Over the years, I have become unaccustomed to people making sacrifices for me, as these individuals will ultimately leave for various reasons. I dislike situations where emotions are left behind when someone arrives and then departs. I prefer my friends to be self-sufficient, needing nothing from me, and I needing nothing from them. Each person’s actions stem from their own steadfast inner convictions.
I sat down by the tea rice, and the fat guy drew a few lines on the ground with a stick: “After you all left, I tried a small-scale explosion on the mountain. I didn’t expect that after only blowing up two or three spots, the entire mountain shell became loose and cracked, and a large area collapsed, revealing a big hole filled with water, waist-deep. I led a team down into it, and as we walked, we found a small underground river. The tunnel where the river flowed varied in height, and we waded through it. There were three sections of the river that surfaced, with cracks appearing in the mountain shell above, allowing sunlight to shine through like a narrow sky. The rest of the river was underground. When we reached the end, the tunnel became very narrow and dry, and we began to see a man-made shaft going upward. We heard shouting and gunfire from above, so we climbed up and saw stone slabs blocking the bottom of the shaft, which we blew up layer by layer. Then we saw you all.”
The airflow from the explosives rushed through the shaft, emitting a terrifying roar that scared us half to death.
I looked at the route drawn by the fat guy and fell into deep thought. The place where he entered the underground waterway had a bloody battle between Dongxia and Mongolia, indicating that the mountain there was crucial for the Dongxia people. Now it was confirmed that there was an underground water vein leading all the way to the forest filled with ancient wells that we had discovered. The fat guy said the water vein continued to extend underground.
This place is still far from the Yunding Tiangong, and there is a significant water source in the heart of Changbai Mountain, so there is no need to transport rainwater from here; this underground vein must lead to some crucial location for Dongxia underground. The woods here are home to so many human-faced birds, clearly connected to their underground habitat.
I called the team to organize their gear and check their ammunition, and I went to see the medic about my hand. The medic said it was a fracture but not broken, and he gave me a splint, advising me to avoid using my injured hand as much as possible. I put on a bandage and noticed that Wang Meng had already walked far away. I said to the fat guy, “We need to continue down. What’s the air situation below?”
“If there’s flowing water, the air shouldn’t be a problem. But the area below the wellhead is already very narrow; we can’t proceed further on foot and will need to dive down.”
I nodded. We only had three sets of diving equipment outside that we hadn’t brought in. Only the fat guy, I, and one other guy who specialized in water routes had diving experience. He was the son of someone who fished bodies out of the Yellow River, in his twenties with long non-mainstream hair, pale all over, and over 1.9 meters tall, moving through the water like a white snake. His nickname was Su Zhen.
The fat guy used a satellite phone to signal outside the mountain, asking the main force to bring all the supplies in, and I took the opportunity to rest a bit.
That evening, we continued to withdraw a few kilometers, consolidating our camp. The next day, the fat guy stayed behind to guard the camp while the rest of us regrouped. Xiaohua decided to split into two routes with us; he would continue forward on land to see what else could be discovered.
By the time the diving equipment arrived, the valley was already bustling with activity. Su Zhen and I checked the equipment, and our group returned to the forest to find the wellhead. The ground was covered with bird bones; all the corpses had been completely devoured by the centipedes, and many centipedes were coiled under the bones. We calibrated our watches and descended into the passage at the bottom of the well, landing in a bone-chilling underground river that was waist-deep. Broken tiles were scattered across the riverbed. I shone my flashlight, and the water in the underground river was crystal clear, without a trace of impurities. Looking ahead, we could only move forward on our knees, as the river flowed very gently. After advancing about thirty meters, we reached the spot where Fatty said we needed to dive through. The waterway extended downward, completely submerged.
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