Volume 5 Chapter 44 The gap between heaven and earth

Countless “monkeys in the mouth” pounced on me, tearing at my muscles. I struggled violently, ready to exhaust my last ounce of strength before giving up. But I was already hopeless. In such a situation, even if the immortal Laozi came, he couldn’t save us.

While I was still struggling, suddenly there was a tremor, and we all fell backwards. The monkeys that were holding onto me froze, and in an instant, all of them fell off of us and scrambled to escape through the gap.

I turned around and saw the same thing happening to Fat Man. All of the monkeys retreated from the gap in an instant, as if they had seen a ghost.

Fat Man was covered in wounds and was also confused. We looked at each other, and the fat man said to himself, “What’s wrong? Don’t you want to eat what you’ve got? Do you think I’m too greasy?”

The commotion of the “monkeys in the mouth” had not yet ended. The monkeys that were gathered outside the gap did not stop, and climbed back into the mouth of the giant bird with a human head. The giant bird with a human head began to move, flying up one after another, quickly disappearing, as if it had received some kind of order, or had seen some kind of terrible natural enemy, and was frantically fleeing.

I gave the fat guy the 56-caliber rifle and told him to load it. Then I carefully approached the gap, but I didn’t dare to go out. I peeked out and was stunned. The human-headed birds were flying into the sky one by one. Soon there were none left around us. They had all run away. It was suddenly quiet, and there were only the two of us left.

This is really strange. I said hello to the fat guy and gestured for him to come out. We looked around and felt a little uncomfortable about the sudden turn of events before we died. I thought to myself, “God, even if you really don’t want me to die, you have to find a better reason.

I said to myself, ‘What are they afraid of? How can these monsters have natural enemies?’ Before I finished speaking, Fat Boy patted me on the shoulder. He had seen something.

I turned my head and saw that the human skin covering the giant bronze gate on one side had burst open and fallen off. The two huge bronze gates had actually moved a little to the side, and a tiny, pitch-black gap appeared in the middle of the two gates.

My heart was in my throat, and I was sweating. Such a huge gate had opened by itself. The huge tremor just now must have been the reaction when the gate opened. Who opened such a heavy gate? Who was inside?

From Wang Zanghai’s description, this underground gate was depicted as a passage for evil spirits to travel between hell and the world. The gate was filled with ancient evil, and it was definitely not a good thing. Now that the gate was open, was the evil spirit from hell about to come out to walk the dog?

This was an unpredictable sight. In an instant, my mind went round and round. Was it a monster or a zongzi? Should I run or take a look first? If I ran, which way should I go?

At this point, my thoughts were extremely clear, and I began to admire my own tortured mind.

But after the door opened, there was no movement, and I didn’t see the door continue to open, nor did I see anything come out. After standing there for a long time, the fat man asked me, “Do you want to go take a look?”

But if we enter and the door closes, such a huge bronze door, even if there are a thousand people here, we won’t be able to push it, and we will definitely be trapped inside. So what is the value of knowing the secret?

It is actually a choice between leaving here safely or taking the risk to get the answer.

After weighing the pros and cons, I still couldn’t bear the mystery that had tortured me for almost a year. I had to go in and see what the magic realm that Wang Zanghai saw was like, and what mysterious power was behind the secret that had lasted for thousands of years and involved three generations of our family.

I looked at the fat man, and he shared my thoughts.

He gave me the Type 56 and picked up his M16, retrieved a few magazines from the bodies strewn across the ground, wiped the blood from his face and gestured for me to follow him.

The door was so big that from a distance it looked like a slit, but up close it was almost wide enough for a truck to drive through. It would take an unimaginable amount of force to move the door, which weighed over 10,000 tons, over such a short distance.

I suppressed my excitement and walked up to the door. I smelled a strange smell blowing out of the gap, and my heart suddenly began to race. An emotion between nervousness and unease grew stronger and stronger. We were all sweating and even our feet were a little soft.

The fat man first shone his flashlight. As soon as the flashlight light entered the giant door, it completely disappeared and couldn’t illuminate anything. Wang Zanghai mentioned that when the Dongxia people brought him here, the first part of the door was a void, and a strange lighting tool called “the fire of truth” was needed. We surmised that it must be a rhinoceros horn candle that could be used to see what was inside.

When I thought of this, I couldn’t help but be startled. I thought to myself, “No, we don’t have such equipment. Even if we go in, we’ll see nothing but darkness. I wonder if we can pass through that void and reach the magic realm?

The fat guy hadn’t thought of this. Seeing that I wasn’t moving, he thought I was scared again and asked me, “Are we going or not?”

I was about to speak when I suddenly saw several lights in the darkness between the bronze doors. I was about to pull the fat guy to take a look, but he was pulling me instead. I turned around and saw that from the cracks in the rocks beneath the rift valley, a pale blue mist had begun to rise, like waves in the sky, rising rapidly.