Book 2: Chapter 15

Book 2: Chapter 15

Zhang Qishan couldnt find the other soldiers anywhere, and there werent any corpses either.

He cut the mountain gods belly open and found that it was full of minced meat. He could see the remains of military uniforms, as well as bullets and belt buckles.

This meant that his soldiers had all been eaten and chewed to shreds.

He stood in front of the mountain gods body, not speaking for a long time.

Death was death, and there was no difference between suffering and not suffering. But these people had all been alive when they first arrived.

He saw a flare gun among the minced meat, so he took it out, climbed to the top of the tree canopy, and fired a flare into the sky.

As fate would have it, the people who had followed Zhang Qishan were all deadwith the exception of Zhang Xiaoyu, who was the first person to get seriously injuredwhile those who had followed Qi Tiezui were still alive.

This was always the case. The number of people he brought with him when he left the Northeast became fewer and fewer. Although they werent all from the Zhang family, it was starting to become rare for him to hear the accent of his hometown.

He couldnt help but feel sad about it, but he didnt dwell on it too much.

Soon after, he heard Qi Tiezuis group whistle from the edge of the forest. Zhang Qishan replied back and had them come to him so that the two sides could reunite.

Qi Tiezui took a closer look and said, Look at this. This vine grew out of the coffin and coiled around the banyan tree. Ive never seen anything like this before. In our family, we need to learn pharmacology and how to identify herbs. If were in other places, its reasonable for me to not recognize what herb it is since I didnt learn pharmacology very well. But do you see how this vine is growing? Have you seen anything like this before?

Zhang Qishan took a closer look. Indeed, there was a vine growing out of the coffin, and the leaves on it were a bit like curled nails. All the leaves were curled up, which made it seem very different from the plants they had seen before.

This is an ancient coffin, but do you see how the vine comes out of this hole in the coffin? Qi Tiezui pointed at a hole in the coffin. This seems to be a deliberate design. When someone put the corpse in the coffin, they knew that something would grow out of the corpse.

"What if some seed just fell into this hole?

Look here. Qi Tiezui pointed at the embossed pattern on the coffin. Zhang Qishan saw that the pattern painted on it was that of a vine growing out of the coffin, as if a tongue was sticking out of the coffin.

This relief had been carved with an extremely small awl, and in order to make the grooves deeper, each line mustve been struck thousands of times so that they wouldnt oxidize.

So this is a potted plant. Zhang Qishan thought to himself. What kind of vine is this? Qi Tiezui illuminated the vines leaves with his flashlight. Does it have anything to do with the mountain god?

Call someone up and open the coffin, Zhang Qishan said. This coffin being here must have something to do with the monster. The villages bring babies here and sacrifice them every year in exchange for longevity. These are all clues. Open the coffin and see if there's any evidence inside of it.

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Tiffanys Notes: Thats the end of the story for now.