Chapter Seventeen: A World Unlike Any Other

I couldn't tell if the man was being sincere or deliberately misleading us. Once I caught my breath, I began to examine the desiccated corpse. The first thing I noticed was that this was not an ancient body—the clothes were modern. The skin was deathly pale, the muscles had shriveled away, leaving only a layer of human hide clinging to the bones. When I saw the face, I was struck by a vague sense of familiarity. After thinking for a moment, I suddenly exclaimed.

"I've seen this man before..." Although the corpse was somewhat shriveled, its skin was intact, and I quickly recognized him as the tall fellow who had opened the door for me that day at the Yanjing Hotel, among the group with Stray Dog.

After I finished speaking, Peanut was silent for a moment, then sighed softly. "It seems your father and his group are in dire straits. We may not have much time left."

"Then... how did this man die? If we keep going like this..." Old Tan’s fear was understandable. If it weren’t for my father’s life hanging by a thread, I certainly wouldn’t have gone any further. Peanut had said that in ancient tombs, anything was possible. Now, I was beginning to grasp the meaning behind his words.

"It's pointless to speculate about his death. We can only be twice as careful..." At the end, Peanut raised his head to gaze into the pitch-black ceiling of the cave.

We cast one last glance at the corpse before pressing on into the darkness.

For this expedition, Old Tan and I had gone to great lengths in Yanjing to select these high-performance German flashlights, but inside this cave, I discovered their beams barely pierced the darkness. It was as if, besides the blackness, there was a layer of invisible mist shrouding everything. After discovering the corpse, Peanut noticeably began glancing upwards more often. I suspected he had guessed something but chose not to burden us with it. In any case, even if he had told us, amateurs like Old Tan and me would be of little help.

So, as we moved forward, it felt less like traversing a perilous environment and more like I was battling the fear within myself.

As we walked, I suddenly sensed the space around us opening up, echoes of footsteps faintly ringing out, the gravel thinning beneath our feet, until at last I realized I was standing on smooth stone slabs.

"How big is this place?" I said, sweeping my flashlight around, but I couldn't make out the boundaries of this chamber, not even the ceiling above.

"Old Yuan, don't you think it's unusually cold in here?" Old Tan said, rubbing his arms.

I had noticed as much. Given that we were deep in the mountains, where sunlight never reached, I hadn't given it much thought.

"The chill here is indeed unnatural. Let's fire a flare and see what we’re dealing with," Peanut suggested, glancing around.

At the mention of a flare, Old Tan lit up with excitement. He’d wanted to fire one back when we were gearing up, and I’d had to drag him away from the idea. As soon as Peanut spoke, I knew Old Tan would insist on doing it himself.

I pulled a flare and launcher from my backpack, and Old Tan snatched them eagerly. "Damn it, finally—been waiting for this."

"I know you just wanted to play with this. But listen, none of us have used one before, maybe you should—" I hadn't finished before Old Tan abruptly raised the launcher and fired into the darkness above us.

In an instant, the flare blazed out, illuminating our surroundings. I’d meant to give Old Tan a kick for his impatience, but as the flare revealed the scene before us, I was rooted to the spot in shock.

To be fair, Old Tan’s shot was perfectly placed, but as the flare fully ignited, what I saw utterly stunned me. Were it not for witnessing it myself, I could never have believed that such magnificence lay hidden in a nameless mountain.

The space around us was ten times larger than I’d imagined. Beneath our feet stretched a vast plaza paved with stone. The nearest rock wall was more than a hundred meters to our left. Around the plaza stood six enormous round stone pillars, each at least thirty meters high and seven or eight meters thick by my estimate. Atop each pillar was carved a massive, ancient face, their expressions enough to make one’s heart quail.

And before us rose a grand city gatehouse, imposing and majestic. Bathed in the flare’s glow, the structure appeared ochre yellow, broad and intact. In ancient times, this would have been an impregnable fortress anywhere. But here it stood, hidden in a cave whose origins were unknown to all.

What truly chilled the three of us was the cliff just two or three meters ahead—a ten-meter-wide precipice, as long as the gatehouse itself, clearly serving as a moat. If Peanut hadn’t told us to stop and fire the flare, who knows if we would have walked straight into it.

The flare finally dropped into the moat, and after a delay, a sudden splash erupted from below. The sight left us all in awe and dread. After half a minute, Peanut was the first to sense something amiss.

He took up his flashlight and walked to the edge of the moat, and Old Tan and I followed.

"There’s water down there. Could it be connected to an underground river or spring?" Peanut mused.

I leaned over the edge, peering down cautiously. The first thing I saw was a swirl of white mist, and the cold that rose from below was bone-chilling. Then, I caught the glint of flashlight on water.

"Strange. In this scorching weather, how can the water be giving off so much cold?" I wondered aloud.

"Either there’s an ice cellar below, or something profoundly cold is inside that gatehouse," Peanut replied, straightening up and heading over to examine the massive stone pillar by the rock wall.

At this, Old Tan turned to me. "Did you see any suspension bridge just now? How are we supposed to get across?"

"Really?" I stood up and shone my flashlight along the moat. Its range was limited, so Old Tan and I followed the edge, searching for a crossing. Just as he said, there was no passage over the moat. "Now what? Are we supposed to swim across?"

I glanced down again—the drop from where we stood to the water surface was at least thirty meters. We could try jumping, but who knew how deep the water was? If it was only half a meter deep, that would be suicide. But without another option, we were at a loss.

As anxiety gnawed at me, Peanut’s voice came from behind. "Don't even think about it. Even if you survived the jump, you’d never climb back up. There must be some kind of mechanism." He looked at me seriously. "Also, you two need to stop wandering off. If I can’t see you and something happens, I won’t be able to save you in time."

Honestly, being lectured by someone possibly younger than myself was a bit hard to swallow. But on reflection, he was right. The dangers here far surpassed any ordinary wilderness expedition. Amateurs like Old Tan and me had to exercise extreme caution if we hoped to survive.

Old Tan was more straightforward. "Come on, we're not kids. Spare us the lecture. You say there’s a mechanism? I’ll believe it when I see a bridge appear out of thin air."

Peanut just grinned and said nothing. He began searching along the edge of the moat, looking for any sign of a hidden mechanism.

"That guy..." Old Tan muttered, unconvinced. I nudged him to help search the area.

As we searched, I asked Peanut why this city gatehouse was here, buried inside a mountain cave.