Volume 5 Chapter 11 The Mezzanine

This was an unexpected situation, and everyone panicked.

Pan Zi took out a folding shovel from his waist and jumped into the pit, swinging it around and slashing, but the fat man’s feet were swinging around and he missed, slashing the stone on the side and sending sparks flying. The fat man saw Pan Zi using so much strength and yelled, “You damn well better aim right, don’t hit my feet!”

Pan Zi also shouted, “Don’t fucking move, or I’ll cut off your leg!” He swung again, but again missed.

The fat man shouted, “Change players! This kid doesn’t like me, he’s taking revenge.”

Ye Cheng and Hua Monk jumped down to help, trying to hold down the fat man’s leg. But before Ye Cheng could get a good grip, he suddenly fell, and the entire stone corridor collapsed, dragging him down with it.

This is fucking chaos! Hua monk hurriedly went up and grabbed him, but he didn’t stand still and stumbled into my hand, which was holding the fat man.

Things happened too quickly, and the lighting was poor, so it was so chaotic. Several people rolled into a ball, and the fat man fell into the bottom of the pit like a meatball. I felt a little bad at the time, and before I could stand up, I heard a series of “cracking” sounds coming from under the brick layer.

I turned pale when I heard it. I was too familiar with this sound. This was the sound of the frozen stone material cracking extensively and longitudinally when we were doing a stress test on the building.

Before I could think about it, there was a sudden tremor, and the entire pit suddenly sank, causing the stone gallery below to collapse. No one had time to react, and suddenly we lost our balance. We all rolled down the slope like a slide, wrapped in bricks and fell into the hollow created by the collapse of the wooden gallery.

Before I could congratulate myself on my foresight, I felt a numbness in my buttocks, and I had already fallen onto a slope, and then I just kept sliding down. Fortunately, the rope tied around my waist stopped me from sliding down, and then bricks started falling on my head.

My butt hurt so much that I tried to sit up, but the slope under my butt was too steep and I couldn’t get my feet to work. I used my hands to push the bricks away and asked if everyone was okay. No one answered me, and all I could hear was a series of curses and the sound of bricks colliding.

When the bricks finally stopped, I was able to look up and see what had happened. The area was in a mess, with several flashlights completely buried in the rubble and several others lying along the slope in the darkness below. Fortunately, the German mountaineering equipment was sturdy and none of the lights had broken. However, a little light was still coming through the gaps between the people and the bricks, but it was still not clear enough to see anything, and it was pitch black on the sides. I could vaguely see a large hole above my head, which was the opening of the stone corridor, and we had slid down from above.

This must be the space under the main hall of the spirit palace, suspended in the air on the steep slope of the mountain. We had fallen on the steep slope, and if it weren’t for the rope, we would have rolled to the bottom long ago.

Ye Cheng was hanging on to my head, and he had been hit pretty hard. I asked him if he was okay, and he replied that he had already eaten lunch. He was stunned.

In the dark, Hua Monk shouted, “Be careful, there might be a zongzi here. Get your weapons! Everyone, get your hooves out! Fatty, where are you? Is the thing that grabbed your foot still there?“

Fatty was at the bottom, and we and the bricks all fell on him, which was really bad. I heard his moaning coming from the pile of bricks: ‘It’s still holding on. It’s almost touching my thigh. I’ve got him trapped. Pull me out quickly, or my dick will be lost!’

”That’s my hand!“ Pan Zi yelled.

”Damn it!” The fat guy angrily said, “You fucking rascal, you couldn’t have picked a better time to play a prank?”

Without a flashlight, the few people who weren’t trapped had to grope around in the dark, pushing the bricks down the slope. Pan Zi dug me out first, but his hand was caught by the fat guy and couldn’t be pulled out. We continued digging, and soon the fat man dug it out as well. He was relieved and panted, saying, “You bastards really dared to crush me. Fortunately, I had the divine fat with me, or else I would have been crushed this time.”

Pan Zi didn’t have time to argue with him and said, “Where is the thing on your foot?”

In the dark, the fat man moved his foot, as if feeling it, and said, “It’s gone! It’s unlikely that it could still be clutched after falling like this. It might have been knocked down by us and fallen down the slope. How could there be a dumpling in this kind of place?

Hua said, “It must still be nearby. Be careful. Hold the black donkey hoofs and find the flashlight first!”

I hurriedly went to the bricks to find the flashlight, but I couldn’t find it. Ye Cheng on the other side found it. He pulled out the pile of bricks and suddenly the area around him lit up. He immediately pointed the flashlight down.

I was right under him, and I was disgusted by the flashlight blocking my view. I was about to ask him to dim it down a bit, when suddenly I saw Ye Cheng’s face turn green in an instant.

I looked at his expression, and suddenly began to sweat profusely. I thought to myself, “Could it be that it’s on my side again?” I quickly turned my head and saw a greenish-purple dried-up face protruding from the side of my shoulder, only a foot away from my nose.

I was so scared that I let out a cry of “Oh my god!” I retreated and grabbed a piece of green brick with my left hand and smashed it at the face. I didn’t know if I hit it or not, so I turned around and climbed up.

At this time, the other flashlights were all dug out, and suddenly the whole area was lit up. I climbed up a few steps, but since Ye Cheng was right above me, I couldn’t move at all, so I slid back down. I looked to the side and couldn’t help but gasp in shock.

I saw that on the steep cliff under the main hall of the spirit palace, there were layers of simple terraces. On top of these protrusions, there were almost neat rows of frozen ancient bodies in a pale purple color. Layer upon layer, it looked like the Hall of Arhats in the temple, all huddled together, densely packed, with hideous faces. Judging from their appearance, they had all died of cold, and they were all sitting here like monks, with their shadows so dense that you couldn’t see the end of them, and you didn’t know how many there were.

Ye Cheng was the most timid here, and he said in a trembling voice, “Fuck, is this the corpse storage room where the monks’ golden bodies are stored?” He even felt a little weak all over.

Chen Pi A-si held him down and waved his hand at him, saying, “Don’t be afraid, it’s just a corpse.” He pointed at my feet. I looked down and saw that among the bricks at our feet, there was even a mummy that had been crushed into powder.

“The dead here are as cold as stone, and they will crumble when touched.” Chen Pi A Si said, “These things have already been impossible to change, there should be no rice dumplings here.”

“Then what was that thing that just grabbed my foot?” the fat man asked.

Chen Pi A Si said, “Your foot, just now, may have been caught by the hand of a corpse, otherwise if it were a rice dumpling, do you think you would still have legs? Don’t believe it, look at your own trouser leg.”

The fat man looked down at the trouser leg he had just been grabbed by, and sure enough, there was a hole, and a dry hand that looked like a hook, in the pile of bricks not far from his feet. When I picked it up, it was hard as a rock and couldn’t possibly have been able to stretch out to grab someone’s leg.

Suddenly, everyone let out a sigh of relief. Pan Zi even exclaimed, “You’re so timid, you can’t even tell what you’re looking at.”

The fat man was furious, but he couldn’t think of a reason to argue, so he just sulked there, muttering, “That hand really did grab my foot. I can’t even tell if I was grabbed by a hook or not? I don’t believe it, so what?

We shone our flashlights around, and realized that we were under the main hall, and there was a lot of space. Because the bodies were so tightly packed, we couldn’t see the end, but apart from the bodies, there was nothing else suspicious.

Pan Zi asked Hua: “How could there be so many dead people here? I’ve never even heard of it.”

“It looks like a sacrificial chamber. I don’t understand this at all. No imperial tombs of any dynasty look like this… who are these dead people?” Hua said to himself.

I suppressed my fear and shone the flashlight on one of the corpses. I found that the facial features of the corpse were still relatively well preserved. The eyes were closed, the face was wrinkled, but there was no beard, and the whole body was covered with a thin layer of ice. What was frightening was that the skin of these ancient corpses was all blue and purple, and their mouths were wide open, with fangs inside.

“These may not be human beings,” said the fat man, looking at the teeth. “You see, just one bite can take someone’s face off.”

“Not human?“ Ye Cheng’s face turned pale again. ‘What is it? A monster?’

”It could be the legendary yeti, except these don’t have fur.“ The fat man started to talk nonsense.

”Bullshit!” Hua monk shouted: ‘What monster yeti, these corpses’ teeth are sharpened by themselves, this is a custom of ancient shamanism. Later, because it was too troublesome, masks were used instead. These are definitely not Jurchen people from the Ming Dynasty. Look at the clothes on these bodies, they are very primitive, not Jurchen or Mongolian style. And look, some of the bodies are wrapped in linen. These are ice burial mummies.

I remembered the ice burial pit we saw the night we camped in Xiaosheng Valley, and said, “Could these bodies be the remains of the ancestors buried in ice that Wang Zanghai dug out when he dug the mountain to build the tomb?”

The monk nodded: “That’s right. This cave was probably a burial ground in ancient times, where the local ancestors performed ice burials. But Wang Zanghai’s land planning turned it into a fake burial mound. These bodies must have been dug out when the cave was excavated.”

The fat man asked: “If it’s really like you said, why not just burn them? What’s the point of putting these bodies here?”

“Who knows? Look at these mummies, they’re so scary. Shamanism has many primitive and strange witchcraft rituals and curses, and it is said that they all require the use of corpses. The layout here may be related to shamanism, and something strange may happen. Maybe we won’t be able to get out no matter how we walk, because of these corpses. We have to be careful.”

I thought of the corpse array in the Qinling Mountains. It seems that wherever there are a large number of corpses, this kind of thing like being trapped by ghosts will always happen. Could it really be evil magic at work?

Shamanism is not a complete religion. It is actually a primitive form of witchcraft, which means that it has practical value and is closely related to pharmacology and spiritual worship. My understanding of shamanism is limited to the shaman dancing in the Qing Dynasty opera. However, it is said that shamanism, like the Chinese Qimen Dunjia, was lost in the course of history. Some of the good things were introduced into Tibetan Buddhism, while some of the evil things suddenly disappeared. From ancient books, we can see that many of the rituals of early shamanism were extremely evil and bizarre, with a large number of content about curses and corpses, and were inextricably linked to the art of poisoning.

The fat man listened to the words of the monk and suddenly realized, “No wonder, when I entered this spirit palace, I felt like my feet were burning and I was uncomfortable. It turns out that there were so many zongzi buried underneath. The conscience of the old slave was really badly damaged.”

The monk said, “I’m just guessing. The most important thing now is how to get out. Let’s split up and look around to see if there are any exits?”

Afterwards, the monk said, “But be careful. This place looks a bit strange, and there are always hidden dangers. The cliffs here are too steep. If something happens, you won’t be able to run away.”

Everyone agreed, and the fat man couldn’t wait any longer. A few people undid their carabiners, picked up their flashlights, and scattered off to carefully search the steep cliff walls.

It is not a pleasant thing to walk among so many corpses, but it is a bit strange that the more corpses there are, the less you feel anxious. Perhaps it is because after a certain level of fear, there is a kind of counterproductive emotion.

The corpses were packed so tightly that there was no space between each row for people to walk. We almost all squeezed past the gaps between the corpses. The bodies were old and young, all of them frozen like greenish-purple rocks. I saw some people still carrying bronze ritual implements, all of them completely rusted and green. Almost all of the lower bodies of the corpses were fused with the rocks below. You had to knock them apart to move them.

After searching for a long time, I didn’t find anything in this direction. I felt uneasy as I watched myself getting further and further away from the others. I was just about to pretend to have finished searching and return to the hole to ask the others about the results when I heard Pan Zi yell, “You fat bastard, what are you doing?”

We followed Pan Zi’s voice and looked in the direction the fat man had just been looking. We saw that the fat man had stopped searching at some point, but instead was crouching in the pile of bodies below, facing us with a blank expression and an open mouth. At first glance, his face was actually tinged with a bluish purple color, no different from the bodies around him. We didn’t know what the hell he was up to.