Darkness

When all ten or eleven of them stepped into the secret chamber, torches hanging on the wall automatically caught fire and lit the place up. Who knows how the ancients who designed this place pulled that off, Yuchen thought, and to be sure, the rest of them were probably thinking the same thing.

Besides a second doorway on the opposite wall, the rather cramped room had little to offer--except two small pillars arranged in the center on top of which two rectangular wooden cases were resting. Those cases looked incredibly lifelike despite their age. The dark, rosy wood they were made out of had to be lacquered or something, or else it would have long disintegrated by now.

"Well, we had better take those," Yuchen said.

He went over and picked them both up, preparing to place them in his backpack, when he noticed that one was about three or four times heavier than the other.

"Shouldn't we open them and see what's inside?" Shujie protested.

"No, that would be a mistake," her teacher replied, "Whenever you find cases or boxes, you're supposed to keep them closed."

"Why's that?"

"They were put in boxes for a reason, namely that the contents are probably fragile. Better to open them after we go back, when we have a table to set them on, instead of risking dropping them on the floor. Besides, look at this--the cases are locked. Unless you have an ancient key on you, we'll have to pick the lock."

"But what about that one?" She pointed to the lighter case in Lin Yuchen's left hand. "That one's lock looks busted."

He took a second look at it, and sure enough she was right. He hadn't noticed before, but the lock looked like it had been smashed with a hammer. That combined with the fact that it was strangely light was enough for him to disregard his own rule--he promptly unlatched the case and opened it.

"Woah..."

"It's empty?"

The students crowded around him, looking utterly baffled.

"The giant hole at the entrance is starting to make a little more sense," Shujie proposed, "Pirates must have gotten here before us."

"That makes no sense," Xu Shen retorted, "Why would pirates swipe one and leave the other?"

"What if they felt bad about the first one, and couldn't bring themselves to touch the second one?"

"How naive..." He was shaking his head, "What if...what if it had already been broken into when it was put here. As in, whoever built this place lost what was inside, and planned on getting it back, so they kept the case."

There was a very palpable spark between them. Whether the spark between friends or between rivals, though, it was hard to tell.

"Both of your ideas are stupid," Professor Lin told them, "These entire ruins are pristine and full of other artifacts. If pirates have been here, it would be obvious; the whole place would be ransacked."

"Then tell us, Professor. Why is there an empty case here right next to a full one?"

Their pleading voices were steeped in a genuine inquisitiveness. Like real archeologists. Lin Yuchen was impressed, but unfortunately he didn't actually have an answer for them. This was above his pay grade. Maybe that Diao Zhen will do another ritual and solve the mystery, he thought.

After filling up a page of notes describing everything that had just happened, he said, "Shujie, let me see your map. Shen here completely botched ours."

"Cai has it," she replied.

Xie Cai, who had been leaning against the wall, wasted no time handing him his notebook.

"Oh, don't tell me they trusted you with drawing the map..." He snatched the book from his hand and, to his surprise, found that it was much better than Xu Shen's.

"Come on, it's not that bad is it?" Cai's sycophantic voice was very annoying.

Try as he might, Professor Lin could not find a single flaw with the map. Yes, not only did all the lines look like they had been drawn with a straightedge, but he had even followed all the map conventions used by professional archeologists. All the passageways and rooms were clearly labeled, as were all the sites where they had found Artifacts.

"Well, you did a good job labeling everything, but couldn't you have made the handwriting a little cleaner? These letters are elementary school-tier." Professor Lin couldn't help but feel a pinch of embarrassment as he said that. This unexpected talent of Cai's really upset his ego.

"That does it for this floor," he went on, "Since so much space is flooded down here, there's not much more to explore. We'll combine our groups from here on out and leave through that door."

They left the secret room through the other door. That led them to a shorter passageway that ended in a large flight of stairs. Each stair was very tall, and on top of that they were eroded to the point where they didn't look much like stairs anymore. That made them very difficult to climb, but remarkably all of them made it to the top without injury.

Combining the two groups turned out to be a good idea, too, because now it began to seem like they were backtracking. In the first place, creating a whole five groups probably was not necessary. The ruins seemed very convoluted and extensive at first, but many of the paths went in circles and were full of redundancies.

That didn't mean they had explored it all, though. Most likely they would be coming back over the next several days, but at least for today, they were on the downhill trip.

Everything would have concluded smoothly, they would have gone back to the hotel, ate a hearty dinner and slept soundly, had not something terrible happened while they were on their way back to the entrance. So terrible, in fact, that a few people ended up losing their lives that day. Bear with me here.

So, Lin Yuchen's party was about to turn round a corner, when they heard whispering coming from somewhere off to the side.

"Hey! Shut that light off, and get over here."

Because they had been walking in near silence for the past thirty seconds or so, that whisper really startled them, so much so that one of the girls let out a brief scream.

"Shhhh! Keep it down!"

They shined their lights to the source of the whisper and found a small cavity that Professor Bai and his party had stuffed themselves into. Most of them were crouching, and judging from the looks on their faces, something was severely amiss.

"Eh? What's going on?" Professor Lin whispered back.

"Get in here," his boss responded, "We're hiding."

"Hiding from what?"

"Just get in here."

His voice may have been quiet, but its disquietude convinced them all without trouble that it would be better to do as he said and ask questions later. And so, they all stuffed themselves into the cavity too.

Now that true silence had finally arrived, their ears were able to make out a rhythmic scritch-scratch sound rolling in from some distance--who knows how far or how close. It sounded as though something was dragging itself across the gravelly floor. And that sound had such a strength and fullness to it that whatever it was that was making it had to be massive.

"What's that noise?" someone said.

"You'd rather not know," came a raspy whisper.

"Should have known we weren't the first ones down here..."

In the pitch-blackness it was naturally not possible to tell who said what, but as time went on one thing became clearer and clearer: the ominous scritch-scratch sound was getting louder.

With the exception of the four or five of Song's troops that had been followed them, all of them were weak humans with virtually no martial training. For whatever monster was making a sound like that, killing them would probably be as easy as snapping a twig or perhaps breaking a piece of china. The thought alone set their hearts racing.

Within a couple minutes, it sounded like the thing was less than five feet away. Actually, it got so close that you could hear the sound of air moving in and out of its mouth. Suddenly, the scritch-scratch stopped and a low pitched growling took its place. The students and teachers were frozen in terror, and I can't blame them: for all they knew, a mouth full of sharp teeth was merely inches from their faces.

No, there was nothing they could do besides silently mouth the Name of Amida.

In the blink of an eye a flashlight clicked on. That was followed by the clangor of swords rattling out of their scabbards as two of the warriors dashed out of the cavity, shouting at the top of their lungs.

And there they saw it: its arrow-shaped head was five feet tall, the head of a serpent. An ocean of green and black scales bathed in the yellow flashlight, shimmering no less brilliantly than the giant fangs that hung down from its upper jaw. Seeing its two eyes that were the size of watermelons bearing down on them, the students and teachers erupted into a frenzy. There was no where to run though, so they just piled up in the corner.

I guess this is what they mean when they say "fish in a barrel", but luckily for them those two warriors had each plunged his sword into the snake monster's head. The cavern trembled as it filled with its shrill roar, and as it flailed in pain it splashed blood all over the place. Since their swords were stuck in its body, they couldn't use them anymore, so next they pulled out daggers, but it was too late:--its fangs struck them down like lightning, nearly impaling them. They drew their last breaths before their bodies even hit the ground.

Three other warriors were now crouching at the entrance of the cavity, about to fly into the fray, when Professor Bai shouted at them, "Hey, why don't you shoot it? Why use swords?"

"Unless I can get a clear shot at its throat, shooting is a bad idea. The bullet could bounce off its scales and the cave walls, then ricochet and strike someone back here."

"I'll try to force its mouth open!" The soldier next to him said in a deep, nasal voice. Then with knit brows and a red face, he threw himself at the snake.

When it opened its mouth, he pierced his sword straight through its forked tongue--from the left side. The blade caught onto one of its fangs, and amazingly he managed to keep its mouth propped open with his sheer strength alone. His huge arms were shaking. "Fire!" he shouted.

Without a second thought, the two remaining soldiers aimed their pistols at its pink throat. They let five or six rounds fly each, which was more than enough to finish it off, because sure enough its scales were so hard that they kept the bullets on the inside. Within seconds they had already ruptured most of its internal organs.

As it let out its final screeches, the snake's jaw went limp, causing the warrior's blade to slip off. The sudden relaxation of its muscles caught him off guard, and as its jaws came crashing down, one of the fangs opened a gash about half a foot long on his upper arm. His entire arm was soon coated in blood, but his demeanor as he leaned himself up against the wall was unbelievably stoic.