Chapter Eighty-Nine: A Narrow Escape from Death (2)

The compass needle trembled faintly, like a watch whose spring had not been wound tight, wavering back and forth, though only by the slightest margin. Cha Wenbin tried several times, but that was the strongest reaction he could get. After a while, he had no choice but to give up.

"No good?" I asked him.

He shook his head with a bitter smile. "That makes no sense. This compass can answer questions of life and death. What am I supposed to make of this? Could it be that even Heaven does not know?"

I could only comfort him. "Don’t overthink it. This place is not so bad. Worst comes to worst, if a few of us go on the road together, that is not such a bad thing."

Later, I told Fatty that surviving that time and making it through was nothing less than a miracle from our ancestors. We were all like dry leaves clinging to a branch, and no one could tell when we would fall. Reality was far crueler than imagination. How cruel? Food was a problem, yes, but that was minor compared with the cold below. It was like a frozen cellar down there. Deprived of any source of warmth, the more you slept, the colder you became. To keep our body temperature up, we could only get up and run in place, but that only burned more strength. Back then there were only two choices: starve first, or freeze first...

We were trapped for a full three days and three nights.

I can barely remember how the last piece of flatbread was divided. It was the only food we had left. Water, at least, we still had. The small pool ahead of us could still let us gulp down a few mouthfuls when we were thirsty. Perhaps not long after that, it would carry our corpses off to who knew where.

On what should have been the fourth day, by our reckoning, it was a little after eight in the morning outside. Fatty and I were wedged together, both of us half dazed. Fatty mumbled that he was hungry, and I muttered back, "If you're hungry, get up and drink a couple of mouthfuls. Fill yourself with water and that’ll do."

Fatty was probably dazed from hunger too. For two days, when we got hungry we could only drink water. When we walked, our stomachs rattled like loose stones. Water does not fill you up; the more you drink, the hollower your stomach feels. Fatty even got intestinal trouble from it, and by yesterday he had started with the diarrhea. In just those two days he had grown noticeably thinner, and his steps had become unsteady. I only heard a muffled cry of "Ah!" and when I looked up again, there was no sign of Fatty anywhere...

The surface of the little pool still shivered with ripples. I could picture Fatty, dizzy with hunger, pitching headfirst into it.

"Fatty!" I threw myself to the water’s edge and screamed at the top of my lungs. I was hoping that in the next instant he would burst back out of the water and joke, "Young Master Xia, you haven't bathed in days. Come down and soak a while..."

But in the end, that was only my imagination. Fatty was gone. He had fallen into the water...

Cha Wenbin fell silent.

For a man like him, someone so loyal and so deeply responsible, we had been brought here by him, and he ought to have taken us back. Even if he could not bring us back, then the first one to die should have been him, not us.

He quietly gathered up the things scattered on the ground. I looked back at him, but he kept his eyes on the floor.

"Where are you going?" I already knew the answer, even without asking. Was there anywhere else left to go?

"I'll go first," he said, lowering his head. "Whether I live or die, I still have to try."

"Have you gone mad?" I stepped in front of him at once, spreading my arms wide. "Don’t go throwing your life away. We’ve already lost one. I don’t want to be left alone here to wait for death."

"Take this." Cha Wenbin handed me my grandfather’s compass. "It belongs to your family. It should be returned to you."

I tried to refuse. "I’m not a Daoist priest. What would I want it for?"

He looked at me and said earnestly, "Keep it. In case there is still hope."

I grabbed his clothes and raised my voice to a shout. "If there is hope, why not wait together?"

Cha Wenbin asked me back, "I have to go look. What if Fatty is down there waiting for me to save him? If we give up on him like this, what hope have we left him?"

"You know he’s already gone!" I held onto his arm. I knew it would be hard to talk him out of it, but I truly did not want to watch him walk to his death.

"Alive, I want to see the person. Dead, I want to see the body." With that, he jerked free and went straight for the pool. I could not bear to look at his back. I thought, fine, if that is how it is, then let us jump together.

I clearly saw him break into a run, his body leaning slightly forward. Just as I thought I would soon hear a splash, I instead heard Cha Wenbin shout, "Xiao Yi, come here!"

"Where's the water?" I stared in disbelief. There was not a single drop left in the pool. Only the weeds at either side and the wet stains proved that mere seconds ago it had still been full. Then I looked down at the compass in my hand. Its needle was twitching nonstop, and I hurriedly handed it to Cha Wenbin. "Look at this."

Cha Wenbin took the compass and turned it lightly. I only heard a soft click, as though some hidden part had locked into place. The needle swung onto the bright red character for "life," and the arrow for that character pointed directly at the now-dry pool.

He looked at me in delight. "There’s a way out. Right below us!"

"What is going on?" I was utterly baffled. Where had the water gone?

"What time is it?" he asked.

I lifted my wrist and looked at my watch. "Eight forty-five in the morning."

"It’s the tide. It won’t take more than three minutes. The water will soon rise again. If we’re going, we have to go now." Cha Wenbin turned back to me. "Fatty may still be alive!"

The pool dropped straight down only three or four meters, narrow as a pencil cup, the top and bottom about the same width. I slid down the smooth stone on either side, with the only foothold in my hands being the weeds. Cha Wenbin was about a body-length behind me, and after we had gone down a little more than two meters, he was already shouting, "Hurry! I found the exit!"

Behind me was a round opening more than a meter in diameter. Beside the opening stood a stone stele thick with moss, its inscription long since illegible. I gripped the weeds and inched toward it, and I could clearly hear the water below my feet, less than a meter away, making a constant rushing sound.

Cha Wenbin stood at the mouth of the round opening and shouted, "Hurry up! The water will come back soon!"

The moment I seized that stone tablet, a voice inside me told me, You are saved.

It was a tomb inscription. There was no doubt about it: this was the main gate of the entire burial chamber. The hole behind it was obviously a passageway, and following that passage would lead out to the blue sky above.

Sadly, we had no time to admire the inscription, because the water below had already begun surging upward again. Whether this path was truly a passage or not, it was now our only remaining hope. A minute later, it too would be swallowed by water.

I pushed out with all my strength, over mud underfoot and broken stones on both sides. I do not know how far I ran. When bursts of cold wind began blowing into my face, I knew I could go on living...

The exit was a heap of rubble. After clawing away the stones and weeds, I caught the long-lost scent of fresh air drifting through the open sky. It felt unbelievably good. Just as I was about to shout, Cha Wenbin covered my mouth and dragged me into the grass beside us. When I looked up, I realized the guard hut was only twenty or thirty meters away. If we crouched here, we could hear every word they said.

The area around the mine cave was already bustling. Many workers in heavy coats were going in and out, and by the riverbank there was even a cargo boat half loaded with coal slag.

"There." Cha Wenbin gave me a look. The riverbank on both sides was lined with reeds. Keeping low, we moved slowly through the reeds toward the boat, and when the other side was not paying attention, we slipped into the rear hold under a sheet of tarpaulin. Not long after, the boat set off, sailing far away, and then Cha Wenbin and I crawled off one after the other and swam hard to shore.

People say that if you survive a great calamity, there will be good fortune afterward. The two of us, frozen stiff like popsicles, supported each other as we crossed field after field of rice paddies. We found a farmhouse to borrow some fire and ask for old clothes, and I did not stop until I had eaten a full three bowls of rice...

Fatty was still nowhere to be found, so Cha Wenbin and I had no choice but to go home first and look for help. Yuan Xiaobai had already left as well, though she had left a phone number behind. After several days with no news, our families had long since been driven nearly mad and were searching everywhere. Around the third day, my father came back and said that someone in the neighboring county had found a man who had fallen into the river, lying on the sandy bank.

By the time Cha Wenbin and I arrived, the man had already been taken to the hospital. On the hospital bed lay a figure covered head to toe in tubes. Looking at that round, bulky body, who else could it have been if not Fatty?

At the time, Fatty was still in a deep coma. To survive after prolonged oxygen deprivation and exposure to the cold, the doctors said, was already a miracle. After asking around, we learned that the local medical facilities were limited, and they could only depend on Fatty’s own luck. Hearing that, I nearly smashed the hospital to pieces.

Fatty had been found by a local child in a village downstream from Champion Village. When the child spotted him by the river, he thought he was a corpse and ran home screaming to tell his parents. When the adults came to look, they saw that he was still breathing, so they found a tractor and sent him straight to the county hospital.

At the time, Fatty had been left with only his underwear on. All his clothes were gone, and later it proved that if he had not stripped them off in time, he would already have drowned. The only clue was the gold hairpin he had been clutching in his hand. He lay in the hospital for three days, and no one could pry his fist open.

So when the doctor said he was worried about brain damage and that Fatty might become a vegetable, I only answered, "He won't. That bastard's brain still works just fine. Even at death's door, he knew enough to hold on to his treasure. He’ll be all right."

Since there was a condition for it, he should be sent to a larger hospital. That was the advice from the local doctor. I rushed home to find the number Yuan Xiaobai had left, made the call, and the other end told us to hurry to Shanghai. That very night I hired a car and sent Fatty to Shanghai.

As expected of a wealthy household, a whole team of specialists arrived first thing the next morning. By noon they informed us that surgery was necessary. Fatty’s head had suffered a severe impact and needed a craniotomy. Fatty was a drifter without parents or children, so it was I who signed the consent form.

At four in the afternoon, the doctors announced that the surgery had been a success. They said his condition was good and that he should wake up the next day. Only then did Cha Wenbin and I finally breathe again, though both of us were already at the end of our strength. That very night, we both ran high fevers that would not come down, and we ended up hospitalized together, keeping Fatty company...