I felt puzzled and immediately leaned closer, pushing the fat man’s foot aside for a better look. Sure enough, a portion of the incense ash was embedded in the tiny crevices of the stone surface, forming some lines. It was clear that these lines were very smooth and not part of the stone’s natural texture.

As someone who specializes in rubbings, I recognized this as a principle of imprinting, using very fine powder to reveal shallow marks on the ground, similar to the method used in many spy dramas where a pencil is rubbed over a sticky note to reveal the message written on the previous page. Clearly, someone had carved something on the rock surface in front of this shrine.

I became excited and quickly overturned the incense burner, pouring all the ash onto the ground and the rock surface before starting to smear it with my hands. Soon, more subtle lines began to appear on the ground and rock wall.

“This is…” the fat man also noticed something unusual.

“It should be what the craftsmen who excavated this cave carved,” I said.

“I think Secretary Lei has manifested his presence so quickly!” the fat man exclaimed. “His efficiency is much higher than ours!”

“Don’t jump to conclusions just yet,” I said, evening out the ash.

He squatted down to help, and the dull oil bottle came over as well. Together, we covered a large area with the incense ash. Before long, a series of crooked characters appeared before us.

Each character was about the size of a chess piece, all in traditional Chinese characters, carved in an incredibly hasty manner. Some were nearly indistinguishable, but there were quite a few—around thirty or forty of them, varying in size.

Looking at the notes, it seemed to be carved by a single person.

The characters were Chinese, but some of them I had never seen before; they appeared to be dialect pronunciations.

The fat man asked in confusion, “Could it be that the previous craftsmen discussed things on this stone wall just like us?”

I shook my head, saying no. These characters were continuous, clearly written as a whole passage. However, the carving was very shallow, and like us, they likely used a stone to simply scratch it onto the rock wall without any carving tools.

What kind of person, for what purpose, wrote these characters in front of this statue? I couldn’t recall, but the key must lie within the text.

I examined the characters; they were meant to be read vertically. I couldn’t recognize them at first, so I carefully identified each character one by one and then re-carved them onto the side with a stone.

It was a very simple message.

“On the seventh day of November. East wall, seven feet from the left, there are sixteen. West wall, three feet from the left, there are seven. North wall, five feet from the left, there are ten. South wall, six feet from the left, there are four. In total, they must be excavated and resumed within three days.”

“This is… a record of mining measurements?” I hesitated.

The overall tone seemed to suggest it was a message left behind, a hint from a foreman to others before leaving, with a reminder: “count carefully.” It seemed like a superior addressing a subordinate.

“Northeast, southwest?” The fat man looked around. “Could it be a record of the distribution of jade veins?”

I shook my head. The direction of jade veins is completely natural and has no pattern; specifying “left several feet” in a single cross-section would be of no use. “There are sixteen,” “there are seven,” “there are ten,” “there are four” seemed to be markers for counting; he was counting things on the wall.

Looking at the east wall, there was nothing on it, only the jade veins and rocks naturally wrinkled. The complexity of the dark jade veins was so intricate that it was almost like the blood vessels of the rocks, impossible to represent with such a small number as “sixteen.” Moreover, he had one last remark: “It must be excavated and resumed work within three days,” as if saying that the things represented by “sixteen” or “seventeen” were obstructing further mining. What could it be? Could it be the incredibly hard rock essence of the stone veins? But the rock essence is extremely hard and weighs hundreds of tons; how could it be excavated in three days?

We all stood up and walked to the far left of the east cave wall, measuring a distance of seven feet with our fingers to see if there was anything in that section. After seven feet, it was still the surface of the rock, covered with countless dark green marks, but there was nothing.

The胖子 and I exchanged glances. In fact, we had examined the rock surface very carefully; even without looking closely, we knew that there was nothing visible on the surface. “Could what he wrote above have already been excavated?” There was that possibility, but as I thought further, a strange notion began to form in my mind.

I returned to the shrine, gathered the incense ash on the ground, and placed it back in the incense burner. Then I took some of it to the rock wall and smeared a handful on it. At first, there was nothing, but after several circles, lines indeed began to appear, resembling the outline of some kind of object.

“Hey?” the胖子 exclaimed in surprise, “How did you know that?”

“That kind of message is too vague; it’s a summary of the final message, and it would definitely leave a mark on the rock surface,” I said, continuing to smear.

Soon, an irregular polygonal outline emerged on the stone. I took off my powerful flashlight and turned it on. The outline was very clear, like sketching the general shape of an object with short straight lines when drawing a draft.

However, we did not see any shapes on the rock’s veins that were related to this outline; it seemed to be randomly drawn on the rock wall as a reference for cutting. Yet, even so, I still felt a chill all over, and many fragments in my mind began to spontaneously combine in various ways. Deep down, I knew there had to be something in this rock wall; otherwise, this outline wouldn’t be carved here. They must have made rough markings to excavate something from here.

Why couldn’t we see it? Was it because the method was wrong?

Thinking this, I asked, “Does anyone know if there are any special processes when they mine jade?”

The胖子 shook his head, saying, “Isn’t it done with explosives?”

But the 闷油瓶 said, “First, they use fire to burn it, then splash it with cold water to make the stone crack naturally.”

“Splashing with water? Let’s go get some water!” I said immediately, not even knowing what I was trying to prove, but I had a strong intuition that we were onto something crucial!

I rushed to the other side of the cave, tied a knot in the legs of my removed diving suit, filled it with water, and carried it back. The胖子 and I both grabbed it and splashed it onto the rock wall.

We splashed water on it repeatedly for over ten times, and the color of the rock deepened due to the seepage. Stepping back to take a look, the surface of the rock, where the jade vein was, became blurred, and other parts turned smooth and translucent. It turned out that these stones were also jade; they just had different contents, which is why they were referred to as ordinary rocks by those dark green jades.

At the same time, we saw a shadow faintly emerging from the rock wall. It was a figure of a person.