Chapter Twenty-Nine: The Elder of the Village (Part One)

Reality often turns out to be the complete opposite of what you imagined—there were no piles of gold, nor fish scattered everywhere. The first sight of that scene was beyond what our minds could bear.

Bones—countless bones—snapped under every step, densely packed, intermingled with the carcasses of animals. Humans are born with a fear of death, and bones are its symbol. I didn’t want to stay another second.

“Let’s go.” I tugged incessantly at Zha Wenbin’s sleeve, pleading, “Let’s go, let’s leave this place.”

Fatty was rummaging through the piles, turning over bones with what might have been a thigh or a shin, muttering, “Why isn’t there any gold? This doesn’t make sense.”

Zha Wenbin just kept sweeping his headlamp around, as if searching for something. Fatty seemed to have found something too—a lump of iron, rusted and encrusted.

“Damn it, after all that trouble, it’s just an old hoe. Not even enough to cover the diesel we burned. Master Zha, did you really pick that gold up from the bottom of this pond, or were you just fooling us?”

“A hoe?” Zha Wenbin hesitated, then said something none of us understood: “Yes, that’s just right.”

“Just right?” Fatty grumbled. “So you brought us down here just to find some hoe?”

Zha Wenbin patted Fatty’s shoulder. “Let’s head up. This place will need to be dealt with properly another day.”

“What do you mean?”

Zha Wenbin didn’t explain further, only saying, “Let’s go back for now. This pond is useless to us. Xiao Yi, come on. If Fatty wants to stay, let him.”

The moment I heard that, I grabbed the rope and scrambled up. Only a fool would want to linger here. I came for gold, not to stare at piles of bones. I didn’t need any urging from Zha Wenbin—the speed I climbed out was much faster than my descent, using both hands and feet, making the ladder sway dangerously, and I nearly fell several times.

Fatty kept hollering from below, “Slow down! Steady! You’re shaking the ladder so much, I’m going to fall!”

I ignored him. The rope ladder was unsteady to begin with, and Fatty, trying and failing to climb, was clearly messing with me on purpose. He simply stayed put, grabbing the rope and yanking hard to the left. The ladder swung like a swing, and I almost toppled off. Not satisfied, Fatty ran to the right, pulling the rope again, and I lurched the other way.

“Fatty, damn you!” I shouted at the top of my lungs, clutching the ropes for dear life, desperate not to let go. But the more I cursed, the more gleeful Fatty became. On the last and wildest swing, I thought I glimpsed a huge, pitch-black hole in the wall.

“Stop! Stop!” I shouted, but Fatty kept going. I was frantic: “If you don’t stop, I’ll jump!”

Luckily, Zha Wenbin intervened. I heard him say to Fatty, “Enough, stop messing around. Someone’s going to get hurt.”

Fatty, still joking, said, “It’s not that high. Even if he falls, I could catch him.”

I’d had enough. Before he could shake the ladder again, I reached for the hole, swung my body, and slipped inside. I figured hiding here was better than risking being thrown off.

Fatty, having finished his banter with Zha Wenbin, looked up and saw the rope was empty—I had vanished. That’s when panic set in, and he started searching frantically.

“Huh? Where’s Xiao Yi?”

I swung my headlamp down and called, “Hey, I’m over here.”

Zha Wenbin looked up and asked, “How did you end up there?”

“There’s a hole,” I replied, glancing back. “It’s deep—I can’t see the bottom!”

Zha Wenbin took a look at the height and told Fatty, “Come on, stop fooling around. Hold the ladder steady at this angle, I’m coming up to take a look.”

Fatty grumbled, “What about me?”

“You stay down and wait. If you let go, the ladder might swing again, and then we’d have no way down.”

The hole was wide enough for two people to crouch side by side. The walls bore clear signs of being man-made. My back felt a chill, as if a breeze was blowing out from within.

Summoning our courage, we advanced a few steps. The tunnel wound upward in a spiral. Zha Wenbin stuck out his tongue to taste the air and whispered, “The stench of corpses—it’s strong.”

“What?”

Without another word, Zha Wenbin grabbed me and hurried back out. “We need to leave now. This place is unclean.”

I didn’t know why he said that, but I remembered what happened when I was a child—he’d accurately foretold my grandfather’s death. He was different from us, in the way he spoke, the way he looked at people; he was always hard to figure out.

Back on the surface, Fatty recounted the day’s events to Yuan Xiaobai, who was shocked. So many bones—at least a hundred people. That would be a major event in any era. We hesitated about whether to report it to the village.

In the end, Zha Wenbin decided not to, reasoning that it was a burial pit.

“We were just unlucky today and picked a burial pit. Those bones belonged to people sacrificed for burial. If we can find the real burial chamber, there will certainly be gold below.”

“What do you mean?”

He continued, “From the first day, I suspected this wasn’t just a pond. The stones showed signs of being shaped by hand. No one would go to such lengths just to dig a pond. I believe these eighteen ponds are interconnected. As for their purpose, I’m not sure yet, but today’s site was definitely a burial pit.”

Girls are always a little softer-hearted. Yuan Xiaobai frowned and asked, “A burial pit?”

Fatty nodded. “I examined the bones carefully; most were broken at the neck, and the cuts were clean—just like beheadings. Wenbin’s guess is probably right.”

Zha Wenbin went on, “Xiao Yi, the place you found today is dangerous. Tomorrow, you and Xiaobai should go around the village and ask the lifelong locals if they’ve ever heard any tales about this place.” Then he turned to Fatty, “Stone General, you’re coming up the mountain with me tomorrow.”

“Climbing the mountain?”

Who knew what he was really up to? When he refused to explain, there was no use pressing—it would all be revealed in time.

The next day, we met at noon. Fatty burst in, breathless, exclaiming, “I’ve made a big discovery! Xiao Yi, I really have to hand it to Master Zha—how did he even think of this? Guess what we saw?”

“We have some news too. You go first.”

“It’s like that old saying—‘You can’t see the true face of Mount Lu because you’re in the mountain.’ Master Zha and I climbed to the top of the opposite mountain, and when we looked down, the whole village was spread out before us. Those ponds, when connected, form the pattern of a human face! The first pond we drained was an eye; the one a few days ago was just above the nose bridge. I was stunned—how could it be so coincidental?”

Zha Wenbin interrupted him and turned to me. “It’s not a coincidence—it was done deliberately. Xiao Yi, what did you two find?”

“The oldest person in the village is Old Qiu at the east end, eighty-seven this year. When Xiaobai and I first went, he wouldn’t give us the time of day—he doesn’t talk to anyone, almost like a hermit. Just as we were about to leave, Xiaobai asked me in the yard when we’d be draining the third pond. Suddenly, Old Qiu burst out of his house, leaning on his cane, and shouted at us, ‘You went to drain the pond?’”

Yuan Xiaobai picked up the story. “I was terrified—Old Qiu glared at me like he wanted to kill me. I quickly explained that we were just draining it for irrigation, but then he asked if we’d found anything in the water. Isn’t that odd?”

Fatty asked, “Did you tell him we found gold?”

“No, I said we found nothing—not even fish. Then he got impatient and shooed us out. He seemed very concerned about what we might have found. We asked around—the villagers mostly settled here as families of loggers, except for Old Qiu, whose family has lived in Wildman Village for generations. That’s what Old Miao said, but he also mentioned that Old Qiu is an eccentric who keeps to himself. He used to have a daughter, but she died, and now he’s alone. The village takes care of him, doesn’t make him work, but he still collects his share of the work points.”

After thinking for a while, Zha Wenbin said, “Let’s eat first. Then take me to meet Old Qiu.”

Old Qiu’s house was a pair of flat-roofed rooms, different from the others—it stood on the outskirts, not within the village proper. The yard was fenced with pickets, flanked by two cedar trees at the gate—just wide enough for two people to circle with their arms, standing like guardians.

As we pushed open the gate, a fat black cat stared at us, then bolted back inside like an arrow.

Fatty joked, “If you want to know what a man’s like, look at his animals. A wily old cat like that must belong to a crafty owner. So unfriendly—no wonder he’s not popular.”

No sooner had he finished than we heard an old man’s voice shouting from inside, “What gang of ruffians is making a racket in my yard? Get out of here!”