He didn’t dare to slack off. With a sudden push off the ground, he grabbed the tail of the mole rat and started pulling it out. After just a few tugs, something below seemed to bite onto it, and a force yanked the rope back into the tunnel. Old Samuel had never imagined something like this could happen—he was nearly dragged into the hole himself. Thinking quickly, he tied the tail around his own waist and threw his whole body backward, his back almost forming a 30-degree angle with the ground. This was a trick he’d learned from tug-of-war games with other boys in the village. This way, his entire body weight was anchored to the rope; even if it were a mule pulling, he could still hold his ground.

Sure enough, this move put him in a standoff with whatever was in the hole. Both sides strained, but neither could budge the other an inch. After a stalemate of more than ten seconds, a gunshot rang out from inside the tunnel, followed by his father’s shout: “San Yazi, run!!!!!!” Suddenly, the rope went slack, and the mole rat shot out of the hole with a whoosh—something seemed to be hanging from it! At that moment, Old Samuel couldn’t care about anything else. He knew something must have gone wrong below. He caught the mole rat in one hand and turned to run!

He ran for more than a mile without stopping before he dared to pause. Pulling the mole rat from his coat, he took a look and screamed in fright. There, hooked onto the mole rat, was a bloody severed hand. He recognized the hand immediately and burst into tears—it was clearly his second brother’s. Judging by this, even if his second brother wasn’t dead, he was crippled. At this thought, he gritted his teeth, determined to go back and save his brother and father. But as soon as he turned around, he saw a blood-red thing crouching behind him, staring straight at him.

But Old Samuel was no pushover. He’d followed his father through thick and thin, seen plenty of strange things, and knew that anything could happen underground. The most important thing wasn’t to panic, but to adapt. After all, no matter how fierce a ghost, it couldn’t be stronger than a living person. No matter how terrifying, it still had to obey the laws of physics—a burst of bullets would tear it apart, and there’d be nothing left to fear.

With this in mind, he steeled himself, backing away while pulling the Mauser pistol from his waist. He set it to rapid fire, ready to unleash a storm of bullets at the first sign of movement from the blood-red thing. But just then, the blood-red figure stood up. Old Samuel took a closer look and felt his scalp tingle and his stomach churn—it was a person who had been skinned alive! The whole body was drenched in blood, as if it had squeezed itself out of its own skin. Yet this person could still move—what a miracle. Could this be the true form of a blood corpse?

As he thought this, the blood corpse hunched over and suddenly lunged at him. In an instant, Old Samuel locked eyes with it, its bloody face pressing right up to his nose, a sour stench assaulting him. Old Samuel instinctively fell backward, emptying a full magazine into the thing’s chest at point-blank range. The bullets, fired from such close distance, all passed through, sending blood spraying everywhere and forcing the thing back several steps. Old Samuel felt a surge of hope. He swung his arm back and aimed at its head, pulling the trigger—only to hear a click. The gun had jammed!

This old Mauser had been dug up by his great-uncle from a warlord’s tomb years ago. It probably hadn’t seen much use, but after years of following his father around, he’d had no time to maintain it, and rarely had a chance to fire it. Who would have thought it would jam at such a critical moment? But Old Samuel wasn’t one to give up easily. Seeing the gun was useless, he swung his arm with all his might and hurled it at the thing, not caring whether he hit or not, then turned and ran. This time, he didn’t even dare look back. He fixed his eyes on a big tree ahead and sprinted toward it, thinking, “No way it can climb a tree, right?” Suddenly, his foot caught on something, and he fell flat on his face, smashing his nose and mouth against a tree stump—blood gushed everywhere.

Old Samuel slammed his palm on the ground in frustration, cursing his rotten luck.

At that moment, he heard the wind behind him—he knew the King of Hell had come to call his name. He steeled himself: if he was going to die, so be it, and simply lay on the ground without getting up. Unexpectedly, the blood corpse seemed not to see him at all and actually stepped right over him, leaving a bloody footprint on his back. The blood corpse was shockingly heavy; as its foot came down, Old Samuel felt a sweetness in his throat, as if even his bile had been stomped out. The spot on his back where he’d been stepped on immediately began to itch terribly, and his vision blurred. He realized at once that he’d been poisoned—and the toxin was extremely potent. In a daze, he saw that not far away, his second brother’s severed hand seemed to be clutching something.

He blinked hard and looked closely—it was a piece of ancient silk. He thought, “If my second brother risked his life to bring this out, it must be something extraordinary. Now I don’t know what’s become of them, but at the very least, I should keep this safe. If I really die, they’ll be able to find it on my body, and my brother’s hand won’t have been lost in vain, nor will I have died for nothing.” Thinking this, he struggled to crawl over, pried open his brother’s tightly clenched hand, took the silk from his palm, and stuffed it into his own sleeve.