No one expected Jiang Lian to tug on the rope so soon after descending. Meng Qianzi thought something had happened, and her heart tightened. When she saw the gentle amplitude of the rope’s movement, she secretly breathed a sigh of relief.
Jiang Lian reached the bottom of the pit and decided it was better not to speak loudly. He tugged on the rope to come back up. The rain had lessened considerably. He pushed away the umbrella extended toward him and said to Meng Qianzi, “Granny Duan had been down there before. She left writing on the wall, quite lengthy, too complex to explain in a few sentences. It’s not far down in the coffin pit, though part of it is submerged in water and can’t be seen. Should I take pictures to show you, or would you prefer to go down and see for yourselves?”
He meant nothing particular by this question, but to some of the mountain folk, it sounded somewhat offensive: how could they let an outsider take pictures of their ancestors’ writings when they should be brave enough to go down themselves?
Lu Sanming blurted out: “Of course, we should go ourselves…”
He didn’t finish his sentence, suddenly realizing: who would they send down? What if that thing appeared again while they were looking at the writings…
His head began to throb: it’s not the thousand possibilities that scare you, but the one you didn’t prepare for.
Meng Qianzi asked: “Is the content of the writing… confidential?”
Jiang Lian thought for a moment: “I’d say it’s quite confidential.”
Meng Qianzi said, “Then I’ll go.”
To prevent Lu Sanming and the others from objecting, she spoke first: “Personally, Granny Duan was Big Mama’s foster mother, which makes her my grandmother’s generation; officially, since it’s a secret left by a Mountain Ghost elder, I should be the one to see it. You all wait here. If anything happens, rescue me immediately from above ground. If you can’t get me out, follow our previous plan—call for Qu Qiao and Xian Qionghua with all equipment ready before going down into the coffin pit.”
Lu Sanming’s face changed color: “Miss Meng, this won’t do! Please wait until all the equipment arrives before going down. What if…”
Meng Qianzi said, “How long does it take to read a message? Besides, it’s not deep inside the coffin pit—I could come back up with one turn of the body. In the time you’ve spent trying to persuade me, I could have already finished reading it.”
Lu Sanming had nothing more to say.
Since the boss was determined to go down into the coffin pit, the others couldn’t just stand idly at the edge. Half of them followed down into the ground pit to help install another pulley.
Seeing Lu Sanming’s anxious demeanor, Jiang Lian found it both amusing and understandable. He said to him, “Don’t worry, I’ll go down first and stay below Miss Meng. If anything happens, I’ll warn her to leave first and shield her if needed. Nothing will happen.”
Lu Sanming was overjoyed: “That… in that case, Brother Lian, thank you so much!”
What kind of bullshit is this? Meng Qianzi felt anger rising in her heart: why should he be obligated to shield anyone?
She was about to scold Lu Sanming, but remembered she had already made him lose face in front of everyone today. It wouldn’t be right to humiliate him a second time, especially considering his age…
She had to swallow her anger.
However, as she fastened the rope around herself, she quietly asked Jiang Lian: “Aren’t you afraid?”
Jiang Lian understood her meaning: “Of course I’m afraid, but I’m going down to find Shen Gun anyway. If I can protect you while I’m at it, isn’t that killing two birds with one stone? When doing things, one should always aim for maximum efficiency.”
Saying this, he slowly released the wheel axle and gradually descended into the coffin pit. Meng Qianzi took a deep breath and quickly followed. Just as she entered the bottom of the coffin pit, before she could steady herself, she heard Jiang Lian say: “Actually…”
Looking toward the sound, she saw Jiang Lian not far below her, tilting his body upward, looking at her: “I know that finding the box will inevitably be dangerous. I just hope we can quickly get through all these dangers, finish this major task, and afterward, live more freely.”
Meng Qianzi asked him: “Do you feel that finding the box is a burden to you?”
Jiang Lian nodded: “A huge burden. No matter how willingly I undertake it, it’s still a huge burden. That’s why I want to rush forward, faster and faster. I’m not afraid of suffering or taking risks. The sooner we resolve this, the sooner I can do what I want to do, without having to breathe with a rock on my chest.”
Meng Qianzi was slightly moved.
Jiang Lian was always smiling, sometimes almost lazily, which often gave people the false impression that nothing bothered him, no matter how serious—but it turned out he felt pressure too.
Meng Qianzi said, “So, what do you want to do?”
The corner of Jiang Lian’s lips curved up as he replied: “Just live a good life, of course.”
With that, he continued down the rope.
Jiang Lian did indeed stop below her, closer to the water’s surface. Meng Qianzi couldn’t descend with him; she had to start from the beginning, reading the writing on the wall line by line.
The first line read: Duan Wenxi obtained the Phoenix Plume here.
“Plume” refers to a bird’s feather. Directly translated, it meant that Duan Wenxi had taken a phoenix feather from this place.
Meng Qianzi held her breath and continued reading line by line.
Duan Wenxi was also from the old generation, so her wording mixed classical and vernacular styles. On this wall, she had recorded the extraordinary events that occurred during her journey to Wubairong Village.
Meng Qianzi read quickly, adding appropriate inferences and drawing on her understanding of Duan Wenxi’s character, allowing her to reconstruct the basic story.
It turned out that during those days, Duan Wenxi, accompanied by mountain folk, was patrolling the northwestern Gui region and stayed in Wubairong Village.
One night at the first crow of the rooster, Duan Wenxi’s experienced ears immediately recognized it as someone imitating a rooster. Opening the door, she found a note inviting her to meet alone behind the fifth Zongzi Mountain to the right of the village’s dirt road.
By then, it was already the 1970s, and most regions were either engaged in political movements or focused on production. The ways of martial artists and Taoists had long gone out of fashion. So, despite the strange circumstances, Duan Wenxi felt a sense of nostalgia upon seeing the note, reminiscent of her past jianghu life.
Although she was already seventy, her bold spirit remained as strong as ever. With her vast experience, she feared no petty schemes, and besides, she was annoyed by those mountain folk followers who trailed her everywhere like flies.
So she secretly slipped away from everyone and went directly to the meeting place.
Behind Zongzi Mountain, she met Yanluo.
During their conversation, she learned that Yanluo had once been a bandit in western Hunan. Though they stood on opposite sides of right and wrong, they could still be considered fellows of the martial world. Moreover, with the changing times and the new society, past identities of bandits and heroes had become history; behind Zongzi Mountain stood one in her seventies and one in his sixties.
Therefore, Duan Wenxi wasn’t particularly bothered by his former bandit background.
Yanluo, cunning and suspicious by nature, had probably eavesdropped on the mountain folk’s conversations. He got straight to the point, saying that years ago, while robbing, he had stumbled upon a great secret containing an immense fortune, which he wanted to give to Duan Wenxi.
His exact words were: “Whoever obtains the Qilin Crystal becomes divine and gains immortality.”
Duan Wenxi couldn’t believe this and laughed heartily, but Yanluo remained calm and pulled out an object wrapped in a damp handkerchief from his pocket. He held it in his palm and presented it to Duan Wenxi.
Strangely, though he initially held the handkerchief package in his palm, when he withdrew his hand, the package remained suspended in midair, neither falling nor dropping.
Duan Wenxi’s laughter abruptly stopped.
Before her eyes, Yanluo unwrapped the handkerchief. As the cloth scattered and drifted downward, the contents remained suspended in midair.
It was a seemingly ordinary, grayish-white, thin piece of bone about the size of a child’s palm.
Yanluo explained that this was a fragment of dragon bone—a real dragon’s bone. True dragons fly through the rain; their bones float when wet and fall when dry. Dragons are proud creatures and would never leave their bodies exposed in the wilderness. Dragon bones placed on the ground would disappear into stone if on stone, or into soil if on soil, within the time it takes to burn a stick of incense.
This fragment, he said, was found at the windward entrance of Zhenlong Mountain after years of intermittent scraping and grinding of cliff rocks. Legend had it that someone once scattered dragon bone ashes there, and when the wind blew, the ashes took the form of a dragon and moved through the air, remaining suspended for a long time before falling—a phenomenon known as “dragon rising with the wind.” Even today, standing at the windward entrance and carefully observing the vast forest below, one could vaguely make out what appeared to be a blue dragon lying among the trees, caused by the influence of the dragon bone ashes on the local soil and vegetation.
The wind couldn’t blow away the fragment; it hovered momentarily before slowly descending and eventually disappearing into the cliff rock.
Corresponding to Zhenlong Mountain’s “dragon rising with the wind” was Phoenix Mountain’s “phoenix eye revealed by water.”
During his more than ten years living in Wubairong Village, Yanluo, under the guise of a traveling peddler, had visited Phoenix Mountain’s right eye over a hundred times. Finally, on a recent rainy day, he found a clue.
He openly admitted that he admired the Mountain Ghost’s extraordinary abilities and wished to borrow her power. He invited Duan Wenxi to excavate the Phoenix Eye together: just as the windward cliff entrance contained dragon bone fragments, the Phoenix Eye concealed a Phoenix Plume.
Ordinary fire couldn’t burn dragon bones; only fire lit by a Phoenix Plume could incinerate them. Possessing the dragon bone fragment and obtaining the Phoenix Plume, then using the latter to ignite the former, was key to finding the Qilin Crystal. Furthermore, it was said that the light from burning dragon bones could illuminate the path to the next life.
Duan Wenxi had no reason to refuse. She had spent half her life seeking extraordinary phenomena, and this was perhaps the most bizarre. Besides, in her twilight years, she grew curious about the afterlife: rather than withering away as an old woman waiting for death in Shangui Study, she preferred to mount her old steed and unsheathe her precious sword once more—better to die on the road than decay in bed.
She wrote: “At the Phoenix Eye, we dug relentlessly, finding three layers of coffins. The Nine-Bell tribe had gathered sixty-six grievance bones in the wilderness, three threes endless, six sixes infinite, using boundless, hidden, resentful energy to suppress the auspicious light of the Phoenix Plume. The third coffin layer forms a curtained door. From here downward, do not sound the bronze bell, for if rung, the earth dragon will come…”
The inscription ended there; the rest was submerged underwater.
Upon seeing the words “earth dragon,” Meng Qianzi could barely breathe. Below her feet was the water surface, extremely murky, with broken coffin pieces floating on top. Shining her flashlight down, she could vaguely see white bones submerged within—these must be the fallen human bones. Even the driest bones have a greater density than water and would sink rather than float.
Glancing sideways, she saw Jiang Lian trying to enter the water. Meng Qianzi lowered her voice and sharply called out: “Come back!”
Jiang Lian turned his head at her voice, knowing she had finished reading: “It mentions an earth dragon. Is that a type of dragon?”
Meng Qianzi shook her head: “No, it’s an alligator. Granny Duan used old terminology. My Big Mama was influenced by her and still calls alligators ‘earth dragons’ or ‘pig-wife dragons.'”
As she spoke, she repeatedly shone her flashlight over the water surface and into the depths of each passage: when alligators float on the water surface like dead wood, flashlight beams can detect their eyes, but if they’re submerged, it’s hard to tell…
Chills ran down her spine, and she felt that speaking here was too dangerous. She pulled Jiang Lian: “Let’s go higher up, we’ll talk there.”
Jiang Lian rotated the bearing tied around his waist, ascending with her to near the bottom of the coffin pit. Meng Qianzi still vigilantly looked at various parts of the water surface: “Don’t go down yet, wait for the equipment. You’ve heard the mountain folks’ description—that earth dragon is huge, and in such a bizarre place, the alligators down there are not like the ones you’ve seen in zoos.”
“There are two possibilities now. First, Shen Gun just entered the water and was swallowed by that earth dragon, in which case he’s already dead and any rescue would be futile; second, Shen Gun was lucky and found a hiding place—if he can hide a little longer, until our equipment arrives, there’s still hope for rescue. You can’t save him. With that small dagger of yours, it wouldn’t even tickle an alligator, you know?”
Jiang Lian couldn’t argue. It was strange how people behaved—not knowing what something was, he had been eager to try, but once he knew…
With his small dagger against a giant alligator, he would only be sending himself to death.
At the very least, he wanted to see the rest of Duan Wenxi’s message. He cleared his throat, about to say something, then suddenly stopped. After a while, he quietly asked her: “Did you hear something?”
Meng Qianzi made a “shush” sound and concentrated on listening.
From somewhere deep in one of the passages came intermittent, clanking sounds—faint knocking.
Jiang Lian’s spirits immediately lifted: “That’s human knocking, Qianzi, definitely human! I’ll go check quickly.”
With that, he slid down, and before Meng Qianzi could stop him, he had slipped into the water.
He had prepared to swim for a while, thinking the water would be deep, but it only came up to his waist when he stood. Jiang Lian took a deep breath and hurried toward the nearest passage, listened for two seconds, decided it wasn’t right, and tried another—the knocking sound was already so faint and came irregularly, stopping for long periods, making one’s heart race with anxiety.
Meng Qianzi watched from above, her heart nearly jumping out of her chest: she wasn’t an alligator expert and didn’t know their habits. Would a person moving through water and disturbing the flow attract their attention?
A thought flashed through her mind: might as well go all the way and knock Jiang Lian unconscious to bring him back—that would be simpler than watching anxiously…
Just then, Jiang Lian suddenly pointed to one of the passages: “Here, it’s this one!”
He stepped in, but after walking just a few steps, his heart sank: this passage wasn’t straight at all. Not far ahead, there was a branch to the side, and shining his flashlight further ahead revealed more branches.
Jiang Lian’s mind buzzed: this wasn’t a passage—underground was a maze!
Just as this thought struck him, he suddenly felt his spine tingle: something in the water pushed against his legs as he stood in the water. Something was coming straight at him!
Looking up urgently, he saw the water in front of him surging into waves, with a massive black shadow approaching incredibly fast, already just meters away.
Jiang Lian had no time to think. With a loud shout: “Qianzi! Get away!” he lunged into the nearest branch passage before finishing his words.
Meng Qianzi watched helplessly as Jiang Lian entered the passage, thinking she really should knock him unconscious—she couldn’t stand seeing such reckless behavior.
Just as she turned the axle to descend about a meter, she heard Jiang Lian’s warning. Simultaneously, water surged as an earth dragon shot in, bringing a gust of wind that hit her face.
Damn, is this an alligator?
It was at least five or six meters long, shaped like an alligator and covered in scales, but with four dog-like legs, each as thick as a flesh pillar. As soon as it entered the chamber, it immediately stood upright, filling the air with a putrid stench.
Meng Qianzi urgently shook the rope and shouted: “Pull the rope!”
The rope began to ascend rapidly, but it was too late. The earth dragon was too large and stood up too quickly. With a low growl, its two front legs grabbed the broken coffin opening. The pulley, simply set up at the edge of the coffin opening, couldn’t withstand such force. It snapped, causing the rope and wheel to fall amid a chorus of screams from above as Meng Qianzi plunged heavily into the water with a splash.