The Lost Tomb : Ten Years Later

Chapter 6: Dodder Cocoon

Xiao Hua looked at me coldly and obviously didn't want to bother answering. The others also looked at Xiao Hua expectantly, hoping that he could really buy a train.

"Focus." Xiao Hua said after a moment.

He was always reminding me to focus, and this kind of admonishment was actually the motivation that kept me going. In the end, there obviously wasn't a train for sale, so a group of twelve people started walking all along the tracks.

We looked for someone to borrow nearly twenty mules from, so we could half ride and half carry our supplies as we set off.

I was very familiar with this kind of journey over the past ten years, and wore an old but particularly useful jacket as I sorted out all the shoes, tents, and mosquito repelling equipment. I had three Kukris: one that was sheathed on the mules back, one at my waist, and one on the side pocket of my backpack. Brother Xiao Man led three mastiffs into the primitive forest after they ate their fill.

We ended up walking for four days, and hardly spoke the entire way. We had already entered the primitive forest's hinterland, and were passing through a pine forest that obviously wasn't old enough. Even though Xiao Hua said it couldn't be here, we still looked around just in case, but didn't find anything special.

"This felled forest is only four days away from the forest farm, and is the nearest pine forest. It should have been the first one to get cut down. The earliest trees were used to build houses in the forest farm. The rotten wood we dug out from the ground must have come from someplace deeper than here."

We moved on.

At night, the forest was damp and cold, so we cooked instant noodles over a crackling bonfire. Brother Xiao Man had a good harvest every day, and either brought back a hare or a pheasant. Both Kan Jian and Fatty were having a good time roasting different things every day. I hadn't been able to eat too much meat in recent years, so I could only eat the first bite or two.

When we came to a mountain depression a week later, Fatty gave a cry and everyone stopped.

There was a huge mass of dodder in the mountains, which looked like a giant cocoon. There were many "hairy sticks" around it that were actually dead trees that had been completely entangled in the dodder. The dodder vines were also dead, and the yellow silk looked like a large tent over the area. The weeds on the ground had withered and turned yellow, but they had grown extremely high, indicating that they had obviously grown wildly for a period of time before they had died.

We were all intrigued by this dodder cocoon, and when we looked closer, we found that the cocoon was really huge and seemed to have a huge rock inside.

"This should be it." My instincts were telling me. I looked around and saw a sparse pine forest around us, which had such a strange landform. The mountains on both sides had gentle slopes, and this rock in the depression was very strange.

We began to sweep the ground everywhere with metal detectors, and soon found that when we dug up the surface soil and sifted it, it wasn't long before iron lumps appeared. They weren't fragments of ancient armor, but the iron dregs of weapons, arrows, and so on.

"It's an ancient battlefield." Fatty struck a pose like he was Huo Qubing [1] and turned to point to one side of the mountain. "This boulder should be from the other side of the mountain. After the Mongolians entered here, Emperor Wannu's army pushed this boulder down and then rushed down after it."

Was it an ambush? But there should be a lot of falling rocks in an ambush. A single boulder would make for a tough battle. I looked in the direction Fatty was pointing and said, "Emperor Wannu's army was guarding an important place. When the Mongols climbed the mountains and attacked, they needed a boulder to crush anything in its path. Let's go up the mountain from here. Everyone, stay vigilant. There must be something on the hill."

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Note:

[1] A distinguished military general of the Western Han dynasty during the reign of Emperor Wu of Han.