Daomu Biji: Restart

“Fatty!” I shouted.

When there was no reply, I felt my heart drop and couldn’t help thinking, he’s done for. This guy’s been eating and drinking nonstop over the past few years, and has long lost awareness of his waistline. His lower body must’ve been squished to minced meat. I tried to look back, but the small hole was so narrow that I didn't even have room to. I had no choice but to call to Poker-face, "Little Brother, did Fatty get in?"

Fatty finally shouted back at this time, "What kind of fucking stone is this? Shit, it hurts like a bitch!"

His voice seemed somewhat distorted because of the narrow space. When I asked him what happened, he said, "I'm fine. My tooth broke."

“How the hell did you break your tooth?” I asked him.

“I came in backwards and it smacked me in the face,” Fatty said. “This mechanism is really ruthless to have such settings.”

Without this small hole, the three of us would’ve really been inseparable. We would’ve been flattened into pancakes and rotted here together.

"Do you think this is all a trap?" He asked me. "This mechanism forced us to come in here."

I thought it unlikely since I couldn’t figure what the motive would be.

I flicked my lighter on and illuminated the dark hole in front of me. At this time, there was no other choice but to go forward, so I said to Fatty, "Do you have a weapon I can use to defend myself in this kind of environment? I want to crawl forward."

If something crawled out from the opposite side, I would definitely suffer.

"You can take the flare gun,” Fatty said. “I loaded it earlier."

I heard the sound of someone struggling to reach something come from behind me. Then, Little Brother handed me the gun. I struggled to reach back, snagged the gun, and then pulled it forward, aiming it at the darkness ahead. The action was really awkward, but I couldn't do anything about it.

"Climb slowly,” Fatty said. “I came in backwards, so my life is in your hands, Mr. Naïve."

I asked Fatty why he came in backwards and he said that if we crawled forward and encountered any problems, then it would be easier for him if we needed to retreat. If he had been facing the same way as us, it would be too inconvenient to crawl backwards.

I crawled more than ten meters forward, but the small hole seemed incredibly long and didn't look like it was coming to an end at all. I held the lighter in front of me and carefully looked around at the rock.

This really was a naturally formed tunnel that probably went on for several hundred kilometers. You would definitely die halfway through if you tried to find the exit.

After crawling more than twenty meters, the small hole sloped down a little. We tried to keep crawling forward, but I couldn’t do it anymore. I could barely spread my hands and feet out and could only crawl like a worm now. It consumed ten times as much physical strength as ordinary crawling.

"Fatty, we have to think long-term," I stopped and gasped out.

"Mr. Naïve, Little Brother, I have to pee really bad. Do you mind?" Fatty said from a distance.

It was all downhill from here, so I told him to endure it and started crawling forward again.

Under the imminent threat of Fatty's urine, we climbed another three or four meters. The atmosphere was really depressing, but we finally began to go uphill and I heard Fatty let out a relieved noise. Then, the foul smell of urine immediately filled the tunnel. He must’ve really been holding it in.

I relaxed and prayed that we wouldn't have to crawl back at some point.

At this time, I was embarrassed to find that I also needed to pee, but I thought of who was behind me and knew that I would be killed. As I tried to distract myself, I suddenly found some seal script on the rock wall beside me.

Seven yin.

“Yin” was an old unit of measurement, which was equivalent to about two hundred meters (1). So, the “seven yin” here was a distance of about fourteen hundred meters.

This was a distance marker.

"Mr. Naïve, why aren’t you crawling? My urine reeks."

"Those words on the stone tablet outside said that there would be an accident when you went in more than a hundred meters, right?"

"Yes."

"How many meters did we climb just now?"

It was about forty meters, which was definitely short of the seven yin this marker was indicating. That meant that this unit of measurement was reversed. We were climbing from seven yin to one yin.

There must be something at one yin, I said to myself. And it’s more than fourteen hundred meters away from us.

****

TN Notes:

(1) So, I’m no expert, but my dictionary (and google-sensei) says yǐn (引) is equal to 10 zhàng (丈), which is one-thirtieth of a km or 33.33 meters. Most definitely not 200 meters…