Chapter Sixteen: Entrance

Old Tan's face turned pale; he wanted to laugh, but his facial muscles were trembling. I went down to pull him up, and together we spent another ten minutes climbing the last stretch, less than twenty meters.

Once we emerged from the narrow tunnel, we paid no heed to our surroundings and immediately collapsed onto the ground. Any idiom describing exhaustion and disarray would fit us perfectly right now. Lying there, we poured half a canteen of water down our throats, only then feeling the midday sun's heat.

Suddenly, I remembered Peanut and scrambled to my feet. What I saw left me utterly dumbfounded.

Above the narrow passage was a patch of grass pressed against the cliff, still a long way from the summit. Peanut had already set up the tent from his backpack and was crouched in front of it, cooking on a stove. Seeing me staring blankly at him, he grinned and said, "The scenery here is no worse than Mount Tai. Eating here must be quite an experience."

Looking at his leisurely demeanor, I wanted to curse, but in the next moment, the aroma of meat stole my soul away.

"This smells incredible! How does compressed biscuits cook up this taste?" Old Tan, drawn by the scent, leapt up from the ground. After that ordeal, we were both dizzy with hunger. The moment we caught a whiff from Peanut's pot, we lunged forward.

Peanut handed us chopsticks and lifted the lid. "I caught a wild rabbit, though I only have salt. Not sure how it'll taste."

At this point, even raw meat would smell appetizing; let alone this authentic wild game. We had no time for words, grabbing chopsticks and digging in. I forgot everything except opening and closing my mouth.

"Experience teaches us that filling one's stomach is humanity's most fundamental need," Old Tan said, patting my shoulder after spitting out a bone.

A sudden thought struck me, and I turned to Peanut. "You had time to catch a rabbit, so why not look for the entrance to the ancient tomb?"

Peanut smiled, holding up his index and middle fingers, asking for a cigarette. I tossed him one, and after a couple of puffs, he pointed behind us.

Following his gesture, I saw a large opening in the stone wall behind the tent, surrounded by rubble.

"This should be the entrance to the ancient tomb. Blasted open, and quite recently."

Hearing this, I almost rushed over, but Old Tan stopped me. "Don't be hasty. We should prepare first."

He was right, so I started rummaging through my backpack for flashlights and flares. Suddenly, I remembered something and looked at Peanut. "What did you mean by 'recent'?"

Peanut led us to the opening, and I immediately saw numerous cigarette butts scattered among the rubble, as if recently discarded. Peanut said, "The entrance was blown open at most yesterday. Whoever did it is probably half a day ahead of us."

"You mean another group went inside?"

"Yes. We don't know if they're friend or foe. Once inside, we need to be vigilant," Peanut replied, handing me a dagger.

Truth be told, I wasn't as anxious as he implied. "They're probably just another bunch of tomb robbers. We're here to rescue people, not to compete for loot. If we run into them, we just explain ourselves."

Peanut burst out laughing. "Fine, if you trust your eloquence, so be it. But let me remind you, once inside the tomb, be prepared for anything."

"Those things in the old Yuan family's cellar were already wonders of the world. What could be so mysterious? Ghosts, maybe?" Old Tan spoke bravely, patting my chest and claiming he'd handle whatever we encountered.

Yet, when he said the word 'ghost', Peanut's expression turned serious. I thought to myself, in situations like this, caution is best.

After packing our gear and grabbing our flashlights, we followed Peanut into the entrance of the Han Dynasty king's tomb.

The moment I stepped inside, I noticed the cave was filled with rubble, some pieces taller than a person, obscuring the path and forcing us to crawl and climb.

"Those folks are gutsy. How much explosive did they use?" Old Tan muttered behind me.

"Aside from the entrance, these rocks fell from all around. There must've been a collapse; not just the blast at the entrance," Peanut said as he shone his flashlight around.

The cavern was vast, with bizarrely shaped rocks above and all around us. In the darkness, it felt as though we had entered the maw of some monstrous creature, the jutting rocks like giant fangs ready to swallow us whole.

The deeper we went, the fewer sounds we heard. I didn't know if the darkness was muffling my hearing, or if this place was truly a realm of silence. Peanut occasionally made us stop to observe our surroundings carefully, his caution starkly different from his demeanor outside. Old Tan and I barely dared to make a sound; in such an environment, I think we both felt a blend of terror and a strange excitement.

"Tap."

In the deathly silence, a faint sound suddenly seemed very loud. All three of us stopped in our tracks, Old Tan and I nervously sweeping our flashlights around.

"Tap, tap..."

The sound continued, echoing in our ears. After listening for a while, I realized it was water dripping onto rock from above. I raised my flashlight, slowly aiming it at the ceiling above my head. The cave roof was riddled with protruding rocks, and even with the flashlight, it was impossible to see into the shadows between the cracks.

Peanut signaled us not to move, his reaction making Old Tan and me even more tense and uneasy. As I listened, I felt the sound creeping closer to us.

Suddenly, the noise vanished. Just as I was about to ask Peanut what to do next, my face began to itch, as if something fine and delicate had brushed against it.

"Hiss." I called out, reaching up to slap my face. Feeling around, I realized I'd caught a thin, light, sticky strand, almost like silk. Holding it up to the flashlight, I examined it closely for a long time before realizing it was a spider silk.

There was nothing unusual about the color, just much thicker than normal. Peanut and Old Tan came over, and I carefully showed them the strand. Old Tan stared for a while, then exclaimed, "Damn, you scared me! I thought it was something else. Just a spider silk—what's odd about that in a place like this?"

His words made my earlier nervousness seem a bit neurotic. Peanut glanced around, apparently unconcerned, and called for us to keep moving.

After a while, I heard Old Tan behind me fussing and waving his hands over his head.

I laughed, "Ha! The spiders fancy you too? Beware, or they'll snatch you up and make you their groom!"

"It's not that," Old Tan stopped and called ahead, "Hey, Peanut, is there a waterfall up there? We heard water dripping, but now it's just dripping onto my head. Look, again!" He slapped his head as he spoke.

Watching him flail like a monkey, I wanted to laugh, but suddenly my face froze and Peanut beside me was stunned as well.

"What's wrong with you two?" Old Tan asked, seeing our strange expressions.

Nervously, I said, "Look at your hands."

Old Tan was confused, but brought his hands up, and immediately groaned. On his palms, somehow, was a sticky, bright green liquid, making his hands look poisoned.

We all thought of the dripping water, and Old Tan looked up. Almost simultaneously, a drop landed on his face, drawing a green streak across it in the flashlight's beam.

Peanut inhaled sharply, picked up a stone from the ground, and instantly hurled it into the darkness above us.

"Oooo, oooo..."

To our horror, instead of hearing the stone hit rock, a strange, eerie wail—like a woman's cry—echoed through the cave. The sound was chilling and ethereal. Old Tan and I were petrified, but Peanut didn't wait and kept throwing stones upward.

I didn't know how he aimed, but it was clear that every throw hit something. The cries grew sharper, making my scalp crawl; I wanted to cover my ears.

Just then, a shadow flickered in our flashlight's beam, and a lump dropped from above, landing heavily between us.

We all jumped back a few steps, flashlights converging on the object.

It lay exposed before us, and once I saw it clearly, I realized it couldn't have hidden anyway. The thing that had fallen was a corpse, pale and shriveled.

I sucked in a cold breath, thinking our luck was cursed—how many corpses had we seen these past days?

It was a man, limbs twisted from the fall, and beneath him was a pool of green liquid, exactly like what had dripped onto Old Tan.

"Good heavens, that's corpse water!" Old Tan yelled, frantically wiping his hands and face.

"It's not corpse water," Peanut said, after examining it.

"If not corpse water, what is it?" Old Tan stopped, but dared not approach the body.

Peanut gave a strange smile, "It's what remains after the corpse's innards have liquefied."

"Innards?" Old Tan nearly fainted, and I felt nauseated.

"How do you know? If it's decomposed organs, why doesn't it stink?" I crouched beside Peanut, peering at the body.

Peanut seemed annoyed by my doubt, gave me a glare, then suddenly grinned, "I've drunk it."

I retched, and Old Tan vomited uncontrollably.