Mysterious Country 1: Mist-Shrouded Champa,Volume 6: Chapter 5: Miracle

Although the camping lamp exposed the quietly approaching Green Tomb before everyone, the lamp body that had not yet fully restored illumination seemed to short circuit due to unstable voltage. It only flashed slightly once. The light emitting diode suddenly burst. Darkness once again submerged everything in an instant.

At this moment, Luo Big Tongue, who had been the first to raise his gun, had already pulled the trigger. Two shotgun shells fired simultaneously. With a bang, gunpowder smoke suddenly rose. The other three also recovered from their shock. Each held their weapons and fired. Sima Hui, in the continuously flashing gunfire, discovered there was nothing before him. Not even half a ghost shadow. He called for everyone to conserve ammunition and stop shooting.

The surroundings fell back into silence. But everyone’s hearts were still pounding wildly. Not knowing what unexpected things would happen next. Luo Big Tongue saw the camping lamp was completely damaged. He wanted to steel his courage and continue groping in the darkness for the white phosphorus grenade that had just fallen to the ground.

At this moment, they suddenly heard a gloomy voice from over a dozen steps ahead: “Stop looking. The white phosphorus grenade is with me…”

The voice was stiff and hoarse. Exactly the same as the sound that came from the handheld recorder when the earthquake bomb was detonated in the cabin earlier. Only this time, he was no longer using a disguised voice.

Everyone was shocked and anxious upon hearing this. They were about to swarm forward and attack. But they heard that person laugh coldly: “You truly don’t know what’s good for you. Holding goose feathers and not knowing they’re light. Carrying a millstone on your head and not knowing it’s heavy. If you want to live, don’t act rashly.”

Sima Hui thought: Since Green Tomb dares to show himself, he must have something to rely on. Moreover, having been shot in the head, he not only didn’t die, but also didn’t bleed much. This body shell, although having both form and shadow, who knows what kind of monster it is. Their illumination equipment is nearly exhausted. The situation is extremely unfavorable. Now is not yet a suitable time for action. So he stopped the other three. He didn’t press forward. He only asked from his original position: “Who exactly are you?”

That person let out a series of dry cold laughs: “Everything you four just said, I heard every word without omission. You four dog bastards, eyes growing on the back of your heads. Heaven killing good insight! If I now say I am a missing person from the Allied counterattack on Myanmar… I’m afraid I can’t hide it anymore.”

Sima Hui knew his previous predictions were correct. On one hand, he secretly pondered countermeasures. On the other hand, he responded: “With your few tricks, you think you’ve covered everything tightly. But actually, it’s like dogs drilling through the front fence and cats entering through the back hedge. Not a single place is solid.”

That person, hiding in the darkness, heard Sima Hui’s words. He let out a neither cold nor warm hey sound. He said: “I was only temporarily careless, revealing some slight flaws. I didn’t expect to be seen through by you. But after all, you still haven’t crossed the final ‘bottom line.’ Otherwise, you would have been corpses on the ground long ago. How could you have lived until now?”

Sima Hui understood clearly in his heart. What the other party called the “bottom line” was that among the several survivors of the expedition team, none had seen Green Tomb’s true face. He didn’t know what was so strange about this, that he never dared to let anyone know. Whoever saw it would be killed. Even state secret documents were nothing more than this. But a person, even if their appearance was ugly and strange, would never rise to the level of “secrecy.” However, Sima Hui felt that asking about this matter now was completely meaningless. The urgent task was to quickly grasp the other party’s motives. So he said: “You’re not Xi Shi or Diao Chan. No one is eager to see your appearance. You coming out now, it can’t be just to tell us you have this taboo?”

Luo Big Tongue also threatened from the side: “You’d better give us a reason right now to not dismember you into eight pieces for the time being.”

That person was unmoved. But his tone became even more sinister: “The danger you face is far more terrible than you imagine. If we continue to maintain a hostile relationship, it benefits no one.”

He frankly admitted that there were indeed some things he wanted to tell everyone. So he no longer concealed. First, he admitted his identity. He was the mastermind Green Tomb who hired the expedition team and planned the entire operation.

Green Tomb was the largest underground intelligence, drug, and arms trading organization in the entire Southeast Asia region. Because the current head never showed his face, outsiders also didn’t know his identity and origins. They could only call him by the organization’s name Green Tomb. Actually, the pseudonym he used externally in the past was Qian Baoshan. He had lived in Yunnan for generations. He had also done business in Myanmar, Laos, Vietnam, Cambodia, and other places. He had close relations with British and French colonists.

Before Qian Baoshan became the head of Green Tomb, he already knew that the British had repeatedly sent expedition teams deep into the northern Myanmar Savage Mountain rift valley. The operational goal was absolutely not merely to search for missing personnel. The main purpose was to investigate the Cham dynasty’s Golden Spider City. But because the mountains were high and the forests deep, the terrain was rugged, the environment complex, not once did they succeed.

However, the intelligence collected by the British over many years and the archives of successive operations ultimately fell into Qian Baoshan’s hands. Plus the much information he obtained through secret channels. This made him realize that the Cham civilization with strong mysterious colors, a branch of ancient Hinduism, had never been mixed with Buddhism. As early as a thousand years ago, in the depths of the primeval jungle, there was hidden the temple of the Cham dynasty worshipping the Vedic Lord of Beasts. Later, because of the sinking of Savage Mountain water veins, the stone halls and ancient pagodas on the surface all sank into the mountain belly.

The Cham ruler at that time was King Anu Jaya. This person’s appearance was strange. He was extremely arrogant. He believed in fate and physiognomy. His temperament was unpredictable. He was cruel and bloodthirsty. He destroyed Buddhism and killed monks. Whenever he went on conquest, he would peel the faces off all living captives. The monks, slaves, and craftsmen slaughtered by him were countless. The sudden appearance of the abyss like rift valley in Savage Mountain was regarded as an omen of world destruction. The theocratic dominated high pressure rule most feared the collapse of faith. To eliminate disaster, the Cham king ordered people to rebuild the City of Four Million Pagodas in the depths of the cave. Westerners called it the Golden Spider City based on its special shape.

It was said that although King Anu Jaya was born with strange features, rare since ancient times, called the person closest to heaven, he was after all still flesh and blood. The distance to heaven was so far it could not be reached. However, in the Golden Spider City of the Savage Mountain great rift valley, there was buried the secret about this distance. That is to say, the entire Golden Spider City was a passage to heaven. Because after the collapse of Savage Mountain, someone discovered from the underground mud a massive rock that was completely integrated. If comparing its volume intuitively, it was estimated to be equivalent to a large soccer field. Inside this rock body were many naturally formed caves. King Anu Jaya ordered people to pave the inside and outside of the massive rock with bricks and stones neatly. This became the strangely shaped Golden Spider City. Most of the original caves were sealed shut. Only at the deepest part was one room left called the “Corpse Eye.” Apart from the Cham king, no one knew what was hidden inside. From this time, the strange plant Udumbara began to grow and spread endlessly around the ancient city. The dense fog produced by it covered all paths entering the rift valley. Then when the Cham king died suddenly without illness, along with these unknown secrets, he took them all into the coffin. He left no written records for later generations. Everything became an unsolvable eternal mystery.

Qian Baoshan didn’t believe in gods, buddhas, heaven, or hell. He believed that from ancient apes evolving to the present, although the degree of technology and civilization changed with each passing day, the essence of being human had never changed. For tens of thousands of years, it was nothing more than walking, sitting, lying, eating, sleeping, birth, aging, sickness, death, reproducing offspring. Because this was the form of human life. Perhaps the so called gods were existences that transcended these life forms and never sank. They were existences that pitiful mortals who could only live one life could never understand. From the distant past to the endless future, no life could change its own form of existence.

Qian Baoshan was different from the Cham king who had already died a thousand years ago. Through these fragmented and disintegrated pieces of information, he had already inferred the secret in the “Corpse Eye.” He disregarded any cost and consequence. He only wanted to find an opportunity to see the truth hidden within. However, from the ancient city grew the rare Udumbara. It sealed the underground cave. Subsequently producing large amounts of dense fog. Apart from cold blooded reptilian creatures, any living person who entered would be swallowed. None survived.

Qian Baoshan tried every possible means. Finally, he found several ancient maps left by the Cham king. They depicted the terrain structure inside the rift valley. But although he knew the legend that only flying snakes could enter the fog, he couldn’t understand it after thinking a hundred times. To go deep underground and investigate thoroughly, he first persuaded the British to dig tunnels in Savage Mountain. Later, because of the Japanese invasion of Myanmar, he was forced to abandon this. During World War II, Qian Baoshan again provided information. He guided the Americans to use the previously abandoned tunnels to build roads. And sent his subordinates to lead the Sixth Independent Engineering Combat Regiment’s mixed supply company into the Mammoth Cave. Even on the eve of Myanmar’s independence, he also ordered people to impersonate the Royal Air Force. They piloted modified Mosquito special transport planes. They loaded earthquake bombs and entered the rift valley. Preparing to use synthesized chemical defoliant to destroy the underground plants. But none succeeded.

Among successive operations, the one closest to success was that Mosquito special transport plane. At that time, the Mosquito flew in severe weather. It actually risked its life to land in the fog. But immediately lost contact. Failing at the final hurdle. To thoroughly destroy the Udumbara that produced the dense fog, special chemical poison was necessary. This chemical defoliant and shock bombs were both military grade. They were strictly controlled. After the British withdrew from Myanmar, they were no longer easy to obtain. So the best operational plan was to send another suicide squad. Enter the valley bottom and detonate the earthquake bomb in the cabin. But the situation in northern Myanmar was unstable. Armed conflicts continued to escalate. A suitable opportunity was never found.

Qian Baoshan was extremely cautious by nature. He never showed his traces before others. So each operation was only planned and arranged behind the scenes. He never personally risked danger. But he knew that the dense fog in Savage Mountain was difficult to cross. And with the changes in political situation, the opportunities left for him would become fewer and fewer. He had no choice but to devise a strange strategy. Starting from areas outside the scope of scientific cognition. And planning to personally enter the mountains to search for the Golden Spider City.

Qian Baoshan first took advantage of the Vietnam Hue battle raging like fire and oil. He stole the Cham king’s golden coffin from the ancient capital’s imperial city. And peeled the dead human face skin with the perfect appearance from the skeleton’s head. Because Qian Baoshan knew that he himself lacked nothing. Only lacking a fortune that was difficult to fathom. According to the standards of the Vatican’s Papal Office, those who could produce two or more miracles after death were considered “saints.” For example, after someone died, their corpse without special treatment, placed in normal temperature environment, preserved for hundreds or thousands of years, not decaying or rotting. This counted as one miracle. If someone had an incurable disease, prayed sincerely and devoutly, and after touching the corpse, their strange and difficult illness was cured without treatment. This counted as another miracle. Only when double miracles appeared could this corpse be recognized as a saint during life. Such things were all viewpoints of Western religion.

And the demon faced King Anu Jaya was born with heavenly and strange features. His fortune was strong and prosperous, like the sun in the sky. For example, his killing karma was very heavy. He had extremely many enemies during life. Assassination and poisoning attempts against him were common. But always by some strange coincidence, not once succeeded. Every time he experienced great calamity, he always passed through danger as if on flat ground. After his death, the corpse appeared at least three miracles: First, the corpse had already decayed. Only the head was not damaged. The face was like a silver bottle. Still vivid and lifelike. Second, since the royal tomb was looted, those who opened the coffin and saw the Cham king’s face with its undispersed spirit, terrifying and awe inspiring, all felt fear in their hearts. They all intended to destroy this demon face. But all died tragically and unexpectedly. Without exception. The remaining people were so frightened their souls flew and their gallbladders split. They had no choice but to re nail the coffin shut. They dared not face it again. Third, it was said that the Cham king’s yin spirit did not disperse in the coffin. Whoever could exchange the dead corpse’s face onto their own head, the Cham king’s yin spirit would follow behind. All matters would turn danger into safety.

Qian Baoshan knew some Fangshu. But he didn’t dare to deeply believe. The reason he did this was completely to give himself a reassurance pill. After all, fortune was something without shadow or form. Usually, one only knew whether it existed or not after the fact. No one could guarantee it. Then he continued preparing. Waiting for the opportunity. Sure enough, within a few years, large areas of non military controlled zones were produced by warfare in northern Myanmar. Qian Baoshan bought off several local armed forces. He set up several operational strongholds outside the mountains. At the same time, he spared no expense. He recruited experts and skilled hands from all aspects. Planning to divide into three teams to enter the mountains and search for the underground ancient city.

Although preparations were sufficient, there were still too many unknown factors. The expedition team had at most only twenty percent certainty. Qian Baoshan couldn’t help but look before and after. Hesitating and unable to decide. At this time, news suddenly came that a strong tropical storm system rarely seen in decades was continuously hovering. It would very likely affect Savage Mountain. Violent winds and rain would completely eliminate the dense fog that never dispersed all year round. Qian Baoshan didn’t expect that the biggest obstacle before his eyes would be so easily resolved by heaven. This was the first time in his life that he felt the “fortune” brought by the corpse skin mask.