I suddenly felt a chill run down my spine, breaking out in a cold sweat, and I desperately wanted to pull my hand back. However, the withered hand had an immense strength; not only could I not break free, but it also pulled me toward the coffin.

I was so frightened that I nearly lost my mind. In my panic, I pulled out my paddle, intending to use it to break that corpse’s hand. But before I could aim, a sudden commotion behind me wrenched my gun-hand painfully.

At that moment, I had no idea what had grabbed my hand. I was shouting and struggling, and somehow, I managed to throw off that corpse’s hand. Then I kicked against the stone coffin, sending everything behind me crashing down.

After rolling on the ground twice, I realized that my attacker was a person. My courage surged, and I rolled over and jumped up, ready to fire a shot. But before I could see who was in front of me, there was a loud bang, and a gust of wind hit me from nowhere, knocking me hard on the back of the head. Everything went black, and I was knocked out.

I fell to the ground, and at least two people came up to restrain my hands, lifting me up and pushing me next to the coffin. When I looked back, I saw that Lao Yang had also been captured, tied up tightly and pressed to the ground.

The person behind me used my belt to bind my hands and pushed me down to the ground. Then, with a gun pressed against my head, I finally got a good look at them. To my shock, these were the same guys we had encountered at the roadside stall in Xi’an.

How could they be here? I was astonished. Could it be that they really had been keeping an eye on us, as Lao Yang said, and followed us here?

This was bad; these guys were desperate criminals. Falling into their hands would likely mean disaster. This place was practically the perfect spot for murder; a body could go undiscovered for hundreds of years.

After tying us up, they tossed us aside and didn’t beat or kill us; instead, they went to push the stone coffin lid that we had just seen. Lao Yang and I looked on, noticing that the withered arm was still hanging outside the coffin, and we turned pale, shouting in fear, “What are you doing? There’s a zongzi inside! If you release it, we’ll be in trouble!”

The group paused, then burst into laughter. A young man said, “What zongzi? You should take a good look at what’s inside!”

With that, he pushed hard against the coffin lid, and amidst our shouts, it thundered as it was pushed aside. Suddenly, an old man who looked like a frail farmer sat up from inside the coffin.

I looked closely and thought, “No way, isn’t that Uncle Tai?” How could he be sitting in a coffin? It quickly dawned on me, and I felt like slapping myself—I had been played!

Uncle Tai stood up, tucking his white, corpse-like hand, covered in dry wrinkles, into his clothes, then climbed out of the coffin and approached us.

Looking at his hand, I noticed the nails were yellow, long, and sharp. Suddenly, I remembered a friend of my grandfather’s from my childhood, whose foot had been scratched by a zongzi and had oozed pus for over ten days, but from then on, his foot had shriveled up, looking just like Uncle Tai’s hand.

I secretly thought to myself, could it be that Uncle Tai’s hand looks like this because he was scratched by the zongzi? I regretted not thinking of it earlier; if I hadn’t scared him like that just now, we wouldn’t have been so easily caught.

Uncle Tai looked us over a few times without saying a word, just lighting a cigarette and speaking a few words in their local dialect with a few people beside him. Those people glanced at us and nodded in agreement.

I thought they were going to turn against us, and I couldn’t help but go on high alert. To my surprise, they ignored us and gathered around the coffin instead. Uncle Tai switched to Mandarin and said to one person, “Boss Wang, according to the gossip directions that Boss Li mentioned, this place is the entrance to the underground waterway of the tomb from back then, but there’s nothing here. What’s going on?”

A slightly chubby middle-aged man squatted down with difficulty, took out a notebook, and said, “It can’t be wrong; it’s definitely this place. They must have hidden the entrance when sealing the tomb. The secret door should be in this room.”

Uncle Tai looked around and asked another person, “Master Liang, you have some research on this. What do you think?”

That person was hiding in the shadows, and I couldn’t see his face, but I heard a relatively young voice say, “I’ve seen Boss Li’s map, and it should be correct. I just took a casual look earlier, and if there’s a secret door, it wouldn’t be anywhere else; it must be under the coffin bed.”

They lowered their heads, looking at the raised part under the stone coffin. Old Tai knocked on it with the butt of his gun and said, “How do we open it?”

Master Liang thought for a moment and shook his head, “I don’t know. Let’s push it open and see.”

Uncle Tai stood up and walked over to the young man. The two of them leaned against the coffin and pushed hard. With a creaking sound, the coffin shifted a little, revealing a dark gap under the coffin bed.

The others came over to help, and a few of them pushed hard a few times. The empty coffin slid down halfway, revealing an entrance about a meter wide in front of us.

I stretched my neck to look inside; it was pitch black, and it seemed like there was a very steep stone staircase leading down. I smelled a strange odor wafting up from below, something vaguely familiar, but I couldn’t recall what it was.

The young man shone a flashlight down and was about to lean over when Uncle Tai stopped him. He pointed at me with his chin and said something in their local language. The young man nodded, came over, pulled me to the edge of the hole, untied my hands and feet, and then pushed me into the hole, aiming his gun at my head, ordering me to go down.

I realized that they hadn’t killed us earlier; they probably had this layer figured out. Since they hadn’t walked through this secret passage before, they were afraid of traps and wanted to use us as bait. Remembering how Old Yang had pleaded with me earlier, saying this journey would be like a vacation, I suddenly regretted it immensely. I thought to myself, why did I listen to him? Now, it seemed that there would probably be traps on the staircase below; I was doomed.

I moved my hands a bit, contemplating whether to fight back against them. After all, I was going to die anyway. Even if I went down the secret passage without traps, there would be plenty of opportunities to be used as bait later; I wouldn’t always be this lucky. Taking a chance against them might give me a glimmer of hope. At that moment, Old Yang signaled me with his eyes and whispered, “It’s fine, just go down.”

I’m puzzled. He hasn’t been here before, so how does he know there’s nothing wrong? But looking at his expression, he seems confident, and I can’t quite grasp his intentions. I tied the flashlight to my hand, braced myself against one side, and cautiously used my foot to test the ground below.

Taking a deep breath, I shone the flashlight down and discovered that this was an almost straight corridor, so deep that I couldn’t see the bottom. The stone walls around it were inexplicably damp, with a greenish hue, and when I pressed my hand against them, it felt a bit slippery. However, there was no water below, so I was unsure where the moisture was coming from.

I wanted to go down, but Uncle Tai patted my head and handed me a whistle, saying, “When you reach the bottom, blow this whistle. If I don’t hear anything in half an hour, I’ll take care of your buddy.”

I knew he was worried that I might run off, and I couldn’t help but smirk internally. I took the whistle and cautiously descended into the tunnel.

The almost straight stone steps were quite laborious to climb. They weren’t carved very carefully; some were shallow, some deep, and most could only accommodate half of my foot. After descending a dozen steps, I was already starting to pant, and my toes began to ache. Looking up, the stone door above had turned into a small square of light, and the surrounding darkness pressed in like ink. I could see a few vague shadows flickering above, clearly, they were constantly looking down at me.

At first, I was worried that there might be traps on these steps, so I walked very carefully. However, the further I went down, the rougher the stone path became. The stones were large and solid, and with this kind of craftsmanship, there definitely wouldn’t be any traps.

As I continued, the mine tunnel’s direction changed gradually, and the steps became easier to navigate. I noticed that the rock in this section had clearly turned a reddish-brown, and there were many tiny reflections when I shone the light on it.

This rock was probably granite, with some mica inside, making it very hard. They must have redirected the mine tunnel to avoid this granite band. So, I must be deep inside the mountain now.

I lost track of time, but soon I heard the sound of water coming from below the mine tunnel. After a few turns, the sound grew louder, resembling a stampede of horses, with the water flowing very rapidly.

I glanced at my watch and realized I had been walking for almost twenty minutes. I felt that if I went any further, the whistle’s sound might not reach the surface, so I took out the whistle and blew a few short notes.

The sound spiraled upward, and soon I heard a whistle echoing back from above.

I continued downward, and the mine tunnel ahead widened. An exit quickly came into view, and a strong gust of wind rushed toward me, nearly knocking me over. I ran down a few steps, and suddenly a loud roar filled my ears as I emerged from the dark tunnel onto a riverbank, revealing a rushing underground river before my eyes.

This underground river was about as wide as a basketball court, with the cave ceiling more than ten meters high, extending infinitely to the left and right, leading who knows where. There were no stalactites on the cave’s ceiling, but the surrounding stones had become very smooth after years of erosion. Looking at the scale of this cave, I knew it was not man-made.

The water flow was extremely turbulent. Just now, the loud sound of rushing water I heard above was because the cave structure here resembled a loudspeaker, amplifying the sound of the flowing water. As I walked further in, I found the water temperature quite high, making it difficult to step in, and the deeper I went, the higher the water became—within just a few steps, it reached my knees, so I quickly retreated.

This seemed to be a vein of rock, like the blood vessels in the human body, the veins of the mountain. I looked to both sides and noticed that the underground river channels appeared to be narrowing, gradually decreasing in width. On the rock walls of the river on the left, there were many iron chains hanging.

Just as I was pondering this, a young man came out of the dark passage with a strange shout, stepping into the water and exclaiming, “Damn, it’s so hot!”

I turned to look and saw another young man following him out. This person was wearing glasses and looked quite scholarly; he should be the lawyer Liang. As he approached, I realized that he was actually a bit older than he appeared from a distance. The third to come out was Lao Yang, followed by a somewhat portly middle-aged man, and then Uncle Tai. I thought there should be one more person behind them, but I found no one else following. I was puzzled—weren’t there five of them when we entered the mountain?

They all switched on their flashlights, and several beams of light swept back and forth in the rock vein. Lawyer Liang whispered, “What an incredible sight! The path to the tomb is actually an underground river. If I hadn’t seen it with my own eyes, I wouldn’t have believed it.”

The young man walked a few steps into the water, frowned, and then retreated, saying to the others, “Damn, it’s quite deep here, Uncle Tai. This path is tough; it’s not good.”

Uncle Tai glanced at Boss Wang and asked, “Boss Wang, how should we proceed now? Does your precious map say anything?”

Boss Wang flipped through his notebook and replied, “The map says that when they came to explore the tomb last time, they set two iron chains underwater. If we follow those chains, we can reach the entrance to the underground palace!”

All the flashlights shone into the water, and sure enough, a thick, dark iron chain, about the thickness of a wrist, lay across the bottom. Uncle Tai pulled it out of the water, weighed it in his hands, and exclaimed, “Damn, it really exists.”

The young man walked over and tugged at it a few times but couldn’t move it. He glanced anxiously ahead and said, “Uncle Tai, going this way on the water might not be wise. Boss Li just died so tragically; if we encounter those fish again, we’ll all be done for!”

Lawyer Liang touched the water and said, “It’s fine. The water here is so hot that there must be a hot spring outlet below; there definitely won’t be any fish. If there are, they would have been cooked already. Ermazi, you’re overthinking it.”

Ermazi grinned, seemingly unconvinced, and asked, “Really?”

Lawyer Liang patted his shoulder, just about to say something when suddenly, a massive splash erupted from the water behind Ermazi. In an instant, we were all knocked into the water, soaking wet. In my panic, I turned my flashlight back to see a column of water shooting up from the surface, hitting the cave ceiling, and scalding water began to rain down like a shower.

Liang Shiye was so scared that his face turned pale, sitting in the water and trembling, unsure if he had wet himself. Uncle Tai, being someone who had seen storms before, stood up with one hand already drawing his gun, shouting at Liang Shiye, “What the hell is this thing!”