Chapter 31: The Sphere

I lost all sense of time after blacking out; it was the cold that jolted me awake.

My back was aching and numb, and my chest hurt with every breath, leaving me wondering if I had broken a rib.

"You're awake."

I lay on the ground and turned my head to look. A Mole was busy tidying her soaked hair; she was as drenched as I was.

I could hear the sound of a river flowing nearby. Enduring the stabbing pain in my chest, I asked, "Sister Red... did we make it out alive?"

"Yeah, we both have nine lives," she replied, having no heart for jokes.

I struggled to crawl up from the ground, but the movement pulled at my ribs, sending a fresh wave of pain through me.

"Take it easy. I checked your wounds—your ribs aren't broken, just bruised," A Mole said, helping me up.

Now that I had a moment, I scanned our surroundings.

Before us flowed an underground river. The spot where A Mole and I were standing was barely a bank, a cramped space less than two meters wide.

The backpack I had been carrying was gone; it must have been swept away by the river. Fortunately, A Mole’s pack had survived. It contained some biscuits to stave off hunger and a few emergency tools.

Leaning against a rock, I looked at her and said, "Sister Red, thank you for saving my life. I can’t swim. If you hadn't pulled me out, I would have drowned."

A Mole ignored me, seemingly lost in her own world as she began to take off her clothes.

I hurriedly looked down.

Her voice drifted over: "There’s nothing here to burn, no way to make a fire. Stop with the thank-yous and hurry up—strip off your wet clothes and wring them out, or you’ll get hypothermia."

Seeing me fidgeting and hesitant, she shook her head and chuckled. "I’ve seen everything there is to see, kid; do you really think I’m afraid of a greenhorn like you? Get to it."

Five minutes later, I was down to my briefs. I covered my crotch with my hands, refusing to strip any further regardless of what she said—this was my final stand of stubbornness.

"Ugh, fine, whatever," A Mole said, taking my clothes to wring them out. She didn't press the issue of the briefs.

We were deep within a cave system. The walkie-talkie in her bag was useless, and there were no satellite phones back then—the second Beidou communication satellite wouldn't be launched until 2007. This meant we had no way of contacting Big Brother or Third Brother in the short term.

We were on our own.

The biscuits in the pack had been soaked through, but to regain our strength, we had no choice but to eat them. The softened biscuits were cold and mushy, melting the moment they hit our tongues like thin soup.

After resting for over an hour, we put our clothes back on. A Mole asked if I could walk, and I gritted my teeth and insisted I could. We set off together, stumbling along the narrow riverbank.

The underground river flowed from west to east, and we followed the same direction. The platform that had looked like a reservoir was gone; it was so heavy that it must have sunk to the riverbed.

As we walked, I thought it over carefully, but truthfully, I still couldn't make sense of it. Those thick bronze chains had left a deep impression on me.

I knew one thing: bronze casting during the Western Zhou period relied on the piece-mold casting technique; the lost-wax method was a much later development. These bronze chains were interlocked, link by link, yet had remained intact for two thousand years. To my knowledge, given the technical limitations of the Western Zhou era, it should have been impossible to forge bronze chains of such length.

As we continued, the current grew swifter, and the narrow bank we were walking on became even tighter. At first, we could walk side-by-side, but later, fearing we might slip into the water, A Mole took the lead while I followed behind.

Thankfully, the high-end waterproof flashlight I had bought earlier proved to be a lifesaver.

A cool breeze blew from ahead. I felt it.

That was a good sign. At the time, I believed that as long as we followed the underground river, we would surely find an exit.

"Wait!" She suddenly stopped.

"What is it, Sister Red?"

"Yunfeng, look at that thing." She turned to the side, shining the flashlight ahead.

The beam was limited, and the distance was too great to see clearly. I only saw some vague, round, dark shapes hanging from the cave ceiling.

"What is that?" I couldn't make it out either.

"Be careful, let's go take a closer look," A Mole instructed, turning her head toward me.

As we drew closer, I finally saw it clearly...

It was a long, ladder-shaped bronze artifact...

In front of these bronzes, many round mud balls were suspended by thinner copper chains. I had no idea what these things were for.

A Mole looked up, frowning. "Yunfeng, do these... look like chime bells to you?"

"Chime bells? Ladder-shaped bronze chime bells?" I was startled.

Now that she mentioned it, the more I looked, the more it resembled them.

Ancient bronze artifacts come in many varieties—about thirty-four types, and chime bells are just one of them. Later generations categorized them into round, square, hat-shaped, and ladder-shaped chimes.

Why would such a massive set of bronze chime bells be hanging in an underground cavern beneath Moth Mountain? And what were those mud balls in front of them for?

People are always curious about the unknown.

"Let's knock one down and see," A Mole said, picking up a small stone from the ground.

She raised her hand and threw it with force, as if she were knocking fruit from a tree, but unfortunately, the first attempt missed.

She tried a second time, but still couldn't hit the round objects.

"Let me try, Sister Red." I took a small stone from her hand.

I loved using a slingshot to hunt birds when I was a kid, so I still had a decent aim.

I hit it on the first try. The ball swayed back and forth like a swing, but it didn't fall because the force wasn't enough.

This time, I used all my strength.

"Plop." The mud ball fell into the river.

"I hit it, Sister Red!"

A Mole rolled her eyes at me.

Watching the fallen ball drift toward the center of the underground river, A Mole quickly took off her top and turned to me. "Wait here for me. I’m going to fish it out and see what it is."

"Plop." Before I could even tell her to be careful, she took a running leap and dove into the water.

Two minutes passed. The surface remained calm. I hadn't seen a trace of her, and the ball that had fallen was also gone.

"Sister Red!"

"Sister Red!" I shouted, panicked, standing on the bank.

One of the round balls was pushed by the current to my feet, but A Mole was nowhere to be seen... I was terrified, standing there frozen and at a loss.

"Splash!" A head and shoulders emerged from the water.

I let out a breath of relief when I saw it was her.

After she swam ashore, her expression was dark and unsettled.

"Are you hurt, Sister Red? What happened?" I asked, worried by her grim look.

She caught her breath for a moment, then turned to look at me. "There’s something under the water... I couldn't see it clearly, but it looked like a giant, man-made rotating mechanism."

"Huh? A giant rotating mechanism? What does that mean?"

"I don't know. Let’s not talk about that for now. Let’s see what this thing is." She pointed at the spherical object at my feet.

"Oh, right. Okay."

The thing was hard, about the size of a soccer ball. I had to strike it several times with a sharp stone before I managed to crack a small fissure in it.

Like opening a coconut, I stuck my hand in, trying to pry it open.

I didn't succeed on the first try, but the opening widened, so I shone my flashlight inside.

There was something white in there. I reached in to touch it.

As I felt around, my expression changed.

My fingers had brushed against two hollow sockets.

"What is it?" A Mole asked.

I quickly pulled my hand back, sat on the ground, and pushed myself backward with my hands.

"A... a human head."