I slept restlessly, nearly half-awake when I sat up, a surge of irritation to get out of bed. Just as I was about to scold him, he covered my mouth and whispered, “Don’t say anything, come with me.”

Feeling baffled and seeing his unfriendly expression, I had no idea what was happening. I threw on my outerwear and asked, “What’s going on? What happened?”

Old Yang whispered, “Come with me, I want to show you something.”

I stared at him for a while, feeling puzzled. However, judging by his expression, he didn’t seem to be joking, so I put on my outerwear and quietly followed him outside.

Outside the shack was a forest. Old Yang took out a compass to determine the direction and pulled a folding shovel from our gear, signaling for me to follow him.

With our flashlights on, we walked downwind for a good ten minutes before he finally stopped, thrusting the shovel into the ground beneath his feet. “This is it?” he said.

I was extremely confused. Given his demeanor, was he planning to plant trees at this hour?

Seeing my expression, he quickly explained, “The last time I came out of the mountains with my cousin, we spent the night here. That night, I noticed he sneaked out in the middle of the night for some reason, so I followed him and found him burying something here. But at that time, our situation was pretty dire, and I didn’t have the energy to deal with trivial matters; I just wanted to get out of the mountains quickly, so I didn’t pay much attention to it. Now that I think back, the whole situation seemed a bit off.”

“Are you sure it’s here?” I asked.

He nodded. “My cousin came out of that cave acting all strange, as if he was possessed by something. I’m sure he was hiding something from us. Now that we’re back here, I’m planning to dig it up and see what he buried. You keep watch.”

I nodded, and Old Yang began to dig.

The soil here seemed soft, but the villagers were still sleeping not far away, so I wondered if we would wake them up. Therefore, Old Yang would stop to listen for any sounds after every three digs.

He dug for nearly half an hour, and I started to doubt if he had the wrong place. Suddenly, his shovel seemed to hit something metallic, producing a clear sound.

He stopped digging, bent down, and pulled out a stick-like object from the pit.

The object was covered in mud, and I couldn’t tell what it was, but instinctively, I felt it was a bone. Old Yang wiped it a bit, and his expression changed. “Damn, it’s this thing,” he said to me.

I leaned in to take a look. It was a bronze artifact covered in green patina, with a very obvious break at the bottom, suggesting it had been sawed off from another bronze piece. Under the flashlight’s beam, I could see abstract patterns resembling a single-headed, double-bodied snake. It was likely something from the “She Clan,” as the old man had mentioned.

Old Yang said to me, “This is the bronze branch I told you about. I didn’t expect my cousin to secretly saw this off.”

I frowned. These people could be said to be the least cultured group within the entire tomb-raiding class, and they were also the most numerous. It was quite common for them to destroy an extraordinary treasure for just a few thousand bucks.

Old Yang continued to dig, trying to see what else he could find. However, after digging for a long time, nothing else appeared, and he began to refill the soil. We wrapped the branch in cloth and tiptoed back. The others, having worked all day, were still fast asleep, but we could no longer sleep. He sat down across from me and started adding firewood to the campfire.

I noticed Old Yang’s serious expression and the worry on his face, and couldn’t help but ask, “You’ve been fluctuating between joy and worry these days. Is there something you can’t talk about? Do you have hemorrhoids?”

Old Yang lit a cigarette and said, “Ah, if only it were that simple. I just feel that something is off; there’s something I can’t figure out.”

I remained silent, listening to him speak.

Old Yang continued, “It’s mainly about my cousin. When we entered the mountains together, he was perfectly normal, but ever since he saw this bronze branch, I’ve felt like he started to change. At first, he just became a bit neurotic, but gradually, I noticed that he seemed to be losing his grip on reality…”

I asked, “Are you saying that your cousin’s madness is related to this thing?”

Old Yang nodded, “Look, he secretly sawed this thing off and brought it out, then buried it—what was that for?”

I watched Old Yang fiddling with the bronze branch and suddenly felt like I had seen it somewhere before. I hurriedly took out the materials Professor Wang had given me, flipped to a picture, and upon comparison, I realized it was indeed correct. It was something a British missionary named Thomas had copied from a rock painting in a cave in western Hunan in 1845. It depicted a totem resembling a tree, and Thomas had annotated below the drawing that it was the “sacred tree” of the local indigenous people. Later, this note fell into Professor Wang’s hands, and based on the descriptions, he believed this sacred tree was one of the cultural totems of the Snake Kingdom, representing the divinity of the earth and fertility.

I compared the bronze branch and found that this section was merely the tip of a branch. If this were to scale, the entire bronze tree should be about seventy to eighty meters tall. If it were fully excavated, it would be enough to shock the world.

I patted Old Yang on the shoulder and told him not to overthink it. If it really were a problem with this branch, then he would have already turned out like his cousin.