This stretch of water wasn’t long or deep, and they soon turned into a dry passage. But the next few sections were deadly—several times, he was completely submerged underwater.
Shen Gun didn’t have much swimming ability, but he still desperately held his breath, fearing that a single cough might alert the giant alligator and earn him another bite.
His slender waist—yes, genuinely slender compared to the alligator’s mouth—couldn’t withstand much more abuse from the creature’s jaws.
After what felt like an endless journey through winding paths, though in reality it hadn’t been very long, he was suddenly thrown down roughly.
This fall pulled at his wounds, causing excruciating pain. Shen Gun rolled twice on the ground, instinctively raising both hands to shield his face, attempting a futile defense. But the giant alligator didn’t even look at him. It twisted its body and swept its massive tail—had Shen Gun not ducked quickly, his head would likely have been split open. Even just grazing his scalp, the force of the wind was substantial, leaving his head throbbing and his scalp stinging.
Then the giant alligator darted away.
Shen Gun sat stunned for several seconds: was it not in a hurry to eat him, treating him as… food storage?
But he quickly realized that time was precious. Even if given just one more minute, he needed to actively seek help. Most importantly, he needed to let the Mountain Ghost know he was still alive, not devoured—only then would they organize a rescue. Even earthquake rescue teams first confirm there are signs of life beneath the rubble.
Shen Gun swallowed dryly, enduring the pain in his waist, hips, and thighs. He forcefully tapped his headlamp a few times to normalize its illumination, then nervously surveyed his surroundings.
This was… an underground cavern combined with a crevice lake. Calling it a lake was somewhat exaggerated—it was really only the size of a large pond. The water was extremely murky, yellowish-brown, with water continuously seeping in from crevices high above, creating tiny ripples on the eerily still surface.
This must be the lair where the giant alligator normally lived and rested, right?
As he looked around, Shen Gun’s eyes suddenly lit up.
He discovered that more than half of the cavern’s ceiling was sealed with bronze covers. Even along the lower edges, bronze had been poured as covering, giving the impression that this cavern wasn’t originally a dead end—later, someone had performed large-scale filling and bronze casting to create the current “isolation.”
Knocking on the bronze cover would produce a sound. If the entire bronze cover was connected as one piece, the Mountain Ghost at the pit might hear his knocking. Besides, it was so quiet underground that sound could travel easily.
Shen Gun grew excited. He searched around and quickly found a fist-sized stone: he could knock a few times to send a message. He even planned to knock four or five times, then quickly lie back down and continue playing dead. Perhaps the giant alligator was stupid enough that even if the sound brought it back, it wouldn’t know he was the one knocking.
Without delay, Shen Gun removed his outer garment and tightly bound it around his injured waist and hips to prevent blood from dripping. Then he grasped the stone and climbed toward the higher ground, using the natural terrain of the cavern. When he reached a suitable position, he mustered all his strength to raise his hand and struck the bronze cover with a “bang, bang, bang.”
After every few strikes, he paused to listen for any movement, ready to rush back and play dead at any moment. By the third or fourth round of knocking, his peripheral vision caught something unusual.
In the center of the water’s surface, a small area glowed with a golden halo. Within this gold were different colored light halos, flowing and flickering beautifully. But in an instant, the glow disappeared, as if covered by something.
Shen Gun thought he was hallucinating. He blinked hard several times and looked again. This time, he saw no glow but instead noticed a massive shadow slowly rising beneath the water’s surface.
Damn, there was something else in the water?
Shen Gun’s entire body froze. He gripped the stone tightly and remained motionless against the rock wall. In the extreme silence, he could almost hear his teeth chattering.
The glow mysteriously appeared again, this time on the other side, quickly rolling across a palm-sized area of the water’s surface. But Shen Gun couldn’t afford to chase after any bright lights now—he saw an alligator’s head partially surfacing from the water.
There were two giant alligators underground!
And what’s more, he had thought the one that had carried him was already enormous, but now it seemed like a mere apprentice compared to this master—this one hadn’t fully surfaced, and he couldn’t see its complete form, but judging from the visible part, its blackened crocodilian head alone was almost as large as a small table.
No wonder the smaller giant alligator had dropped him here—was it paying respects to this elder one, making an offering?
Shen Gun didn’t dare move a muscle, even holding his breath. Fortunately, this larger one seemed to have been sleeping and wasn’t fully awake—the eye facing Shen Gun’s direction had drooping flesh, half-closed, showing only a narrow slit. After the knocking sound stopped, it didn’t surface any further. After pausing briefly, it slowly sank back down.
However, this rising and falling motion stirred the murky water, bringing up excrement and decomposed matter, making the water surface mottled with lighter and darker patches. Even more horrifying was the smell—truly nauseating.
Shen Gun’s arm hung down, the stone in his hand suddenly feeling like it weighed a thousand pounds. Now he wouldn’t dare knock again, even if it killed him. Besides, wouldn’t knocking harm others? If he lured the Mountain Ghost here, their equipment at best consisted of daggers and batons—those sticks would be too thin even to serve as toothpicks for the giant alligator.
He sat down heavily, surveying the gloomy cavern: was this to be his final resting place?
He felt around his waist, checking if he had anything useful. Eventually, he found a slingshot and a small wine gourd.
Duan Wenxi’s wine gourd.
—I drink half the gourd, leaving three sips for you. If fate denies our meeting, may we still share this wine?
Because the gourd was small and light, he had carried it ever since, usually tucked at his waist. As for those three sips of wine, after climbing the cliff, he had taken one sip, resulting in dizziness for half a day—he had a one-cup tolerance.
But he had decided to finish it all, to honor Miss Duan’s kindness, though he wasn’t concerned about exactly what kindness she had shown him. He had planned it all out: of the remaining two sips, he would drink one when finding Duan Wenxi’s remains, and the final sip when the matter of the box was completely resolved.
Now it seemed there would be no opportunity.
He was going to be eaten by an alligator.
Fate had still been kind to him, blessing him with a miraculous one-cup tolerance and mysteriously arranging for him to have a gourd of wine in his moment of desperation—he would rather be drunk when the alligator devoured him than experience it all while conscious…
Just as he was thinking this, there was sudden movement outside. The smaller giant alligator had returned, exuding murderous intent and extremely agitated for unknown reasons, its mouth full of chaotic, sharp white teeth.
One look told him it had come to tear him apart. Shen Gun unscrewed the wine gourd, gulped down a large sip, then glared fiercely at the alligator, stuffing the gourd cap into the slingshot pouch.
Come on, he would make his final stand in life: throughout his life, he had never shot accurately with a slingshot. Perhaps, at life’s end, with liquid courage, this “pellet” from Miss Duan, carrying his anger and sorrow, would unleash miraculous power and blind the alligator’s eye in one strike!
The gourd cap whistled through the air.
As the alcohol took effect, Shen Gun collapsed against the bronze cover.
He didn’t see that his “pellet” struck the rock wall about ten meters away from the alligator’s head, then rolled into the lake water, creating ripple after ripple.
Miracles generally don’t happen to people like him who lack preparation, training, and don’t even aim properly.
The wind howled fiercely as bonfires blazed.
Shen Gun saw himself, arms hanging down, placing the Mountain Gallbladder into a box, while someone nearby chanted: “One Mountain Gallbladder.”
With previous experience, he listened carefully to the person’s pronunciation and wording. It truly wasn’t standard Chinese. Though he had traveled extensively and heard countless dialects, this wasn’t any language he recognized.
Yet somehow, he could clearly understand what the other person was expressing.
Who was this person placing the Mountain Gallbladder? Shen Gun desperately searched for a mirror, wanting to see if this person’s face matched his own, but couldn’t find one.
The next moment, he felt himself walking with that person, constantly making way for one hurried person after another. These people remained indistinct shadows, but he could see they carried different objects.
Someone approached him, asking: “Is your box still empty?”
He heard himself answer: “Empty, mine is only half full.”
That person sighed with relief: “Mine is already full, so let me move this to yours.”
With that, they handed him a heavy package.
He carried this package back, passing one half-open box after another, hearing various tallying voices, some clear, some muffled.
—Original text: Mountain Classic, one scroll; Sea Classic, one scroll; Great Wilderness Classic, one scroll.
—Carved by Fu Xi: Yin-Yang Eight Trigrams Double Fish Stone Plate, one piece.
—Nüwa: Human-shaped clay figurines, sixteen.
…
He trudged back to his box this way, and the person guarding the box looked at what was in his hands and announced: “Seven pieces of North Star bones…”
The scene suddenly changed.
Still in the deep night, with howling winds across an empty wilderness, deserted for hundreds of miles. Deep within a small mountain cave, a flickering torch cast the whispering silhouettes of two people onto the rock wall, furtive yet enormous.
“Are these all the Phoenix Plumes? All here?”
“All here.”
“What about the dragon bones? Why are they just a packet of ashes?”
“These are burned ones. I scraped them all together. I couldn’t find the others—I don’t know where they’ve hidden them. Don’t worry, I’ll think of something and ask around. Also, have you tracked down the craftsmen?”
“Yes, there are forty boxes with the phoenix and luan bird patterns, all made by Kuang…”
There seemed to be a strange sound outside. The two shadows looked back in alarm, and one of them reached out and extinguished the torch in one grasp.
The scene changed again. This time it wasn’t night—bright daylight made everything blindingly white, so bright it hurt the eyes.
He lay on his back, unable to open his eyes against the glare. A figure, distorted by the white light, roared: “Dig out his heart, pull out his intestines!”
He was terrified. As he tried to escape, he felt countless hands suddenly emerge from the ground beside him. One had extremely sharp nails that pierced his chest with a soft sound, then grasped the flesh on both sides and ripped downward. The countless hands followed, grabbing and scratching wildly…
He screamed repeatedly, crying for help, but suddenly a slender, cool hand firmly covered his mouth.
…
Shen Gun shook his head desperately, frustrated that he couldn’t open his mouth. He suddenly opened his eyes to see Meng Qianzi, pale-faced, forcefully covering his mouth while scolding him in a low voice: “We’re here to rescue you! Why are you shouting?”
Beside them, Jiang Lian held a dagger, vigilantly watching the cave entrance. He quietly instructed Shen Gun: “Don’t make any sound. It’s almost noon, the Mountain Ghost reinforcements might have arrived. If we can sneak out quietly…”
…
After countless twists and turns, he and Meng Qianzi had unexpectedly found their way to this cave entrance.
The one-eyed earth dragon lay at the entrance, sound asleep.
Creatures like alligators don’t fully sleep when highly alert. There’s a saying, “sleep with one eye open,” meaning half the alligator’s brain sleeps while the other half remains awake, with one eye always open—but Meng Qianzi had accidentally stabbed its eye blind, and an alligator’s most vulnerable parts are its nose and eyes.
In the past decade or so, every documented case of someone escaping from an alligator’s mouth involved survivors striking the alligator’s head and face with all their might, some even using their hands to blind the alligator’s eyes. So this alligator was seriously injured, sleeping more deeply than usual. Jiang Lian and Meng Qianzi had benefited from this, taking the risk to sneak in through the cave entrance.
But just as they approached, before they could wake him, Shen Gun suddenly cried out “help,” and it was only due to Meng Qianzi’s quick reaction that his mouth was covered in time.
Seeing his companions, Shen Gun felt immensely relieved. He quickly shut his mouth, nodding repeatedly to indicate full cooperation. Just as he was about to stand, his backside bumped into something.
It was the wine gourd!
With a clang, the gourd struck the bronze cover nearby, then continued rolling, falling toward the lower area.
Meng Qianzi’s scalp tingled. Without thinking, she flipped downward, reaching out to grab the gourd, but missed by just a little. Another clanging sound, and the gourd continued to fall.
There was no time to hesitate. Meng Qianzi flipped again, then slid along the ground, extending her arm just in time to catch the gourd. By now, she was only a few meters from the water’s edge.
She let out a soft sigh of relief, holding up the gourd with a smile toward Jiang Lian and Shen Gun.
Jiang Lian didn’t smile. He vaguely sensed something was wrong with the water behind Meng Qianzi.
And Shen Gun was so terrified that his face turned white. At this point, he no longer cared about making noise. Using every ounce of his strength, he shouted: “Run! Run now!”