The notebook wasn’t very big – it would be impossible to read together like schoolchildren with heads bumping, trying to accommodate each other’s reading speed. They quickly reached an understanding: Yi Sa would be the primary reader, explaining the main contents after each page, while Zong Hang sat quietly beside her, either waiting patiently or tilting his head to study Yi Sa, occasionally leaning in to read a few paragraphs when necessary.
The title page contained Ding Changsheng’s account, briefly mentioning the Three Rivers Source incident.
“…When we arrived, the disaster had already happened. It was like a scene from hell – dead bodies everywhere. Those who weren’t dead were mangled, crawling on the ground. Many had crawled back into their cars and died in their seats. Some had driven away only to overturn a mile or two away. Jiang Xiaoguang said Jiang Jun had mentioned that cave over the radio, but we searched for miles around and didn’t see any cave…”
Zong Hang murmured: “It must have drifted away, isn’t that why it’s called the ‘Drifting Cave’?”
That was possible, but Yi Sa couldn’t imagine how a cave could “drift” through the ground.
She turned to the next page: “Ding Changsheng and the others quickly contacted their headquarters and unanimously decided to suppress the incident, never making it public. Even internally, they would control who knew about it.”
This was understandable. In the ’90s, such a major incident in the Western region – whether reporting to the police or seeking medical help would certainly attract attention from relevant authorities. One wrong move and the three families’ histories could be completely exposed.
The first page described the arrangements for the deceased and the placement of survivors.
The dead were quickly cremated because “bodies were twisted and deformed, with strange odors, some even developing pustules and sores.” Everyone worried it might spread like a plague. After the mass cremation, they scattered quicklime at the site for disinfection.
A parenthetical note indicated that the list of the deceased was on the last page.
Yi Sa immediately flipped to the last page, counting roughly sixty to seventy names neatly arranged. Yi Jiuge was among them, listed together with many other Yis.
Yi Sa stared blankly for a while before turning back. Too much time had passed – she had little memory of Yi Jiuge, only remembering that when her sister hit her, their father would come to protect her. That was all.
Regarding the survivors, there had been lengthy discussions. Ding Changsheng strongly advocated for “confining them” – “I’m not targeting them specifically, but who knows what they’re infected with, whether they might harm others?”
Zong Hang carefully gauged Yi Sa’s expression: “Yi Sa, although I don’t have a good impression of Ding Changsheng, I think his proposal was… quite reasonable.”
Those bio-hazard horror movies all had similar plots – unknown viruses and diseases initially required isolation and containment. It was only when isolation failed that global disasters occurred.
In that situation, letting them “return home to recover on their own” seemed unreasonable.
Yi Sa hummed in agreement and continued turning pages.
What followed were sporadic records, three to four pages per person, documenting their delirious speech. Some talked a lot, rambling on, but mostly repetitive. Others said little, just a few lines. Some never said anything noteworthy, so weren’t recorded at all.
The first was Yi Ping, male, 34 years old at the time of the incident, 1996-1999 – only lasted three years.
– Why do you keep me locked up? How can I get things done? I have important matters if they’re delayed, can you take responsibility?
– When does the ferry leave? What time is it? Where’s the clock? Why don’t you hang a clock on my wall? I’m in a hurry, I need to go on duty at Jin Tang.
– Everyone’s boarding, they’re boarding, they’re coming, they’ll be here soon.
Below was a small note: Many people mentioned THEM, unclear whether male or female, so uniformly replaced with “it.”
These words were incoherent and bizarre, no wonder Ding Changsheng called them “ravings” and didn’t take them seriously.
The second was Yi Hu’an, male, 27 years old at the time, 1996-2004.
His recorded words indeed seemed like those of a severe mental patient and a war maniac at that.
– We can’t hand over our beautiful rivers and mountains to the enemy! Follow me and charge! Charge! Kill them all!
– We must use sandbags to dam the Yellow River! Fill up the Yangtze! Get ten thousand water pumps to drain the Lancang River! Don’t worry about drinking water, we can drink from the Pacific!
– Everyone must stay alert! This is no joke, absolutely no joke.
Yi Sa didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. With Ding Changsheng’s temperament, facing such situations daily must have made him want to spit blood.
Reading on.
This one was Yi Lian, female, 24 years old at the time, 1996-2009.
A woman’s words were relatively more reserved and introspective.
– We can never go back to how things were, might as well die sooner.
– They’re like us, they know everything.
– Duo she, duo she…
Zong Hang asked curiously: “Duo she? Does it mean to abandon more?”
Yi Sa shook her head, indicating she didn’t know either.
Turning more pages revealed several similar cases – some shouting about impending doom, some repeatedly insisting they needed to go out on business, others constantly asking “Where’s the clock, where’s the clock?”
She turned to a new page.
Yi Baoquan, male, 41 years old at the time, 1996-2007.
Yi Sa’s whole body tensed. Before even reading the details, her heart was already pounding.
Yi Baoquan’s words were lengthy, probably recorded by Ding Changsheng as the handwriting matched that on the title page, with a marginal note saying “nonsensical waste of time” – while others followed instructions and recorded plainly without adding words, only leaders like Ding Changsheng could make such reviewer’s annotations.
Before the record was a line of explanation: Yi Baoquan’s symptoms were slightly different from others. This person was relatively quiet, never shouting, and had drawn a strange picture on his room wall, reproduced on the back.
Yi Sa first turned to the back to look – sure enough, it was that drawing of corpses made into boats. However, though claimed to be an “exact reproduction,” the artistry was far inferior to the wall version, lacking much of its visceral impact.
The great lake and corpses easily led to associations, and Zong Hang blurted out: “This great lake, could it be Lake Poyang?”
Yi Sa didn’t respond, turning straight back.
The first recorded line made her heart skip.
– Corpses are ferries for the dead, dead people open their eyes underwater, quietly coming ashore in the night.
Zong Hang was a bit dazed, recent experiences still vivid: dead people opening their eyes underwater – was this about those dead in the resting place? That number, if they all emerged from the water en masse, would be truly terrifying…
He shuddered.
– Hundred-zhang drums at the Yellow River’s shore, cycles’ bell beneath the hanging water lake, Jin Tang waters connect the next life’s path, and thousand boats await at the crossing.
– They reached a dead end, no path ahead, wanting to turn back.
– Life comes only once, for anyone.
…
Zong Hang stared blankly, feeling every sentence somehow related to him, but unable to pinpoint exactly how.
He pointed to a spot on the page: “Yi Sa, this ‘cycles’ bell beneath the hanging water lake’ – isn’t Lake Poyang the Hanging Water Lake? Could that Taiji disk thing we saw in the resting place be the cycles’ bell?”
But Yi Sa’s attention wasn’t on the “bell.”
She stared at the two characters for “cycle.”
Cycle, life and death, death and life, generally representing rebirth. Here it said “Jin Tang waters connect the next life’s path” – next life naturally meant new life, and with the word “cycle” there, that “duo she”…
A chill ran through her body: “It’s not ‘duo she’ (多舍), the recorder misheard – it should be ‘duo she’ (夺舍) [possession].”
Zong Hang didn’t understand what possession meant: “What does that mean?”
Yi Sa came back to her senses: “Quick, get my phone, it’s in my bag.”
Her tone was off. Zong Hang quickly went to the motorcycle and brought over the hanging bag.
Yi Sa took out her phone, fingers trembling slightly. She scrolled through her contacts and dialed Yi Yunqiao.
Yi Yunqiao answered quickly, her voice characteristically mysterious: “Hey, Sasa, I was just about to call you. Have you heard…”
This Aunt Yunqiao was like a large information processing center – she always had gossip to share whenever you contacted her, never a dull moment.
Yi Sa interrupted her: “Aunt Yunqiao, I need to ask you something. Do you know Yi Baoquan?”
Yi Yunqiao paused: “Yi Baoquan…”
Yi Sa silently prayed: Know him, you must know him. You’re both from the Yi family, around the same generation, he “died” at Three Rivers Source – you couldn’t not know him.
“Why are you asking about him? I called him ‘Brother.’ He died over twenty years ago, just like your sister, in that Three Rivers Source incident. He was a water octopus…”
Speaking of this seemed to stir old memories. Yi Yunqiao sighed: “Back then, our Yi family had the worst luck. Brother Quan was a good person. At my wedding, he gave me a generous red envelope. In the guest book, he even left his thumbprint…”
Wait… thumbprint? What was that about?
Yi Sa asked curiously: “Shouldn’t he have signed his name?”
Yi Yunqiao explained: “That’s exactly why I remember it so clearly. Brother Quan was born in the 50s. When he should have been in school, it coincided with the Movement. He wasn’t interested in studying and preferred running around and causing trouble, so he missed his education. He was barely literate. While others signed their names and wrote congratulations, he only left a thumbprint. He felt embarrassed about it, and we never spread it around… Hey, Sasa, where are you? Why do I hear such loud water?”
Illiterate, couldn’t write… but those characters “We have come” were written quite sharply.
Yi Sa’s mind was buzzing: “Then… could he draw?”
“Someone who didn’t even want to hold a pen, how could he draw? Hey, wait, you must be asking about someone else with the same name?”
Yi Sa didn’t know how she brushed off Yi Yunqiao, muttering some incoherent response to end the conversation.
After hanging up, her whole body felt cold. She lowered her head, hands pressing and kneading her hair as if her brain were a lemon – needing to be squeezed and pressed to produce valuable thoughts.
Zong Hang quietly took her phone and searched for the meaning of “duoshe” (possession).
The results came up quickly, explaining it was a Taoist theory about using someone else’s body to return to the world of the living – superstitiously speaking, it was probably like a spirit possessing a corpse.
Reincarnation, possession – it all sounded like they’d stumbled into ancient Chinese mystical texts or dark legends. Goosebumps rose on Zong Hang’s arms.
After a long while, Yi Sa finally raised her head and said softly: “Zong Hang, could it be that these people who came back to life aren’t their original selves, but have already become someone else?”
As she spoke, darkness had completely fallen, the last ray of light instantly swallowed by the surging, turbulent water surface.
Zong Hang jerked as if stung by a scorpion, shouting: “What are you saying, Yi Sa? No, that’s impossible!”
Yi Sa remained calm.
She pointed to the notebook: “It says here, life comes only once, for anyone, only once.”
Zong Hang said: “Ding Changsheng also said those were just ravings, nonsense!”
Blood rushed unstoppably to his head. At this moment, he’d rather champion Ding Changsheng than believe anything else.
He was Zong Hang, still Zong Hang, son of Zong Bisheng and Tong Hong. Everything about him was the same as before – how could anyone say he was someone else?
Yi Sa reached out and held his hand, saying softly: “Zong Hang, don’t panic. I’m the same as you.”
The water roared, the mist rising from the river was cool, the wind was cool, but Yi Sa’s hand was warm.
She said: “It’s natural Ding Changsheng couldn’t understand this notebook. He’s not a water ghost, doesn’t go underwater often, and hasn’t been to the resting place. Of course, he’d think it was nonsense. Even my sister only realized some things after going down to the resting place.”
Zong Hang held her hand, taking a long while to calm down. He gave a soft “mm,” and in his dazed state, suddenly recalled the dream he’d had in the cave: that postcard he’d sent, stamped by the post office with “Sender not found, delivery impossible.”
Were dreams prophetic? Was he no longer the Zong Hang of before?
Zong Hang’s head throbbed painfully.
Yi Sa comforted him: “Don’t worry too much about it, these are just speculations… The ‘they’ in ‘they have come’ must refer to something specific. However, ‘they’ don’t seem to be human, but rather…”
Zong Hang lowered his voice: “Ghosts?”
Yi Sa slowly shook her head.
No, they seemed quite different from the ghosts and monsters of folk tales, more like some unknown force.
She pondered: “At Three Rivers Source, many Yi family members died, and many lived. Ding Changsheng always thought the survivors were infected, but actually, they revived too quickly. This batch of survivors had already become ‘them,’ whether it was my sister, Jiang Jun, or the people recorded in this notebook.”
“It’s not exactly possession, it’s more like…”
She suddenly came up with a term: “Grafting.”
Unable to explain this clearly, she searched it on her phone to show Zong Hang.
Simply put, it was a plant reproduction method, “attaching a branch or bud from one plant onto the stem or root of another plant, making the two parts grow into a complete plant.” It also mentioned “utilizing the plant’s wound-healing ability.”
She used Zong Hang as an example: “You were shot three times, each shot fatal, but when I later checked your wounds, they had all healed. This is a kind of ‘healing’ ability that humans don’t have, understand? But ‘they’ might have it.”
“As for those corpses in the resting place, though dead, they hadn’t decomposed, still fresh. When you were drowned in the lake, you had just died, possibly meeting the conditions for grafting. But this grafting has rejection reactions – burst blood vessels is one type, growing deformed with displaced muscles and bones is another.”
Zong Hang listened, half-understanding.
He recalled visiting an agritainment farm once, where the farmers working with plants had mentioned grafting, giving an example of grafting potatoes with tomatoes – supposedly the new plant would grow tomatoes above ground and potatoes below.
But he’d never heard of “grafting” people.
While he was confused, he heard Yi Sa sigh: “The waters of our three families run truly deep. Opening Jin Tang, locking Jin Tang – everyone thought it was a safe or treasure chest… ‘Jin Tang waters connect the next life’s path’ – probably every Jin Tang cave was arranged by the ancestors as a nest for grafting.”
Yi Baoquan’s drawing of corpses rowing ashore was a metaphor – how could corpses be used as boats? It was ‘they have come,’ successful grafting, so “dead people open their eyes underwater” and then come ashore.
She turned on her flashlight and reopened the notebook, illuminating it line by line for Zong Hang.
“There might be countless ‘they’ coming.”
“But the first batch of advance forces has already arrived. This first batch was assigned missions, though their ‘grafting’ wasn’t very successful, resulting in all sorts of strange conditions. My sister said she misunderstood ‘perfection’ – we subconsciously think that looking normal and proper is perfect, but what if that’s not the standard at all? Only those who understand their missions are perfect. In this sense, Jiang Jun was more perfect than any of us.”
“Look here, ‘We can never go back to how things were, might as well die’ – she probably knew she had been grafted, wasn’t her original self anymore.”
“And here, ‘I have important matters, I’m in a hurry, need to go on duty at Jin Tang’ – think about Jiang Jun. After he entered the Jin Tang cave under Lake Poyang and inserted the ancestor tablet into the Taiji disk, he wouldn’t leave. He patrolled between the nest combs – doesn’t that look like being on duty?”
It did, and Zong Hang felt chills: “What did he want to do?”
Yi Sa turned off the flashlight.
In the darkness, her eyes were exceptionally bright: “In a way, he was like a midwife. ‘Cycles’ bell beneath the hanging water lake’ – that Taiji disk was the cycles’ bell. Inserting the ancestor tablet was like activation, indicating certain things were about to begin. They were coming, and the corpses in the resting place were all waiting to be grafted. The Mekong also has a hanging water lake – Tonle Sap Lake. The Yellow River is an above-ground river without a hanging water lake, so the poem says ‘hundred-zhang drums at Yellow River’s shore.'”
Zong Hang stammered: “Then where do they come from?”
As soon as he asked, he realized.
From the great rivers.
Someone in the notebook said they wanted to fill the Yellow and Yangtze Rivers and drain the Lancang River – meaning ‘they’ come from the great rivers!
Zong Hang looked at the Yellow River before him, suddenly feeling cold all over, unconsciously shrinking back.
The outlines were no longer visible, just a dark mass merging with the shore. The continuous rumbling of water covered the unfathomable secrets beneath the surface.
If they came from the great rivers, the three rivers were like three birth canals. The Jin Tang Manual didn’t mark treasure locations but an enormous delivery room, each Jin Tang cave a ready departure point for reincarnation.
This world is dazzling and magnificent, with major events and new developments every day, everyone hurrying about in endless cycles…
No one has time to notice a flower blooming, a leaf falling, a whirlpool suddenly appearing on the river, or a new stream above the snow line.
Nor do they notice in secluded places, in the shadows, how ‘their’ three-line reincarnation is quietly unfolding.