Book 3: Chapter 15: Summary of the Frightening Night


    If it was the old me, I would definitely think that Old Jin was feeling disoriented and imagining things. But now I understood that this kind of thing could really happen. You just had to trust your senses.


    Was this some kind of evil or was it something else? I looked at Ding Jingens eyes and knew that something had to be wrong with him. But I had never encountered this kind of situation before and couldnt find the right adjectives to describe it.


    His state made me feel that there was some unknown thing hiding behind his soul that wasing out from time to time. It not only prevented Ding Jingen from answering key questions, but also suddenly came out to control his actions.


    "Who the hell are you?" I asked him coldly. When Ding Jingen just looked at me and smiled, I turned to Old Jin and asked, "Can you speak Mongolian?"


    "I can speak two phrases in the eastern dialect."


    "What do you mean?"


    "How much is it? I love you!" Jin Wantang said these two phrases in Chinese and then said them again in Mongolian.


    I narrowed my eyes and looked at him. <em>What were you nning to do after learning these two sentences?</em> I thought to myself, but I still motioned for Old Jin to speak Mongolian to Ding Jingen.


    I figured Ding Jingen''s strange situation must have been a result of getting possessed by something in the worlds second most valuable tomb. So, no matter what had attached itself to him, it probably only understood Mongolian. Although these two sentences had no practical meaning here, maybe hearing Mongolian would make that thing in his body react a little.


    Jin Wantang said to Ding Jingen first, "How much is it?" Then he said, "I love you."


    Ding Jingen didnt react and just continued to look at us with that smile on his face. At this time, a big cloud covered the sun and the whole grasnd darkened a little bit. Ding Jingen''s eyes began to look in the direction of the small forest in the distance.


    I realized that he thought it was going to get dark again.


    "Lets talk about conditions," I said to him (or maybe it was to the imaginary thing behind him). "I can let you go to that grove, but you have to tell me what youve experienced."


    He turned his head to look at me and suddenly said a few words in Mongolian.


    I obviously couldn''t understand it, but I saw Jin Wantang''s expression change.


    When he saw me looking at him, he said, "I don''t understand."


    "Bullshit."


    Jin Wantang hesitated for a moment before saying, "I didn''t lie to you. I really don''t understand it, but I know the meaning of some pronunciations. This sentence ishe saidhe said theyre just on their way to their destination."


    I was puzzled and looked at Jin Wantang again. "This is a Mongolian proverb, he exined. It means that you think youve reached the ce where the sheep are herded, but youre really just on the way to your destination."


    This exined the nomadic state of the Mongols and just meant that they were always on the road. But at this point in time, I believed it meant something different.


    After thinking about it, I took a deep breath. Could it be that we thought they hade out of the worlds second most valuable tomb and were cursed to die, but it was actually the opposite? Maybe subjecting themselves to this curse was the key to entering the worlds second most valuable tomb.


    So had they never reached that tomb and were burying themselves alive in order to enter it?


    Ding Jingen looked at me and said one final sentence in Mongolian, which nobody understood. I threatened Old Jin into tranting those words but found that he really didnt understand them this time.


    Then, Ding Jingen fellpletely silent and didn''t say anything else.


    To make a long story short, we were at a stalemate for a long time. I was skilled in intimidation, but it was ineffective on a person who was in a trance. In the end, I had no choice but to temporarily give up. Of course, I didn''t let him go either. It wasn''t that I didnt intend to honor my promise, it was just that he didn''t give me any satisfactory information.


    When I gave up, I pressed Ding Jingen''s stomach and found that it was bulging. It mustve also been full of those stone grapes, so I was worried that he might have a perforated stomach or something.


    Fatty woke up at this time, so I told him to make those people vomit the stone grapes up. While preparing breakfast, I began to think about our current problems. I spread the tbread out on one side and began recordingst nights harvest in my notebook.


    1. First of all, it was obvious that everything in the woodsincluding dead thingscould move in the dark.


    2. The bodies dug out from beneath the grove carried porcin pieces. Based on their behavior, Ding Jingen and the others were going to the grove to bury themselves alive. It seemed to be some kind of curse.


    It looked like Guotang Feng had died the same way back then.


    3. The moving ceramic figurine had an unknown origin, but it seemed to be a kind of evil thing that would attack people.


    4. The curse was rted to the ceramic figurine and porcin. The porcin items consisted of wine vessels and tableware for a huge banquet. The ceramic figurine also appeared at the banquet, wearing a corpses clothes and seeming to be a key member of the banquet.


    It was a very strange feeling because the ceramic figurine at that time was in the hosts position. In other words, the ceramic figurine may have yed the role of the banquet host and the corpses were all guests.


    It was really weird and gave off an evil aura.


    5. Their stomachs were full of grape-like stones.


    The ancients used to swallow stones to fight off hunger during famine. Many people who died of famine had simr stones in their stomachs when their bones were found. There were also many animals that swallowed stones to help digestion. I didnt know what kind of situation this incident fell under: were they preparing to digest some kind of special food or were the stones the food itself?


    6. All the participants had strange fins growing around their ears, which seemed to be a sign of attending the banquet. And this thing was currently only visible to me.


    It suddenly urred to me that Ding Jingen kept looking at my ears earlier.


    I unscrewed the gas stove, found Fattys small shaving mirror, and took a look at myself. I held the mirror the same way Joker from A Chinese Odyssey did (1) and felt relieved when I didn''t see anything in my ears.


    I had been thinking that all of these abnormalities only appeared after you came out from the worlds second most valuable tomb, but now I was starting to think that it was more likely that they hadnt entered the tomb yet. But if that were true, where did they go before and where did they get the porcin from? And what did they experience?


    Which was the correct answer?


    7. There were also those huge stone tablets I saw during that brief moment.


    I didnt know whether it was the worlds second most valuable tomb or not, but at that time, it had really been shocking.


    The clouds retreated again, letting the sun shine brightly once more. Jin Wantang had been fiddling with the satellite phone for a long time. The white noise had been going on for a while, so I didn''t expect him to get in contact with anyone. But at this time, I suddenly heard a voice on the other end of the line.


    I was particrly familiar with that voice and jumped up when I heard it. It was Xie Yuchen''s voice. I rushed over and asked Jin Wantang to turn up the volume. Xie Yuchen''s voice sounded very faint as he said, "Weve arrived. This is a one-waymunication that broadcasts once every satellite cycle. Its not a real person. Listen to the following content."


    ****


    TN Notes:


    (1) Per Tiffany: A Chinese Odyssey is a two-part 1995 Hong Kong fantasyedy film starring Stephen Chow. The protagonist is named Joker (Zhizunbao). Joker was the reincarnation of the Monkey King fromJourney to the West. Basically, there was this scene where Joker looked at the mirror and saw that he was a monkey instead of a man. So, Wu Xie looked at the mirror like this: