Chapter 64: Living Pile

I didn't dare tell Sister Red about what had happened back then.

I secretly shook my head and dismissed the thought. That was impossible. Yao Yumen must have just been joking at the time and didn't mean anything else by it; I was probably just overthinking.

After resting for a while, Researcher An, perhaps because her nerves had been stretched too taut, leaned against the wall and fell asleep before long. As for the outside world, I had no idea whether it was day or night.

In a hazy state, I also leaned against the wall and dozed off. It felt like I had slept for a long time when suddenly a commotion came from outside.

It turned out that our guards were afraid we would die of thirst, so they lowered a bucket of water down with a rope, with a wooden ladle floating inside it.

"Sister Red, Researcher An, come quick, there's water! Let's have some!" I was extremely thirsty and didn't care about anything else, directly scooping up a ladle of cold water and gulping it down my throat.

I wasn't afraid that the gang had poisoned it; if they wanted to kill us, they certainly wouldn't need to go to such trouble. Since they were keeping us alive, we must still be of some use to them—a fact that Sister Red, of course, understood as well.

Researcher An, however, didn't see it that way. She stared in terror at the clear water in the bucket and shook her head frantically, "No, we can't drink it. The water is definitely poisoned."

"It's fine. Look, I've drunk so much and I'm completely fine. Look at your lips, they're cracked and bleeding; Researcher An, you really need to drink some." I scooped up a ladle of water and brought it to her lips.

"No!" I don't know where she found the strength, but she violently knocked the wooden ladle out of my hand. The ladle struck the wall, and all the water spilled everywhere.

"You..." I was both furious and anxious.

She immediately realized her mistake, buried her head between her knees, and began sobbing continuously like a lost little girl.

"Sigh," I sighed, the anger that had just flared up in me subsiding by more than half. Putting myself in her shoes, she had watched with her own eyes as all her companions died, leaving her completely alone in the world. After all, she was just a timid young girl.

"If you won't drink, then don't," I picked up the wooden ladle and looked at Sister Red. "Sister Red, would you like a little more?"

"Is there something on the wall?" I noticed Sister Red staring fixedly at the stone wall.

Well, it couldn't exactly be called a stone wall; the wall down here was cast from rammed earth, uniformly pale and yellowish, and exceptionally hard. It was probably built during the same period as the underground cavern, and it was possible this place had once been a small sacrificial burial pit that ultimately went unused for some special reason.

Sister Red suddenly stood up and walked over to the wall, gently sliding her hand across it. That particular spot had just been dampened by water—the water from the ladle just now.

I walked over in confusion and looked closely.

The rammed earth was absorbing the water rapidly, and I saw, faintly and vaguely, the contours of several human faces appearing! Moreover, all these facial outlines had their mouths open and their eyes closed!

I was startled and rubbed my eyes hard before looking again.

My eyes weren't playing tricks on me; indeed, the longer I looked, the more distinct they became.

The rammed earth absorbed water very quickly; as soon as the water dried, the contours of those faces vanished.

"W-what's going on?" I swallowed hard and said with a trembling voice, "Sister Red, what just happened? Did our eyes play tricks on us?"

Sister Red's brow was locked in a deep, silent frown. She stood up, picked up the bucket, and began splashing water onto the wall using the wooden ladle, scoop after scoop.

This time, the rammed earth wall absorbed enough water. Soon, across the entire wall in front of me, the outlines of hundreds of human faces emerged! Packed densely together, these faces could not be distinguished as male or female, but their facial expressions were all the same: mouths open, eyes closed, all facing us.

Researcher An was so terrified that she started screaming at the top of her lungs.

"Useless thing! Shut up!" Sister Red snapped, losing her temper. She turned around and kicked Researcher An several times. I quickly pulled Sister Red away and pleaded on Researcher An's behalf.

Afterward, Sister Red picked up a sharp little stone from the ground. She suddenly turned back and asked me if I could pee right now.

With a wry face, I said I had just drank water and didn't need to go right now. Feeling rather embarrassed, I asked Sister Red what she meant.

She shook her head and said, "Yunfeng, I suspect this place isn't an abandoned, useless sacrificial pit. Those sacrificial victims were probably all turned into *sai dou long* and cast straight into these walls."

Seeing my confusion, Sister Red took a deep breath and explained, "This is just a guess for now. Later on, if you pee a little on the wall, we might be able to tell. I've seen this kind of situation once before. *Sai dou long* was the term used during the Shang and Zhou dynasties, called soul-burying pillars after the Spring and Autumn and Warring States periods, and nowadays people call it driving live piles."

"Driving live piles?"

I actually recognized the term Sister Red used. The phenomenon still existed nowadays, though it was very rare.

The so-called driving live piles was actually an extremely evil and terrifying architectural practice passed down from ancient times.

In ancient times, due to underdeveloped engineering technology, many large-scale projects frequently suffered accidents resulting in deaths during construction. The ancients didn't understand the underlying principles and instead viewed these as punishments from ghosts and gods or the vengeance of resentful spirits. Therefore, to appease the anger of the spirits and expel lingering vengeful ghosts, property owners would bury people (especially children) alive beneath the foundations of buildings to ensure the structure was successfully completed.

And the person buried alive was referred to as a "live pile," doomed to guard that spot for thousands upon thousands of years after death, never to be liberated and never to be reincarnated.

Regarding this matter, there is a saying among people today: building a large bridge always requires human lives. If you don't believe it, you can look back at the history of bridge construction. Legend has it that when a certain famous bridge project was finalized back then, its acceptable casualty quota was set at fifty deaths.

Also, regarding the Haizhu Bridge built in the 1930s, legend has it that right after the bridge was newly completed, people walking across it at night could often hear the crying of men and women coming from behind them, yet when they turned around, there was nothing there.

When the construction of the Haizhu Bridge was decided, the person ruling Guangzhou at the time was the warlord Chen Jitang. This man was extremely superstitious about all kinds of sorcery and occult arts, and whenever he faced a matter, large or small, he would first divine its fortune. He kept a dozen or so Daoist priests and fortune-tellers at his estate, though nobody knew whether those priests actually possessed any genuine skill.

Therefore, rumors frequently circulated among the common folk afterward that Chen Jitang had buried numerous mentally disabled fools—both men and women—into the foundation concrete of the Haizhu Bridge, and all these fools had been used as live piles.

Sister Red said that this passed-down evil art had an evolutionary process, and it was originally called *sai dou long*.

After waiting for less than an hour, I felt the urge to urinate and asked Sister Red where she wanted me to pee.

Sister Red pointed at the wall and said, "Right here in the middle, aim a bit higher." She said that boy's urine and aged vinegar possessed acidity that could soften rammed earth. I didn't know whether it was true or false, but I followed her instructions anyway.

I had done this plenty of times back in my school days. Back then, the men's and women's restrooms at school were separated by just a single wall, and the mischievous boys in our class would pinch their parts and spray vigorously toward the high upper sections just like a high-pressure water gun, usually prompting screams and curses from the women's restroom next door. Afterward, they would act all badass and shout across the wall, "What's up? Unconvinced? Have the guts to pee back over here!"

There's a joking saying that a man in his youth can piss three zhang against the wind, but in old age a tailwind will wet his shoes—a joke mocking a man's advancing years.

I was currently in my prime. After Sister Red stepped back, I looked at the rammed earth stone wall in front of me and immediately let loose. The stream flew higher and higher like a fountain, leaving Researcher An behind me completely dumbfounded.

Within three minutes of being soaked in urine, the rammed earth indeed looked as though it had softened somewhat.

Seeing this, Sister Red's expression brightened with joy. She locked onto a specific spot and began hammering away fiercely with the sharp stone.

Loads of gray mortar and mud flakes began to fall off, and a small pit was hammered out of the wall by Sister Red's brute force.

However, the good times didn't last. Soon, the rammed earth inside became too hard to hammer through. Breaking into a sweat, Sister Red turned back to me, panting, and said, "Yunfeng, we have a chance to escape now."

"But it's all going to depend on you."

"Huh?"

"No way..." Who knew how thick this rammed earth wall was, and there might even be sacrificial victims buried inside. If we really had to do this...

Where was I supposed to get that much boy's urine? How many ladles of water would I have to drink!

I was human, not a street-sprinkling truck.