Daomu Biji: Restart

I didn't see anything related to Uncle Three except for the murals of the immortal boat. Back in those days, they did such a beautiful job robbing the tomb that they didn't leave anything behind except for the shuikao. Not to mention the mural in the back of the chamber, just the content of the mural at the front of the chamber was enough to guess what Uncle Three's reaction was. Based on his character, he probably knew that there was an underground place in Fujian and he would definitely go explore it. But I remembered that Uncle Three wasn’t someone who could hide things and he had never told me that he had gone through such an experience before. That probably meant he paid more attention to the contents of the mural in the back of the tomb chamber.

I really wanted to see all the murals at once, but at this point, I was more concerned about the shuikao. Moreover, I couldn’t waste any more time for Fatty’s sake.

Poker-Face still hadn't come back yet, so I decided not to stay in the tomb chamber any longer. I went over to get Fatty, but when I looked down at the hole we had come through before, I knew it was unrealistic. Getting down from this height with an unconscious Fatty was absolutely impossible.

I left three candles by the hole in case Poker-Face came back without a light and then wrote on the floor: Fatty fell into a trap; I'll take the front door.

I dragged him past the buried stone boats and returned to the gate. All the leather figurines that had been crowded around the door before were now surrounding the shuikao. Their shapes looked weird and their long fingernails were resting on top of the shuikao, as if they were sucking the body fluids of the shells I had crushed to death.

Under the candle’s green light, these strange figurines that had been buried here almost looked like they were sucking the shuikao’s skin dry with their fingernails. I was covered in a cold sweat and all my hair was standing on end.

As I dragged Fatty all the way to the gate, I cheered myself up by silently thinking that if I stir-fried those shellfish with ginger and onion, I could eat two and a half catties worth.

There were still a few of them leaning against the gate, but I could see a stone bar (1) propped up against one side of it. I leaned Fatty up against it and then pushed the tomb gate hard. The gate was extremely heavy, but I managed to push it open a gap.

All the fingernails that had been stuck in the gate were crushed by the rotating shaft. Once I was done, I suddenly wanted to cry. I had always gone in from the tomb entrance and never thought that I would one day come out of the tomb like this.

I held the basin full of candles out and found that it was really the place where we had turned back earlier. I dragged Fatty out and then carefully imitated the leather figurines' behavior. I crawled over until I was next to them, grabbed the shuikao, and then ran out.

All the figurines’ hands immediately turned to me and started crawling towards me like spiders. As I ran out of the gate and quickly tried to close it, my instincts jumped. I picked up the meteor hammer’s stone and jammed it under the tomb gate.

Countless hands instantly sprang out of the crack and tried to grab me, but the gap wasn’t big enough and only the hands could come out.

The skin of these leather figurines was elastic and the hands instantly became extremely slender. I put Fatty on my back, picked up the basin of candles, and headed towards the place we had blown up before. When I got there, I picked up a brick and started tapping it on the ground.

The stone didn’t sound as crisp as my Kukri, but I still wanted to inform Poker-Face of my location. I knocked for a long time, but didn’t receive a response.

I propped Fatty up against the wall. There was no other lighting available, so I had to use the rhinoceros horn candle to illuminate his ears. The candlelight wasn’t a linear light source, so I couldn't see the innermost part of his ear. After thinking about it, I went up and sucked at his ear hole.

I immediately felt like something was wrong. Something had been sucked out of his ear and went straight into my mouth.

I almost swallowed it, but immediately spit it out. I looked at the place where it landed and saw that there was a "leg", which had still been alive even after it had broken off inside Fatty’s ear.

I looked at Fatty, held back my nausea, and sucked his other ear. I was a little relieved when I found that there was nothing in there.

I went over and carefully looked at the shuikao. I knew I was too concerned about it, but Uncle Three had always been so precise when working. So, why did he only leave a shuikao in such a strange place?

****

TN Notes:

(1) Can also be called “zilaishi” (自来石) or a “holding-stone” I guess. It’s stuck behind the door to prevent somebody from opening the door from outside. Think of it like a giant wedge.