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I walked out of Li Jing's house, feeling somewhat dazed.
In the end, I didn't say it to her, didn't dare to say it.
I'm not some top student from the No. 1 High School, I'm just a tomb robber, a criminal, and no one my age would dare to be friends with me.
I can't forget the look Li Jing gave me as I left.
"What's wrong, kid? Lost your soul?" Back in the small house at the foot of the mountain, Yi Ke was eating an apple.
I forced a bitter smile and said, "It's nothing, the wind was too strong, it got in my eyes."
Yi Ke held the apple in one hand and suspiciously sized me up. She then burst out laughing, "You haven't even grown all your hair, and you're talking about heartbreak? Just forget about it." She laughed so hard she nearly toppled over.
I was irritated and shot her a glare, "Just eat your apple. If you don't know the situation, stop talking nonsense!"
I wasn't angry because she called me a kid, but because she told me to forget about Li Jing—how could a good person like her be forgotten just like that?
Though, back then, non-mainstream photos were all the rage on QQ Space—those melancholic looks, messy hair, a photo with some special effects, and a few words: "Forget love."
For more than a month after that, things were calm. I didn't dare to find Li Jing again. The little calves fed by Old Boss and Old Third grew bigger every day, and we fed them the best feed, so they grew very fast.
The thickened hooks had long been procured. Old Boss had found a master in Luoyang to make them, with the size and requirements exactly as we had requested.
Aside from feeding the cows, Old Third would take time to hammer and chisel at the stone door, working for about two months. Finally, a small depression in the shape of a cow's nose appeared on the stone door.
That night, we gathered in the pit. Everything was ready. Each of us wore a serious expression, because tonight, we were going to do it. We were going to open the stone door with this fantastical method. Whether or not it would succeed depended entirely on tonight.
Old Boss patted the little yellow cow—not a little calf anymore, as these three cows were only a bit shorter than me now. They were already quite large.
Maybe because they were well-fed, one of the cows even nudged Old Third with its head.
"It's all on you, buddy," Old Boss said as he patted the cow's head.
Yi Ke had gotten the best climbing rope on the market at that time, and after several attempts, Old Boss finally got the hook to catch on the self-sealing stone at the back of the door.
With the hook secured to the cow's nose ring, the climbing rope was tied on.
We passed the rope around and tied it to the necks of the three cows, then each of us took hold of the remaining rope.
"After raising cows for a hundred days, we use them now."
Old Boss gritted his teeth and shouted angrily, "Pull!"
The rope instantly tightened!
"Pull!"
"Pull!"
The three cows mooed loudly as they pushed back. Yi Ke and I, just like Old Boss, exerted all our strength, our faces turning crimson.
Immediately, a cloud of dust fell from the stone door.
"Hold on! Put in more strength!"
"Give me...damn it..."
"Open!"
With the final roar, there was a loud sound from the stone door behind us.
The self-sealing stone that had been blocking the entrance to the tomb collapsed under the pull.
We all collapsed to the ground, gasping for air. Old Third, who had been living in the dark tomb for several months, was now so excited he couldn't control himself.
"We did it, we did it!" he kept repeating those words.
Months of persistence, along with the self-sealing stone's collapse, and the dust had all disappeared.
Without the self-sealing stone, pushing the stone door open became quite simple.
After catching our breath, we placed our hands on the stone door. With a single push, the door cracked open a small gap.
The sound of the stone door scraping was like the ringing of a three-thousand-year-old bell, deep and resonant.
When it opened wide enough for one person to crawl through, we stopped.
Looking inside, it was pitch black. I was the first to smell a fragrance, similar to the one I had smelled the first time I entered the tomb, but this one was much stronger, a pungent aroma.
Old Boss had said that such fragrances weren't good signs.
After waiting for a while to make sure the air inside was circulating, Old Boss took the lead, and we all crawled in.
It was very dark inside, but Old Boss had prepared for this, and we lit the torches we had prepared earlier.
The torches were held high.
"What... Big Brother, what is this?" I was stunned and couldn't speak, staring at the scene before me.
What appeared before us was wood—more specifically, many pieces of wood, each about a meter long, and there were a huge number of them, not just a thousand or two.
The pieces of wood were interlocked in a regular pattern, standing more than ten meters tall, spanning over twenty meters in width, and stacked one layer upon another, resembling a giant hedgehog...
Every piece of wood was coated with a black substance that seemed to be some kind of preservative.
The scent of sandalwood was emanating from the wood.
Old Third stared blankly at the "wood mountain" before us: "Yellow... Yellow marrow pit..."
Yes, these interlocked wooden pieces, stacked like a hedgehog, were the "Yellow Marrow Pit" that Yao Yumeng had briefly mentioned.
The Yellow Marrow Pit from the Han Dynasty could not compare to the one before me, it was like comparing a tractor to a Ferrari. The difference in scale was beyond imagination.
None of us had seen the Yellow Marrow Pit from the Western Zhou Dynasty, but if we followed the later Han Dynasty's specifications, the very center of these wooden pieces might very well be the tomb owner's coffin. In other words, we were now standing in the main tomb room that had disappeared earlier...
These wooden pieces, interlocked and stacked like a giant hedgehog, made me frown and ask, "Old Third, this wood mountain is blocking the way. How do we get through?"
Old Third, being experienced, thought for a moment and said, "Yunfeng, don't rush. This thing was definitely made by craftsmen. Once they were done, they needed a way to get out, so there must be a hidden route."
After saying this, Old Boss raised the torch and began searching carefully for a space large enough for a person to crawl through. We also stepped forward to help with the search.
Earlier, when we were farther away, we hadn't noticed, but as we got closer, I suddenly saw that some of the wood in the Yellow Marrow Pit had mushrooms growing on it. These mushrooms were different from the ones we eat at home; they were shaped strangely, and the caps looked like wrinkled old faces, with noses and eyes visible from a distance.
Yi Ke also noticed these mushrooms growing on the wood, and she reached out to touch one.
"Don't touch it! Stay away from that thing!" Old Boss shouted.
"You can't touch it. If I'm not mistaken, this type of fungus should be specifically mentioned in the Tomb Sutra," he added.
"This is called Yellow Pine Old Face. It's a rare burrowing fungus used in medicine."
"Yellow Pine Old Face? Medicine?" I had never heard of such a thing.
Yi Ke took a couple of steps back and said, "Old Third, didn't you just say it was a medicinal herb? Why can't we touch it? Even if it looks a little strange."
"No, it's not like that," Old Third said solemnly. "Very few people have seen this. I doubt even Yao Yumeng has. The Tomb Sutra says this plant grows in extremely yin places. According to local legends, it's used by Miao healers to summon souls."