**Cuscuta Cocoon**
Xiaohua looked at me coldly, clearly unwilling to pay me any attention. The others were looking at Xiaohua with anticipation, hoping he could actually buy a train.
“Focus,” Xiaohua said later.
He often reminded me to concentrate, and this correction was actually a motivating factor that helped me endure. In the end, of course, there was no train for sale; instead, we counted a group of twelve people and walked along the railway tracks into the depths.
We borrowed nearly twenty mules, half for riding and half for carrying supplies, and then we set off.
I was very familiar with this kind of journey over the past decade, wearing a well-used but still effective windbreaker, organizing all the shoes, tents, and mosquito repellent equipment. Three white dog legs were sheathed and laid across the mules’ backs, while I secured my own at my waist and on the side of my backpack. Xiaoman brought three mastiffs, well-fed and ready, and we headed into the primeval jungle.
We walked in silence for four days, having already entered the heart of the primeval jungle. We passed through a clearly insufficiently aged pine forest. Xiaohua said it couldn’t be this place, but just in case, we searched around and found nothing particularly special.
“This area of logged forest is only four days away from the lumber yard; it’s the nearest pine forest and should be the first one to be cut down. The earliest trees were used to build the lumber yard’s houses, and the decayed wood we dug up must have come from deeper areas than this.”
So we continued onward.
The forest at night was damp and chilly, with a campfire burning as we cooked instant noodles. Xiaoman caught something every day, whether it was a wild rabbit or a mountain chicken. Both Kan Jian and the Fatty enjoyed the wild game, grilling different things each day. I could no longer eat much meat over the past few years, so I could only manage a bite or two at the start.
A week later, we arrived at a mountain hollow. The Fatty let out an “ah,” and everyone else stopped as well.
In the hollow was a massive clump of cuscuta, densely packed, resembling a giant cocoon. Surrounding this clump of cuscuta were many “hairy sticks,” dead trees completely entwined by the cuscuta. The cuscuta itself was dead too, forming a large, yellowish, dead (silk) shroud. The wild grass on the ground was wilted and yellowed but unusually tall, clearly having grown wildly before wilting.
We were all drawn to this cuscuta cocoon and, upon stepping closer, found that the cocoon was indeed enormous, seemingly covering a giant rock inside.
“This should be the place,” my intuition told me. Looking around, there was a sparse pine forest, and with such a strange terrain and gentle slopes on either side, this rock stood out oddly in the hollow.
We began scanning the ground with metal detectors, and soon enough, we made a discovery. As we turned over the soil and sifted through it, it wasn’t long before some iron lumps appeared—fragments of ancient armor, iron remnants of weapons, arrowheads, and so on.
“It’s an ancient battlefield,” the Fatty said, striking a pose like Huo Qubing, pointing at one of the mountains. “This giant rock must have come from the mountain on one side. When the Mongolian troops came here, the army of King Wannu pushed this giant rock down and charged forward behind it.”
Is it an ambush? If it’s an ambush, there should be a lot of falling rocks. A giant boulder indicates a siege battle. I, the fat guy, said, “The army of the King of Wannu is guarding an important location. When the Mongolians are climbing the mountain to attack and are about to break through, that’s when a giant boulder will come rolling down. We’ll head up the mountain from here, everyone stay alert. There must be something on the mountaintop.”
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