At this point, I understood quite clearly what was happening. It was a mass of muddy substance spraying out from the crevices in the rocks. Below us was a hollow area filled with broken stones, and I had no idea what the situation was like underneath. Clumps of mud sprayed up from the gaps. Some of it flowed back down before hitting the surface, while others shot straight up to the surface from the crevices in the rocks, like a fountain. I rummaged around in the cracks of the rocks, and they were all covered in a slippery, oily mud, making it impossible to get a solid footing, which left me feeling frustrated. The noise outside grew louder, and I knew that shouting wouldn’t help, so I just flashed my flashlight at the gaps. Soon, the fat guy rushed over and reached down to pull me up. He was covered in oily mud, and when I grabbed his hand, I slipped off. After a while, he tossed down a belt. I buckled it around my hand, and he pulled me up halfway. The mud was gushing out more violently now, and in the darkness, I saw clumps of shadows flying into the air.

“Can you make things easier for me? I’d be better off bringing the lady from the shop downstairs!” the fat guy cursed. “Is falling into a pit your only skill?”

“It was an accident, an accident!” I shouted. “What’s going on here?”

“How would I know?” the fat guy replied. I looked toward the bronze door, where there was cold smoke everywhere, and it was even harder to see now. He helped me walk toward Zhang Haixing, and I asked him what he had run away for.

“The door blew up,” he said.

“It blew up that easily?”

“Who cares if it was easy or not?” he retorted. “All this mud is gushing out from inside. Damn it, I thought a flood was coming.”

When we reached Zhang Haixing, I saw her standing on a large rock, lighting a cigarette and looking around. The fat guy continued, “But the situation is better than I thought. All this mud has washed down into the crevices of the rocks. It seems this canyon is very deep; there’s a considerable depth under the broken stones beneath our feet. If it weren’t for these rocks falling down and filling the bottom of the canyon, the door would be halfway up the mountain.” The volume of mud must be enormous; after flooding the bottom of the canyon, the impact caused a lot of mud to spray up from the crevices. The fat guy was still quick to react; if it weren’t for this coincidence, we would have already been swept away by the mud if we had run a bit slower.

“Why is there mud all behind the bronze door?”

“Not just that; listen to this sound. Behind that door is filled with mud. This bronze door is like a dam, sealing all this mud inside.”

“But last time, nothing sprayed out.”

“That means the situation has changed. We need to go in and take a look to figure out what’s going on. I hope this canyon is long enough to drain all the mud inside. Let’s wait; we can’t leave for now anyway. The stones here have all been loosened by the flood.”

As the fat guy spoke, a clump of mud splashed directly onto the stone beside us, and we both ducked. I noticed the mud was very viscous, almost like a membrane. When it touched a person, it felt like gum that wouldn’t come off, and I had a vague feeling that something was off. Zhang Haixing was more composed than us; she was covered in mud, smoking while looking around, completely ignoring us. We couldn’t do anything but wait there. Soon, we got used to the noise and began to calm down. The cold smoke gradually extinguished one after another, and the surroundings returned to complete darkness. However, knowing the situation around us made this darkness less frightening.

After seven hours, the noise began to decrease. As the commotion slowly subsided, I found myself feeling uncomfortable. Gradually, from extreme noise to extreme silence, I entered a meditative state, until there was not a sound to be heard around us. The fat guy was the first to let out a sigh.

“It’s done,” he said. “What did this mountain eat? Water-induced diarrhea.”

“It was already disgusting enough. We still have to go in later; can we leave some way out?” Zhang Haixing said, gradually brightening the flashlight to look around. Almost all the stones around us were covered in black mud, and we were too. Even if it was just a splash, after such a long time, there was hardly any spot that had escaped. The fat guy shook his hand; some parts had already solidified, and he easily tore off the whole piece of mud stuck to him.

“Damn, this stuff is great for blackheads,” the fat guy said, going to tear off the mud on his face. I followed suit and tidied myself up a bit, then turned on my flashlight and stepped back to the bronze giant door.

The sight before me left me dumbfounded. We had only pressed a small hand grenade, thinking it would only create a hole the size of a butt, but in front of us, a massive opening appeared on the bronze door, overwhelming and disheartening. At least a ten-foot-high gaping hole opened outward, clearly formed by the mud washing against it. The hole looked like a vertical mouth, and inside was pitch black. The black mud sticking to the bronze door had turned into many viscous strands, hanging on the sharp edges of the gaping hole in the bronze giant door. The fat guy poked it with his flashlight and said, “It looks like a wound.”