“What"s immortal fruit? Is it the same as a devil fruit?” I thought of an anime in which there were a lot of fruits that would give you super powers after eating them and I thought it was strangely funny. (TN note: lol he totally means One Piece)
I looked at Fatty and he said, “I heard my older sister say it. This guy was extremely c.o.c.ky and wanted a prost.i.tute. Once she went to the boss"s house to "deliver takeout", she saw a box hanging in his room. He wouldn"t let her touch it, saying it was immortal fruit. She didn"t understand, so he asked her if she had seen "The Legend of Chu Liuxiang." Monk Wuhua had never fallen on the ground since he was born, sitting on the bed and meditating on the Luanjia, just like free flowing water. The man had a very high Buddhlike nature and had never touched the world of mortals since he was born. The same was true of some things, which had never fallen to the ground since they were made. They were all hung up and preserved. The box containing such treasures is called immortal fruit. I just heard about it, but I didn"t expect there to be so many.”
“Are you a f.u.c.king storyteller?” I said, “I"ve heard stories too. In the past, eunuchs had a treasure room where all the things cut off from them were put in a box and hung up. This was also the case and there were all kinds of boxes. Some of the big eunuchs" treasures had their own special rooms. I think this place is the treasure house.”
“You mean there are tens of thousands of d.i.c.ks hanging from this ancient building"s third floor ceiling? s.h.i.t, this landlord"s aesthetics are really disturbing. Absolutely impossible!” As Fatty pulled out his submachine gun from the bag, he said “Just you wait, this fat master will show you his skills and shoot with great precision.”
I saw him coughing until his face was almost blue and said, “Don"t f.u.c.king bicker with me, just shoot it down.”
Fatty pointed to one in the distance: “Let"s do things with style. Look at that, the smallest one.” I didn"t see it clearly, but he raised his hand and with one shot, a box hanging from the ceiling dropped and rolled on the ground several times.
We covered our noses and mouths until the dust dispersed and then Fatty picked it up. It was a wooden box, and the outside was pretty badly rotted. Fatty pried it open with an iron pick and dropped the contents to the ground.
It was a dry hand with two unusually long fingers, but not the same as Poker-Face"s.
Fatty and I looked at each other and didn"t speak. He stood up and immediately shot down several more. I opened the boxes and found there were all dry hands inside. Some hands had completely rotted and were just bones, but I could see that there was something wrong with the fingers of these hands.
Moreover, some of the boxes were old and some were new, and there was a great difference in age.
“Zhang family"s d.i.c.ks look very special.” Fatty teased me, “How do you like that?”
“f.u.c.k off.” I cursed, looking above our heads, “this is a ma.s.s grave. These hands obviously have the Zhang family characteristics, and there are so many of varying ages. Do you know how many Chinese returned home when they died overseas?” I paused for a moment, looked at him and continued, “The body was too heavy to be preserved, so they only brought back part of it. I think these hands are probably those whose bodies have been damaged and couldn"t be buried, so they cut off one hand and buried it here in this way.”
“Then why are there so many?”
“War.” I said, “so many people, it must be because of a large fire, or war. Of course it wasn"t a great war, but since ancient times, large tomb raiding families had their own armed forces. And it wasn"t only tomb raiding families, but also the wealthy in many places. These people were a very strong local armed force during the war.”
“Do you remember the bodies we fished out of the lake?” Fatty asked, “Those didn"t have hands either. They were all cut off.”
“These hands all have the obvious characteristics of the Zhang family. Apart from being buried, there must be a reason to hide their ident.i.ty.” I said, “It seems that the bodies we fished out of the lake were also from the Zhang family.”
“Is it the Zhang family?” Fatty muttered, “It"s too confusing, what"s going on?”
These hands aroused my curiosity, and I couldn"t wait to follow Poker-Face"s footprints to continue exploring. We found the next flight of stairs and climbed up.
On the next level, I saw many wooden railings—this level finally had something normal. Like many towers, there were numerous rooms and corridors further in. After leaving the stairs, we found that all the rooms were closed and the windows were covered with black paper, so we couldn"t see inside.
Fatty took a few steps forward, picked a random a door, and gave it a push. He found it was locked and was about to kick it open, but immediately remembered the dust and put his foot back down. We used our clothes to wipe the dust off the door, and then Fatty poked a hole in the black window paper with an iron pick.
We peered into the room but it was completely dark. We shined the flashlight into the hole but couldn"t get a complete picture. Fatty took out the homemade flare we had found from the dead grave robbers and lit it, throwing it into the hole.
The thing burned through the aluminum foil and lit up the whole room, making me realize that it was actually a large-sized flare that had been improved by these grave robbers. The working cla.s.s is really ingenious. We pressed our eyes against the hole again and found that the room wasn"t big, up to 3 square meters, with a large black wood coffin inside.
The walls were covered with wooden tablets full of written characters and when I looked at all of the small Chinese characters, I thought they seemed like an epitaph.
The fire burned for less than a minute and then went out. Fatty dumped another one and looked at the room more carefully. He said, “No, this floor is the burial chamber and the line should all be here.”
I estimated that this floor had at least 2,000 square meters and since this one room was 2 to 3 square meters, that is to say, there are about 1,000 such rooms. That would mean that there are about 1,000 coffins holding 1,000 dead people here.
“Are there so many members of the Zhang family?” Fatty said, “How big is this family?”
I said, “Wealthy families in ancient times were very large. Have you seen "A Dream of Red Mansion?" Do you know how many people there were in The Grand View Garden? Cao Xueqin alone wrote 450. The number of Genghis Khan"s family is estimated to be tens of thousands by now. You and I may even have the “Golden Family” genes. The Manchu royal family also had a large population. In history, as long as a family can prosper for three generations, by the third generation, there will be tens of thousands of people all over the country. This family had a special status and its rise and fall weren"t affected by historical changes. I"m afraid the family was even larger and those who could get a small room here were all very prominent members of the family. The seven matriarchal cousins and three patriarchal cousins are all hanging downstairs.”
Fatty said: “Man, thanks to Little Brother"s generation having dementia we don"t have to worry about China being occupied by them.”
“China"s third largest surname is Zhang. "The Yellow Emperor"s fifth son, Qingyang, was born to command and when he looked at the arc of the heavenly body, he vowed to make a bow. To make this bow properly, he made libations to the arc and thereupon became the Zhang clan." It"s not surprising that the Zhang family is distinguished.” I said, “Do you smell something strange?”
During our discussion, a strong smell of scorching heat reached us and Fatty sniffed it: “It"s ok, it"s just the smell of the flare.”
I didn"t think it smelled right since it was so strong, and with the temperature, it didn"t smell like old smoke. “No, it"s not right.” Before I finished speaking, I saw a light flashing in the room we had just looked in.
I leaned over and saw we were done for. Just now the flares were thrown on the floor inside… the floor that was made of wood. The temperature of the flares was so high that the floor was burned.
“You"re in big trouble motherf.u.c.ker.” I said, “Quick quick quick, the canteen.”
“It"s fine, isn"t it just a small fire?” Fatty said, removing the lid from the canteen, taking a sip, and spraying it into the hole. But it was no use spraying a few mouthfuls, the canteen had been completely emptied, but the fire was getting hotter and hotter.
The whole ancient building was made of wood and this was the middle floor. If it burned, the whole building would be finished. “Now I admit I"ve caused a big problem.” Fatty said, looking at the top beam. Originally, as long as you kicked the door in and stomped your feet, the small fire would definitely go out, but I was almost certain that the toxic powder acc.u.mulated over the past thousand years would kill us before the fire went out.
“Urine.” I remembered an incident that Uncle Three told me about before, “Do you have to pee?”
“f.u.c.k, it"s full of powder, who knows if it will burn my "little brother." I"ve already sacrificed my lungs for Little Brother; I don"t want to sacrifice that.”
“It"s ok. Poke a hole in the top of the window so you can see and aim at the bottom. At most, some powder will stick on it and you can wipe it off. It"ll be fine.”
“Then why don"t you do it?”
“I didn"t drink that much water.” I scolded, “Hurry up, or it"ll be useless to empty your bladder.”
Fatty looked at me, looked at his crotch, and looked at the flames inside. “Alas,” he made up his mind: “Then squat down!”
I squatted down and Fatty unzipped his pants, exposing his boxers. He came towards me and stepped on my shoulder. I heard him cry: “f.u.c.king eat my….”
I really didn"t expect Fatty to be so heavy. As soon as his foot came down, my collarbone snapped as if it was broken, and I fell down, unable to bear his weight at all. Fatty"s word “whip” hadn"t been finished before it turned into “s.h.i.t” as his whole body fell onto the wooden door, knocking it to the ground.
The flame was obviously extinguished in an instant. When I saw something was wrong, I immediately shouted, “Hold your breath.”
The two of us immediately wrapped our clothes around our heads, covering our noses and mouths and rigidly protected our faces.
I had a hunch that the dust must have drifted down like snowflakes, but what I didn"t expect was that this time there was only a little bit. Fatty and I waited for a long time and felt weirdly surprised as we flicked the dust out of our hair.
“Is there anyone cleaning here?” Fatty asked.
I shook my head: “Maybe it"s because the windows here use this kind of black paper. You see, the windows on the floors we walked through before were all made of white paper and were rotted to the core. The black paper here is still intact. I think it must"ve been specially treated." I fingered the dust at my feet and found it was very thin and gray.
I felt it carefully and found that it was real dust, not alkali dust.
I breathed a sigh of relief—it was relatively safe here. I originally thought the whole thing would be completely rotten, but it seems that empiricism is still out of the question.
Just then, I smelled something unpleasant and found my pants legs and the door that we had destroyed were all wet. After getting a whiff, I sighed, “Fatty, you didn"t stop the f.u.c.king car, did you?”
“s.h.i.t, as soon as I opened the gate, you f.u.c.king fell down. Can you be more reliable? If you had held on a little longer, I could finish peeing." Fatty lit a cigarette and patted himself on the crotch. “I spent all my last energy trying to draw back my magic; otherwise I would fall down like this and get stuck in the door. s.h.i.t, even the hard gun would be useless.”
I said, “Put it away first.” As he stood up and shook his pants legs, he lit a flashlight and looked at the characters on the wooden tablets covering the walls around the coffin.
The wooden tablet was badly decayed, but judging from the characters in the first few lines, I found it was the introduction of this person"s life. The words were all in an ancient style.
I read it very quickly, and suddenly felt a little ecstatic. The things written above, although not what I wanted to know, were too valuable. It seemed that some core secrets of the Zhang family could be deduced from them.
Moreover, the secret was no longer inferred from all different sources of information since the life written on the epitaph was almost 100% authentic.
<> <><>
*****************************
TN note: Omfg, these dumba.s.ses are professional tomb raiders lol. I was cracking up so much reading this chapter.