The pickup truck only dropped them off in the county town.
Yi Sa found a small hotel, left Wu Gui there, picked up a few essential items from the water ghost bag to pack, and then took Zong Hang on the motorcycle.
As they drove further into the countryside, there were fewer traffic regulations. She rode the motorcycle at full speed, with yellow dust continuously rolling behind them. Despite just being on a motorcycle, Zong Hang felt as if he was experiencing motion sickness like on an airplane.
When they were close to the village where the brick kiln was located, Yi Sa stopped and hid the motorcycle in a small grove, cutting some leafy branches to cover it—they didn’t know if anyone was guarding the kiln, and the motorcycle’s noise was too loud. Rumbling in would inevitably attract attention.
Following the map Ding Yudie had sent, the two carefully slipped into the village.
After walking for a while, the village was completely silent, without even a sound of crowing roosters or barking dogs. The courtyard walls were all low; standing on tiptoes to peek inside, all the gates were locked. The red Spring Festival couplets on the outer doors had faded to light pink, their corners curling up and fluttering in the wind.
Zong Hang stretched his neck, vigilantly looking left and right, and occasionally glancing at the roof edges. When Yi Sa found this strange and asked about it, he said, “I’m looking for security cameras.”
Security cameras? As if they were entering some high-tech secret base. Yi Sa thought that given Ding Changsheng’s personality, he wouldn’t be so conspicuous: though the villagers had moved to the city, they might still occasionally return to their old homes out of nostalgia. He wouldn’t be so bold as to install surveillance on other people’s houses.
The village wasn’t large, and the brick kiln was prominent due to its tall chimney.
Upon closer inspection, there was a lock on the large iron gate. The front row consisted of workers’ quarters, and the back row had massive brick kilns with huge openings. The open space was piled with waste bricks, and in the corners were tilted handcarts and dust-covered tractors with wild grass growing from their crevices—it had all the appearances of an abandoned brick kiln.
They climbed over the iron gate.
Listening carefully, there was the sound of mahjong tiles clicking.
Yi Sa gestured for Zong Hang to stay put while she crouched and moved along the wall to the window where the sound was coming from. She held her breath and slowly peeked in…
Inside were four men, both old and young, gathered around a table playing mahjong. A standing fan was whirring nearby, and in the corner was a basin filled with water, soaking a watermelon.
A middle-aged man with a cigarette hanging from his mouth played a tile: “Two of circles!”
He urged the bald man next to him: “Hurry up!”
But the bald man seemed indecisive: “Let me think for a moment.”
The middle-aged man grew impatient: “How annoying!”
After a pause, he complained again: “I don’t get it anymore. Everyone else has left, but they won’t let us leave. What’s even going on here? Who’s coming? Just staring at nothing all day, it’s infuriating!”
The triangle-eyed man across from him tried to calm him down: “Just relax, play your tiles. You don’t know how to enjoy your good fortune.”
The remaining stocky man also consoled: “It won’t be much longer, just a few more days…”
Besides them, there was no one else in sight.
Yi Sa carefully left the workers’ quarters and snuck into the largest part of the brick kiln complex.
The firing kiln.
It was a circular kiln with fire holes all along the top of its grand arched corridor. The corridor extended left and right, turning to form an overall track-like ring. When the kiln was operating, the openings would be sealed tight and the arcade would be packed with unfired bricks, but now that it was abandoned, everything was cleared out—except for brick dust and stones, there was no other garbage, making it appear clean. Sunlight streamed in through the kiln openings one after another, cutting the ground into distinct patterns of light and shadow.
This was strange—when the Three Rivers Source incident occurred, they must have brought back at least several dozen people for “research,” and to accommodate all these people, they would certainly need a large space…
Yi Sa walked through the brick kiln, observing as she went.
As she walked, she suddenly noticed a smoke vent and had a thought.
To prevent kiln explosions, the outer walls of the brick kiln were built more than two meters thick, with semicircular ground-level smoke vents typically placed between every two kiln openings. These connected to internal flues, which fed into support flues that merged into the main flue, ultimately venting through the chimney.
Unlike the other smoke vents which were mostly filled with ash and brick debris due to abandonment, this particular one had been cleaned.
Yi Sa crouched down and entered.
As soon as she went in, her heart began racing: though the entrance looked small, the space inside was large enough to stand up straight and even take a couple of steps.
The floor was paved with red bricks, just laid down without cement in the joints. She stomped heavily, and sure enough, the sound was hollow underneath.
Yi Sa knelt and pried up one brick, then another. Soon, a square cast iron manhole cover was revealed, with handles on both sides. Yi Sa grabbed one handle in each hand and with a mighty effort, lifted the cover.
Below was a pitch-black square opening.
She carefully set down the cover and knelt at the edge of the hole, shining a pocket flashlight down.
There was a long iron ladder descending vertically.
This must be it, Yi Sa let out a breath, quickly retreated, and positioned herself by the kiln opening. While keeping an eye on the activity in the workers’ quarters window, she made hand signals to Zong Hang.
An inward wave meant “come,” no movement meant “stop,” downward pressure meant “crouch,” and rapid waving meant “hurry.”
Fortunately, those men were completely absorbed in their national pastime, remaining oblivious to everything else. Zong Hang managed to sneak over in a crouch quite smoothly.
Yi Sa pointed to the smoke vent and told Zong Hang: “I’m going down to look for something. You keep watch here. If anyone comes, notify me immediately by hitting the iron ladder three times.”
Zong Hang nodded.
He wanted to go down with her, but keeping watch… was also important.
Yi Sa efficiently climbed down the iron ladder.
The ladder wasn’t short; it seemed Ding Changsheng had developed quite an extensive underground operation here over the years. And this project was perfectly matched with the brick kiln—the excavated soil didn’t need to be transported away, it could be made into clay blanks and fired into bricks right there.
As soon as she reached the bottom, she turned on her flashlight and looked around while walking.
Down here… how to describe it.
It was all rooms. One was clearly a monitoring room—entering it revealed dozens of surveillance screens of various sizes, though they were all dark now—abandonment and power cuts had their advantages; she probably couldn’t have gotten in here when it was operational.
There were also several rooms like large medical offices. Though Yi Sa couldn’t understand everything, she knew the various medical equipment was very professional. Among the three families, there were medical professionals, and it seemed Ding Changsheng had secretly recruited some specialized personnel when setting this place up.
The conference room was just tables and chairs, not worth looking at.
The next room ahead…
Yi Sa turned the handle but couldn’t open it.
It was locked, which meant it must be important. Yi Sa put the pocket flashlight in her mouth and took out a thin wire from her pocket, straightening it to insert it into the keyhole.
It opened after just two attempts.
It was an office, without even a computer. There were file folders standing on the desk, old manila paper document envelopes on the bookshelf, and the pen holder was full of fountain pens and pencils, with ink bottles nearby—this was definitely the style of an old-fashioned person like Ding Changsheng.
Where was the black leather manual?
Yi Sa first searched through the bookshelf but found nothing. She did see a row of books about bacterial infections, including “Guns, Germs, and Steel,” “Practical Infectious Diseases,” and even “Psychiatry” showed up.
Then she pulled open the drawers one by one, picked open a locked one, and found a notebook carefully stored inside. However, it wasn’t black leather but had a soft exercise book cover. A glance showed it contained something like clinical symptom records. Never mind—since it was locked away, it must be important. She rolled it up and tucked it into her lower back.
The black leather manual…
This office didn’t even have cabinets, everything was in plain sight. There couldn’t possibly be secret compartments or anything like that. Besides, Yi Xiao had said that Ding Changsheng thought that item wasn’t important. If it wasn’t important, where would he throw it?
Looking up, she saw the curled edges of newspapers sticking out from the top of the bookshelf. Yi Sa moved a chair to step on, quickly flipping through the stack of newspapers—they were all daily papers and evening papers, with some magazines mixed in, probably what Ding Changsheng used to pass the time…
Yi Sa’s hand trembled.
She found it! It was right under that stack of newspapers. What leather manual—it was just a notebook with cheap black plastic covers. Yi Sa quickly pulled it out and opened it to look.
The first page was densely packed with writing, beginning with—
“After November 19, 1996, after discussion, we unified all the injured people in one place. After some time, I noticed that many people showed signs of mental disorder, often speaking nonsense. Although I felt these words were meaningless, I still required the care staff to record whatever they said…”
Flipping further, the handwriting varied, probably recorded by different people.
This must be the right notebook. As for the detailed contents, better look at it after getting out.
Yi Sa quickly tucked this one away too, and then put everything back in place. Though she’d only been down here for a short time, her back was already sweating—after all, she was stealing and felt guilty.
Closing the door and coming out, she originally intended to go back up quickly, but when her flashlight beam swept across, it revealed a fork in the corridor at the end.
There were more rooms—what were those for?
Yi Sa hesitated for a moment: damn it, since she was already here, might as well see everything.
She gritted her teeth and walked quickly over.
Turning down the fork, her flashlight beam passed over doors of identical size. These doors weren’t locked, some were half-closed, some wide open. Each had a palm-sized transparent plastic sheet stuck to it, with paper slips inserted showing different names, written in pen ink that had already faded and blurred.
And most of those names had the surname “Yi.”
Yi Sa’s heart began pounding wildly. Her flashlight beam swept around randomly before suddenly stopping.
Yi Xiao.
She took two quick steps forward and pushed open the door.
The room was narrow and cramped, just a few steps from one end to the other. The largest piece of furniture was a single bed, stripped of all mattresses and bedding, leaving only the wooden frame. Under the bed was an old-style spittoon, and beside the head of the bed was a table with two iron rice bowls on it.
Such sparse furnishings had carried the entirety of someone’s life for over twenty years.
The flashlight beam swept across the wall.
The wall was covered with all sorts of writing—some written with pens, some scratched with implements, and some written in blood.
Yi Xiao had also written, “They’re coming.”
She had written other things too. Jiang Jun’s name appeared several times, always followed by “Don’t die, wait for me to find you.”
So in the end, did you get your wish?
She also saw the familiar phrase “The wind whistles and the wood sighs,” followed by a long passage—
“I don’t like the name, Yi Xiao, I should be called Yi Sa. I like wind, not plants and trees. Wind can freely go anywhere, while plants and trees are trapped in one place forever, like a curse. I’ve been trapped here for seventeen years…”
Among all the wall writings, “Yi Sa” appeared only this once, and not even because she missed her.
Yi Sa slowly backed out. She wasn’t comfortable facing the living Yi Xiao, nor being in the environment where she had lived for so long.
She wanted to scan through the remaining rooms as quickly as possible.
The furnishings in the rooms were all similar, and the walls all had varying amounts of writing.
Some cursed Ding Changsheng violently.
—You bastard Ding, let me go, I want to go home, even if I die I want to die at home.
Some were terrified.
—I’m going to die, I’m going to die, my blood vessels are growing out of my flesh, I don’t want to die.
Some prayed to the ancestral masters for protection.
She also saw “They’re Coming” in various sizes.
When she pushed open another door, Yi Sa froze for a moment, then felt her hair stand on end.
The occupant was long gone, of course, and the furnishings weren’t particularly different, but it gave an extremely cold and strange feeling as if though the person had left, they had left behind some sort of aura that continued to intimidate visitors.
On the wall, there were no hysterical outbursts, no chaotic scrawls. Instead, with extremely calm strokes, a picture had been drawn.
Dark brown—probably drawn with blood.
The picture showed a vast lake.
More than ten people were riding boats, rising up from the jumbled lake bottom—yes, only one was sailing on the surface—the others, at varying heights, were all coming up from the bottom of the lake. More intriguingly, probably lacking the energy to draw each one in detail, behind the last boat, dots like sesame seeds represented countless more followers.
Yi Sa felt something was off about the image. As she moved closer, she suddenly shuddered, realizing what it was.
Those people weren’t riding boats—they were riding people!
The horizontal corpses, at first glance, looked like boats—those people were paddling corpses, rushing forward eagerly, swarming towards the lake surface…
At the top of the drawing were four neat characters.
Not “They’re coming,” but…
“We are coming.”
“We are coming.”
Yi Sa felt an indescribable strange sensation surge in her heart. Just as she was murmuring these words, she suddenly heard faint knocking sounds from the iron ladder above, three knocks, then three more.
There was trouble above!
Yi Sa instantly snapped back to reality. Without time to think further, she rushed out the door. After running just two steps, she suddenly turned back to look at the name on the door.
The person who wrote “We Are Coming” was called Yi Baoquan.