The Lost Tomb : Sea Of Sands

Chapter 176: Humanoid Creature

The old lady was accompanied by Lin Qizhong, and it was obvious that they had reconciled. He was still hostile towards me, but I was protected by the old lady, and didn't care at all.

The topography of the village was different from before, and there were many factories on the outskirts of the village where wolfberry had previously been planted. The old lady's land was now in between two such factories.

China's factories often had a complete warehouse even if there was only one machine in the whole factory. Of the two factories here, one was for injection molding and the other was for wrought iron. They were both so noisy that we had no effective way to communicate during the whole process.

I didn't bring anything with me since I just wanted to listen to the story, but I stopped along the way and bought three four-or five-meter carbon fiber fishing rods and a hammer. I removed the thin sections of the fishing rod, assembled them, and then sharpened the head. I stuck a razor blade to the flexible joint and knocked it into the soil. Compared with the times I used the Luoyang shovel before, the depth here was at most three or four meters, which was very easy.

After I made seven or eight holes, I realized that I was basically close, and hit the last shovel so it would go as deep as possible. After pulling it out, I discovered that it was possible to pull out a soil layer that had porcelain fragments even if I hit a depth of more than six meters.

There was a lot of porcelain buried—or once buried— underground. With so much precious porcelain, Ningxia had a historically special geographical location. There was a kiln here, but it was unlikely to produce red underglaze or red glazed porcelain. In other words, if so much integrated Central Plains porcelain was piled up here, it must have been transported here.

This area was well known for mudslides, and although the landform here had changed a lot, I was quite certain that this was a relatively steep area in ancient times.

Discovering the porcelain here must have been an accident.

I invited Lin Qizhong and the old woman to have lunch in a small restaurant in the village, because I wanted to talk to them about their archives and cultural system, and see if there was anything like a collection of local folklore that I could look at. In fact, there were several county records websites on the internet that covered a wide range of local records, including county records, prefectural records, provincial records, and general records. There were also genealogies and some rare local documents. The database covered a period from modern times all the way back to the Ming Dynasty, which was good for me.

I downloaded some of the information at that time, and then got busy with other things. When I went there again later, the website was no longer available. I thought it was because they couldn't make ends meet, and the operators were unable to manage it later.

In fact, if this website had offered some paid services, people in our profession wouldn't care too much even if the price was really high, because the nature of these documents was invaluable to people who knew the ropes.

At this time, Lin Qizhong suddenly asked me: "Since you're so interested in this matter, do you want to go and see the place where the car accident happened?"

I always had this idea in the back of my mind, but I figured they would definitely refuse, so I didn't bring it up. I didn't expect Lin Qizhong to be the one to bring it up himself, however, so I was somewhat surprised.

I was on guard at that time, but it may have just been because I had experienced too many things before. My inner calm left me defenseless against some of the dangers I had foreseen, or, to put it more bluntly, I looked down on Lin Qizhong and felt that no matter what he did, I could give as good as I got because of my current experience.

So I nodded and agreed. The old lady stayed in the village, and he and I drove to the place where the car accident had happened more than ten years ago.

We went from a cement road to a dirt road, but there was no road to get up to the quarry site. We got out of the car and started walking on the mountain path.

In China, one of the advantages of decades of development was that most places had been visited. Although some paths may not even be frequented several times a year, it was still comforting to see a clear dirt path in the bushes.

Lin Qizhong didn't say a word to me the entire way, and we walked until about three in the afternoon, when we came upon a mountain depression.

It was overgrown with weeds and the bottom was full of rocks. The mountain path we had walked up was almost at a forty-five degree incline, and there were many large and small pieces of gravel on the hillside.

Lin Qizhong stopped and said to me, "This is it."

"You can remember it after all this time?" I was a little surprised, because the landforms along the way were too similar, and there were so many forks in the path that I couldn't count them with all the fingers on both hands. Several sections of the dirt path had been covered with grass, and it was easy to think the path had ended if you didn't push the grass aside.

"I come here from time to time." He said: "I still don't believe such a long road disappeared in such a short amount of time." He pointed to the opposite slope: "The road was on the opposite hillside."

You wouldn't build a dirt road in the mountain at the bottom of a depression, because any landslide, mudslide, or natural mountain collapse would destroy the road. As a result, the road was usually cut in the middle of the mountain.

I suddenly understood why he was so confused. The opposite mountain was very steep, but now that I was looking at it, it was all one integrated mass, and there was no sign of it being dug out. There were only a lot of rocks and mud and gravel on the hillside, but they were all piled up naturally.

Say, for example, that the road was a long serpentine shape. If you wanted to cover up any traces of it, you would have to cover the whole area; otherwise, it would be easy for it to appear, and make it even more obvious that you were trying to conceal it.

There was nothing like that on the opposite mountainside. It was all very natural, and looked just like an ordinary mountain.

"I'm going to check it out." I told Lin Qizhong.

He made a "go ahead" gesture: "I've been there too many times. You won't find anything."

Since the depression wasn't wide, and there were only weeds and a few trees down there, I didn't bother arguing with him. I simply lay down on the grass and dropped down into the depression, then climbed to the opposite side.

I hadn't done this kind of field exercise for a long time, so I was struggling by the time I got to the other side. I grabbed a handful of dirt from the ground, squeezed it, and then smelled it.

If someone had done something, I would have noticed such an obvious flaw. But the soil didn't have any special smell, nor were there any traces of a fire [1].

I lit a cigarette and noticed a big tree on the mountainside.

I hadn't seen any particularly large trees in Yinchuan, nor along the way, but this tree was one yard taller than all the others I had seen before.

It was an abnormal kind of big, because it didn't conform to the universal system here.

I went to the tree and pushed the trunk, finding that it was very strong and the branches grew very naturally. This was a tree that had grown here since it first sprouted, so there was no way a road had cut through this area. My doubts were the same as Lin Qizhong's.

I looked at the opposite hillside at this time, and saw something standing there beside the rocks where I had just talked to Lin Qizhong.

I thought it was Lin Qizhong, but I suddenly noticed that something was off. What I was looking at was some gray thing. It was a creature in the shape of a human being, but it definitely wasn't human, nor was it any kind of animal I had ever seen before. The humanoid, gray thing standing up there was similar to a fox, but it didn't have any hair. All it had was bare, dry skin. 

****************************************

Note:

[1] He means it doesn't smell like they blew up the mountain.