Chapter 40: Mountain Spirit

The fire was dying down. Chen Jiansheng kicked two pieces of dry wood into the embers, and the flames roared back to life.

"Yunfeng, go ahead and remove the hat," Sister Hong instructed, handing me a dagger.

"All right..."

I gripped the dagger with both hands, approaching the creature step by cautious step. Taking a deep breath, I kicked the wide-brimmed hat off its head.

Beneath the hat was a monkey face!

No, that wasn't quite right. It was more accurate to say it looked like a monkey’s face. We exchanged glances, all of us wearing expressions of bewilderment. The creature had a sharp, elongated face, a protruding nose, and bright red fur on both sides of its mouth. A layer of white fur covered its forehead, and its small eyes gave it a truly sinister appearance. It was already dead, its eyes closed and its mouth half-open.

"Hey, is this thing what I think it is?" Chen Jiansheng turned to look at Sister Hong.

Sister Hong examined it closely, frowning. "I can't be sure. I've never seen one before."

Seeing them speak in riddles made me anxious, so I asked Sister Hong if she knew something. She explained that this might be a *shanxiao*—a mountain demon or forest spirit from folklore. She proceeded to tell me what she knew.

In the old days, if you asked experienced hunters in the deep mountains which creature was the most formidable or sinister, they wouldn't say tigers or leopards. Almost all of them would give the same answer: the *shanxiao*.

Some regions call them mountain ghosts or mountain gods. They are divided into male and female; the males are said to be man-eaters and lecherous, often preying on human women. The females, however, enjoy playing tricks on people. They like to disguise themselves as human children, blending into crowds to play games, only to snatch the children away once they have gained their trust.

Standing just over a meter tall and fond of wearing large hats to cover themselves, they look just like children from a distance. As for the hat, elders used to say it could grant invisibility—that if a human wore it, they would become unseen.

Of course, the idea that a *shanxiao* hat could make one invisible was undoubtedly nonsense. I knew this because I had tried it. Right in front of Sister Hong and Chen Jiansheng, I mustered the courage to pick up the hat and put it on.

It reeked of a pungent, musky odor. Once I had it on, I asked, "Sister Hong, Chen, am I invisible now? Can you see me?"

Chen Jiansheng looked at me with drooping eyelids, his tone dry and indifferent. "That's right, kid, you're invisible. You can go rob a bank now; I guarantee no one will see you. You could even go to the women’s bathhouse, and the security cameras wouldn't even catch you."

I curled my lip and tossed the ragged hat aside. It wasn't hard to hear the mockery in his voice.

We didn't know where the hat came from, but when we examined the clothing the *shanxiao* was wearing, Chen Jiansheng suddenly recognized it. It was because the garment had been put on inside out.

Chen Jiansheng reached into the pocket of the inner lining and pulled out a plastic bag containing a lighter and half a pack of "Five Golden Flowers" cigarettes. His face turned livid, and he kicked the creature's corpse five or six times.

"Damn it! This beast! This is our teammate's clothing! This animal stripped it off and put it on itself!" Filled with rage, he kicked it several more times.

"That's enough. It's already dead. Why are you losing your mind?" Sister Hong shook her head. "Look for the other thing—see if it’s hiding the item you mentioned."

I helped him search, but after going through it carefully several times, we couldn't find the green jade ritual object Chen Jiansheng had spoken of.

Suddenly, Chen Jiansheng clapped his hands, startling me. Sister Hong frowned and asked what he was doing. He clutched the cigarette pack, pointed toward the ceiling, and said excitedly, "My brother met his end up there; I saw it with my own eyes! This beast stripped the clothes, put them on, and came down here to the tomb owner's back garden. Chen, tell me, what does that imply?"

Sister Hong pondered for a moment before muttering, "There’s a path."

"Exactly!" Chen Jiansheng pointed up and then down. "There must be a passage between the upper level and here. If we find that path, we can get out!"

I was thrilled. If Chen was right, we could leave this place, go up, and find my eldest and third brothers. The question was, where was the path the *shanxiao* had taken to get down?

Things were starting to make sense. This underground space, with its lush vegetation and hidden mountain crevices, was likely the tomb owner's private garden. If the owner was indeed the Marquis of Jie, he might have used the influence of a feudal lord to gather such rare flora and trees to enjoy in his afterlife. It was a concept similar to the mercury seas and pearl-studded stars in the First Emperor’s mausoleum. The only difference was that while Sima Qian explicitly recorded the First Emperor’s tomb in the *Records of the Grand Historian*, there wasn't a single word about the Marquis of Jie in either official or unofficial history.

Sister Hong came up with a plan to find the path. Even though *shanxiao* are sinister, they retain some monkey-like habits, and she suspected they lived in groups. If one was missing from the pack, would they come looking? It wasn't much of a plan, but Chen Jiansheng had been trapped here for half a year; when a person is pushed to their limits, they are willing to try anything.

We propped the dead *shanxiao* up against a tree, put its hat back on, and straightened its clothes. Then, we retreated a hundred meters and hid behind a large tree, watching for any sign of movement. Thanks to our careful staging, from a distance, the creature didn't look dead—it looked as if it were simply resting against the trunk.

After waiting for over an hour, we got what we were looking for. I was starting to doze off when Sister Hong tapped me to signal that something was happening.

I peeked out from behind the tree and was terrified. I didn't know how it happened, but a fog had suddenly descended. About three or four hundred meters ahead, amidst the hazy white mist, many small, dark figures appeared. I couldn't make out their features, only the silhouettes of their many hats.

There were a dozen of them, wearing all sorts of clothes—black, white—who knows where they had scavenged them. They mimicked human movements, walking with a strange, waddling gait.

The scene, draped in faint white mist, felt exactly like the "Hundred Ghosts Night Parade" from old Hong Kong horror movies. I swallowed hard, my heart in my throat.

Soon, the creatures discovered their dead companion. They circled it, looking at one another and letting out squeaks like rats. After a while, they seemed to reach a consensus. Four of them lifted the dead one and began to waddle away.

"Follow them," Chen Jiansheng whispered, taking the lead on all fours.

We kept a distance of over a hundred meters. With the terrain working in our favor—plenty of trees and shrubs—we could duck into the grass the moment anything seemed amiss. We walked and stopped repeatedly. Throughout the journey, the creatures looked back from time to time; it was dangerous, and we were nearly discovered several times.

I don't know how long we walked, but after many twists and turns, we followed them to the entrance of a hidden mountain cave. The cave was so overgrown with weeds that it was perfectly concealed; had we not seen the creatures crawl inside one by one, we never would have found it.

Watching the short figures disappear into the hole, I lowered my voice. "Chen, you've been here for a while. Had you ever found this place before?"

Chen Jiansheng, still hiding in the grass, poked his head out for a closer look.

"A rat hole this small, covered with weeds?" he muttered. "How was I supposed to find it?"