Mysterious Country 1: Mist-Shrouded Champa: Volume 1: Chapter 6: The Black Room Treasure Hunt

Mysterious Country 1: Mist-Shrouded Champa: Volume 1: Chapter 6: The Black Room Treasure Hunt

Near the graves and burial pits on the outskirts of town, many “fire kilns” lay hidden. These formed when decomposing corpses mixed with underground methane and marsh gas, creating a highly flammable gas that had been sealed inside the cavities for years. Once suddenly exposed to outside air, it would ignite with violent force.

As fate would have it, the “thunder ink” that Old Zhao was after happened to sit right next to one of these methane-filled fire kilns. He had ordered his men to use a long rope to drag a stone block against the cave wall, causing it to collapse instantly. A stream of fireballs erupted with a whoosh, engulfing Old Zhao as he writhed and rolled in the fissure, screaming for his mother and father. The ropes binding him snapped in the heat, and he plunged into the depths of the crack, stone and all.

Sima Hui and the other two rushed forward in alarm and peered down into the fissure. Clumps of earth and rock were cascading down the walls, and the oil lantern had smashed and gone dark. Below was complete blackness, impossible to make anything out. Fortunately, the area near the thunder ink happened to be a breeding ground for glowworm beetles, and countless frightened fireflies burst from the roots of the grass and scattered in all directions, bumping and drifting through the air. Their glow filtered down through the crack in layers of dim, eerie light, and through that faint luminous haze, the outline of Old Zhao could just barely be made out. He had fallen and been stopped by a protruding shelf of rock some thirty-odd meters below the surface, hanging head-down without moving. Whether he was alive or dead was impossible to say.

Sima Hui called down to Old Zhao several times from above and received no answer. Growing desperate, he decided to risk going down to rescue him.

Luo Dashetou grabbed his arm. “This fissure is a hollow shell of earth. It could collapse at any moment. Climb down there and you’ll be buried alive for sure. Just because you’ve got a dead rat hanging from your belt doesn’t mean you’re some kind of hunter. I’m telling you, this is not the time to show off.”

Xia Qin was equally anxious, but she had even fewer ideas than Luo Dahai. “What do we do? Maybe we should hurry back and get help…”

Sima Hui knew perfectly well how dangerous this was. But Old Zhao struck him as a genuinely remarkable and capable figure, and it seemed like too great a waste to let him die without explanation in a place like Luosi Grave. He refused to stand by and do nothing. Saving someone came first. Without wasting another word, he felt along his military belt, turned something over in his mind, settled on a plan, and immediately asked for Luo Dahai’s and Xia Qin’s belts as well. He told the two of them to stay up top and be ready to help, then lowered himself into the fissure.

Luo Dahai and Xia Qin had been about to stop him, but the moment they saw how he was climbing, both of them froze in astonishment. Any normal person, whether climbing up or down, would naturally keep their head up and their feet below. Sima Hui did the complete opposite. His head pointed downward, knees bent, toes hooked into cracks in the rock, both hands open and alternating to bear his weight, moving along the wall like an inverted gecko. Neither of them had ever seen anything like it. Their hearts leapt straight into their throats.

What Sima Hui was doing was a piece of martial arts passed down through his family from the old outlaw traditions: the “Scorpion Scales the Wall,” also known as the “Inverted Boot Escape.” The technique is said to have originated in folk acrobatics. In Wuqiao, the most celebrated acrobatics county in China, everyone from ninety-year-old elders to toddlers who had barely learned to walk could perform a few extraordinary feats. In bad years, they would travel in groups to other towns and perform for a living. This had been their local tradition since ancient times, and no one could say exactly which dynasty the custom had started in. Not long ago, an ancient tomb from the Wei-Jin period was excavated near Wuqiao, and its murals depicted acts including belly-balancing bowls, the scorpion crawl, and fire comets, proving that such skills had existed since antiquity and carried an extraordinarily long history. Although the ancient technique known as the “scorpion crawl” had long since vanished from acrobatics as practiced in recent centuries, it had survived in the military of earlier eras. The soldiers who knew this skill were mostly former outlaws and bandits who had been brought into the army under imperial amnesty. When sneaking into fortified cities and raiding enemy camps, they could stand inverted, clamp their legs around the edge of a city wall, and scramble up at speed. Anyone who witnessed it was left speechless, which gave the technique its name: the Scorpion Scales the Wall Upside Down.

In truth, this inverted climbing technique is actually more consistent with human biomechanics than it might appear. The problem is that almost no one dares try it, and most people with a conventional mind would never even conceive of the posture. Sima Hui’s ancestors had been military officers in the late Qing Dynasty and outstanding figures in the outlaw world, possessed of extraordinary abilities both civil and martial, and their line had produced practitioners of this skill to the present day. Sima Hui had trained in it since childhood under his tutor in both literary and martial arts, though his mastery was still incomplete, and he had never used it in front of others before.

Now he held his breath, pressed himself against the wall of the fissure, and inched steadily downward. Within moments he had reached Old Zhao. By the light of the glowworm beetles drifting around him, he could see that blood was flowing from Old Zhao’s nose and mouth. The man had been knocked completely unconscious by the fall. His thick fur coat had likely saved his life, but the burns on his body were severe. Sima Hui reached out and checked for breath. He was still alive. If he could get him back up, there might be a chance.

Sima Hui immediately reversed himself, looped one belt around Old Zhao’s waist, connected it to a second belt and then to his own, and strapped Old Zhao onto his back. Fortunately Old Zhao was nothing but skin and bone, and the military belt was sturdy enough to hold. Sima Hui could just barely manage the weight. He could see the bottom of the hollow was dangerously fragile and could cave in at any moment, so he didn’t dare linger. He was just about to begin climbing back up the way he had come when Old Zhao suddenly let out a groan and stirred back to consciousness. With weak and trembling effort, he raised one hand and pointed into the depths of the fissure.

Sima Hui looked down in the direction Old Zhao was pointing. There among the layered glowworms, their light wrapping around it in a soft haze, sat the thunder ink, black as lacquered jade. It had fallen to just half a meter below them. Almost within reach.

Old Zhao seemed to be asking Sima Hui to take the thunder ink out with them first. The fissure ran hundreds of meters deep, and the hollow earth and rock layers could collapse and seal it entirely at any moment. Despite being gravely injured, Old Zhao’s greed burned hotter than his pain. He couldn’t bring himself to abandon this once-in-a-lifetime piece of thunder ink, and still harbored the hope of claiming it for himself.

With Old Zhao strapped to his back, Sima Hui was already straining against the wall. The added weight was causing more earth and rock to break away from the inner wall with increasing violence. He could see things were turning bad fast. Staying alive was what mattered. He had no intention of going after the thunder ink. He took a deep breath, deployed the Scorpion technique, and made his way around and up toward the surface.

Up above, Luo Dahai and Xia Qin watched as large chunks of the hollow earth kept breaking off and falling. Several times it came close to burying Sima Hui alive, and their hearts nearly stopped each time. When at last they saw him nearing the surface, they thrust out their hands and pulled with every last bit of strength they had, hauling both Sima Hui and Old Zhao out. They had barely cleared the edge when a tremendous rumble sounded and a cascade of earth and rock sealed the fissure completely. The thunder ink, along with countless glowworm beetles, was buried beneath it, unlikely ever to see daylight again.

Sima Hui was drenched in sweat. He sat down heavily and panted. He had acted on a surge of reckless courage back there, and now that it was over, the fear settled in. One moment later and he would have been entombed underground.

Luo Dahai let out a breath of relief when he saw Sima Hui was unharmed, then went to look at Old Zhao’s injuries. He straightened up afterward, shook his head, and said: “Burned and broken both. This man can’t be saved. Even rushing him to a hospital now probably won’t make it in time. Better to dig a hole and put him in it sooner rather than later, or we’ll end up on the wrong end of a wrongful death investigation.”

Sima Hui steadied himself and said: “We went to all that trouble to drag him back out of a grave pit. The least you can do is try to revive him before you write his death certificate. He’s still breathing. You can’t just go ahead and bury someone who’s still alive.”

Luo Dahai threw up his hands. “We’re not doctors. What are we supposed to do? See for yourself. Old Zhao over here is breathing out more than he’s breathing in. Half his face has been burned off, and he’s been beaten into a bloody mess from head to toe. He’ll be feeding the crickets any minute now.”

Sima Hui suddenly thought of something. “Xia Qin’s mother is a doctor at the military hospital. Growing up around medicine, she must know something about it herself.” He immediately told Xia Qin to do what she could to stabilize Old Zhao while they figured out how to get him to a hospital.

Xia Qin was not yet sixteen. She had never been anywhere near a situation like this. She knew some basic medical knowledge, but looking at Old Zhao covered in blood, half his cheek burned away, both rows of teeth exposed through the ruined flesh, her mind went completely blank with panic. She was in no state to treat anyone. And besides, her mother was indeed a doctor, but she was a gynecologist.

Sima Hui truly did not want to watch Old Zhao die if there was anything at all to be done. Even a single thread of hope was worth pursuing. He urged Xia Qin on, saying: “A gynecologist is still a doctor. Don’t overthink it. Treat a dying horse as though it might still live. Besides, Old Zhao is half dead already. He’s in no position to care what specialty is listed on your medical license.” Worn down by the combined pleading of Sima Hui and Luo Dahai, Xia Qin steeled herself and went to examine Old Zhao’s injuries. In addition to the severe burns on his face, several of his ribs appeared to be broken, likely puncturing internal organs and causing internal bleeding. His mouth was full of bloody foam. His breathing came in irregular bursts and his consciousness flickered in and out. Luosi Grave was in the middle of nowhere. There was no way to get him to a hospital in time, and even if they could, he couldn’t be saved.

Xia Qin worked for a long while but had neither the experience nor the equipment. She was helpless, and the tears came.

At that moment, Old Zhao coughed a few times and startled everyone by pulling himself out of deep unconsciousness again. Luo Dahai assumed Xia Qin had actually performed some kind of miracle and praised her medical brilliance effusively.

But Sima Hui could see that this was a dying man’s final flicker. Old Zhao had only moments left. His heart sank, and he asked quietly: “Old Zhao, is there anyone you want us to contact? Any relatives or friends? Any message you want us to pass on?”

Old Zhao looked up at Sima Hui for a moment, then shook his head. In a voice that came and went, he said: “Never thought that I, Old Zhao, after riding out every storm life threw at me, would go and capsize in a shallow ditch like Luosi Grave. I suppose that’s fate. They say a man destined for eight can’t reach ten, no matter how he tries. Truer words were never spoken. But what I never expected was that you, young Sima, would know the Scorpion Scales the Wall. Where did you learn that?”

Seeing that Old Zhao could go at any moment, Sima Hui felt there was no point keeping anything from him, and gave a brief account of his own origins and background.

Old Zhao looked mildly surprised, but he too could feel the end approaching. With the last of his strength he said: “I have no family left in this world, no one close. On account of what friendship we’ve managed to share, do me the favor of burying these old bones here in Luosi Grave. Couldn’t lay eyes on the thunder ink while I was alive. I’ll guard it from the other side as a ghost… that’s good enough.” He trailed off, his trembling finger pointing at the ground below, and said with failing breath: “Yellow ox rises from the Yellow Stone Mountain, when the great calamity comes, the storm clouds will gather…”

Sima Hui looked where he was pointing. It was the very spot where the landslide had buried the thunder ink. The last words struck him as very strange, and he asked quickly: “What do you mean?”

But Old Zhao’s eyes had already gone unfocused. Before he could finish what he was saying, his breath gave out. He died in front of Sima Hui.

The three of them had only known Old Zhao for a short while, but they had shared hardship together, and watching him die like this, they were all struck with a quiet sadness. They sat beside the body in silence for a long time, until the firefly city drifting across the wilderness gradually scattered and faded. Then they used flat stones to dig a shallow pit and laid him in it.

Sima Hui thought about the thunder ink, now buried deep in the fissure. The spectacle of the firefly city would probably never be seen in this world again. He made a mental note to come back around the Qingming Festival to sweep Old Zhao’s grave.

The three of them took their leave of Old Zhao’s resting place and walked slowly back toward Luosi Bridge. Each was lost in their own thoughts, and no one spoke. It was only when they reached the bridge that Luo Dahai thought to ask Sima Hui what Old Zhao had meant by his last words. Sima Hui shook his head and said he hadn’t understood either, that it was probably the ramblings of a dying man. But inwardly he thought: you can’t get answers from the dead. Old Zhao’s origins and history, and whatever secret the thunder ink had concealed, had all become a riddle that could never be solved.

Sima Hui walked on with a heavy heart. He looked up and saw that the eastern sky had begun to show the first pale light of dawn. Looking back on everything that had happened through the night, it all felt like a nightmare. He stretched out his aching limbs and turned to Xia Qin: “You haven’t been home all night. Your father must be out of his mind by now. He’s probably got half the neighborhood out searching for you. You should head back.”

Luo Dahai quickly added: “And whatever you do, don’t mention me or Sima Hui to your father. Our reputations are spotless and we’d like to keep it that way.”

Xia Qin shook her head. “It’s fine. I told him ahead of time that I was staying the night at my aunt’s place.”

Luo Dashetou laughed. “Sima, look how good little Xia is to us. She heard from her father that there’s going to be a crackdown on shady social organizations soon, so she cooked up a story for her family, stayed out all night, and came all the way here from the city just to warn us.”

Xia Qin shook her head again, signaling that wasn’t quite right. She hesitated, then said: “Actually, the reason I came to find you this time, there’s something else. Something important. But I’m worried that once you hear it, you’ll go and do something reckless again. So I haven’t decided yet whether I should tell you.”

Sima Hui and Luo Dahai both stopped short at that and pressed her to explain. Whatever it was, it couldn’t matter. From the perspective of the general public they had been trouble since birth, and from the city to the countryside there wasn’t a mess they hadn’t already stirred up. What bigger disaster could they possibly cause?

But as the saying goes: the world is as vast and uncertain as the sea, and where in a man’s life is there no wind and no waves?