Chapter Ninety-One: The Stinking Fart

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The moment I caught sight of that thigh bone, I was honestly jolted. Just then Li Qing came over, took the flashlight from my hand, and reached into the hole. A moment later, he dragged out a skeleton. It was wearing something like the climbing gear sold by the one-eyed old man, and from its equipment it looked like some hiker.

“I told Uncle Dongfang that the one-eyed old man killed the people who came into the mountains, but he didn’t believe me. See for yourself—this is proof,” I said to Li Qing. This trap was clearly dug by the one-eyed old man, and the corpse inside explained everything.

Li Qing ignored me. After hauling out the skeleton, he even climbed partway into the hole himself. After a while, he brought out a dagger.

“This pit was dug by this man with the dagger. He wanted to get out, but he failed,” Li Qing said.

Looking at the skeleton on the ground, and hearing Li Qing’s words, I could not help picturing it: a desperate man trapped in this pit, using a dagger to dig his way out, only to die of exhaustion inside the hole. And if my older brother could not come to save us, perhaps Li Qing and I would end up exactly the same.

“Do you have any way out?” I asked Li Qing.

Li Qing shook his head. He took the flashlight and paced around the cavern, which was not large. He kept tapping the stone walls, as if searching for a hollow section or some hidden mechanism. But after circling once, he sat down and said, “Nothing.”

At last, I saw a trace of tension on Li Qing’s face. But that was no good sign at all. It only meant we had no way out from inside. If we wanted to leave, we could only wait for someone outside to save us. Though I had faith in my older brother, I still feared something unforeseen might happen. Just as Fatty had said, if someone truly meant to kill me, my brother, even if he were following far behind, might not be able to stop it in time. And even if he killed the murderer after the fact, that would hardly be a worthwhile bargain.

The reason I had been able to follow the one-eyed old man all the way here was, truthfully, in large part because of Chen Dongfang. That made me suspect they were conspiring over something. Yet when I thought it over again, that did not seem likely. If the one-eyed old man and Chen Dongfang were on the same side, they could have killed me after entering the mountains. Even if they had not done it then, now that we were trapped in this cave, crying to heaven and earth with no answer, if Li Qing wanted to kill me I would already have died a hundred times over.

The two of us just sat there in silence, saying nothing, only smoking cigarette after cigarette. I knew I was waiting for my older brother to rescue me, and Li Qing was likely waiting for Chen Dongfang. But after two or three hours of waiting, that silence and oppression only made me more and more restless. I even began to wonder whether my brother knew where I was at all. He might be searching for me frantically, yet still fail to notice that beneath a giant boulder there was such a cave. Maybe by the time he found me, I would already be dead, just like that skeleton.

“Brother, I’m here! I’m underground! Come save me!” I stood up, lifted my head, and shouted.

“Save your strength. They can’t hear you out there. Instead of wasting effort, think about how to get out,” Li Qing said.

“Then tell me what you can do, Li Qing. I agreed to come into the mountains entirely because of your skills. If you hadn’t moved your hands around, would we have fallen down here?” I said. Though I knew blaming him was useless, I still felt that even quarrelling with Li Qing was better than sitting there in silence. As long as I was not left to stew in this suffocating gloom, I might not go mad.

“I’ve done the math. The dry rations you brought are enough for us for three days. Then, if we have water, you might last ten days. I can last half a month or even longer. If you die and I eat you, I can last a month. Based on the distance we covered from entering the mountains to getting here, ten or so days is enough time for them to find us, so I advise you to conserve your strength and stay alive,” Li Qing said.

I was fine with everything else he said, but the part about eating me instantly raised gooseflesh all over my body. Li Qing seemed to notice my reaction and said, “Of course, if I die before you, you can eat me too. Don’t think that’s some terribly cruel thing. In that kind of situation, you can still force it down.”

A chill ran through me, but I also knew that if someone were starving enough, cannibalism was not impossible. So I said, “Enough, stop talking. It’s too early for that. Don’t let us starve to death before we’re disgusted to death.”

It had to be said that Li Qing’s analysis did calm me down. I had not brought much in the way of provisions, but I did have several bottles of water. Besides, the cave walls were damp, so there should be dew and the like. I believed that with the strength of my older brother, Chen Dongfang, and Fatty, even if they could not find us today, it would not take too long.

But simply waiting like this was torture. So I took out my small flashlight and tried searching around. What if I found some hidden mechanism and, with a light touch, a stone door opened? Or what if, like in a martial arts novel, I discovered the secret manual of the Nine Suns Divine Art, mastered it in three days, and split open the stone wall with one palm to escape?

After searching a full circle, though, I found nothing at all. In the end, my gaze settled on that skeleton. I gave it a bitter smile and said, “Buddy, coming into the mountains for no good reason, you surely weren’t some penniless nobody like me. Did your family even know you died here?”

Who would have thought that after I said that, the skeleton suddenly moved. The skull turned, just right facing me, those hollow eye sockets seeming to stare straight at me!

I had already grown used to looking at the skeleton, but when it moved like that, I was truly startled. I dropped into a squat and hurriedly knelt, saying, “Buddy, I won’t say it anymore. I won’t mock you. Just take that as me letting out a fart!”

Who would have thought that after I said that, the skeleton’s skull would shake again on the ground. By then gooseflesh had covered me from head to toe. I shouted, “Li Qing!”

He came over and also noticed the skull’s abnormal movement. Had it risen from the dead? But in this condition, could it even rise from the dead?

“Could it have something to say to us? Or some unfinished wish?” I asked Li Qing in a low voice.

Li Qing waved me back and stepped protectively in front of me. “Don’t move.”

At that very moment, the skeleton skull rolled once more across the ground. In the same instant, Li Qing moved like lightning, grabbed the skull, yanked it clean off the neck, and then thrust two fingers into the eye sockets.

I seemed to hear a shriek from the skull, and in fright I clutched my head and shut my eyes. But the next moment, the screaming did not stop. I opened my eyes and glanced over, seeing that between Li Qing’s two fingers there was something writhing. It was chubby and fat, struggling frantically while letting out shrill squeals. I swept it with the flashlight, and sure enough, it was a weasel.

The weasel was absurdly fat. Caught by Li Qing’s two fingers around the neck, its round eyes were full of terror. Yet no matter how desperately it struggled, it could not break free.

“This thing came out of the skull?” I asked. Seeing how bloated and round it was, and thinking it had clearly grown so fat by feeding on the hiker’s corpse, I felt sick. Why had the clothes on that hiker not rotted away, while the flesh itself had been reduced to a mere skeleton? The blood and meat had all been eaten by this weasel, and I nearly vomited.

Just then, seeing that it could not escape Li Qing’s fingers, I suddenly noticed a puff of white smoke-like vapor rising from the weasel’s rear end. I immediately knew what it was: the infamous stench fart of the weasel.

In an instant, I only felt an unbearable foulness. My breathing nearly stopped. I had once thought corpse rot was the worst smell in the world, but only then did I realize there was no stench that could compare with a weasel’s fart. I took one whiff and felt dizzy, so I quickly covered my nose and mouth. But I had already been feeling nauseated, and now with that disgusting fart smell added in, I could no longer hold it back. I turned and vomited.

Looking at what I threw up on the ground, I honestly felt a pang of regret. I had no idea when my brother and the others would come save us. Damn it, at the very least that had been food.

After I had thrown up for a while, the unbearable feeling eased somewhat. I looked at Li Qing. Since he was the one holding the weasel, the stench fart had hit him first, and he was now completely overcome, tears and mucus streaming down his face. It was rare to see Li Qing at a disadvantage, so I laughed and said, “Mister Blind Monk, how does it feel?”

Even in such a miserable state, Li Qing’s fingers still clamped the yellow weasel tightly. After I asked him, he gave no reaction. As for the weasel, having failed even with that murderous fart, it looked even more panicked in its round eyes and struggled with renewed ferocity.

After Li Qing wiped away his tears, he extended his other hand and said, “I was going to keep you alive, but I didn’t expect you to be this foul. Kill you, and it’s one meal of dry rations.”

With that, Li Qing raised a finger. With his strength, a light flick would surely kill the weasel.

The weasel seemed to understand that Li Qing meant to kill it and use it as food. Its eyes were full of despair. Then, just as Li Qing raised his hand, the weasel suddenly turned its gaze toward me, its eyes pleading, and it actually began bowing to me, as if begging for help.