The cave was on the verge of collapse, with big and small rocks crashing down on my head without any regard for the danger. Staying even a second longer could mean being buried under the rubble. In this situation, it was already fortunate to have a way forward; how could I think of anything else? I grabbed him and shouted, “What do you mean we can’t go in? Are we supposed to wait outside to die?”

Old Yang said, “The situation inside is unclear. You should take a look first!”

I replied, “I can’t worry about that now. Look at this situation—whether it’s a dragon’s den or a tiger’s lair, we have to go in!” With that, I pulled him toward the cave.

Old Yang stubbornly held onto his own hand, refusing to let me pull him in, and said, “Please, just listen to me this once. We really can’t go in!”

As he spoke, he tried to pull me back outside. I was furious and was about to ask him if he was trying to get himself killed when suddenly a large rock crashed down. I quickly let go, and we both stumbled backward. The rock landed with a loud “boom,” blocking the entrance we had just been at.

I was terrified and shouted to him, asking if he was okay. After a long pause, I finally heard him groan, “I’m fine. Damn it, I just got hit on the head. It’s not collapsing anymore. How about you?”

I told him I was fine too, then pushed against the rock, but it didn’t budge. Realizing we were trapped, I looked around. I had initially thought this was another cave in the rock wall, and there would surely be an exit on one side. However, upon closer inspection, it turned out to be a closed space, very narrow, seemingly a natural crevice in the mountain. It felt strangely familiar.

After crawling a few steps over the rubble, I suddenly realized that this was also a cave formed after a collapse. However, this collapse had happened some time ago; everything that could fall had already done so, leaving only broken stones on the ground.

I had been puzzled as to why the giant snake was so powerful, able to smash the hard rock like that. Now it made sense: there had already been a collapse here before, and that previous incident must have caused significant damage to the surrounding rock layers. What appeared to be solid rock on the surface was actually cracked inside. When the giant snake crashed into it, it finally broke apart, creating this passage.

I looked up and saw that we were in a gap between two fallen giant rocks. The degree of their fit suggested it was very solid; even though the outside was still being struck, only dust was falling down here.

It seemed the giant snake had also exhausted its strength; its crashes grew lighter and finally ceased.

Still shaken, I recalled how Old Yang had pulled me earlier. If I hadn’t let go in time, I would have been crushed into a meat pie by now. I was furious and shouted from behind the rocks, “What the hell was wrong with you earlier? You almost got me killed!”

Old Yang, blocked by the rocks, couldn’t get in and retorted, “What do you mean I was wrong? Why don’t you look at yourself? Now what are we going to do?”

I dug through a few rocks and saw the beam of Old Yang’s flashlight shining through the cracks. However, the largest rock was at least the size of a dining table, and the gap was too small. I could stretch my hand out, but there was no way for me to squeeze through.

I struck the stones a few times, chipping away some white fragments. The two types of stones had the same hardness, making it quite laborious to break them. Lao Yang saw that the fragments I was smashing were starting to loosen again and hurriedly told me to stop, saying, “Take it easy. If you hit here again, it might collapse.”

I replied, “Sticking your neck out is just as risky as pulling it back. Whether we get crushed or starve, there’s no point in worrying too much.”

Lao Yang said, “It’s better if you don’t. We haven’t reached the end of our rope yet. Why don’t you take a look around and see if there’s anything special? If you find something, call me immediately.”

I looked around; it was dark, and all I could see were fragments of stone, so I told him there was nothing inside.

He fell silent for a moment and asked, “Are you really sure there’s nothing? Take another careful look.”

I said, “Why would I lie to you? This place is only as big as my backside; if there was anything, I’d definitely see it.”

Lao Yang replied, “Alright, take a closer look. I’ll head forward to see if it’s really blocked so solidly. Maybe there’s a gap we can crawl out of.”

As he spoke, his flashlight beam moved away. I leaned against the stone to rest for a moment, crawled into the gap, and looked around. I quickly realized there was no exit here; the stones above me weighed several tons. Being trapped here, it seemed I wouldn’t be getting out for at least a year or so.

As I ventured deeper, I found there was no path. Just as I was about to turn back, I suddenly noticed what seemed to be some drawings on the stone wall and hurried over to take a closer look.

At first glance, I thought they were primitive cave paintings, like some sort of graffiti, perhaps left by the ancestors who cast bronze trees. But upon closer inspection, I realized they weren’t; the drawings depicted an airplane and several English letters—clearly the work of modern people.

Who would do something like this in such a place? I felt quite puzzled.

Half of the graffiti was buried under the pile of stones at my feet. I moved the stones aside to see what exactly had been drawn. After shifting a large stone, a bundle of dark, tattered cloth appeared, resembling a piece of clothing.

As I pulled apart the ragged cloth, a shriveled, decayed human hand, with bones exposed, suddenly came into view. The hand was claw-like, as if it had tried to crawl out from under the rubble but had ultimately succumbed to exhaustion and died.

I was startled, nearly crying out. I thought, how could there be a dead person buried here? Could it be that this person was alive when the cave collapsed? But who was this person?

I continued to move the stones, and soon a complete corpse was revealed. The body had completely decomposed, suggesting it had been buried here for some time. Its clothing was in tatters, and I couldn’t tell what color it originally was. However, judging by the talisman hanging from its neck, this person might have been here for the same reason as us—looking for treasure.

Recalling the corpse I had seen at the bottom of the waterfall, which was similarly decayed, I thought that perhaps these two were part of the same group. Truly, some die for wealth, and some die for food; perhaps these two were destined to meet the same fate as mine.

I continued to dig, fully uncovering the corpse. I also found a backpack, completely rotted and nearly empty, containing only some black remnants that I couldn’t identify. I flipped it over, and from the compartment inside fell out a notebook.

The notebook was nearly falling apart, but fortunately, the paper quality was good, and the words written in blue ballpoint pen were still clear. I picked it up and took a look; the front contained some geographical locations and phone numbers. When I flipped to the back, I was suddenly struck by what I saw—there were some diary entries, and the date of the first entry seemed to indicate that it had started three years ago.

The handwriting of this person was quite juvenile, suggesting that they weren’t very skilled at writing. Each diary entry contained only about a hundred words. I quickly flipped through a few pages, and a chill ran down my spine.

From the entries, it appeared that this person had arrived here three years ago. The diary did not detail how they got here but instead began recording from the moment they became trapped in this cave. However, later entries occasionally mentioned their experiences before entering.

There were a total of eighteen people in their group, as mentioned in one entry: “Only I am left out of the eighteen.” It also noted that they did not enter through our route but rather came in through a massive tree hole in the banyan forest at the mountaintop, where the aerial roots wrapped around it.

This must be the banyan forest that Lao Yang mentioned. We never had the chance to go in, and I hadn’t expected there to be such a mystery inside. Had I known, we wouldn’t have gone through so much trouble.

But as I read on, I couldn’t help but feel relieved that we hadn’t taken that route, because the diary recorded that their descent was extremely perilous. Out of the eighteen who entered, only six made it out, while the others all died along the way.

It’s likely that the tree hole was located in the middle of the forest, possibly in one of the banyan trees that Lao Yang described, which were too large to be encircled by more than a dozen people. However, it’s unclear whether there was one tree or several in that forest. After they descended, their route was directly opposite to ours; we climbed straight up from the base of the bronze tree, while they must have dropped directly onto the top of the bronze tree.

What surprised me was that they mentioned not finding anything on the sacrificial platform and then descending along the surrounding walkway. At the bottom of the walkway was a pool of water, like an extremely deep pond, the water a vivid green with no visibility to the bottom.

They jumped into the pond and found the depth was immense; without equipment, they couldn’t dive down. The diving gear they brought was too small, and after a brief attempt, they had to give up. When the six of them surfaced, they were taken aback.

It turned out that while they were diving, the water level had dropped drastically. When they emerged, the walkway where they had left their gear was suddenly six or seven meters away from them. They hadn’t anticipated this; all the ropes were in their bags, not on their persons, and they panicked.

As the water level dropped rapidly, some of them climbed up to the bronze tree, while others ran into a cave exposed in the rock face. The owner of this diary entered the cave where I was, but unfortunately, he hadn’t been inside for long when a giant black serpent, like a dragon, suddenly emerged from the water and chased up the bronze tree. He only heard the screams of his companions and gunfire, which scared him into hiding in the cave.

This disaster struck suddenly; all his companions were desperate individuals. One of them, while fighting the serpent, detonated explosives just before dying. They had prepared explosives for blasting the mountain and had a significant amount, resulting in an explosion that shook the earth, even collapsing the cave where he was hiding.

The owner of the diary fainted temporarily from the explosion. When he woke up, he found himself trapped. He speculated that such a violent explosion must have killed everyone outside, and since he had no specific goal in his tomb raiding, he had no hope of rescue. He felt despondent.

The following content started to get a bit dull. He was trapped in the crevice for seven days, and the little food he had quickly ran out. He was both thirsty and hungry, and his battery had run out. In the darkness, he realized his time was running out and thought of his mother, who had no one to care for her, which made him feel utterly hopeless.

In the days that followed, due to hunger, he became delirious. One day he woke up, not knowing what time it was, only feeling an extreme thirst. In a daze, he grabbed the already dried-up water bottle and took a few gulps. Miraculously, sweet, clear water suddenly surged from the bottle. He didn’t understand what was happening, but greedily drank for over ten minutes, and the water showed no sign of diminishing.

He thought he was dreaming and believed he was close to death, experiencing hallucinations. He thought it might be better to just die like this. Then he considered that if it was a dream, there might still be food in his bag. When he reached in, he was overjoyed to find all the bags he had originally stored food in were full. He ate desperately, nearly choking himself in the process.

Gradually, he realized that all of this was not a dream. At first, he thought that God had come to save him, but as time went on, he felt increasingly that something was off. Eventually, he discovered that everything happening was somewhat connected to his thoughts, but it wasn’t infallible. For instance, when he concentrated on wanting a specific item, it wouldn’t appear. However, when he casually reached into his bag for food, he often found something he liked, even though there was nothing in the bag.

He began to consciously analyze and conduct thought experiments. Over time, he discovered his ability to materialize things. He wrote extensively about this period, and the experimental process was very complex. In the end, he didn’t conclude that he had a materialization ability; instead, he believed he had become the “delirious God.”

The graffiti on the rocks was likely drawn during this time when he was extremely bored. At the end of the diary, he wrote that he would try to use this ability to escape from there. If he succeeded, he could become a superhero; if he failed, he would die there. I don’t know what kind of experiment he ultimately conducted, but it seems that, in the end, he failed.

However, it’s uncertain whether it would be a good or bad thing for someone with such abilities to enter the real world. Seeing this corpse and thinking about my own situation, I couldn’t help but feel a chill. I had no food around me, and I feared I wouldn’t last even seven days. Besides, even if I had food, being trapped here endlessly would be worse than just dying.

I put down the diary and searched the corpse’s pockets, finding a mobile phone that was already dead. I tossed it aside and found a wallet containing some money. I thought to myself that everything might rot, but RMB would not rot—what a situation.

Inside the wallet was the person’s ID card. I pulled it out, wanting to see what this unfortunate soul was called. Shining my flashlight on it, I saw that the photo had become blurred, but the name was still clear: “Xie Ziyang.”

This surname is quite rare. The person who died in the underwater tomb, Xie Lianhuan, also has this surname. I glanced at this person’s birthday and noticed he was quite young; it’s such a pity.

Suddenly, a flashlight beam flashed from behind, and Lao Yang had crawled back, asking me from behind a rock, “Old Wu! What are you looking at?”