Chapter Ninety-Five: Ye Qiu

Old Gu’s excitement provided at least a sliver of comfort to those of us who felt we had been dragged here to die. The sickly man remained silent, as if speaking to him was no different than talking to thin air. It seemed his world consisted solely of that knife, which he used to scrape the dead skin from his palms incessantly.

The winding murals appeared endless. Old Gu took as many photographs as he could, claiming these artifacts were priceless treasures, but I had little interest in them. My only plan was to wander through, and if the worst came to the worst, just find a hospital afterward to have the patch of skin on the back of my neck cut out.

"Let's move, let's move," I urged. "The guy outside gave us a deadline. If we don't get out and see the sun by seven tomorrow morning, we'll be stuck here staring at these murals for eternity."

Cha Wenbin leaned toward the sickly man and asked, "My friend, does your intuition tell you we should go in?"

Half of the man’s face was obscured by his hair, making his expression unreadable, but I saw him give a slight shake of his head.

"Then should we continue down into the water?" Cha Wenbin pressed.

Again, he shook his head.

Fatty, losing patience, grumbled, "Not going in, not going out—buddy, stop playing games with us, would you? Don't tell me we're really just here to appreciate art? Let’s go, Master Cha. This guy isn't one of us; we’ll go our own way."

"If you go in, you will die..."

Fatty’s hot temper flared. He raised a fist toward the back of the man's neck. Seeing the situation escalate, I quickly grabbed him. "Don't start trouble, let it be."

But Fatty remained relentless. He grabbed the sickly man’s shoulders and shook him like a scarecrow. "Who’s going to die? Damn you, stop playing the mystic and trying to scare us!"

I expected the sickly man to be tossed into the water like a rag doll by the enraged Fatty, who seemed to be venting all his pent-up frustration. I couldn't stop him; I only prayed he wouldn't hit too hard. But I was wrong. I saw the sickly man flick his finger against Fatty’s wrist as casually as one might swat a fly. That was all it took. Fatty immediately pulled his hands back, clutching his left wrist with his right hand as he stumbled backward. His face was flushed, and his expression was one of intense pain.

I walked over to Fatty and whispered, "What happened?"

"He’s got some skills," Fatty said, gripping his wrist. "My whole arm feels like it’s been electrocuted; it’s completely numb and I can't move it."

Cha Wenbin, noticing the anomaly, came over and asked, "Are you alright?"

The sickly man turned back to Cha Wenbin and said, "It will pass in a minute. I just hit a pressure point. If you truly insist on going in, then let us go together."

We followed the stairs up for about thirty meters until we reached a gray arched wall. The bricks were damaged, with nearly half of the structure collapsed, resembling a mouth with its front teeth knocked out. The hollowed-out sections were thick with cobwebs. I cleared them away and peeked inside. It was a small chamber of less than ten square meters, though the darkness made it impossible to see much else.

After climbing inside, we found a corpse lying in the corner, shrouded in thick cobwebs and dust like a mummy. Once the cobwebs were swept away, a skeleton dressed in grass-green clothing was revealed. The flesh had long since rotted away, leaving only bones scattered with the black carcasses of flies. What caught my eye was a military-green canteen beside the body—a clear product of modern industry that couldn't have been there for very long.

"Someone has been here before. Damn it, we might have made this trip for nothing." Fatty’s logic was always rooted in grave robbing. To him, this wasn't rare; finding plastic bottles in ancient tombs was common, and finding corpses meant the site had already been picked over.

The chamber was sealed on all sides. Did this person die only after reaching this point? Who were they, and when did they get in?

I noticed a canvas bag on the remains. After shaking off the dust, I dumped its contents out. There were two unlabeled medicine bottles, half a bun hardened into a stone, a dagger, and four dry-cell batteries.

I suddenly recalled the sickly man’s warning about people dying here. I looked at him, but he was staring at the corpse. Just as I was about to ask him something, he knelt down and began unbuttoning the skeleton's clothes.

He stripped the body until only the bones remained. Judging by the pelvis, it was a young man; the skeleton was intact, with no signs of fractures. The remains had their right hand clenched into a fist. The sickly man reached out two fingers and gently pinched it; with a "snap," the finger bones shattered.

"What are you doing?" Cha Wenbin shouted. "That is disrespectful to the dead!"

The sickly man ignored him. I saw him rummaging through the pile of shattered finger bones before picking up a dark object and handing it to me. "What a person clutches before they die is often the most important thing."

He opened his palm to reveal a button. It was a brownish-yellow color, the size of a fingernail, and distinct from common buttons in that it was diamond-shaped.

"A fine piece," Old Gu remarked. I wondered what was so special about a button, but he continued, "This is made of hawksbill shell. It’s very valuable; ordinary people couldn't afford clothing like this."

I said, "Let’s deduce this. Old Gu said we can speculate until we find evidence, right? This man died here. If we assume he was murdered, then he must have hated his killer so much that, in his final moments, he grabbed their clothing and tore this button off."

"Master Xia, we aren't Sherlock Holmes solving a case. This place seems to be a dead end. We should ask our 'intuition expert' where to go now."

I turned to look for the sickly man, but he was busy moving the corpse. As he dragged it away, I was shocked to discover a large hole in the corner of the wall where the body had been resting.

"He really is uncanny! How could he have known that?"

Cha Wenbin pulled me aside and whispered, "Something is wrong. This man is too familiar with this place. He must have been here before, and he might even have known the person on the floor!"

While Cha Wenbin and I were whispering, I looked up to find the sickly man gone. Ignoring the corpse, we scrambled through the hole one after another. Though it was only the thickness of a wall, what lay beyond was a world away from the small chamber.

It was a vast plaza paved with rectangular stone slabs. In the center stood a massive pillar with crossbars extending every half-meter or so. As I entered, I saw the sickly man climbing the pillar.

At the top of the pillar, visible to the naked eye, was a mass wrapped in tree roots, with several iron chains extending from it. The sickly man was agile; he scurried up, stood at the top, poked into the tangle of roots, and slipped inside like a bird returning to its nest.

Fatty gasped, "What kind of person is this? He treats this place like his own home—coming and going as he pleases. Even the legendary Qian of Xi'an would be put to shame by him!"

Fatty and I exchanged looks. "What should we do?"

Fatty’s eyes darted around. "Should we go up? We can't let him take all the good stuff. It’s empty down here; there's probably treasure in that bird's nest."

"Don't go," Cha Wenbin said, his brows furrowed. "I have a bad feeling."

Fatty laughed, "Master Cha, have you developed intuition too?"

Cha Wenbin waved his hand. "My eyelid is twitching violently. I feel we should leave quickly; this place doesn't seem meant for the living. The scent of death is too thick."

Old Gu added, "Perhaps it's a matter of perception. We call this atmosphere 'oppressive.' It feels vast, yet it makes one deeply uncomfortable. Your sixth sense might be right. I once felt this way in the basement of a temple in India; they later discovered over three thousand skeletons there."

"Underneath here?" Fatty stomped hard on the ground. The solid echo made me believe we weren't standing on a pile of corpses—at least, not yet.

A moment later, the sickly man emerged from the "nest" and descended like a monkey. He approached us, empty-handed. Fatty remarked, "Seems it was an empty nest—no bird, no eggs left."

The sickly man looked at us and asked, "Who is coming with me?"

"Where to?" Cha Wenbin asked.

He pointed to the pillar. "Inside there. But people will die."

"What do you mean?"

"People will die." He looked directly at me. "Are you afraid? If you are, you can stay behind and remain here forever, just like the corpse outside."

I said, "Can you be clearer? We are all in the same boat."

"I can't explain it. Intuition," he replied, using the same word again.

Fatty stepped forward and shoved him. "Do you take us for fools? Intuition? Ha! If you have that kind of intuition, I'll take you to Hong Kong to bet on the lottery. You'll make a fortune."

Cha Wenbin asked, "How do you explain the hole behind that corpse?"

He knelt down, gently stroking the black blade of his knife. "I feel as though I have been here before. Everything here feels familiar, yet I also feel like I have never been here."

"My friend, what is your name? Where are you from? I have seen this knife before; it is not yours."

"Ye Qiu," he paused. "That is what they told me. I do not know where I came from. They brought me there. When I passed through a room, I saw this knife. I heard the knife calling to me. I broke the glass case, and then it was mine."

"The knife called you? Can a knife talk?"

He gently stroked the archaic black blade. "Yes. It talks to me constantly. My intuition comes from it. It tells me that if we turn back, we will die, but if we keep going forward, we will also die—we will just die fewer."

"Ye Qiu..." Cha Wenbin repeated the name, falling into deep contemplation.