnic minorities back then were completely different from ours now. Most of these tribes have disappeared or assimilated into the Han Chinese. Large-scale blood sacrifice is not recorded in official Han history, but sporadic discoveries have been made at some ethnic minority sites. Unfortunately, due to the loss of their languages and scripts, there are no more detailed records.

Liang Shiye believed that this enormous divine tree might not have been made by the Western Zhou rulers but by the chieftains of ethnic minorities. At that time, around the Western Zhou dynasty, there were many ethnic minorities such as Sushen, Shanrong, Guifang, Qiang, Puyue, etc. Most were still in a slave society. These minorities adopted advanced Western Zhou metallurgy and culture, and their bronze artifacts showed obvious Western Zhou characteristics, so he hadn't thought of this at first. Now, looking back, a slave society's efficient use of labor would have made building such extraordinary things much easier.

Moreover, the sacrificial sites of ethnic minorities were very sacred. Not only were they guarded, but the priests would also cast some kind of sorcery to protect their gods from disturbance. In minority legends, the process of casting spells was very mysterious. This sorcery, passed down to the present, has been mythologized into the omnipotent gu (poison/insect) arts in novels. Liang Shiye also said that the gu arts split once during the Wei-Jin Southern and Northern Dynasties, and again during the Song Dynasty. Before the Qin Dynasty, the gu arts were extremely powerful, almost like modern superpowers. But all gu originated from insects, and at that time, the gu arts were called "vessel insect arts." These masked monkeys and mummies, mysterious and inexplicable, might be products of this ancient gu art.

He had once heard of a gu art called "Chi Gu," which could make people highly aggressive. The worm hidden in the cavity behind the mask's mouth, deep in the human throat, might be the original form of the ancient Chi Gu. This worm could affect the nervous system of animals or humans, causing them to attack strangers. So when I shattered their masks, the monkey regained its nature and instinctively stayed away from us.

Chi Gu could reproduce inside the host. After the host died, they would attach themselves to some place, like the cavity of this mask, waiting for the next host to approach and then parasitize them through some means.

This mummy might have been a worker mining here at the time. Unfortunately, he encountered a dormant Chi Gu, got infected, and was killed by this ancient evil sorcery.

Of course, there is no record of this stuff, and it's uncertain if it's true. But it's an indisputable fact that the mask hides a worm that goes deep into the human throat. This is definitely not an ordinary matter, and we need to be on guard.

Hearing Liang Shiye say this, I got goosebumps all over. I thought, isn't this just like a plot from an American movie? Who would have thought American sci-fi had to borrow from our ancestors' technology? I didn't know whether to feel proud or ashamed. I turned to look—the eerie mummy still hung motionless, its pale mask half-smiling, as if waiting for us to approach.

Old Yang looked a bit pale and muttered, asking Liang Shiye, "What you said is too terrifying. If we get infected by this Chi Gu, can we just pull it off immediately? Would there be any hidden dangers?"

Liang Shiye said, "I've never been infected either. Chi Gu is hard to remove. I think if you get infected, there's no way to simply pull it off. We should focus on prevention. Let's try to stay away from these mummies. Uncle Tai also fell from here. An old hand like him probably didn't just slip—be careful."

Old Yang frowned, as if he wanted to say something but didn't. So I asked him, given the situation, how much longer we had to climb. If the branches were this dense all the way up, we'd be exhausted before reaching the top. Old Yang told me that it would get sparser above. When he climbed before, he only had a small flashlight with poor illumination, so he didn't notice these mummies, nor was he attacked by monkeys. So now he didn't know exactly where he had climbed to. But anyway, since the ancient path is like a single pillar, climbing up wouldn't lead anywhere else.

I felt it was not a good place to linger, so I suggested we get past this section first. There was also that fat Cantonese boss traveling with Liang Shiye, but he wasn't here. He might still be above us. If he reached the top first, it would be trouble. If he set up an ambush, the three of us might die without knowing why.

Old Yang said, "That makes sense. Wait a moment, I'll fire a flare and see if there's any ambush above." He took out a flare gun and fired straight up.

The flare flew to the top and didn't hit anything. My heart sank. A flare like this can go at least 200 meters. Could there still be 200 meters to climb? That would be a real killer.

The flare burned brightly. Looking up, there wasn't far to go before the branches got sparse again. I wondered why it was designed that way. Moreover, from below, 200 meters wasn't beyond sight—I could still make out some things, though I couldn't tell what they were.

The flare fell back down. Old Yang watched it for a while and said, "It seems that fat Cantonese boss isn't lying in ambush above. Maybe only Uncle Tai made it in here alive. After all, that coffin array outside wasn't so easy to get through... Hey, what are those things?"

When the flare was about sixty meters above us, we saw many protrusions on the bronze tree trunk at that section. Looking closer, my scalp went numb and cold sweat ran down to my feet—along a full ten-meter stretch, the bronze tree trunk was covered with face after face. No, it should be said, with those eerie masks.