Chapter 22: Clues in Memories

  Cheng Shu threw something behind us while we were escaping. Before I could see what it was, the thing exploded. After Ma Si Zhe and I got up, we found that Cheng Shu, Huo Ying, and Jiang Liu had disappeared.

  Only two of us were left in the tomb passage, Ma Si and I, plus a group of charred monkeys. Ma Si suddenly remembered something, slapped his thigh and said 'That woman Huo Ying took our stuff away'

  "What thing"

  "What she just took from among those monkeys, we didn't even get a glimpse of it"

  It wasn't until now that I remembered, earlier Ho Ying did pick up something, and then those monkeys rushed down, we were only focused on escaping with our lives, didn't even have time to see what it was.

  This time, Cheng Shu and Huo Ying have gone missing again, and they've also taken Jiang Liu with them. It's likely that the thing Huo Ying got earlier is related to what they were hiding from us before.

  "That thing looks like a box" I recalled that when Huo Ying jumped down, it was right in front of me, and I inadvertently took a glance. The impression is a small box.

  "There must be something fishy about that box."

  I tidied up with Ma Si Zhe, making sure nothing was left behind, and continued walking deeper into the tomb passage.

  "What was that thing Uncle Cheng just threw? The impact was so huge, it's almost as powerful as explosives!" I'm still shaken by what Uncle Cheng threw out earlier. I reckon if I were any closer, I'd have ended up like those monkeys, blown to bits and lying there.

  "It's probably something Uncle Cheng made himself, maybe it was left over from blasting open a grave."

  "It's still a technical job, if you make too little it won't work, and if you make too much you might blow yourself up"

  "People will resort to all sorts of schemes for the sake of money."

  I suddenly remembered the words carved on the lotus flower in front of me, 'North Temple wind is clear, city and town are made of wood'. What does this sentence mean? Those characters were obviously carved later. The carving is not deep, and it's still in simplified characters. It should have been carved recently by someone.

  Is that Grandpa? If it is Grandpa, then what does he want to tell me? Is he guiding me towards something? Grandpa overestimates my intelligence.

  The north temple is clear, and the city is made of wood. I tried to interpret this sentence, but it's not at all like Grandfather's style of speaking. Grandfather has a somewhat pedantic tone, but he rarely speaks in such obscure terms.

  I see! So that's how it is.

  "What did you know?" My sudden surprise left Ma Si Zhe bewildered.

  I finally know what those two sentences on the lotus flower mean. I looked at Ma Si Zhe excitedly.

  We got the order wrong from the start, I don't know if we didn't understand it thoroughly or Grandfather did it on purpose. The correct order should be 'Qingfeng Temple North, Mu as the capital'.

  Beisi Temple I certainly didn't know where it was, because this place doesn't exist at all. What Grandfather really meant to say was the Qingfeng Temple not far from the village. That is, the temple where Grandfather found that monk Yiyuan.

  Judging from the literal meaning, there must be something on the north side of Qingfeng Temple. This discovery made me excited, with a feeling of being unblocked in Ren and Du meridians, but Marx's next sentence blocked me again.

  "What does this wooden city mean?" Ma Si Zhe asked me.

  I shook my head, in my impression, the north side of Qingfeng Temple was a cornfield, and there was no city wall at all. Behind Qingfeng Temple, there is another small road, which is the closest route to the town. When I was young, every time I came back from the market, my mother would take me through there, and I even urinated in the cornfield several times. But I never saw any city wall ruins.

  "After we get out, you take me to Qingfeng Temple to take a look, maybe we can find something." I nodded.

  The darkness in the tomb is still there, but I seem to have gotten used to it. I don't feel as scared as when I first came in, maybe I've become numb. The road here has been too stimulating, and I've already become immune to it.

  I walked with Ma Si Zhe, chatting occasionally.

  "You say you ring the bell now, what will happen to Cheng Shu and Huo Ying?" Ma Si Zhe sneered. I just remembered that the bell controlling Jiang Liu was still in my hand.

  Can't you be less evil?

  "I'm just saying," Ma Si said with a pout. "No sense of humor."

  "But honestly, can a mosquito be so powerful that one bite can drive someone crazy? The incubation period for rabies is ten years, and Jiang Liu got sick too quickly."

  Ma thoughtfully said "You don't know this" and then began a lengthy discourse.

  It was during the great Han Dynasty over 2,000 years ago.

  "If you don't speak properly, I won't listen."

  "Wait, wait, I'll say it properly," Ma Si Zhe coughed and changed his tone.

  Originally, Uncle Ma Si Zhe had stolen an Eastern Han tomb when he went down before. It wasn't until several people went down that they discovered it was actually an empty tomb. There were no burial objects, no coffin, and not even a ghostly shadow in sight.

  The empty tomb was devoid of anything, as if it had been prepared for them. The air inside the tomb became eerie and creepy. Ma Si Zhe tugged at his uncle's sleeve, "Shall we leave?"

  What's the point of coming if you're not going to get anything? Now that we're here, we can't leave empty-handed no matter what. If something comes out later, just give it a shot. Uncle Ma Zhe is also a ruthless character, and since he's already come down, this meat that's fallen into our laps can't be let go of.

  Ma Si-ze and his uncle were walking in the middle, with three or four people in front of and behind them. They were all apprentices from his uncle's shop, according to Ma Si-ze, each one a master craftsman.

  A group of people were cautiously exploring their way, when suddenly they felt a loud rumble beneath their feet. Ma Si Zhe thought it was thunder, but instead the ground slowly began to rise. The people above hastily rolled and crawled down, while Ma Si Zhe trembled with fear, tightly gripping his gun.

  The ground slowly rose before their eyes, and a coffin appeared in front of everyone. The soil on the coffin fell off as it was lifted up.

  This is a vermilion lacquered coffin without a casket. The coffin is inlaid with pearls, jade and precious stones, looking golden and shining. It must have been unintentionally touched by some mechanism just now, which made it rise from the ground.

  The people in the tomb all rose up and whispered to each other about the coffin, their voices full of excitement.

  "No wonder we couldn't see the coffin, it was underground! Good job, nephew! This time we've made a fortune, enough for us to eat for several years!" Marz's uncle patted him on the back. Marx forced a smile, but he still felt that something wasn't right. Generally, coffins in tombs are set up with all sorts of mechanisms and defenses, who would just deliver it to their doorstep like this?

  His uncle told Ma Si-ze to step aside and called two men to pry open the coffin with their tools, while he carefully examined the inscription on the coffin.

  Ma Si Zhe stood idly by, tiptoeing over to his uncle's side.

  "What are you doing here? Don't cause trouble"

  "Aren't you supposed to teach me something? What can I learn from just standing there stupidly?"

  It's also possible that he thought what Ma Si Zhe said made sense, so his uncle thought about it and didn't chase him away.

  "Five saints are fed within, what can be extinguished, attack at noon, country destroyed."

  "Just let you usually do more homework, can't even recognize a stele" Ma Si Zhe was scolded and couldn't say anything, so he could only listen to his uncle's reprimand.

  "The Five Poisons are revered and nurtured within the coffin, their power can destroy half of China. If a war is waged at noon, the country will be annihilated."

  "Something so fierce, I don't know which coffin it's being raised in."

  Ma Si Zhe finished speaking and exchanged a glance with his uncle, as if struck by lightning.

  "Don't pry it open!" His uncle's words had just fallen when the coffin lid was already pried open and turned over on the ground.

  His uncle was furious and said "Normally let you guys work, never been so quick"

  But the imagined thing did not happen, the people who pried open the coffin stood around it, staring at what was inside, unable to move their feet. Seeing that there was no movement, Uncle Ma Si Zhe pushed through the crowd and approached the coffin.

  The coffin was filled with gold, silver and jewels, shining brightly under the light of the mine lamp, without any signs of aging. Not only were there gold, silver and jewels, but also bronze artifacts with strange shapes were neatly arranged inside the coffin.

  Everyone rushed forward, shoving things into their clothes. Uncle Ma Zhe pulled out a gun and pressed it against one of them, saying coldly "Put it back".

  That man wiped a cold sweat from his forehead and obediently put back the things he had just taken out of the bag.

  "My boss, I don't have any intention of embezzling, but we can't mess things up first. Once the stuff here is gone, I guarantee that everyone will get a fair share, not a penny less, but not now."

  Others heard him say this, although they were reluctant, but also obediently put everything back.

  "Ma Zhe, you and Da Meng pack things up, pick the valuable ones." Da Meng has been following his uncle since he was a child and is the person his uncle trusts most besides Ma Si Zhe.

  Ma Si Zhe nodded and walked to the coffin, putting things into his backpack.

  I understand his uncle's approach. If they had let them divide the things at that time, it would have caused a lot of trouble. Uneven and unfair, even if they encountered any trouble later on, others would already have their hands on the goods, and no one would care about Marx and his uncle's life or death. This way, they wouldn't dare to leave easily.

  Ma Si Zhe picked up a few pieces of jewelry from the surface, and this process was extremely entangled for him. Every object in Ma Si Zhe's eyes seemed to be a rare treasure, and giving up any one of them could make Ma Si Zhe cry loudly at midnight.

  After hesitating for a while, Ma Si Zhe found the layer of bronze utensils at the bottom of the coffin. The volume of the bronze utensils was very large, and it was impossible to see what they were used for. Taking the whole thing away seemed unlikely, so Ma Si Zhe thought he might as well take the lid off, and reached out to lift the cover off the bronze utensil.

  The moment the lid was lifted, Ma Si Zhe heard a humming sound, and a cloud of black smoke rose from the coffin. Upon closer inspection, it turned out to be a swarm of tiny flying insects. His uncle, seeing this, grabbed Ma Si Zhe and Da Ye and ran towards the grave path.

  Ma Si Zhe ran while looking back, and that group of people didn't react in time. They were surrounded by those insects and bitten to the ground, rolling around.

  The three of them stumbled out of the ancient tomb.

  Within a few days, I saw on TV the news that the tomb raider died inside the tomb. At that time, the media and the public were all talking about it.

  Everyone was shocked at the sudden appearance of the empty tomb's mechanism." Ma Si Zhe said as he turned his head to look at me.

  "So, did the coffin sink again by itself?"

  "Maybe, I'm not too clear about what happened afterwards either, I just followed my uncle and escaped"

  "It was close, fortunately you and your uncle ran fast, otherwise I'm afraid one of the dead would have been you. This thing is really hard to guard against."

  "My uncle knew all along that there were those insects in the coffin, and it was he who told me about the vampire mosquitoes later. He had me clean out the jewels from inside the coffin, and knowing me as well as he did, he knew I wouldn't be able to resist opening the lid out of curiosity. And then releasing those terrifying insects, killing off anyone who tried to take his treasure."

  Ma Si Zhe's gaze became increasingly deep and his tone also became more downcast. I finally knew why he was different from five years ago, now Ma Si Zhe must have been carrying a lot of things on his back. Secrets, lives, ah! Just like me.

  "It's not your fault." I had been thinking for a long time and could only come up with this one sentence to comfort him.

  "I'm quite lucky to be his nephew, otherwise it would have been me who died" Ma Si Zhe's face relaxed again. But I could see that he had sent the things in his eyes into his heart.

  "So Jiang Liu was still lucky and only got bitten once. If he had been attacked by a swarm of blood-sucking mosquitoes, his fate would probably have been the same as theirs."

  "What is the purpose of this thing's existence?"

  "Just like the poisonous blood of a black ape, it's guarding against people like us. A mechanism in the tomb, but more vicious than poison arrows or toxic gas."

  "I was the first one to hear about such a thing"

  The only common point among these things is that they all appeared in Yunnan Province.

  I was shocked and asked "The tomb you mentioned is also in Yunnan?" Ma Si Zhe nodded.

  "Western Han, Eastern Han, Yunnan, Hani, ancient Dian. Everything we've encountered on our journey is centered around these few things, there must be some connection between them."