Daomu Biji: The Mystic Nine

Chapter 31: Outside the Mine

Zhang Qishan climbed all the way up the mine shaft, following close behind the quick-climbing Old Man Zhang. The shaft was dug at a very steep seventy-degree angle, but small footholds had been dug every foot or so, so it wasnt dangerous. It was obvious to see that iron stakes had been embedded in the stone many years ago, and ropes had been tied to them to help people climb down. But now the ropes had rotted away, and the iron stakes had rusted into the cracks in the wall.

The shaft was crude and unimpressive, but it wasnt long before a light appeared overhead. After climbing more than a dozen steps, Zhang Qishan finally reached the mine shafts entrance. He found that the enlarged space was actually a gap in the mountain, and logs had been embedded on both sides of the rock for people to use as stairs. Zhang Qishan didn't dare step on them. Instead, he placed one hand on the protruding rock and climbed down.

Zhang Qishan crawled out of the weeds and shrubs and discovered that the gap he had just come out of was about four stories up on a small cliff. There was a dry riverbed beneath the cliff, where numerous shacks had been built.

This was the entrance to an ancient mine, and all the miners had lived in those shacks. Faint traces of cooking smoke could be seen rising up in the distance, and braying mules could be heard alongside the sporadic sounds of ore being mined. Since the weeds were overgrown here and no one appeared to be around, all that activity was probably a few kilometers away.

Zhang Qishan looked to the side and found that the mountain gap he had crawled out of was only one among many mine openings on the cliff here. Based on how the fields outside were overgrown with weeds, these old mines had obviously been abandoned long ago. If they didnt remember carefully, they wouldnt be able to tell which one they had come out of.

He and Old Man Zhang jumped down and landed on the riverbed. No one was in the shacks here. The miners followed the vein, so once it had dried up here, they left.

Zhang Qishan snuck forward and asked Old Man Zhang, "What did you find?"

"Follow me." Old Man Zhang said. The two of them walked into the nearest abandoned shack and immediately saw that a thick layer of insect silk was almost completely covering all the shacks alongside the river. A layer of silk strands covered the bed, ceiling, utensils, and stove, and when they walked into the shack and parted some of the silk, they found the bodies. Each one was lying face down on the bed or ground, and had completely rotted and shriveled up.

"You wanted to know where the people went they all died here." Old Man Zhang said.

"How many do you think there are?" Zhang Qishan looked out at the riverbed and told himself that this wasnt an ordinary way to die. The insect silk practically covered everything in sight.

"Based on my experience, there are at least two hundred people in the mine here, including the Chinese miners and Japanese foremen who are mixed in. But theyve integrated with the Chinese for decades, so you cant tell them apart. Either way, they all died here."

Zhang Qishan silently swept his eyes over the circle of corpses. He had thought it was strange when he was on the train, but he could still write it off as a coincidence or a feng shui array set up by the expert. But with so many corpses lying face down here, it was definitely bizarre.

"Why did they die like this?" Old Man Zhang muttered to himself. "Its almost as if theres something on their backs."

Zhang Qishan looked down at the nearest body and narrowed his eyes. His gut told him that these bodies were lying face down even when they were alive. In other words, they looked like this now because something had happened to them before they died. He whispered, "Tell Ba Ye to come up." A soldier immediately left and started climbing up the cliff, quickly making it to the gap at the top.

They had walked several miles underground, but when they had surfaced from the gap, they found that they hadnt actually gone that far. Zhang Qishan climbed back up the cliff and saw that the riverbed led to a distant mountain, which was completely covered in primitive forest. Scattered black smoke rose up from the forest, indicating that the riverbed went deep into the mountain, and the old mines there were still being excavated. There was also a primitive forest between these two mines, so the only way to connect them was by using horses and mules.

"Theyre all dead, so maybe blowing up the mine with solve everything." Old Man Zhang had also climbed up.

Zhang Qishan shook his head, squatted down, and touched the rocks on the ground: "Havent you noticed? Whats missing from this camp?"

"What?"

"None of these shacks have any mining tools, daily necessities, or dry food. This place is just like a coffin home, a kind of temporary place to put the dead. Even though there are a few daily necessities here like stoves and clotheslines, the bodies dont have money or tobacco on them."

"What do you mean?"

"Someone took all the valuables here, which means there must be someone who survived. We have to find them and make them take us into the mine."

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