Book 3: Chapter 42: Graffitied Warning


    We set off about twenty minutester. The mountain opposite us looked very close, but it actually took us an hour to reach the foot of that huge holey slope.


    During that time, there was a thought lingering in my heart that was difficult to get rid ofPoker-Face must have only rested for two hours so would he be able to endure it?


    I didnt see any traces of tiredness on his face, but he definitely had to be tired since he kept taking naps all the time. I just didnt know if I should ask.


    When we were halfway through our journey, he still looked perfectly fine while Fatty and I were panting like dogs. As a result, there really wasnt a need to ask him if he needed a rest. Moreover, wed have to rest when we arrived at our destination anyways.


    At this time, looking up at the mountain was even more frightening, and I couldnt help thinking that it wasnt a lotus flower at all but a huge ho''s nest. It almost seemed as if countless hos woulde flying out of these holes at any moment.


    We went from the foot of the mountain to the huge grave robbers'' tunnel on the mountainside. Fatty looked at the dark hole and said to us, "Comrade Nave, it''s time to use your talents. The choice is yours now: should we find a hole and go in, or should we dig one ourselves?"


    "Go in and have a look." After saying this, I took the lead.


    The grave robbers'' tunnel was so big that Godzi was the only one who could have dug it. The inside sloped downward, so it became very dim after about six or seven meters. When I turned on my shlight and continued walking further inside, I found that there was water on the ground. This stagnant water was very clear, so it must have been umted rainwater that had filtered down from above. After passing the pool of water, I saw a dirt hole that was very dark inside. When I swept my shlight over it, all I could make out were hard clods of dirt inside.


    This didnt seem to be a stone mountain but a dirt mountain.


    Poker-Face quickly cleaned himself without an ounce of hesitation. Our clothes were waterproof, so he washed off the stains on the outside and then neatly took off his clothes. After setting them aside, he quickly got into the pool of water and wiped himself clean. Fatty only took off his jacket and wiped his body with a towel.


    The water was extremely cold, so I wasnt brave enough to copy them.


    I moved to take a few more steps inside the tunnel, but Fatty told me not to move rashly.


    As it turned out, I couldnt actually move because I found that the path ahead was blocked. The hard soil inside had copsed in such a way that the hole was a dead end.


    By this point, Fatty and Poker-Face had already caught up to me. The whole bathing process shouldnt have taken more than two minutes, but Poker-Face had even washed his hair. I figured that his hands had moved so fast when he was washing up that they left afterimages.


    "Sure enough, as I said, the soil here may be quite special and the grave robbers'' tunnels won''tst long," Fatty said.


    I squatted down, touched the copsed dirt pile, and found that there was a lot of coke⁽¹⁾ in the soil.


    When I picked one out and illuminated it with my shlight, I saw that there were some metal things stuck inside. They were very smalmost like sandbut seemed to have rusted after going through oxidation.


    "What''s the matter?"


    I shook my head, but at this time, Fatty''s shlight swept over the tunnel wall on our left. We all saw that some graffiti had been painted there.


    I was pretty knowledgeable when it came to murals, but this wasnt a mural at all. Instead, it was more like a child had graffitied something on the wall. This person had obviously engraved it with a knife, and made sure the cuts were very deep.


    Examining graffiti was one of Fattys many talents.


    Based on how the paint was peeling off of the wall, the graffiti mustve been very old. And even some of the lines were so faint that they couldnt be seen at all. But fortunately, the painter had applied toner to these lines so that they could be preserved up until this point.


    The graffiti showed an image of a ck stick figure, which gave off the impression that it was a mural from the Stone Ages. But part of the mural had been crushed by the hard mud that had copsed.


    "Is this a remnant of the ancient Mongolians?" After Fatty asked this, he suddenly felt that the pronunciation of the words ancient Mongolians was very funny and emphasized, "Ancciiiient Mongolians."⁽²⁾


    "This is the information left by the predecessors who dug these grave robbers tunnels, I said. "Grave robbers generally don''t take the initiative to leave messages for others. Can you decipher it?"


    "The illiterate understand the illiterate, Fatty said. Let me have a closer look. You should go study something else with Little Brother first."


    It took a long time to examine something like this graffiti, so I followed Poker-Face to the other side.


    At the intersection between the copsed soil block and the tunnel wall on the other side, we found a very thin essible gap where the soil hadntpletely copsed.


    Of course, this gap was very long, and when we pointed our shlights at it, we estimated that it was about seventeen or eighteen meters deep.


    Poker-Face started stretching his shoulders and I immediately knew that he was about to do bone contraction. I couldn''t bear to watch him do it, so I turned my head away.


    But when I did this, I saw Fatty looking at us with a pale face.


    "What''s the matter?" I asked him.


    "The information on this is a little scary."


    "Dont be afraid, Daddys here," I teased him. "Just tell me what it says."


    Fatty turned back towards the graffiti and said, "The meaning of the first few pictures is very clear. These are a few people performing Qimen Dunjia."


    He used his shlight to illuminate several figures on the cave wall, but I couldn''t make anything of them. Fatty continued, "The guy who drew this picture should be illiterate, but if you look here, this little man is holding a g up. This is the warning sign of the Mongolian cavalry and I think it means that these pictures are all warnings. And look at the movements of these people. There are seven graffiti figures here all performing Qimen Dunjia, but the seasons of the trees behind them are different. Theres also a figure here, which is a strange thing thats clearly not human. But this thing is also performing Qimen Dunjia, just like those people."


    I looked at the figure and also agreed that it looked very strange. It wasnt in the shape of a person at all, but it had eyes and appeared to be in the shape of this underground pce.


    "I think what this person is trying to tell us is that all of use here because this underground pce attracts us. This underground pce uses Qimen Dunjia to seduce groups of people toe here at regr intervals," Fatty said.


    "What the hell?"


    "That''s just my interpretation of it."


    I looked at those pictures but still couldnt understand how they expressed suchplicated meanings.


    "How is this possible? Its not like the underground pce is a person."


    "Weve just been assuming that its an underground pce, but maybe the things below arent actually underground pces," Fatty said.


    ****


    TN Notes:


    (1) FYI, not cocaine. In this context, coke is a grey, hard, and porous fuel with a high carbon content and few impurities, made by heating coal or oil in the absence of aira destructive distition process. It is an important industrial product, used mainly in iron ore smelting, but also as a fuel in stoves and forges when air pollution is a concern.


    (2) Doesnt trante well. The pinyin for ancient Mongolians is Mngg grn, so when Fatty repeated it, he said Mngg g g grn.