As I took off my wetsuit, trying to recover my strength as quickly as possible, I asked the fat guy what his thoughts were after being here for so long. He shook his head and said, “The most plausible theory I have is that we are all dead, and what penetrated the rocks to enter this cave are our ghosts.”

I forced a smile; I understood the implication of his words. He didn’t really believe we were dead; what he meant was that other theories were even less plausible, as this situation had no clear cause and effect. Theories require clues, but right now, there are none—everything can only be assumed.

The fat guy continued, “If that strange thing doesn’t want to kill us, then whatever happens next, we shouldn’t end up dead, right? If it wanted to kill us, why bother changing locations?”

I forced a smile again. If we weren’t going to die, then what was going to happen? Would a big guy suddenly appear and assault us? I shook my head and said, “There’s no necessary connection. Being alive doesn’t necessarily mean it’s a good thing. You eat drunken shrimp just for the novelty, don’t you?”

The fat guy gasped, thinking it was indeed chilling, and felt a bit depressed, cursing, “I hate this kind of intangible, incomprehensible stuff the most! Do you think the three of us have some bad luck together? Why do we always end up in these kinds of places? It’s really a curse! And that A Gui too, what’s up with him? He knows nothing; otherwise, a little hint would help us be more cautious.”

I frowned secretly; the fat guy was right. The reason this situation had no clues at all, even to the point of being unexplainable, was precisely because of this. Our current predicament had occurred inexplicably, and in our known information, there was definitely a missing key element.

The investigation started from the village, evolving little by little. All the information was derived from the previous level of information. Now we knew the source of the iron blocks was those iron figurines, we knew Wen Jin had been to this lakeside, and we confirmed that the archaeological team had been swapped and learned some secrets about the ancient village beneath the lake. Although some clues still hadn’t fully connected, such as what those iron figurines were all about, I believed that as long as we continued the investigation, everything would eventually connect.

However, the events happening here and our current predicament had nothing to do with this information. In other words, among the various clues we learned in the village, there was a complete absence of a piece.

Where had we missed it?

When I asked the fat guy about his theory earlier, I realized that this matter couldn’t be theorized; there were no factors to corroborate any bad news. Thinking about this, I said to him and the silent oil bottle, “We should completely sort out everything we know from the beginning. This place must be connected to the whole incident; if we list everything out from scratch, we might find some hints.”

The fat guy blew a breath and pointed to the ground, where he had carved letters with a stone, “I’ve sorted it out before, but I really couldn’t come up with anything. If you want to sort it out, go ahead. You’ve read more books than I have; you should do better than me. By the end of my sorting, my head was hurting!”

I looked at those characters; it was his unique enumeration method, writing down all the possibilities, including all the clues, and then circling them to find the connections among them.

I said, “This time is different from previous encounters; all the information is fragmented. Writing it down like this will only make it more chaotic. Let me organize it first, and then we can start from a concept and see if we can piece together the entire line like building blocks.”

I picked up a stone and wrote down a few keywords on the ground. I connected everything discovered since entering the village with the subsequent parts.

Iron block — fragments of iron figurines — the village at the bottom of the lake — unknown purpose — found everywhere — seems dangerous — emits a strange smell
Photos — burned
The saying about the horse plate — the archaeological team was swapped — bodies found — salvaging iron blocks — purpose?
The underwater ancient stockade — Han-style ancient building — underground passage — numerous iron figurines — jade mine?
Isolated mine — iron figurines — identical chisel marks
A, B — prickling pain — fainting
C — suffocation — fainting

After writing, I crossed out everything that had been confirmed, and the table became:
Unknown purpose — seems dangerous — emits a strange smell — purpose?
— numerous iron figurines — jade mine?
Isolated mine — iron figurines — identical chisel marks
A, B — prickling pain — fainting
C — suffocation — fainting

This way, we listed everything we could and couldn’t confirm.
Next, we began to connect some of the factors. I said, “First, we can be certain that the owner of the Han-style ancient building in the stockade is surnamed Zhang; for now, let’s call him the Master of Zhang’s Building.” I glanced at the fat man, “This person has military achievements and is a master of traditional Chinese studies; he might be a local warlord, but could also have another background that is not too relevant to the core of the matter.”

“In a certain year and month, this person, known as the Master of Zhang’s Building, for some reason—similarly, we don’t need to know this reason—discovered a jade mine beneath the stockade. Lured by the enormous profits, he colluded with the local Yao king to dig aggressively, building a solid Han-style building in the Yao stockade for his subordinates to use. The building was constructed so sturdily that it’s clear they had been digging here for a very long time, possibly planning to continue for several generations.”

“The cave we are in now, judging by the marks of excavation, should be one of the mines they dug.”

After saying this, I looked at the fat man and asked if he had anything to add. He shook his head, and I continued, “Alright, everything seems normal up to this point and conforms to logic, but this contradicts our current situation. Clearly, the mine we are in now is completely sealed off, so I can say that between the time everything was normal and our current situation, something happened that caused the mine to undergo inexplicable changes.”

The fat man nodded and said, “Don’t put it so poetically; damn it, something must have happened in this cave later.”

This part is the initial hypothesis and is relatively certain, so I wrote it down as a starting point and drew a question mark beside it, “What happened here? It certainly wasn’t a sudden sealing off because if that were the case, someone would have been trapped to death.”

“Not necessarily; think about it, we came in here inexplicably; they might have found a way out later,” the fat man said.

I shook my head. What kind of cultural literacy did miners have back then? Could they think of solutions that I couldn’t? Even if they could, it wouldn’t be quick. Given the tools and physical strength they had at the time, they would likely first consider the idea of “smashing” something, leaving behind a lot of rubble on the ground.

However, since I wasn’t there at the time, I couldn’t make definitive judgments, so I didn’t argue with the fat guy. We bit our lips and began to think of various hypotheses.

Before we could come up with two rounds of ideas, the Silent Oil Bottle spoke up, saying casually, “The statue in the mine is the Thunder King of the Yao ethnic group. It’s a fierce god and is generally not openly worshipped unless something terrible has happened.”

We were all taken aback. The fat guy exclaimed, “What the hell! How do you know about this stuff?”

The Silent Oil Bottle didn’t answer and continued, “The presence of this statue indicates that the situation didn’t happen suddenly. Moreover, after it occurred, they were still able to bring a statue from outside to worship here. This means that although the event is terrifying, it didn’t scare them away.”

I thought for a moment and found it reasonable. “Setting up a statue indicates that they still want to continue digging. So they used this statue to suppress something. Although the situation is frightening, it only poses a psychological panic and hasn’t threatened their lives. Let’s think about it from their perspective. Under what circumstances would we, as miners, do the same?”

The fat guy inhaled sharply. “Why does this sound so familiar? Could it be that they dug up something inauspicious here?”

I nodded, seemingly having the same thought at the same time. I often heard such rumors back home, like when a factory started construction and ended up digging up the bones of the dead from a mass grave, so they placed a statue of Guan Gong to ward it off.

“This is a rock layer; what the hell could they possibly dig up in a place like this?” the fat guy said. “Could it be a Tyrannosaurus rex fossil?” After saying that, he sighed, clearly feeling that his idea was quite possible. “Imagine, while they were digging, they suddenly unearthed such a prehistoric monster. They would surely be scared half to death, thinking they had dug up the bones of a monster.”

I patted him on the shoulder. “Comrade, you should read more books. The age of dinosaur fossils and the age of jade are separated by hundreds of millions of years. Finding a dinosaur fossil here would be like finding a KFC family bucket.”

“What do you think it is then?” the fat guy retorted.

We thought for a moment and shook our heads. We really couldn’t think of anything. What could reasonably exist in this kind of rock vein that would make them feel it was inauspicious? I really couldn’t figure it out. The only reasonable thing that could exist here was stone. Could it be an unlucky stone? If it were unreasonable, then anything was possible.

The fat guy walked up to the statue and asked the Silent Oil Bottle, “Hey, how fierce is this Thunder King? Is it like our Zhong Kui, who catches ghosts?”

The Silent Oil Bottle shook his head. “The Thunder King is specifically meant to suppress evil gods.”

The mythology of the Yao people differs from that of the Han Chinese. Many evil entities are considered gods and can stand on equal footing with righteous gods, while ordinary gods cannot deal with them.

The fat guy clicked his tongue and said, “So, that means Zhong Kui is just the public security officer, while Lei Wang is the secretary of the discipline inspection committee.” He picked up two thin twigs from the nearby campfire, inserted them into the incense burner, and bowed. “Secretary Lei, my apologies, my brothers and I didn’t recognize you earlier. This little offering is not much, but it’s just a formality. Consider it a white slip. If we can get out of here, my brothers and I will definitely make up for the incense money. I know you’re involved in discipline inspection work, and it’s inconvenient for you to accept many things. Please give me your wife’s phone number later, and we’ll contact her…”

I thought to myself that this guy was really unreliable and said, “You’re not even a Yao person; how could they possibly bless you? Don’t waste your firewood. Besides, only superiors give white slips to subordinates; how can subordinates give them to superiors?”

The fat guy replied, “You don’t understand anything! When you pay taxes in Hangzhou, do you not pay taxes when you go to Beijing? This isn’t called a white slip; it’s called an option. We’re just giving a heads-up to avoid regretting it later.”

As he spoke, he turned around, but the thin twig was too heavy at one end and caused the incense burner to topple over, the base lifting up and spilling all the incense ash out.

The fat guy immediately turned back to support it, and I laughed, “See? They are upright and incorruptible; they won’t accept it.”

The fat guy clicked his tongue again, broke the twig in half, inserted it back in, and then used his foot to smooth out the spilled incense ash. As he rubbed it a few times, I suddenly noticed some strange lines appearing on the rocky surface beneath his feet.