Chapter Fifty-Seven: Emerging from the Cave

Following someone is never an easy task, especially when the ones you’re tracking are better trained than you. The next day, these people claimed they were taking a break, but Fatty analyzed the situation: they must have found something and were planning to act at night.

During the day, the group searching for Xi Zi’s father continued combing the hills. We, on the other hand, spent the time sleeping in the house, while Yuan Xiaobai wandered through the village, keeping watch. As a young woman, she was less likely to attract attention.

When night fell, we changed our approach. It was clear they wouldn’t leave through the main entrance of the village office, so we circled around to the back. Behind the office stretched farmland—beyond that lay the woods. This season, harvest in the north comes about a month later than in the south. The corn was tall and ready for reaping, more than a person’s height; once inside, no one could see you.

After dinner, we slipped into the small school next to the village office—a single-storey building sharing a wall with the office. It had an attic, with two brick vents open for airflow; this would be our observation post.

By nine o’clock, the village was quiet; most people had gone to bed, save for the occasional bark of a dog. Country folk sleep early. Fatty, cigarette dangling from his lips, squinted and stared fixedly ahead. Suddenly, he tapped my shoulder and whispered, “They’re coming.”

I edged over and peered out, and sure enough, the group slipped one after another from their rooms, crouched low. They avoided the main entrance and headed for the back wall, building a human ladder to climb over, one by one. Fatty counted softly, “One, two, three…”

“That’s right, eight of them,” I said. “All of them are out. Should we move?”

“Let’s go!” Fatty grabbed the hunting rifle—borrowed from a man in Miaolan, claiming he needed something to spice up his evening, maybe hunt some game.

Through the cornfield, it was impossible to see each other, only the faint rustle gave away movement. They were clearly prepared, refusing to use lights even in the dark. Luckily, the moon was bright, so we could just make out figures rushing into the woods.

West Mountain—it had to be there! Chen Wenbin had guessed as much. We’d been there years ago: once on a tiger hunt, then again with Old Man Qiu. The place was truly uncanny; even locals avoided it.

After crossing a ridge, their group switched on their lights—here, the village was out of sight, but it gave us a target to follow.

They arrived at the waterfall where we’d once stopped. Pausing for about five minutes, they plunged into the northern woods, a place we’d never explored before.

It was a deciduous forest, and it was night. I remembered the year we encountered the white fox here.

“Should we go in?” I hesitated; Fatty seemed worried too.

Chen Wenbin glanced up. Tonight, only a bright moon hung in the sky, not a single star. For him, that was a bad omen—it meant it was easy to lose your way. He said, “Maybe you two should stay here, I’ll go in alone.”

Fatty slung his arms over our shoulders. “If we go, we go together; if we enter, we enter together. After all these years, we’re not blood brothers, but we’re as close as any.”

In places like this, caution was paramount. The forest floor was covered in leaves—soft, but you never know where a trap might be. Fatty said if it were him, he’d set traps.

Sure enough, as we walked, we found bells strung between two trees with silk thread—the oldest and simplest alarm system. We carefully avoided them, and after about a mile, saw the group in action.

From the outside, there was nothing unusual—just forest, with trees slightly smaller than the surroundings, nothing obvious to the naked eye. Then, with a familiar muffled thud, a shower of dirt burst forth—about fifty meters ahead, a hole had been blasted open.

This was Fatty’s specialty—he could tell instantly: grave robbers, posing as surveyors. Two guarded the site, holding what looked like weapons; the rest descended into the hole. They seemed quite pleased with themselves—so confident that even from a distance, we could hear Qian’s laughter.

We couldn’t risk exposing ourselves, so retreated to confer in hiding. Fatty proposed luring the guards away; with only one tunnel, blocking it would trap them easily.

I thought it was police business. We weren’t criminals, but certainly not saints either. Fatty made a throat-slitting gesture, suggesting we deal with the two guards.

He grinned at Chen Wenbin and me, then circled to the other side, gun in hand. Soon, Fatty emerged acting the part, calling out loudly, “Hey, what are you doing here in the middle of the night?”

The two guards jumped, hands moving behind their backs. Fatty, grinning, said, “Oh, it’s you guys! Aren’t you the leaders from Beijing? What are you doing out here?”

They remained silent, moving closer to Fatty. His smile faded, and suddenly he shouted, “Ah, you’re grave robbers! You’re not surveyors. I’m going to report you to the authorities!” With that, he flung a handful of sand at them and darted into the woods.

Fatty’s performance was rough but effective. Grave robbing was a capital crime in those days—fresh out of the Cultural Revolution, offenses were punished harshly.

The guards chased after him. As soon as they entered the woods, Chen Wenbin and I rushed out. There was a hole, about the size of a washbasin. We were about to find something to block it when sudden gunshots echoed, “bang, bang.”

My first thought was Fatty—had something happened to him?

“The shots came from underground,” Chen Wenbin said, peering down. “They’re in trouble; firing below means they’ve encountered something.”

“So what do we do?” I asked, as we hefted a large stone to plug the hole.

Chen Wenbin hesitated. Fatty, panting, soon burst out of the woods, his clothes torn and face streaked with blood from the thorns. “You two are so slow. Those guys are taken care of.”

“You killed them?” I asked, horrified.

“No, I hung them—two loops, and up they went.” Fatty shrugged, pulling out two pistols. “See? Type 57, made in Belgium, can pierce a bulletproof vest at three hundred meters. These bastards are no amateurs—bet they spent a fortune on this.”

“There were gunshots below,” I said.

“Really?” Fatty replied, and almost immediately, more muffled bangs came from beneath, like fireworks buried in earth.

Fatty cursed, “Damn, there’s a zombie here!”

“Zombie?” Chen Wenbin and I were puzzled. In the south, that’s just a festival food...

“No, I mean something bizarre—what you’d call a corpse demon or monster. Something’s gone wrong. You’re never supposed to use fire or shoot underground—it’s dangerous, might smash valuable artifacts. Everyone in this trade is after money; no one shoots unless it’s dire. A single jar is worth tens of thousands.”

Chen Wenbin stared at the hole, about to crouch down and sniff for clues, then suddenly flung his hand back. “Step back, step back, someone’s coming up.”

The three of us quickly retreated, waiting silently. If we were discovered, we’d still have a chance to escape the woods.

But then something deeply unsettling happened. In the moonlight, a hand reached out from the hole, fingers writhing against the soil as if seeking something to grasp for leverage.

There was something wrong with that arm—the clothing was shredded, blood mixed with sand and gravel, evoking the image of a battlefield casualty. Next came a mass of black hair—a woman!

I watched clearly as she struggled, her trembling wrist barely holding her weight. When she finally managed to crawl out, she rolled aside and lay there for a while. Then another hand reached out.

The woman, remembering a companion below, crawled back and grabbed the exposed hand—this time, she pulled another woman from the earth.

The two women clung to each other, heads pressed together, sobbing softly. We didn’t dare move, uncertain what was happening. At that moment, a third bloodied hand emerged from the hole...