My relationship with Uncle Hai isn’t close enough for us to talk about everything. Usually, we just communicate about business matters. Once we got more familiar, I started calling him “Uncle” to show him respect. However, when he suddenly tried to get closer to me, I felt a bit strange. But I couldn’t show it in front of the young girl. I casually agreed and asked her, “What did he say? Did he find out something?”

Qin Haiting smiled mischievously, “My uncle said he would tell you later. I’m not sure what’s going on either, so don’t go asking around.”

I cursed inwardly at that old schemer; he probably wanted to take advantage of me again.

The next day, Uncle Hai indeed arrived. I picked him up from the train station and took him to the hotel I had booked for him. On the way, I asked him what news he had heard. If he was trying to fool me, I wouldn’t let him off the hook.

Uncle Hai was shivering from the cold and said, “A strong dragon doesn’t suppress a local snake. Now that I’m on your turf, how could I dare to fool you? But let’s not talk about this here; I’m freezing to death.”

I brought him to the hotel, helped him drop off his things, and then went to the dining hall to find a private room. After warming up a pot of liquor and downing a few cups, I finally felt a bit better.

Seeing that he was a bit tipsy, I knew it was time to get to the point. I asked him, “Alright, you’ve eaten and drunk; it’s time to talk. What did you find out?”

He blinked and chuckled, pulling out a stack of paper from his bag and slapping it down on the table. “Look at this.”

I picked it up and saw it was an old, yellowed newspaper dated 1974. He had circled a piece of news with a large black-and-white photo. Although it wasn’t very clear, I recognized it; the photo was of a snake-eyed bronze fish, surrounded by many small artifacts, like Buddhist beads.

However, this fish looked different from the one I had and the one my third uncle had. There were three fish reliefs on the forehead of the statue in the underwater tomb, and this one should be the topmost one. This meant all three fish had now appeared in the world.

I asked Uncle Hai, “How did you find this newspaper? Is there any hidden story behind it?”

Uncle Hai replied, “I’ve been helping a big boss look for old newspapers recently. You know, rich people collect all sorts of things. Look at this; it’s the Guangxi Cultural Evening News from 1974. He asked me to find issues from January to December, and it took me two months to gather them all. I was just about to deliver them, and while checking, I happened to see this news. Isn’t that a coincidence? This newspaper was only published for a year in 1974, and it closed down in 1975, so it’s hard to find. You’re lucky; if my eyes had been a bit slower, it would have been gone.”

I looked down at the article, which had about three hundred words of news stating that this fish was discovered in the foundation of a Buddhist temple in Guangxi. The tower had collapsed due to its age, and during the cleanup of the ruins, they unearthed the underground palace. Inside, there were some already rotten scriptures and treasure boxes, and one of the treasure boxes contained this fish. Experts speculated it was a relic from a monk in the late Northern Song Dynasty.

Northern Song? I lit a cigarette, leaned back in my chair, and started to ponder. This type of snake-eyed bronze fish appeared first in the tombs of the lords from the late Warring States period; the second fish was found in an underwater tomb from the late Yuan to early Ming period; and the third fish was in the underground palace of a Northern Song Buddhist pagoda. What was going on? The timeline was completely off.

I flipped through the other parts of the newspaper, and there was only this one piece of news about the fish. The content didn’t really offer anything new; it was basically saying nothing. I still knew nothing about this fish, and I started to feel a bit down.

Old Hai looked at my expression and said, “Don’t lose heart; I haven’t finished yet. The story behind this is even more exciting.”

I frowned and asked, “What do you mean? Could there be more to this newspaper?”

Old Hai nodded and said, “Of course! If I only found a newspaper, I wouldn’t need to come to Hangzhou to find you, right? This story has to start from the beginning. By the way, since you’re in the business, do you know someone named Chen Pi A Si?”

I was taken aback. Chen Pi A Si was a well-known local figure in Changsha during the old days, a notorious grave robber from the same generation as my grandfather. I heard he was over ninety now and had gone blind during the Cultural Revolution, after which he disappeared and no one knew if he was dead or alive. However, his name still resonated loudly in my grandfather’s stories.

But this person was different from my grandfather; he lived a life on the edge, not just robbing graves but also involved in all sorts of criminal activities as long as it could make him money. Before the liberation, people called him “Shave Head A Si,” implying that he killed without hesitation, just like getting a haircut.

I was a bit surprised that Old Hai mentioned this person because he wasn’t from our generation, and I had never interacted with him. Could this fish somehow be related to him? Even if the story behind this fish had nothing to do with me, it would definitely be worth hearing.

Seeing that I was silent, Old Hai thought I didn’t know and said, “It’s not surprising that you don’t know about Chen Si Ye; after all, we’re not from the same generation. But I must tell you, this copper fish in the newspaper was brought out by him from the Buddhist pagoda’s underground palace. The situation is actually much more complicated than what the newspaper says.” He then briefly recounted the events from that time.

It turned out that in 1974, Chen Pi A Si was nearly sixty years old, and his eyesight hadn’t yet failed him. At that time, it was during the decade of turmoil. He had previously served as a squad leader in the Nationalist army during the early days of liberation and later became a bandit for several years, thus lacking a legal identity. Being caught at that time would mean death, so he could only operate in the minority areas of Guangxi, not even daring to step into the county towns.

A few years earlier, during the campaign to eliminate the “Four Olds,” many ancient sites had been destroyed. Chen Pi A Si had traveled to many places in Guangxi, as it was not considered part of the central plains in ancient times and didn’t have many ancient tombs. He had lived relatively honestly during those years. However, by coincidence, that year, while he was inventorying goods at Jiaqiao Ridge and chatting with some local Miao people, they had a bit too much to drink and started talking about a temple on Cat Mountain where the pagoda had collapsed. They said it made a huge noise, and even the ground sank, creating a large pit. On the night of the collapse, many people reportedly heard a very strange and eerie scream.

Chen Pi A Si felt something was off when he heard the news. He had visited Cat Mountain many times, and the temples there were built very solidly. How could one just collapse? After asking for details, he learned that the tower was not on Cat Mountain itself, but in the center of a nearby mountain range called “Sleeping Buddha Ridge.” This place was quite peculiar; surrounded by villages, it had a large basin of about ten square kilometers in the middle, with a very low elevation. The vegetation was dense, with trees covering the sky and villages perched on the cliffs above, while the forest lay below. There was a drop of over a hundred meters, creating two completely different worlds, and there was no path from the villages down to the basin; the only way to descend was by using ropes.

The locals said that there must be other entrances and exits to this basin, but the underground vegetation was so thick that walking through it was difficult. In the past, the Miao people who went down to hunt or gather herbs often disappeared, so generally, no one was willing to go down unless necessary.

The ancient tower was built in such a place, almost at the center of the basin. Usually, when people looked down from the cliffs, they could only see a very small tower tip protruding from the dense tree canopy, which was covered in plants, making it impossible to see what lay below. The Miao people said that their ancestors had known about the tower for generations, but no one had thought to go down and see it; they had simply gotten used to its presence. Recently, one day, there was a sudden loud noise, and when they came out to check, they found the tower tip was gone, realizing that the tower had collapsed.

There were many legends about this mysterious ancient tower among the locals. Some elderly people said that the tower was built by a high monk in ancient times to subdue demons, and now that the tower had fallen, the demons would come out to wreak havoc. That strange sound was the cry of the demons breaking free from their restraints.

After hearing this, Chen Pi A Si found it very interesting. He sensed that the location of the tower and the sound the Miao people heard at midnight were somewhat off. People like them often had a unique intuition, instinctively picking up information from others’ narratives and some legends. This kind of intuition was hard to find among his generation.

After pondering for a moment, Chen Pi A Si decided to go and take a look.

The Guangxi mountains are numerous, arguably the most prominent in the country. Cat Mountain is one of the important sources, spanning the counties of Xing’an, Ziyuan, and Longsheng, and is the origin of the Li River, Zi River, and Xun River, connecting the Yangtze and Pearl River systems. This area has vast primitive forests, and the first major mountain crossed by the Red Army during the Long March, Laoshanjie, is located here. During World War II, several bombers from the Flying Tigers mysteriously disappeared in this area, which has always given it an air of mystery.

After several twists and turns, Chen Pi A Si arrived at a village on “Sleeping Buddha Ridge.” Standing on a dirt mound and looking into the basin in the middle of the mountain range, he thought, “Wow, that tower is much larger than I imagined.” When it fell, it knocked down several trees, creating a gap in the green forest canopy. From “Sleeping Buddha Ridge,” he couldn’t see what was in the gap, but Chen Pi A Si almost immediately noticed that all the trees around the site of the tower’s collapse were in disarray due to the ground sinking. It seemed that there was indeed something beneath the tower, and it was larger than the base of the tower itself.

Upon hearing this, I already knew it was a “Mirror Palace.” “Mirror Palace” is a dialect term from the Changsha area before the liberation, referring to a structure that has an underground section of the same scale as the aboveground building, making it look like the aboveground structure is a reflection on the surface of a lake, with the two ends being symmetrical.

In the northern dialect, this is also called “Yin-Yang Shuttle,” which means the entire building resembles a shuttle inserted into the ground, with one side representing the underworld and the other the earthly realm. However, such ancient tombs or buildings are now rare; most of the surface relics have been completely destroyed, so this notion has hardly been mentioned in the past decade before the liberation.

Just by observing the arrangement of the trees, Chen Pi A Si could tell that there was a “Mirror Palace” buried below. Such judgment could not be made without extensive experience. I couldn’t help but sigh inwardly, calming myself and listening to Lao Hai continue.

After making up his mind, Chen Pi A Si felt a surge of greed. In the underground palace of a stupa, there could only be three things: either relics, the golden body of a high monk, or a large number of Buddhist scriptures—any of which would be worth a fortune.

However, as an outsider, he found it inconvenient to operate here. Firstly, his identity was special and his background was not good; secondly, during that time, there were constant conflicts between the Miao and Han ethnic groups, and since the villages here were all Miao settlements, entering carelessly could raise suspicion.

After much consideration, he devised a plan. He offered a high price to hire a local Miao guide. He told the guide that he was an old intellectual from the frontier and that one of his students had fallen off a cliff while he was traveling. The Miao people are simple and unworldly; they would never suspect any trickery. Upon hearing that someone had fallen off a cliff, the guide immediately notified everyone in the village. A young Miao man used ropes to make a basket and lowered Chen Pi A Si along with several young helpers down to the bottom of the cliff.

According to Chen Pi A Si’s recollections afterward, the experience of descending over a hundred meters was like hell. The cliff was extremely steep, and his weight was entirely supported by a vine rope. Sitting in a basket, he spun around like a top in the wind, feeling extremely unstable. By the time he passed through the dense tree canopy and reached the forest floor, he felt as if he had lost half his life.

Inside the forest, there was almost no sunlight; the light was extremely dim, and the air was filled with the smell of marsh gas. There were many types of trees here, but without exception, everywhere was covered in green moss, and the mud was very soft, making it almost impossible to stand.

After arriving, Chen Pi A Si pretended to be exhausted (though he was genuinely frightened) and sat there gasping for breath. Seeing that he was not young anymore and looked like a little old man, the Miao leader asked him to wait there while they returned, and he lit a torch to direct the others to search in the direction he indicated.

As soon as they left, Chen Pi A Si immediately took out a compass and, following the coordinates he had noted down earlier, ventured deeper into the jungle. He estimated that in such a large area, the Miao people would need a whole night to search back and forth. With his skills, he should have enough time to find the entrance to the “Mirror Palace” and make a round trip. Unfortunately, he hadn’t brought enough equipment this time, so whether he could enter the palace depended on his luck.

After wandering aimlessly in the jungle for a full four hours, relying on his compass and the courage he had built up from years of traveling, Chen Pi A Si finally arrived at the area he had planned out on “Sleeping Buddha Ridge,” which was the ruins of the temple surrounding the tower.

As he ventured deeper, Chen Pi A Si saw more and more remnants of roofs and walls. Clearly, the ancient structures had vanished, leaving only some foundations and broken walls that had almost merged with the vegetation, making it difficult to discern what they once were. However, judging by the scale, the area of the temple was vast. Although the tower had collapsed within this large expanse, it was hard to tell exactly where it was located.

At his age, Chen Pi A Si felt a bit short of breath after walking around and was just about to sit down to rest when something caught his eye. Suddenly, the grass covering an entire wall seemed to contract, as if something was wrapped inside it.

Startled, Chen Pi A Si rolled out of the way, quickly pulling out an iron ball from his pocket. When he turned back to look, he saw a nearly desiccated corpse of a Miao person entangled in the vines and grass. Strangely, the corpse’s stomach was slightly bulging, as if something inside it was moving.