Volume 6 Chapter 6 The Unacceptable Truth

The sudden noise when the secret door was opened just now, and the brief glimpse of this thing, which was only about half a second, plus the shock of that moment, made it impossible to take a close look at the appearance of that thing, and there was only a general impression in his mind. But now, in the stalemate, in the light of the fire, the strange face was clearly imprinted in San Shu’s eyes.

At first glance, Uncle San was only shocked. He had seen all kinds of zongzi, wet and dry, two-headed and headless, serene and hideous. He was born with a big nerve and had never been afraid of these things since he was 15 years old, but this face was too evil.

The face of the monster was bronze-colored, the flesh had shrunk, and the skin had cracked into scales.

Uncle San thought to himself, this doesn’t look like a zongzi. No matter how ugly a zongzi is, it should at least look like a person. How come this thing looks like a snake? Could this be a monster?

And what puzzled Uncle San the most was that the more he looked at the face, the more he felt a strange feeling in his heart, but he really couldn’t say what it was, and his neck kept breaking out in white sweat.

His hands were getting weaker and weaker, and the monster’s expressionless face squeezed out a little more. Uncle San knew he couldn’t think about it anymore, so he threw the firecracker at the face, and the fire immediately started.

The wine that Uncle San liked was a kind of green “burnt knife,” which Shanghainese people called mung bean wine. Uncle San drank the kind that country people brewed themselves, which was base wine with a very high alcohol content that burned up in a flash. He still likes to drink this wine, but for someone of his age, it’s like a slow poison.

The strange face was submerged in flames and could no longer be seen clearly. White smoke began to billow from the sides, and the flesh began to melt. An extremely unpleasant smell filled the air.

Most of the burial objects in the coffin were covered with damp, rotting silk, which now began to creak and crackle as it burned.

Uncle San tried to hold his breath. After the fire had burned for about six or seven minutes, the alcohol had burned out. Uncle San realized that the trick had worked. The force pushing up from below gradually disappeared. As the fire grew weaker, the face was completely corroded, revealing the charred skeleton inside.

Uncle San was afraid of a change, so he did not relax his grip on the ground. He held on with one hand and pulled out the machete at his waist with the other to play with the skeleton.

After fiddling with it a couple of times, he found that it didn’t react at all. He then chopped the neck twice with all his might, severing the neck bone.

He let out a sigh of relief, certain that the thing was really dead. As soon as he relaxed, he lost all his strength, and the strength in his hands quickly disappeared. His legs went limp and he sat down in the coffin, gasping for breath.

However, the matter was not yet over. After resting for a while, Uncle San was thinking about the secret room under the sarcophagus. He thought to himself that he couldn’t stay here for long. The entire tomb was already filled with smoke, and there wasn’t much air to begin with. There wasn’t enough to go around, so he had to hurry and see what was down there. If there wasn’t anything good, he would quickly go back out through the hole.

He picked up the flashlight on the side, bit it in his mouth, and once again pulled up the stone slab of the secret door under the sarcophagus.

The headless blood zongzi lay flat on the stone slab below. It was a large, male, wet corpse. The clothes had already rotted away, leaving only a lot of strips of cloth stuck to the body. The whole body was a bronze rust color. The most terrifying thing was that the body was covered with many skin folds that resembled eyes.

Uncle San pressed his chest and felt it as hard as iron. He couldn’t help but be grateful. If he couldn’t hold on just now, he would definitely be dead.

At this moment, a very frightening sight suddenly made Uncle San freeze, and a wave of extreme coldness suddenly rushed from the soles of his feet to the top of his head.

He suddenly discovered that the right arm of this blood dumpling, which he had curled up under the stone slab, was actually only a stump!

Uncle San’s heart “clicked” and his mind immediately went blank. He immediately leaned over to look at the broken end of the severed hand. Sure enough, the flesh and skin were like cotton wool, in a burst shape. Uncle San suddenly felt weak all over and sat down on the ground.

I originally thought that Uncle San’s narrative was too cumbersome, but when I heard that the blood dumpling only had one hand, I immediately understood why Uncle San had to tell it in such detail.

The wounds, which looked like cotton wool and were in the shape of a burst, could only be formed by a short-range burst of gunfire. In other words, the hand of the blood dumpling was shot off by a gun!

With these circumstances, the notes in Grandpa’s notebook, and Uncle San’s expression, I had already guessed the development of the situation. Suddenly, I also felt a chilling chill spreading from my back.

But if things really developed this way, the whole thing was too incredible, it had become a plot in a supernatural novel, I really didn’t dare to believe it.

Uncle San touched his body and wanted to find another cigarette to smoke, but apparently he didn’t have any. I touched my back pocket and found half a pack of Yunyan that I had received from the fat man at the bar Happy, and handed it to Uncle San.

Uncle San lit it again and took a deep drag before saying, “I realized when I saw the blood-soaked rice dumpling that there might be some hidden truth to what my old man, your grandfather, wrote in his broken notebook.

At the time, no matter how we asked him about the things in his notebook, he would always say that it was not a story for children. At the time, we didn’t know why, but now we finally know, but the truth is so terrifying.

Uncle San looked at me and said, “Big nephew, you’re so smart, I’m sure you know what happened even if I don’t tell you.”

I didn’t dare nod, because what I was thinking was too incredible.

From Grandpa’s notes, we knew that before Grandpa pulled the severed hand of the Zhan Guo silk book from the cave, there was a series of box cannon sounds in the tomb, which meant that the uncle in the tomb might have been shot in the right hand by this series of box cannons.

And the blood-filled corpse in the dark room of the tomb also had no right hand, and the wound was like cotton wool bursting. The conclusion was likely to be only one: the blood-filled corpse was not an ancient corpse, but my uncle’s corpse!

According to my deduction, the story may have gone like this:

When they went down to the cave, they must have discovered the secret room under the coffin, just like my uncle did. Given his character, he would have been the first to go down to the secret room under the coffin.

It was in that secret room that Uncle discovered the scroll of the Warring States period. Just as he was about to take the scroll and leave the secret room, something terrible happened.

When the accident happened, Uncle should have had time to react, so he was able to reach out of the secret room. But by the time he figured it out, it was probably too late. In desperation, either he or Great-Grandpa shot and severed his hand.

The severed hand was dragged out of the tomb by the grandfather outside the tomb with a soil rat, but the uncle was trapped in the secret room, and in the end, he became such a terrible monster.

The great-grandfather and great-grandfather who tried to rescue the uncle outside were also implicated and died by the coffin.

However, it is not clear how the blood-red thing that chased out of the tomb and the later monster-faced giant corpse were related. I think that the blood-red thing might have been my uncle, who had been shot but still retained consciousness. But Grandpa definitely didn’t think of that at the time, and he thought it was a monster in the tomb.

Of course, only the person involved knows whether this is true. Even if this speculation makes sense, it is only speculation.

I tentatively shared my thoughts, and Uncle San looked at me with a complex expression and nodded.

At this point, I thought of a question and asked, “But since Grandpa told us that ‘this story is not for children to hear,’ it means that he also knew that he might have shot his own brother. In that case, he couldn’t have known about this, so did Grandpa go back to the tomb later? And the fact that the notes don’t record what happened next is because the truth is too horrifying?” Uncle San frowned and said, “I have the same question, but this point can no longer be pursued. The old man is dead, and we will never know what the real situation was like at the time.”

I asked, “What’s next? Did you go down to the secret room under the coffin?” Uncle San took another deep drag on his cigarette, almost inhaling a fifth of it, and said, “If you were me, would you be able to hold back?”

I smiled bitterly to myself, thinking that if I were you, I would have died of fright when I opened the secret door, and I wouldn’t have had the chance to think about whether to go on or not. I shook my head and said, “How can I compare with you? You know my nephew’s courage. Don’t mention the kettle that doesn’t boil. Come on, what is in the secret room?”

Uncle San sighed and said, “I’ll show you something first, and then I’ll tell you slowly.” He then took out his backpack from the cabinet next to his bed and took out a small ivory box from it.

I took it and looked at it. It was a Qing Dynasty enamel box, a rough box that had not yet been enameled. It was very heavy. When I opened it, I saw a black, ugly pebble inside the box, just like the kind often seen in the piles of yellow sand on construction sites nowadays.

“What is this?” I asked in surprise.

“This stone is the thing I took out of the secret room,” said Uncle San.

I said, ‘This is the thing?’ I looked at the stone again, but I couldn’t see anything strange about it. I was about to pick it up when Uncle San put the lid back on the box. ‘Don’t move. This thing is a bit dangerous,’ he said.

I gave the box back to him and said, ”This seems to be just an ordinary stone. In that strange secret room, was this the thing that was put there?”

Uncle San sighed again, as if people of his age always like to sigh. He said, “Don’t look at it as unremarkable, I almost lost my life to get this thing.”

After deducing the truth about the bloody corpse, Uncle San was shocked and lost his mind. He sat on the ground for a long time before he recovered. His heart was in a mess. Looking at the entrance to the secret room two feet away from him, he thought to himself, what mysterious power could make a person look like that in the darkness?

Like me, Uncle San was also a person who was destined to suffer from Tai Chi. He absolutely could not stand the torment of curiosity, but I was too timid and often suffered from the double torment of curiosity and fear. Uncle San was different. He only hesitated for a moment before deciding to go down into the secret room to find out what was going on.

Now that I think about it, this was actually a very unwise thing to do. Only someone like Uncle San would make such a decision under those circumstances.

Grandpa refused to teach Uncle San too much because he was impulsive. It turned out that Grandpa was quite accurate in judging people. It was a pity that the younger generation often ignored the experience of the elderly.

After a short rest, Uncle San began to prepare. He first tidied up the bones of his ancestors, took off his coat, tore it open, tidied up the two sets of bones outside the coffin, wrapped them in his clothes, then put on his gloves, used a body-binding belt to hold the bloodied corpse by the armpits, pulled it out of the coffin, respectfully placed it aside, then put the severed head back in place, and facing the three skeletons, he bowed three times and said, “Unworthy descendant Wu Sanxian, mentally retarded, offended the remains of the ancestors, please forgive me.”

After bowing his head, he put the machete back on his waist, took out the detonator and inserted it into his belt. He looked at his whole body to make sure that there were no flaws.

He calmed his mind and came to the coffin. He raised the trapdoor again and looked inside carefully.

Under the trapdoor, there was indeed a tunnel that slanted downward. However, unexpectedly, the tunnel was very short, so short that it seemed that one could only crawl into it.

The width and length of the entrance to the tunnel were the same as the coffin. The “blood dumpling” was lying inside the tunnel. Fortunately, the place underneath was narrow, and the “blood dumpling” was naturally strong, so it couldn’t exert its strength. Otherwise, how could Uncle San hold him down with his strength?

Uncle San first lit a firecracker and threw it in. The fire rolled all the way down, falling deep into the tunnel, and finally stopped, turning into a small light source that illuminated a general picture.

He then touched the machete at his waist, said a prayer to the ancestors, took a deep breath, and carefully crouched down, slowly entering the tunnel.

The tunnel was filled with an indescribable stench, and Uncle San had to hold his breath as he crawled forward. After his entire body had entered, he pulled on the trapdoor above his feet, and it flipped down.

Suddenly, it was strangely quiet, and all that could be heard was the crackling sound of the firecracker burning in front of him. Uncle San was a little unnerved, and his body was covered in white sweat. He calmed down a little, took out his flashlight, and shone it forward.

The light from the flashlight was much stronger than the firecracker, and it lit up the entire tunnel. He saw that the tunnel was made up of black stone slabs, about three meters long, one after another, all the way to the depths. The entire tunnel was very clean, and the black slate surrounding it was also very smooth and well-maintained.

The flame of the firecracker in front of him was normal in size and color, and the air in the tunnel should be connected to the outside, so there should be no problem breathing.

Uncle San calmed down, gripped the flashlight, and began to crawl deeper into the tunnel.

I have also had experience crawling in narrow tunnels and know that it is never easy. Although Uncle San is much better built than I am, he felt short of breath after only a few steps, and since he had to watch out for the surroundings from time to time, it was even more difficult to climb.

After climbing for about ten minutes, there was a turn ahead. Uncle San turned around, thinking that there would be the same tunnel behind him, but when he turned, he found that in front of him was a black stone wall with relief carvings.

Uncle San was stunned for a long time before realizing that the tunnel had come to an end.

What was going on? He was confused. He had thought that there would be an exit at the end of the tunnel, and then there would be a secret room inside, and all the secrets would be in this secret room.

However, there was nothing now. The tunnel had only extended a little, and then a black stone wall blocked the way.

Could it be that when Uncle San came in, he had triggered some mechanism that sealed off the tunnel?

Uncle San knocked on the stone wall and found that the back of the stone wall seemed to be solid. He checked the joints around it and found that the stone wall was sealed here, which meant that it was not a trap and that this should already be the end of the secret passage.

That’s strange. If this is the end of the secret passage, then this must be where the uncle stole the silk book. But there’s nothing here. Where was the silk book from the Warring States period kept? Was it just lying on the ground?

Uncle San turned around and looked at the surroundings at the end of the secret passage, and then took a look at the stone wall blocking the way.

At this time, the relief on the stone wall caught his attention.

It was a bird-faced deity, with a bird body like a night owl, and a very strange human face, carved in an exaggerated manner. The face was as big as a washbasin, with an open mouth, flowing clouds at the temples, and an expressionless face.

(I heard this and let out a “huh.”)

Uncle San noticed that the mouth of the relief was a little sunken, so he drew a line on it and found that the silk book at the time might have been rolled up and placed in the mouth of the relief.

However, the mouth of the relief was solid, which meant that after the silk book was taken out, no mechanism would be triggered.

He looked up again at the other parts of the relief face, the nose, ears, and eyes, and finally his gaze met the eyes of the relief.

The face of the relief is bird-like, with four eyes, and the pupils are carved in a circular shape. But strangely, the pupils of the upper two eyes are protruding outward, while the pupils of the lower two eyes are recessed inward. In other words, the relief carving method of intaglio and relief is used.

This is something that Uncle San has never seen before. Not only him, but even I know that this is absolutely impossible. All reliefs are either engraved or carved, and it is impossible to mix them up.

Uncle San leaned closer to take a look for himself and let out a “huh.” He discovered that the stone in the pupil of the relief was not part of the relief, but was an ugly black pebble embedded in it. What was strange was that the pebbles of the two eyes above were still embedded in it, but the two in the lower eye had been dug out, leaving only two spherical pits.

Looking at the two eyes, Uncle San gradually became clear-headed, and a bold speculation appeared in his mind.