Daomu Biji

After Fatty went up, I heard various sounds—his cough and the dragging of various things, which lasted for more than ten minutes.

I finally got impatient waiting below and asked anxiously, "What's the matter? What's the situation? How are they?"

My heart was very uneasy. When I heard that the old woman and Little Brother were both there, my heart was already tight and then Fatty told me that I might not be able to accept it.

Could I really not accept it? No, I really didn't think so. When I entered the ancient building, I told myself very clearly in my heart that I would probably face some death—I had such a premonition. On a larger level, I had been building their deaths up in my mind since the beginning so I could face reality if that were the case, but the process wasn't particularly comfortable.

I called several times before Fatty leaned out and said to me, "Come on up."

My heart said, "You just casually said they're all dead, what's the problem?" I have to go and see for myself.

I reached for Fatty, grabbed the edge of the burnt coffin and scrambled to climb up.

Above was a very, very small mezzanine, about 1.23 meters high and full of people from Granny Huo's team.

There was an indescribable smell in the whole area, the stench of excrement and urine almost indistinguishable from that of rot.

I covered my nose and mouth and saw many traces of dried liquid on the ground that should have flowed from the place where these people were lying. It had dried on the wood floor, leaving crimson marks.

Fatty kept coughing and said to me, "Basically all dead."

I looked around, finding it difficult to identify these people in the dark. The first person I recognized was Granny Huo, because her characteristics were very obvious. I climbed over and came to her side, finding that she had been dead for quite a long time. Even her eyes had become cloudy and turned an amber color, her mouth was very wide open, and her facial expression looked very restless.

She must have died rather unwillingly. I sighed. Truthfully, I had no feelings for Granny Huo, but she was an elder after all. I still couldn't restrain my sadness when I saw someone I know become a corpse.

Continuing to look to the side, I saw several faces I knew, but now they were all stiff. After their deaths, excrement and urine flowed everywhere, and these normally all-powerful players had now turned into this. It was a bit ugly.

"Where's Little Brother?" My heart sank completely and I knew everything was over. Although different from what Ghost had said, they seemed to have found a place to escape the alkaline fog, but the result was still the same.

Surprisingly, I didn't feel sad, but I could feel a very strong emotion ready to gush out at any time, surpa.s.sing all other feelings. It was called "collapse". I forcefully suppressed it, not knowing whether my ability to escape from reality had improved to a certain level or whether my mind just couldn't accept such information and chose to bypa.s.s it.

Fatty used a flashlight to illuminate the corner where there was a pile of clothes, and said to me, "Don't look at it yet. Let's first see if there's anything valuable here. It stinks."

I secretly scolded in my heat: "Could you be more ruthless? Little Brother is dead, and you care about the f.u.c.king stench." Thinking about it, I went over and tore open the pile of clothes, immediately seeing Little brother's shrunken face.

I froze for a moment and suddenly went rigid, my mind going blank.

I couldn't describe the blankness in my heart, and suddenly didn't know what to do.

Dead?

You've got to be kidding me.

Is he really dead? Hey, what kind of international joke was this?

"Wake up and let's go home." I patted his face and suddenly felt it was all very funny. I turned to Fatty and laughed: "Look at Little Brother."

"I know." Fatty said in a low voice.

Then, my hand began to shake uncontrollably. When I looked at it, I found that even though there was no sadness in my heart and my consciousness didn't react, my body still felt despair instinctively.

My heart said, "He's really f.u.c.king sitting there, really f.u.c.king dead, Poker-Face is really f.u.c.king dead!"

There was still such a thing in this world… Poker-Face was unexpectedly mortal.

This Zhang Jialou was really amazing. I had always felt that Ghost was an alarmist, but now I only felt like the sky was spinning.

Poker-Face was a miracle, and his death suddenly made me feel that the whole world had become extremely real and cruel. Couldn't all miracles

After a long time, I began to feel a touch of sadness. My instincts were pus.h.i.+ng down the collapsing emotions, but there were still all kinds of uncomfortable feelings leaking from the "pressure cooker" of emotion. I knew that I couldn't let my emotions go. If I felt that sadness, I may just die here, too.

The feelings in my heart were very strange. It wasn't only sadness, but I didn't know if others would be able to understand my complicated mood.

First there was despair, and then distrust of what I saw in front of my eyes. My mind was blank for a long time, and all kinds of emotions came out.

I always wondered what I would feel if Poker-Face died. I thought I might be extremely sad, or maybe a little numb, because I had thought too much and built up the idea of their deaths in my mind so much in order to bear it. Now, I had really encountered it, but my mood was so strange that I couldn't handle it by myself.

After this, I was in a bind, unsure whether I should be sad or pretend to be calm and endure the pain. Finally, the former gradually gained the upper hand and I couldn't do anything by his body besides staring blankly.

But just when I felt the tears about to flow down, I suddenly saw Poker-Face's hand move and scratch on the floor!

Fatty shouted, "What are you doing? Stop looking and come and help!"

My tears still fell because of inertia, but the feeling in my heart was extremely complicated. I turned to Fatty and stammered, "His, his, his corpse just moved!"

"s.h.i.+t, if Little Brother can move his corpse, then he'd be an amazing zombie, the King of Zombies." Fatty said, "Stop your f.u.c.king bulls.h.i.+t and hurry up."

"He, he, he really moved!" I said, immediately having countless thoughts race through my mind. If Little Brother really became a zombie, what should I do? Were we going to rob a tomb with a zombie? Then it's not grave robbery, it's a diplomatic activity.

Fatty looked at me with a strange expression and asked, "What happened?" He started to come over and had just taken a few steps, when suddenly, another body on the side also moved.

Fatty wasn't afraid and went straight to my side. Pointing to the corpse he pa.s.sed by just now, I stammered, "That body moved too, isn't this a room of corpses? They're all moving."

"What corpses, some of these people are still alive." Fatty said.

"Alive?" I couldn't understand. Fatty said, "I didn't say all of them were dead here! Many people are alive, but things aren't so good. You have to look around quickly to see if there's anything useful—water, medicine, etc. All the living people need some water."

Only then did I realize that what he had said just now meant this, and I scolded: "You didn't say that earlier. You scared me to death!"

"I'm not like you. Your mind was on life and death, but my mind was on saving a few people." Fatty said, "Little Brother's pulse was still stable when I checked it just now but some of them are definitely on the brink of death. You have to hurry your palliative care and rescue them." (TN note: palliative care is focused on providing relief from the symptoms and stress of illness. It's not first aide but it's not hospice either. The direct translation was definitely 'palliative' so I left it).

I took one look at Poker-face and saw his face was very pale, looking like the bodies around him. I went up and touched his neck and found he really had a pulse.

However, it wasn't strong and obviously his physical condition was very bad.

In a flash, all my emotions receded like the ebb of the tide and my whole body softened, my vision went black, and I almost fainted. I thought to myself, "Son of a b.i.t.c.h, scared the s.h.i.+t out of my poor heart." Fatty patted me on the hand again, attracting my attention: "Save the others. Little Brother is fine, don't patronize him. These people were raised by parents."

Fatty was right. Under such circ.u.mstances, it was also against my own principles to save Little Brother instead of the others.

I took a deep breath and let go of the tiredness caused by my drastic mood changes, calming down quickly.

I walked over to those people and dug out their canteens—the water had changed a little after being kept for too long. We put some disinfectant in it, found those who still had a pulse and body temperature, and got them to drink the water one by one. They were almost unconscious, and their bodies had weakened so much that some were just like corpses.

"What caused this? Was it poisoning?" I asked Fatty.

He tore open their collars and moved their hair aside, showing the festered skin.

"You see, many of the cracks here are filled with cloth strips and oil wax, basically sealing this place. Although there was very little fog, it's still highly toxic. If you stay here too long, you'll slowly inhale a lot and still get poisoned." Fatty said, "You die in a second when you fall into pota.s.sium cyanide, and it's the same when you inhale it—this is the reason."

"You don't have the education to know about pota.s.sium cyanide." I said.

"Of course, anyone who's read detective stories knows." Fatty said, "Pota.s.sium cyanide and Huo Yuanjia are my idols."

I said, "What about these people? Do you think they have anything here we can use as medicine?"

"If there was, they would've already used it. But have you noticed that none of them are wearing gas masks? It seems they're useless against this type of poisonous gas."

I found it strange—generally, people who had gas masks would wear them even if it was useless because of the psychological comfort. I saw several gas masks scattered around and didn't know what the situation was at that time.

"It was like this when you came up?" I asked. Fatty nodded.

When I thought about it, I felt something was off and said, "You're wrong, they must've been wearing gas masks before. However, it was obvious that someone found this place and checked their faces to see who died, taking off the masks."

Fatty nodded: "It makes sense. Who was it?"

I thought for a moment and figured it was most likely that their opinions had diverged. The team was divided into two—one led by Poker-Face and the other by Granny Huo. Then Granny Huo's team met with some danger and Poker-Face came to rescue them. When he arrived, he found that she was dead and that he was also trapped.

As a result, the people here were in two different states: dead or on their last breath. Poker-Face must have been poisoned after he came in, but the poisonous fog should've dispersed, so he removed the gas masks to see who they were.

I think this was the most likely thing to happen under the current situation. However, when I thought about it, I realized that I was wrong—it was also possible that Qiu Dekao's people came in and found this place.

I remembered that Little Brother's blade was in Qiu Dekao's hand and he had said that one of the guys brought it out. It seemed the guy could've been here. Even if he wasn't, someone must have taken the blade out of here and handed it to him.

I remembered the horrible look of that guy and the way he looked at me. I still found it strange since no one knew what that look really meant, and now I couldn't prove it.

We searched around the secret room and found a hidden door to get out. This should be a compartment for stacking some regular sacrificial objects. After I opened the door, I found it was full of things—all kinds of strange blue and white porcelain bottles. However, the most valuable thing was not the porcelain itself, but the calligraphy and paintings rolled inside the porcelain. All these things were piled up at random outside the secret room.

I could see at a glance why there was such a hidden room and why Granny Huo came up here. It was a studio full of all kinds of precious calligraphy and paintings that could never be preserved if they were soaked in strong alkali fog. At that time, the Yangs.h.i.+ Lei designer of Zhang Jialou must have specially created this small sealed room for the protection of the calligraphy and paintings.

Granny Huo must've looked at Yangs.h.i.+ Lei's design drawings before she found the room.

As expected of a master. If it weren't for this move, they would've probably melted completely by now and I would've only seen a lot of bones full of dry meat. At that time, I could only judge which pile belonged to Poker-Face according to the length of the bones and fingers.