Shen Gun’s progress wasn’t going very smoothly either.

That night, by the time they reached the Yao village, it was nearly midnight. Thankfully, Shen Wangu’s wife Ma Juanhong had considerable influence and managed to knock on a villager’s door, allowing the group to find a place to sleep—otherwise, they would have had to curl up in the car until dawn.

After daybreak, Ma Juanhong went from house to house, urging people to help. She quickly gathered a group of old women who were most skilled at embroidery. The elderly women gathered around, chattering and debating over the knotted-rope record that Jiang Lian had drawn with his spirit eye technique.

The old women all spoke in the Yao language, babbling incomprehensibly like heavenly scriptures to outsiders. Though Ma Juanhong was Yao herself, the Yao language had dialectal branches, making communication not as smooth as one might imagine. Sometimes she even had to use hand gestures, occasionally interjecting a Chinese phrase or two. Shen Gun stood at the side, unable to insert a single word into the conversation.

After breakfast, this group of old women continued their “meeting and discussion.” As noon approached, they were still discussing, occasionally pushing and shoving each other playfully, breaking into laughter.

This wasn’t a tea party they’d been invited to, so Shen Gun grew anxious and asked Ma Juanhong: “How much longer will they deliberate? The pattern is right there—can’t they just embroider it?”

Ma Juanhong and Shen Wangu shared a marital resemblance—both tall and slightly plump. However, she was more straightforward than Shen Wangu, always speaking her mind.

She said, “Uncle Gun, you men have high expectations but low abilities. You don’t understand. You always think that food bought from the market can immediately become a hot meal on the table; that dirty clothes thrown aside will be washed, ironed, and ready to wear the next day, as if there’s no process or effort involved…”

Shen Wangu found her words grating: “Hey, hey, who are you talking about?”

Ma Juanhong didn’t even give him a proper glance: “Whoever feels guilty, that’s who I’m talking about.”

She continued politely: “This embroidery isn’t something you can just create from a pattern. You want it reproduced the same: let me ask you, how many threads are there? Which thread goes over which? Where do they merge, and where do they branch out? Without discussing these details clearly, how can it be done?”

Every profession has its specialties. Shen Gun was speechless.

Shen Wangu quickly pulled Ma Juanhong aside: “But you can’t just make my Uncle Gun wait around. He’s a VIP; you should keep his schedule full.”

He meant that Shen Gun should always be busy, looking at this and that, so that waiting for the embroidery wouldn’t be so excruciating.

Ma Juanhong understood.

…

Thus, Shen Gun was scheduled for two activities.

The first was visiting the village’s only shaman sorcerer.

Many ethnic minorities in Western Hunan had their shamanic sorcerers, though they went by different names. For example, the Miao people called theirs “Badai,” while the Yao mountain sorcerers were called “Bamei.”

This Bamei sorcerer appeared unremarkable, just a taciturn, gaunt old man. When the group visited him, he was preparing to cure meat: squatting in his small courtyard, carefully arranging pine wood, cypress branches, and orange peels for smoking the cured meat.

Shen Gun wasn’t surprised by this: many shamanic sorcerers were illiterate farmers in daily life, only transforming into bridges to the mystical shamanic world when they donned their masks.

The old man couldn’t speak a word of Chinese. Ma Juanhong whispered to him for quite a while. He nodded repeatedly and went back to his room to fetch a surprisingly modern-looking picture frame.

In the frame was a photograph of two people—one was the old man wearing elaborate, colorful sorcerer’s robes, and the other appeared to be a reporter with a camera on his shoulder.

Ma Juanhong explained to Shen Gun: “The sorcerer says he can help. He’s been interviewed by many television stations. This photo was taken during an interview with National Geographic China.”

Such high-profile recognition? Shen Gun gained newfound respect for the sorcerer.

“However,” Ma Juanhong continued, “he can’t guarantee he’ll be able to interpret everything. Let me give you an example: Miao shamanic sorcerers know hand incantations, like protection spells, god-sending spells, soul-chasing spells…”

Shen Gun didn’t understand what she was getting at: “Yes, and?”

“There used to be over six hundred varieties. During the Republican era, an ethnologist named Shi Qigui specifically wrote about Badai hand incantations. By then, only sixty or so remained. After various political movements, even fewer survived. In short, too much time has passed, and they’ve been lost to history.”

“The Bamei sorcerer says it’s like a dictionary. Earlier, sorcerers could recognize everything, but by his generation, less than a tenth remained. If the embroidery pattern is completed, he can only try his best to interpret it—whatever he can read is what we’ll get.”

Shen Gun’s heart sank.

With this sinking feeling, he was led to participate in the second scheduled activity.

Touring the village.

The guide was a young man who could speak Chinese, though not very fluently, so Ma Juanhong still accompanied them throughout. The group moved like a small tour, first observing honeysuckle being dried, then learning how to preserve tofu, and finally arriving at the back of the village to see an ancient tree.

There were many ancient trees around the village, but this one held special status, or it wouldn’t have been presented with such ceremony.

The tree wasn’t particularly tall, only about four or five meters high and one or two meters in circumference. Countless vigorous roots protruded from the ground, intertwining to form what looked like a root mat about six or seven meters in diameter beneath the tree.

The branches were hung with numerous colorful prayer threads and ribbons, some new, others faded to threads and long discolored. The entire circumference around the tree base was filled with various small porcelain bowls and incense stubs of different lengths offered in worship.

The guide pointed at the tree and said in non-standard Mandarin: “Ah-die, papa tree, papa.”

Ma Juanhong asked him a couple of questions in Yao language, then turned to Shen Gun: “This ancient tree is said to be the oldest around the village. Many villagers seek its blessing by recognizing it as their ‘foster father,’ meaning they entrust their lives to it, becoming the tree’s children. They believe this wards off disasters and calamities, so they come to worship during festivals and holidays.”

Shen Gun examined the tree up and down: “How old is it?”

He only knew that to determine a tree’s age, one should check its growth rings, but those could only be seen by cutting across the trunk.

The guide stammered: “Don’t know. As long as the village has existed, this tree has been here. Two thousand years, three thousand years, people say all sorts of things. Our village name is related to this tree.”

Right, the village name—he’d forgotten to ask.

“What’s the village called?”

“Stone, Stone Village.”

This fell short of expectations: Shen Gun had anticipated hearing a more ancient and meaningful name, as if someone should be called “Chu Liuxiang” (an elegant name), but when introduced, it turned out to be “Chu Dabao” (a common name).

He muttered: “That’s too ordinary.”

Shen Bang and Shen Wangu also whispered at the side, one thinking the village name was rustic, the other finding it vulgar and lacking character.

The guide grew a bit anxious, but explaining at length was beyond his language abilities, so he switched to Yao and spoke non-stop to Ma Juanhong like beans pouring from an opened silo.

Ma Juanhong listened attentively, nodding constantly. Seeing the two Shens pontificating their opinions, she just smiled and waited until they finished shaking their heads and waving their hands before calmly saying: “It’s not the ‘stone’ character, it’s a number—the character for ‘ten.'”

Number…

Ten… Ten Heads Village?

Damn, Chinese characters were truly magical—same sound but different characters. With just a slight adjustment, the nature became completely different, suddenly turning eerie and bloody.

Shen Bang swallowed: “Sister-in-law? Ten heads, ten… human heads?”

Ma Juanhong nodded. She didn’t keep them in suspense, revealing fully the ancient legend the guide had just told her.

The story went that the ancestors of these Hua Yao originally lived in the north. Later, because of the great battle between the Yellow Emperor and Chiyou, when Chiyou was defeated and retreated, they were forced to move south along with many other tribes that had followed Chiyou.

At that time, the Hua Yao entered the mountains for the first time. They knew little about mountain terrain and struggled to adapt. Day after day, they trekked arduously, hoping only to find fertile land with good water to settle their entire tribe.

One day, the great chieftain came to them and took away most of their elite members, saying there was an important task to accomplish.

So the remaining elderly, weak women and children stopped advancing and camped in place, waiting for this group to return before continuing their migration.

But they never returned, like a kite with its string cut—never to be heard from again.

These elderly, weak, women, and children waited through days and nights, half a month, then a full month, until they finally realized something was wrong. After tribal deliberation, they decided to follow the direction of the departed group’s footprints to search for them.

In the end, they only found some scattered, familiar-looking personal items near this area, along with ten decayed human heads—they couldn’t find the bodies, probably because bodies with more flesh had been dragged away by wild mountain beasts.

The tribespeople knew disaster had struck. After mourning, they couldn’t bear to leave, letting these young men become wandering ghosts in the wilderness. They buried the ten skulls together, planted a small sapling on the grave mound, built their homes here, and thus remained, generation after generation, until today.

Over time, that small sapling grew into the oldest tree in the village—this very tree before them.

This also explained why the Hua Yao in Western Hunan were all distributed around Xuefeng Mountain, while only this branch settled in the most barren deep mountains of the Great Wuling.

Shen Gun listened in a daze. His already sinking heart nearly dropped to the bottom.

Damn, that crow-mouthed little Lian Lian’s prediction came true—those who knew the secret had long been dismembered by blades and beasts, leaving behind only uninformed outsiders.

He stammered: “Was that great chieftain Chiyou?”

As soon as the words left his mouth, he realized how stupid his question was.

There were many legends about Chiyou, but all agreed he was defeated and killed, beheaded by the Yellow Emperor. In any era, power struggles were cruel.

Shen Gun waited a full day and a half for the embroidery of the knotted-rope record.

It wasn’t that the old women worked slowly, but that they had no concept of rushing: they always had something to attend to—they had to go home to cook, collect firewood, sleep…

Suggesting more money or double pay had no motivational effect on them: they had enough money, and more would be useless.

In today’s world, to still hold such thinking, one didn’t know whether to mock or marvel at it.

However, Shen Gun didn’t let himself remain idle. He used this time to organize his notes, tentatively titled “Chronicles of the Mysterious: The Box-Seeking Chapter.”

…

By nightfall of the second day, Shen Gun finally saw the completed embroidery pattern.

Without exaggeration, his first thought was: What is this?

Because there was no color differentiation, it was all white cotton thread, clustered in lumps with stitches sometimes tight, sometimes sparse. In some places, one thread pressed against another, dense and substantial, almost protruding from the surface; in other places, only a few threads were drawn through, not even covering the base fabric…

He consoled himself: This is right—the more bizarre, the more accurate it must be.

The embroidery pattern was delivered to the Bamei sorcerer.

The sorcerer had already donned his ceremonial robes and shamanic mask. The mask was carved from wood, blackened and oily, with eye and mouth holes cut out, and a ring of stiff, messy black hair attached around the head—thus fully dressed, he looked truly frightening.

Because ceremonies were generally not open to outsiders, much less allowed to be recorded, Ma Juanhong had to plead repeatedly before the sorcerer agreed to let her and Shen Gun enter to observe.

The room was a fire pit house, particularly dim, with only an incense candle lit on the table. Even with doors and windows tightly closed, the candlelight still flickered eerily, making one’s heart crawl—what made their spines sweat even more was that the Bamei sorcerer had hung the embroidery pattern in a corner, seated himself facing that corner, holding only a single-stringed instrument in his arms and clutching a ritual knife in his hand.

Shen Gun swallowed, afraid to make the slightest sound, staring fixedly as the sorcerer plucked the instrument strings, mumbling something incomprehensible, occasionally using the floor as a drum by tapping his foot irregularly.

Deep mountain villages were quiet at night, making the sound of the instrument, the muttering, and those completely arhythmic foot taps especially spine-chilling.

After a while, the instrument playing stopped.

Shen Gun instinctively knew the prelude was over.

The sorcerer’s head, wearing the shamanic mask, appeared oddly large. He brought his furry head close to the embroidery, concentrating intently.

Through Ma Juanhong’s explanation, Shen Gun now understood that this “looking” wasn’t about recognizing characters, but rather a kind of intuitive sensing, similar to channeling: like viewing a three-dimensional stereogram—stare long enough, and those chaotic color blocks would reveal a three-dimensional image. Whatever that image was, that was what the knotted-rope record was trying to tell you.

The Bamei sorcerer looked for a while, then suddenly turned back and said something to Shen Gun.

Shen Gun couldn’t understand, so Ma Juanhong translated: “He’s asking what this is. He says he’s tried looking at it from several angles but still can’t understand it.”

Indeed, he couldn’t understand it. Shen Gun’s heart pounded, and fine sweat appeared on his forehead. He asked Ma Juanhong to convey: “Tell the master not to feel pressured. Look carefully—whatever parts he can recognize are fine. Even if it’s just one or two parts, that’s okay.”

After hearing Ma Juanhong’s relay, the sorcerer mumbled something and went back to looking more closely.

Shen Gun licked his dry lips, holding a pen over his open notebook. Originally, he had thought the knotted-rope record would be a lengthy discourse, planning to write it all down. Now it seemed that recording even one or two sentences would make the trip worthwhile.

After a while, seeming to finally recognize something, the sorcerer spoke a passage.

Ma Juanhong was also tense, fearing she might miss something crucial. She listened carefully throughout before lowering her voice to relay to Shen Gun: “He says… ‘Fierce fire rolling over boiling blood can open the mechanism’s knot.'”

Shen Gun couldn’t understand at all, but it didn’t matter—he just had to record it faithfully. Head lowered, his pen scratched across the paper as his thoughts raced: If the blood is already boiling, how can fierce fire “roll” over it? If you poured boiling blood onto fierce fire, wouldn’t it just evaporate quickly?

Incomprehensible, completely incomprehensible. After writing it down, he stopped, his hand that had just been writing furiously now slightly trembling, waiting for the next sentence.

The next sentence came a full quarter-hour later.

“Can help you hear… the reluctant voices… of people wandering at the entrance.”

This was even more puzzling than the previous sentence, and since the sorcerer was skipping around to different parts, the statements naturally didn’t connect. But despite his mental complaints, Shen Gun’s hand didn’t slow down at all.

The last sentence caused a disturbance. The sorcerer seemed startled, backing away rapidly, but forgot he was sitting on a stool and tumbled heavily to the ground.

Shen Gun was startled and, along with Ma Juanhong, rushed to help him up, one on each side.

The Bamei sorcerer removed his mask, his head and face drenched in sweat, his expression unstable and frightened, his breathing heavy. After a good while, he spoke three sentences to Ma Juanhong.

More precisely, it was one sentence repeated three times—though Shen Gun couldn’t understand, he could tell the content was the same each time.

He looked questioningly at Ma Juanhong.

Whether it was the creepiness of the words or being frightened by the sorcerer’s condition, Ma Juanhong also felt a chill down her spine. Steadying herself, she translated the final sentence to Shen Gun with lingering fear.

She said: “The sorcerer says, ‘There are terrifying bones that can devour people… terrifying bones.'”