Chapter 134: Loyal Dog Daidai

"Wenbin, it's the dog, my dog is inside."

He remained vigilant, looking around as he asked, "Is there anything else?"

I observed closely, "It seems to be a tunnel. The dog's mouth was blocked by something right outside, but I don't see anything else for now."

The more critical the situation, the less one could afford to let down their guard. Having been fooled once, one would not fall for the same trick twice. People fall victim to sinister forces for only a few reasons: a weak constitution and waning vital fire; evil thoughts in the heart; or a lapse in concentration that allows entities to exploit an opening. Zha Wenbin slowly circled around, and seeing that there truly was nothing there, he gradually relaxed. Only then did I notice that he had drawn his side-arm.

Dai Dai was already at death's door. Its body was covered in wounds; several gashes on its back were so deep that its ribs were visible. There was also a bloody hole in its throat, about the thickness of a finger. Its mouth wasn't actually blocked, but rather matted and crusted over with dried blood. When it saw me coming, it still struggled hard to get up, and I saw its tail still wagging. At that moment, my tears broke uncontrollably, streaming down my face. I pulled the dog into a fierce embrace and said to Zha Wenbin, "I don't care if it's some thousand-year-old demon, I'm going to make sure it dies without a burial place!"

Zha Wenbin carried his own medicine pouch, pouring a little from several different vials. I tore the sweatshirt off my body into strips of cloth to bandage the dog. As Zha Wenbin examined the wounds, he said, "Fortunately, it's a black dog. Black dog blood naturally wards off evil and restrains corpses, so the corpse poison has no effect on it. The wound on its throat is just a through-and-through puncture, but I'm worried about those gashes on its back. Injured like this, it must have fought fiercely with that thing."

Needless to say, Dai Dai must have fought for me. Dai Dai was fiercely loyal to its master; although it was a mongrel, when it stood up, it was as tall as a child. Usually, ordinary people wouldn't even dare to approach it, and if Fatty and I hadn't startled it earlier, I figured it would have become the king of the village dogs. I stripped off my heavy coat and laid it on the ground to serve as a bed for Dai Dai. As it looked at me, it kept stretching out its tongue, wanting to lick my hand. Ever since I came back, it had always avoided me, never acting as affectionate as it did tonight. I truly could not bear to look any longer; the sorrow in my heart made me wish I could just drop dead.

"Dai Dai, stay here and don't move. I'll come out to pick you up in a little while."

There was a stone cave here, about the height of a man, with obvious signs of chisel marks at the entrance. In my memory of Hong Village, there was more than one such cave. When I was a child, adults telling stories to the children would always say that there were many caves in the mountains of Hong Village, and buried inside were gold and silver jewelry left behind by refugees who didn't have time to carry them away. The adults always frightened the children by saying that fierce beasts and venomous snakes guarded the caves, and once you went in, you could never come out.

Such stories couldn't stump children like us. Behind the back mountain of the Hong Village committee office, in the backyard of one of my classmates' homes, there was also such a cave. In the late 1960s, the Sino-Soviet split led to Soviet threats of a nuclear attack against China. The instructions issued to the people nationwide were to prepare for war, calling for a nationwide movement to dig deep tunnels and store grain everywhere. Hong Village was assigned to open three air-raid shelters at the time. Because northwestern Zhejiang is distributed along the Tianmu Mountain range, consisting mostly of rock where it is difficult to tunnel, they chose to expand upon the existing cave in my classmate's backyard.

My father participated that year. I heard him say that two production teams, totaling over fifty laborers, dug the cave. They worked during the day and tunneled at night. Enthusiasm among the people was extremely high back then, and they used primitive methods for tunneling. The original cave was somewhat similar to the one I was looking at now; the floor inside was laid with round wooden logs placed end to end, many of which had already rotted. They used steel rods and heavy hammers to break through the rock.

Back then, who hadn't gone inside that cave? No one knew how deep it went; they tunneled section by section. When they reached about twenty meters in, they reported finding human skeletons on the ground. Having returned from the military, my father still had some experience, and since he was very strong, the commune assigned him to act as the on-site commander.

According to my father, the white bones inside the cave were piled up like small mounds. At first, they shoveled them into handcarts and hauled them out, dumping them at what is now the playground of the Hong Village primary school, which was a pond back then. Later, even after that pond was completely filled in, the bones inside still hadn't been cleared away. Then, one night while they were excavating, the cave suffered a cave-in, crushing two men to death. Because the political atmosphere of the times was tense, no one dared mention anything about feudal superstition, or else they would be dragged out to be denounced and criticized.

Because people had died, naturally no one was willing to keep opening the cave. Worried that something else might happen, my father stepped forward and wrote an application stating that the geology was unstable and requesting a relocation to dig elsewhere. Coincidentally, the commune brigade leader that year was my father's former veteran platoon commander. The two of them tacitly handled the matter quietly without reporting it upward; otherwise, my father might have faced criminal prosecution.

At the time, my grandfather said that the cave was called the Cave of Ten Thousand Bones and must never be dug, saying my father and the others had provoked the Tai Sui and brought disaster upon themselves. My father originally had a poor relationship with my grandfather and deeply resented him, so he simply left the cave entrance unsealed and let nature take its course.

Later, until I was in elementary school, I still went to play in that area. About four or five meters deep inside, it was blocked by rubble, and the water accumulation in the cave was also severe. Strangely enough, however, the water flowing out of that cave was a rusted yellow color year-round. When we were kids, we all said there must be airplanes and cannons rotting inside for it to look like that.

Just as I was about to go in, I felt something snag my back foot. Looking back, I saw it was Dai Dai, its head tilted, biting down hard on the hem of my trousers with its teeth. My heart ached so much; blood was still dripping from around its mouth. Zha Wenbin looked at it and said, "This is a good dog."

"Dai Dai, don't worry. I'll go in and out quickly. There's someone helping me here, we're going to avenge you. Later, when you get better, I'll ask for Hua Hua to be your bride, so be a good boy and listen." As I spoke, the dog slowly loosened its bite. I knew that it truly had no strength left; it had reached its absolute limit.

I took one last look as it fell into a deep, exhausted sleep. Wiping away my tears, I said to Zha Wenbin, "Let's go, let's go thrash that bastard!"

The miner's lamp had been on all night, and a fully charged battery of this type could last for about four hours at most. Now, its light had begun to dim noticeably. Zha Wenbin and I, crouching low one after the other, had walked less than twenty meters when the light went out completely. Fortunately, he had a fire starter. This fellow was quite eccentric and never used a flashlight. Ever since he and I were sent to the northeast to work as educated youth, he would make those gadgets in his spare time. This fire-starting tool, processed from rough yellow phosphorus paper, had been optimized by him; he added wax to it to significantly extend its burn time.

There were also wooden logs here, very dry and very similar to the ones my father had described. So I suggested, "Let's make a torch; there are logs scattered all over the ground."

"You use yours, I'm still used to this." He added, "Guess what these logs are for?"

"They can't be firewood. They look a bit like they serve as rolling axes."

"Smart. I looked at the height and width here, coupled with the wood on the ground, and I can basically deduce that this is a tomb tunnel. These logs were used to transport the coffin. The coffin cannot touch the earth before burial, and since the space here is small, resting it on these rolling logs with people pulling in front and pushing from behind makes it quite convenient."

I said, "That certainly confirms your theory. This place is indeed suited to be a yin dwelling. It seems that outside mortuary is also a camouflage."

Zha Wenbin said, "I have to say, this person is very clever. No one would ever imagine that right behind the mortuary lies a massive tomb. The tomb owner literally hollowed out this entire mountain, and didn't mind building that little estate outside. Everyone holds a certain dread toward a mortuary, so normally no one would wander around here, let alone guess that the mortuary is merely a surface structure for this tomb. It's safe, reliable, and receives offerings of incense year-round. As long as that mortuary doesn't collapse, his incense will burn continuously for a thousand years."

"Damn it, this is a truly cunning villain. To come up with an idea like this—I really admire these ancients. When building a nest for their corpses, they come up with all these devious schemes. If Fatty were here, he'd march right in and make sure not even his bones were left."

Red patterns were carved along the stone walls of the route. The Chinese were adept at using colors, and red pigments had already appeared in civilizations even before the Shang and Zhou dynasties. The construction of these patterns was extremely simple, and I couldn't make heads or tails of them. In modern terms, you might call it abstract art. Some depicted figures, but their facial expressions were greatly exaggerated; the most obvious feature was that their eyes were unusually large, occupying almost a third of their entire faces.

As I looked at these murals along the way, many depicted scenes of agriculture, hunting, and sacrifices. Considering I had actually read a few books and my history grades weren't half bad, a sudden thought popped into my head: Could this damn thing be a prehistoric ruin?

Suddenly, Zha Wenbin, who was walking ahead of me, stopped. He made a hand gesture and whispered, "Crouch down, crouch down."

I pressed close against his back and whispered softly, "What is it? If there's movement, just say the word, and I'll hit it with a couple of rounds first."

Zha Wenbin turned his head back and said, "Shh, listen. It sounds like the sound of wind chimes."

I perked up my ears and listened for a long while without detecting the slightest movement, though he kept his head tilted to the side and even said to me, "Why is this melody so familiar? It feels as if I've heard it somewhere before."

I quickly gave his back a poke and said, "Master Zha, please don't mess with me. I haven't seen a single thing. Either your ears are sharper than mine, or you'd better watch out—don't tell me you've fallen under a spell again."

With a deadpan expression, Zha Wenbin asked me, "No, it's very clear. Didn't you hear it? It has a melody, rising and falling. I'm not mistaken, it's right inside here."

Hearing him say this, the atmosphere on the spot instantly grew tense. To be honest, if you asked me to face something tangible and head-on, I might not be afraid, but what I feared most were things I couldn't see—it left me feeling completely unsettled. Having tossed and turned all night, I was only keeping my spirits up on pure spite and anger. With Zha Wenbin saying this, my heart began to flutter with anxiety once more.

"Let me tell you something. Last year at the Fuzi Temple in Nanjing, I ran into an old man who cast a fortune for me. He said I have a trial awaiting me this year, and moreover, it would happen during the leap month. I kept it bottled up and didn't tell you, do you think that's reliable?"

"Then do you believe him, or do you believe me?" he retorted.

I crouched low and said, "Nonsense, of course I believe you."

Then Zha Wenbin looked at me with absolute calmness and said, "Then what he said is true..."

Author's note:

It's the third watch. What should I do? I seem to be getting more and more excited. What should I do, what should I do? This rhythm is unstoppable!!