Daomu Biji: Restart

Fatty lit the signal flare and calculated the angle so that the whole top of the mountain gap was illuminated like there was a small sun. I continued smoking my cigarette as I used the binoculars to look down. Soon, I saw Jin Wantang's blood-covered hand sticking out of the gap.

He was under several large rocks with a big one pinning his legs down.

As soon as I saw this, I already knew in my heart that his legs weren’t completely crushed. The rocks didn’t look particularly heavy, so with the three of us using our strength, we could actually free him.

Jin Wantang couldn't move because of his ribs, and he was in so much pain that he couldn’t muster up the strength to push hard against the rocks pinning him down.

If the heavenly gift had the power to move the human body and spur the rocks to collapse, then there would be no need for the Zhang family to travel around the world and interfere with its development. The heavenly gift was a very passive force, so there was absolutely no way that it magically moved Jin Wantang here and moved the stones from a distance to hold him down.

This was a man-made trap, and human strength was limited. This meant that all of the rocks where Jin Wantang was located could be moved by one person. Someone had obviously broken Jin Wantang's ribs and made him unable to move, because he could have actually broken free on his own if he was in good condition.

The person who set this trap up had to be nearby. I cleared my throat and began to speak to Jin Wantang in English. He was used to fooling foreigners in Beijing all day, so his English should at least be adequate.

I kept the explanation very brief just in case, but Jin Wantang was so weak that all he could do was hum. I didn’t know if he understood me or not.

"Why did you start speaking in a foreign language?" Fatty asked me.

I made a gesture to indicate that the walls had ears. The signal flare went out at this time, so I said to Poker-Face, "I need a cold firework to land under the pile of stones pinning Tang Tang down."

A hundred meters was close to the farthest record a human had thrown something, so Poker-Face would probably need to calculate the bounce if he wanted the cold firework to land accurately.

But as soon as Fatty set off another signal flare and the area around us lit up again, Poker-Face lit a cold firework and threw it out.

I was familiar with his accuracy. The cold firework hit a rock about eighty meters away, directly bounced off of it, flew for more than twenty meters, and then landed directly under Jin Wantang's hand.

Now that the area was very bright, I could see that a few rocks had been stacked into a triangular shape. The purpose of this was to prevent him from seeing the outside situation clearly. After looking at those rocks and determining the basic mechanics, I instinctively felt that the basic structure wouldn’t collapse no matter which stones were broken.

But there was also a lot of risk here. On the off chance that the vibration caused any unexpected changes, then the rocks would completely fall. Although ordinary people wouldn’t die, Jin Wantang’s ribs would skewer his lungs.

"Do you have anything else to say?” I asked Jin Wantang. “What comes next is very risky. I’ll try my best, but you have to be prepared."

"Sorry, Little Master Three,” Jin Wantang said weakly. “I shouldn't have brought that paper copy to you."

"Isn’t it a bit late to apologize now?" I began to check the bullets, looking for the extremely standard ones that could be shot accurately. When it came to shooting, my hands were more steady than Fatty’s now.

Jin Wantang laughed, "Even if I’m old, I have to be sensational at the last moment."

I had burned through a third of my cigarette by this point. I took a puff, feeling a bit emotional. "Tell me the truth."

"Really? If I don't die this time, Little Master Three, I’ll definitely tell you a secret. It will subvert some of your previous judgments, hahaha." Jin Wantang laughed.

My face instantly changed and I was just about to ask him what he meant, but Jin Wantang suddenly began to cough violently. Fatty gripped my hand holding the satellite phone; there was no time to ask questions.

I was cold all over and my hands were shaking before I finally managed to pull myself together. I took a look at Poker-Face. Per my instructions just now, he had used a rope to make a sling that could easily send a round stone flying more than a hundred meters out. We pulled some nylon strips from our clothes and tied them around the rough stone in the sling.

I held my breath, took aim, and picked out a rock as my target. I figured it was the least likely to be a weight-bearing stone, so I started shooting at it steadily. Although it was impossible for me to hit the same bullet hole with every shot, I could still concentrate the bullet holes in as tight a cluster as possible.

From that first shot, my attention wasn’t on Jin Wantang's safety, only on my own breathing. I shot a row of holes according to Hooke's Law and then took out a bullet, made a cut in the top of it⁽¹⁾, and shot it towards the middle of these clustered holes.

The whole rock collapsed completely, just like a house that was demolished using directional blasting.

At this time, I came back to my senses. I felt a little nervous, but the rubble didn't collapse onto Jin Wantang completely and just fell a little inside.

I immediately saw Jin Wantang's face and realized that the opening was only big enough for one person. It was obvious that Jin Wantang's consciousness was already a little fuzzy, so I said into the satellite phone, "It's up to you now."

It took Jin Wantang forty seconds to stick his hand out of the hole.

Poker-Face threw a lot of debris over at first in order to find the perfect trajectory, but when he confirmed the right one, he quickly threw a rock out.

That rock accurately shot into Jin Wantang's hole, which gave Jin Wantang a small burst of energy. He touched the nylon strip on the rock and began to pull on it.

The other end of the nylon strip was connected to a hundred-meter-long standard rescue rope that had a knotted loop on it. It took him fifteen minutes to pull the rope over and put the knotted loop around his hand.

Everything went well and he remained conscious as we started to carefully pull him over. After a little cooperation, we finally managed to pull him completely out of the pile of rocks.

Just as I had expected, his feet weren’t crushed at all.

He lay on his back as we gradually pulled him towards us bit by bit. There was a lot of gravel in the middle, each piece enough to burst his internal organs if they managed to hit a vulnerable spot. As a result, we could only rely on his will.

After pulling him about ten meters out, another person suddenly crawled out of the stone cave where Jin Wantang had been lying just now. The person quickly went over to Jin Wantang, lifted him up, and put a Mongolian knife against his neck.

It was the young man with the white T-shirt.

He and I looked at each other and smiled. Seeing that he was about to slide the Mongolian knife across Jin Wantang's throat—the trap had failed, so he didn't hesitate to dispose of the bait—I immediately lifted my gun up. But when I did, I found that he was completely blocked by Jin Wantang’s body. The knife pierced Jin Wantang's neck, but before it could actually slit his throat, Jin Wantang suddenly took something out and sprayed it in the man's face.

The man immediately turned and covered his eyes, dropping Jin Wantang to the ground in the process. I didn't hesitate and quickly shot the guy in the head with a "bang". Fatty immediately quickened his pace to pull Jin Wantang over to us.

This was what I had said in English before. Poker-Face didn’t actually need to measure the distance at all, so his test throws were really just a cover for him to accurately throw something into Jin Wantang's hand. It was a can of pepper spray. This kind of bait trap was obviously a traditional hunter's trick. They stayed on the other side, so if the prey didn’t take the bait, they wouldn’t let the bait go at all.

The man fell into the stone crevice and disappeared. At this distance, I clearly felt that the other person had turned his head just now, which meant that I had missed the shot.

This kind of reaction speed wasn’t uncommon among ethnic minorities.

I didn’t know where he found the strength, but Jin Wantang suddenly stood up and stumbled over while gripping his neck. As he rushed towards us, we finally managed to drag him over at an extremely fast speed.

He started to fall down, but Poker-Face grabbed the back of his shirt collar to keep him from colliding with the rocks. Fatty and I immediately went up to stop the bleeding while Poker-Face looked at the cold firework in the distance. I also turned my head to take a look.

Sure enough, that man wasn’t dead.

I saw his hand suddenly come out of the gap, grab the cold firework, and drag it into the gap.

****

TN Notes:

(1) Cutting an X into the top of a bullet guarantees that it’ll fragment upon striking the body, thereby creating more severe wounds. Wu Xie wanted to shatter the rock so that's why he cut the top of the bullet.