Neither I nor the fat man paid any attention to him. I said to the fat man, “This is different from our usual tacit understanding. You used to say you understood me.”
The fat man replied, “After thinking it over, I believe it’s safer to understand the little brother.” He spat and continued, “Damn it, I’m not being pretentious. Do you think what the little brother is talking about has anything to do with him? Let me tell you, his matters are his own; you don’t know, I don’t know, and I bet he doesn’t even know clearly himself. What he wants you to know is definitely about you.”
The fat man wasn’t like this before. I turned to look at him and saw him sneaking glances at the short guy, Feng. Suddenly, I realized that I had lost my judgment; with this guy around, the fat man couldn’t say what he wanted to say.
I thought about just kicking the short guy Feng to death, but then I saw him fiddling with something and suddenly he exclaimed, “Hey, can you come help me take a look?” He was complaining as he pulled out an iron chain from a pile of stones.
“Don’t move!” the fat man immediately said, “Whatever you do, don’t move.”
The short guy Feng was startled. Seeing the fat man reaching out to take it, he handed the end of the chain to the fat man, but as he handed it over, he tugged a little.
The fat man and I exchanged glances, thinking that such a small tug shouldn’t cause any problems.
After a few seconds of stalemate, suddenly the huge stone above us sank down a bit, dropping about the height of a fingernail.
My face turned pale instantly. I exchanged a glance with the fat man and started to crawl back desperately. Suddenly, the stones on my body shifted, and the ground beneath me seemed to loosen, while the massive stone above pressed down another fingernail’s worth. The sound of stones straining began to echo around us.
Then, the ground collapsed in an instant.
We fell into an empty space below, stones and all, plummeting down.
In mid-air, the fat man shouted, “Feet need to touch the ground!”
As I frantically adjusted my posture, I already landed. Stones crashed around my feet, many bouncing up and hitting my ankles, causing me to jump up in pain.
The torch was extinguished as we landed, and we all covered our heads with our hands, unsure if the massive stones above had also fallen down.
It all happened in just a few seconds. If the large stones above had also come crashing down, there would be no point in struggling. In the next life, I’d just be reincarnated as a sugar oil cake.
A lot of small stones fell down, and the big stones clattered as they collapsed down, eventually coming to a stop. I broke out in a cold sweat, and fear started to set in. Everything had happened too quickly.
The fat man lit a fire starter and cursed the short guy Feng. I looked up and noticed that the King of Hell hadn’t fallen down with us; could he have been stuck above? Looking up, I saw that the area was completely covered by stones.
If that thing had been crushed, it might actually be a good thing. I turned my head to look around, and my attention was instantly drawn to the surrounding environment.
I saw traces carved into the rocks around us; this was an artificial stone chamber. The pigeonhole above was a trapdoor. The short guy Feng must have opened the trapdoor for us to fall down, but this wasn’t some intricate mechanism.
At the base of the stone walls in this stone room, I saw many dry bones leaning against them. They were all wearing the clothes of the Kham people, but the clothes had a much more decayed appearance. I picked up a hidden knife and found it completely rusted into mud. It turned into fragments in my hand.

On one side, there was a stone door. As I approached it, I noticed that below the stone door was a cliff. I called the fat guy over to take a look; it wasn’t very high, only about six or seven meters, and it seemed to lead to a larger space.

I asked the fat guy for a fire starter and threw it down. We saw a space roughly the size of a swimming pool, filled with stone structures that resembled bellows and kilns. The fire starter could only illuminate the nearest parts, but I quickly understood what this was.

These were the openings for smelting bronze; they were refining metal here.

“What is that?” the fat guy pointed to a section in the middle of the kiln, and I saw a row of objects that were all in the shape of stone heads, similar to those of the King of Hell.