Chapter 1 First Encounter with Postal Service (4)

  It was already 9 o'clock at night when we left the restaurant, and everyone had drunk a lot, especially Lao Cong who was completely drunk. Since I lived closest to him, I had no choice but to send him home first. Just a few steps out, Lao Cong suddenly patted me lightly on the back. I was taken aback - this guy had already walked around from behind me and stood in front of me.

  "Are you okay?" I said angrily and resentfully.

  Old Cang smiled and said, "If it weren't for this, how could we have fooled those few kids?" Old Cang let out a sigh of relief, gently patted my shoulder, and then said, "Let's go, to my house, I'll give you something!"

  Looking at Lao Cong's confident appearance, I followed behind him in a daze. His family's residential area was for the electric power department, built in the early 1990s, with small houses of about sixty square meters. Lao Cong's father had passed away long ago, and his mother had been bedridden for years. However, the house was very clean.

  Lao Cong had me sit on the sofa in the living room, and he himself walked into the house. After a long time, he finally came out of the house with a big sweat, and there was an extra thing in his hand. The thing was wrapped in newspaper, like a box. He sat beside me, gently patted the dust off his body and said: "Ah, I don't know if it can help you, take this!"

  "What is it?" I asked curiously.

  Lao Cong smiled wryly and said, "My old man passed away early, this is the only thing he left us, so many years have passed, I really don't know if it's useful or not!"

  His words made me even more curious about what was wrapped in this newspaper.

  It was said that it was left by his old man, and my curiosity was immediately piqued. I have known Old Cang for so long, and often heard him mention that when his father was alive, he collected many rare treasures. However, every time I wanted to see them, Old Cang would really clam up. Old Cang gently lifted the newspaper, revealing a 10-centimeter square black box inside. The box had some strange patterns carved on it, and although I knew nothing about antiques, I still felt that this box was somewhat unusual.

  Lao Cong gently opened the box, and a black stone appeared in front of me, which looked like a lump of solid asphalt if you didn't look carefully.

  "I'm dizzy, what is this thing, you're making such a mystery of it!" I leaned back on the sofa in great disappointment.

  "Hey, don't underestimate it, this is no ordinary thing." Old Cang said, covering the box and handing me a cigarette. "This thing has some history! When Old Master was young, his family was poor, and he often dug up things that could be sold in the cemetery at night. That evening, he sneaked into a cemetery again, but soon after entering, he heard a 'bang' sound, and the entrance was blocked for no reason. Old Master knew it was impossible to crawl out from the entrance now, so he suddenly remembered a small hole on one side of the tomb chamber, which was just big enough for a person to pass through. Who would have thought that after crawling out only a few meters, the sound of gurgling water reached Old Master's ears." Old Cang let out a long sigh.

  "The sound of the water came suddenly, and the sound seemed to be getting louder. The old man saw that the stream was clear and bottomless, so he scooped up a mouthful of water and drank it. Just after he finished drinking, he heard a faint rustling sound coming from not far away, followed by an increasingly loud flow of water. At this point, the small stream in front of him had become a raging underground river."

  "An underground dark river?" I exclaimed incredulously.

  "Yes, after about a minute, the underground dark river finally calmed down. The old man quickened his pace and just as he reached the entrance, his body sank, and in front of him was a sheer cliff. Fortunately, the old man reacted quickly and grabbed onto the stone wall at the entrance, but his body was already suspended outside. He held on like this for about five minutes, his fingers almost frozen stiff, and it seemed impossible to climb back up. So he mustered up the courage to jump down, although the platform was close to him, it still scared him half to death. Luckily, he landed on the platform. The cave was very large, big enough for two horse-drawn carriages to enter side by side. What made his heart skip a beat were the animal hides and bones on the ground. Could it be that there were some kind of monsters in this cave?"