Chapter Six: The Reservoir Again

  "Ah! Sun Yi! Help!" Early in the morning, I heard Ma Si Zhe screaming and yelling. I walked out of my room with sleepy eyes, saw Ma Si Zhe sitting on the ground, pointing at the door in terror. Following his direction, I almost got scared to sit on the ground too. The face that was peeking through the door gap last night was now standing right in front of me!

  "Sun Yī has come back!" said Ye Hua's mom with a smile. Ma Si Zhe and I maintained our fallen posture, neither of us dared to move or speak, just sitting on the ground, staring straight at Ye Hua's mom.

  My mom heard the sound and came in, taking a jump. "What are you two doing sitting on the floor? Now that Ye Hua's mom is here, let her sit down." My mom pulled Ye Hua's mom into the house to sit down, and as she walked by me, she pinched my arm. I felt pain and rubbed my arm, it seems it wasn't a dream.

  Ma Si Zhe climbed up and asked me "What's this thing?"

  "I told you, this thing is only abnormal at night, during the day it's no different from a normal person." I patted the dirt off my pants.

  "Did you know that you were so scared just now?" He was teasing me.

  "Yesterday you didn't see how furious his mom's face was... Marx Zhe, don't laugh, listen to me! Marx Zhe ignored my angry roar."

  After going through a frightening moment in the morning, I was wide awake and suddenly thought of asking Ma Si Zhe what was in the box he mentioned at the hotel.

  Ma Si Zhe let out a yawn and walked to the trunk, unzipped it, and inside were two guns standing upright! I looked at him, then at the trunk, kicked the lid shut with one foot, and ran over to lock the door.

  "Hey, dead guy, be gentle! This trunk of mine is expensive!" Ma Si Zhe yelled while wiping his trunk.

  I lowered my voice and said 'where did you get this stuff from, this is illegal possession you know, it's against the law'

  "What are you afraid of? I asked my uncle to get it for me from the black market. It's for self-defense, and it will come in handy someday."

  Ma Si Zhe said this with a calm and gentle tone, but I felt a bit suspicious. From my understanding of him, even if he was out of tune, he wouldn't do anything illegal, let alone get two guns. I remembered what he had said before about his uncle's business and asked tentatively, "You're not going to follow in your uncle's footsteps, are you?"

  Ma Si Zhe looked at me for a moment and thought for a while. "Hmmm." I finally knew what Ma Si Zhe had been hesitating to say earlier, deliberately avoiding the topic.

  I kicked him and said 'Do you know that's risking your life?'

  I'm an archaeology major, I know the pros and cons involved. Since ancient times, any tomb with burial objects has had mechanisms, and those without wouldn't be targeted by thieves. So, tomb raiding can make one rich overnight, but also cost one's life in a single night. Moreover, there are many things inside the tomb that science still can't explain today, which are even more unsolvable by human effort. The country has sealed it off, we can't say more, but those incredible stories circulating online aren't baseless rumors.

  I had seen such a thing in the first year I worked. It was also an emergency excavation of a tomb, and two directions southeast were found to have stolen caves. If we didn't excavate until the rainy season, the rain would flood this ancient tomb completely destroyed. I followed the team to the scene, the scene was very empty, there were no buildings around. There was an old professor in our team who felt that there might be some problems with this tomb at the time.

  Everyone didn't think much of it, and besides, they couldn't stop working just because of a temporary guess. The process of digging the tunnel was easy, and before long, everyone had put on their gear and gone down one after another.

  It's been about half an hour, and I still haven't reached the main hall. Logically speaking, this tomb shouldn't be that big, and it should have taken only three to five minutes to get there, but why is it taking so long to see the main hall?

  "Professor, look at this," a girl in the group said.

  Everyone followed her voice and looked over, only to see a Tai Chi-like graffiti painted on the wall. The tomb wall was painted with Tai Chi, which is something that has never been seen before, not just me, but even professors who have been engaged in archaeological work for many years are seeing it for the first time. Everyone speculated that the owner of the tomb might have had some connection with Taoism when he was alive.

  Everyone was thinking about it, but unexpectedly strange things happened. The Tai Chi on the wall actually started to rotate slowly, and the speed accelerated bit by bit, making people dizzy.

  There was a person in the team named Chang Meng, who had a rather irritable temperament. Seeing this situation, Chang Meng stepped forward and pushed Taiji with his hand, saying "This thing can't be a door, right?" As soon as he finished speaking, Chang Meng suddenly disappeared. He vanished into thin air in front of everyone. The people on the team were shocked and couldn't say a word, no one dared to touch Taiji again. A group of people fled from the tomb like they were escaping disaster.

  After the incident was reported to the state, the state's attitude was that it was an unexpected work accident and compensation was provided. The excavation of the ancient tomb was terminated, the tomb passage was filled back in, and the experts were withdrawn. As a result, the matter was settled with tens of millions of dollars, without any news leaking out.

  There are countless examples of such things, and when I first started working, I was still haunted by these things. Now that time has passed, I've also become accustomed to them. I guarantee that no archaeologist is an atheist. More or less, they should have all experienced the mysteriousness of supernatural powers.

  Thinking back to past experiences, I find it even harder to understand Ma Si's philosophy. His family isn't short of money, they could have just hired a few people to do this kind of thing, why did he have to take such a huge risk himself?

  "Don't look at me like that, what's wrong with you, you'll glare out fire in a moment" Ma Si Zhe couldn't take my gaze.

  "You're not short of money to spend, and you haven't lived enough yet. Why take that risk? You and I are both in this line of work, you shouldn't be unaware of the pros and cons."

  "Don't be so tense, you're not going to lose anything, I just want some excitement." Ma Si Zhe said nonchalantly. But I still feel that he's hiding something from me, this guy may not have a good reputation, but he wouldn't risk his life for thrills.

  "I'm different from you, this is against the law!"

  "I'm breaking the law, so you go this time yourself. I won't follow and cause more trouble."

  I just thought of it, this time I came to him without planning to do anything legal. In essence, it's indeed different from stealing burial objects, but in nature, they're all about digging graves. Suddenly I realized my mistake and hurriedly made up for it.

  "Who says you're illegal? What a monstrous injustice! We should go, can't see them on the same level." I tried my best to flatter.

  "Hey, who just eloquently criticized me for doing all sorts of illegal things?" Marx Zhe grabbed my little tail.

  "Who said it? Who said it?" I continued to play dumb.

  Now that it's come to this, I don't want to dwell on why Ma Si Zhe followed his uncle down the mountain either. When the time is ripe, he will naturally tell me. Now he may have some reason that he can't tell me, after all, their family background is different from mine, and there are inevitably things that I won't understand. Hopefully when the time is ripe, he will take the initiative to tell me.

  After chatting with Ma Si Zhe for a while, we finally got to the point. About the tomb under Maoer Mountain, Ma Si Zhe was also very curious, and so was I. My impression of that mountain has been stuck in twenty years ago, and after coming back for a period of time, I've been busy with things and haven't had time to take a good look. I don't know how many years have passed, what changes will Maoer Mountain undergo, and what about the reservoir.

  I handed the note Grandpa gave me to Ma Si-zhe, and he examined it for a while.

  "So that means the problem lies in that reservoir, right?" he asked.

  The crux of the matter is indeed at the reservoir, and the real secret should be hidden in the tomb under the Majiashan Reservoir.

  As soon as he heard the tomb, Ma Si Zhe's eyes lit up. I quickly stopped him, "Don't think about it, it's useless, the notes mentioned that the tomb is not a noble or wealthy person, there shouldn't be any burial objects." Ma Si Zhe's enthusiasm was extinguished by me.

  In the afternoon, Ma Siqi and I packed up to go take a look around Mao'er Mountain. Ma Siqi insisted on bringing his gun, in case something unexpected happened with the villagers during the day. After repeated assurances from me that nothing would happen, he agreed hesitantly.

  Maoer Mountain is located at the northernmost part of the village, and a highway runs not far from its southern foot, which was built just a few years ago. To the west is another mountain, which villagers call Ta Mountain. This is because there used to be a tower on top of the mountain, but it was destroyed in a storm, leaving only the base of the tower behind. It has been preserved in its original state ever since, without any further repairs or renovations.

  The foot of Maoer Mountain is just a reservoir, and the water in the reservoir is much lower than the shore. I still remember when I was young, every time it was dinner time, the production team would use loudspeakers to remind each family to pay attention to the release of water from the reservoir, women washing clothes, children playing, all had to stay away from the reservoir first. Even with such caution, accidents of slipping and drowning often occurred, looking back now, if not for being cursed, there is no other reasonable explanation.

  "Is this Mao'er Mountain Reservoir?" Ma Si Zhe asked me.

  "Ah, this is the reservoir my grandfather built, which was cursed by many people back then. As I gaze at the reservoir, I recall the past. I don't know how Grandfather lived alone after my parents and I left the village, but what probably drove him to despair more than the villagers' resentment was the countdown-like death notice. Watching as one by one, the people around him were taken away. This mental torture might be even more painful than others."

  The monk left a word "wait" for his grandfather before he left.

  Wait for that reincarnation. Grandfather was powerless to change the situation, the only thing he could do was to pull everyone out of the quagmire again after all this was restarted. So it took a dozen years or so.

  In these past few decades, Grandfather didn't just sit around waiting for death. In the village, one after another group of Taoist priests and Buddhist monks came to exorcise evil spirits. One ritual ceremony after another was held by the reservoir, but nothing could be changed. The number of deaths continued to grow at a terrifying rate. Some people even moved away from the village, but it didn't work; no one knew why people who were thousands of miles away would still appear in the middle of that damned reservoir. Grandfather suddenly understood the terror behind the monk's words all those years ago: "This is a cycle, and everyone can't escape." The desolate atmosphere in the village also became increasingly terrifying as the number of people decreased. In the last few years, every person was like a prisoner on death row, waiting for the call of the Grim Reaper.

  What's terrifying is not the approach of death, but that moment of despair, the stench of rot that emanates from everyone. In his diary, I can see Grandpa's inner turmoil and suffering, he had thought about taking his own life, to end it all at once. But then he gave up on that idea, he wanted to forgive, the only thing he could do was wait, wait for everything to be over so that he could finally be free.

  Days passed under the numbness of death's shroud. Until one day, after Grandfather got out of bed, the house was quiet outside, and Grandfather suddenly had a premonition that it was over.

  Grandfather hastily put on his shoes and ran out of the house. The backyard was empty, the front yard was empty, and there wasn't a single person on the road. Not only were there no voices, but also no bird calls, dog barks, or even the sound of wind blowing through the leaves. Everything was silent. Grandfather rushed to the reservoir, and what he saw left him stunned.

  A dozen or so corpses floated on the surface of the water, scattered and sparse. The surface of the water was calm like a mirror, without a single ripple. Although there was no wind, Grandfather still shivered with cold, waves of chill rising from the soles of his feet, as if it were midwinter.

  Grandpa finally waited for that day.

  I don't understand why the people in the village, who had clearly died out many years ago, are now standing perfectly intact in front of me. Grandfather once wrote on a note that he brought those people out from there, but couldn't make them normal humans to live, and this is what I need to complete for him. What does this sentence mean? Is there something I can do that he can't?

  Ma Si Zhe asked me what I was thinking about, and I told him the doubts in my mind.

  You can understand it this way, just like cooking a dish. Your grandfather had prepared the seasonings and the dish was already in the pot, only missing the final step of adding salt when something unexpected happened and he couldn't continue. He could only find someone he trusted most to replace him to complete it. After all, making this dish well was his last wish, and he didn't want others to mess it up.

  Ma Si Zhe suddenly spoke so eloquently, I was a bit unaccustomed to it, but the fact is that it's really possible like he said, Grandfather just needs someone to complete this matter, and I am the most suitable candidate.