Many old friends meet and greet, but we didn't. Just like in the past, no matter how she changed, in my eyes she was still that young知青girl from back then, only with her youthful awkwardness replaced by maturity.

  She still had that tone, opening her mouth and saying: "You several big bags and small bags, sneaking around, one look and no good things, say what are you doing?"

  I took one look at the situation and was afraid I wouldn't be able to go to Zhuangyuan Village, so I quickly went up to get her things. "Nothing's wrong, nothing's wrong, who knew Miss Yuan would come? Let's go, hurry back to the house."

  "Wait, there's another friend." After that, she opened the rear car door again. A man in his fifties, wearing a gray windbreaker, got out of the car and said to me in non-standard Mandarin: "Hello, nice to meet you."

  Yuan Xiaobai smiled and pulled the man's hand, I glanced at Cha Wenbin, his face was almost green, I thought to myself, isn't this girl with such an old man?...

  "Let me introduce, this is my teacher at Stanford University in the US, Mr. Byron, an American of Chinese descent, whose ancestral hometown is Taizhou, Jiangsu Province, and we are considered fellow townspeople. He is a renowned scholar of Chinese culture in the US, and this time he has come back to China with me mainly to visit his relatives. He particularly likes the landscape of southern China, so I brought him along."

  He generously extended his hand: "You can call me Gu Qinghe. Since I'm back in China, it's better to use my Chinese name."

  As expected, he had a lot of demeanor. The elegant and refined air between his eyebrows suddenly made me feel like I was just an uneducated country bumpkin. I dropped out of school after junior high, and this is a professor at an American university. I couldn't help but want to go back home and wash the smell of garlic off my hands immediately before coming back.

  "Hey, Little Yi, what are you doing? Teacher Gu is saying hello to you, why are you staring blankly?"

  "Ah......" Just as I was about to reach out, Zha Wenbin said on the other side: "Qīng hé shēn xiān shì hǎo míng zì."

  That Gu Qing and Da Jing immediately discovered the treasure and rushed to Cha Wenbin, leaving me hanging on one side. My hand stretched out in mid-air, neither withdrawing nor not withdrawing, extremely embarrassing...

  "Do young people understand Chu Ci?"

  Yuan Xiaobai also followed and said to Gu Qing, "He is the Cha Wenbin I told you about, a Taoist disciple who pretends to be serious all day long."

  "Marvelous, truly marvelous!" He couldn't stop sizing up Zhang Wenbin up and down, as if he had just discovered a new continent.

  Cha Wenbin continued without changing his expression: "Chinese people pay attention to the naming of girls with Shi Jing, boys with Chu Ci, literary with Lun Yu, martial with Zhou Yi. Teacher Gu's name has two characters Qing He, which should come from the nine words of Chu Ci's 'Shang Sheng', meaning clear and beautiful harmony."

  "Wow, indeed Chinese culture is profound and vast. A 20-year-old youth actually understands so much. It seems that my research in the US is really narrow-minded. I should bring my topic to China, everyone here is my teacher."

  Zha Wenbin clasped his fists and bowed: "I'm showing off in front of Master Gu."

  "Not 'not', don't call me teacher, just call me Old Gu, are you guys going out?"

  "Never mind, it's just a small matter, but since we have guests now, let's put it off till another day."

  "Wait," said the fatty, "Old Zhang, you've thought this through, haven't you? Today is already the sixth day of the first month. According to our trade's rules, we'll start work on the eighth day. When that happens, they'll open the gate and fire the cannon. Once that guy arrives, do you think we can still sneak in?"

  Fatso's words are not unreasonable. At present, if we don't take action, either we will completely lose the opportunity or it means that the risk will increase exponentially.

  "Either you stay with me and Teacher Gu at my place for now, and we'll come back when it's light."

  "What are you going to do?" she asked.

  "There's something I need to go take care of."

  Yuan Xiaobai threw things on the ground: "Alright, then take me with you. Anyway, I didn't mix less with you in Northeast China before."

  "No way!" Cha Wenbin's refusal was firm.

  "Alright, you're such a perfectionist. Fine, let's go, Teacher Gu." With that, she turned her head and got into the car.

  I quickly went to pull her and persuade her: "Hey, hey, I'm saying, young lady, what are you doing? You've finally returned to the country, why are you doing this?"

  "You guys didn't take me with you, that means you don't consider me a friend. If we're not friends, then what's the point of me staying?"

  "Auntie, this isn't a good thing, we're going to get into trouble, there's danger at any time. You say you still haven't learned to control your temper, it's not as good as when you were in Northeast China before."

  "Xiao Bai, listen to our advice, come back early tomorrow morning, it's really not a good thing, women shouldn't be out late." Then I saw Pangzi whispering something in her ear, and Yuan Xiao Bai's face turned red and green, and she turned around and said to me: "Then you guys go ahead, the earlier you leave the earlier you'll return!" After that, she gave Cha Wenbin a particularly harsh look.

  Fatso continued with a flattering face and said to Yuan Xiaobai: "Let's discuss it, lend me the car at night, and give him some face."

  "Take it and roll as far as you can, whichever girl is blind will get it!"

  I made arrangements with my dad, and then Yuan Xiaobai and Old Gu stayed at my place first. Then the two of us rushed to Zhuangyuan Village. Now we have a car, no need to borrow that three-wheeled thing anymore.

  I asked Pangzi on the road: "What did you say to her?"

  "Haha, I said that tonight there's a matchmaker who arranged a blind date for Cha Ye, and these big and small packages are gifts specially brought by Cha Wenbin for his future mother-in-law..."

  I took a glance at Cha Wenbin sitting in the back row through the rearview mirror, his eyes already had a murderous impulse, so I took the opportunity to ignite: "Damn, Fatty, you're too damaging, hahaha!"

  Then, a pair of big hands tightly pinched the fat man, and then our car went on a wild "S"-shaped ride...

  Village entrance, 12:05, a piece of silence, occasionally there are still a few yellow paper money floating on the road, which was scattered along the way by the old clan head when he left yesterday. Some people say that walking this night road less often will inevitably encounter dirty things coming out to pick up money, but we're not afraid, who made us have Cha Ye?

  The house across the river had already turned off its lights, yesterday that dog barked a few times at the river surface, fatty got up and swayed for a moment, then only to see that dog disappear without a trace at rocket speed, it knew that this plague god had come and didn't hurry to run...

  The entrance was no different from yesterday, and as soon as the door opened, it went straight in like its own courtyard. The floorboards were lifted, and this time one person held a bright mining lamp and went down along the iron ladder. They walked down for about twenty meters until they reached a platform. Below the platform, there was another section of ladder. On that platform, you could already hear the sound of rushing water mixed with a "gurgling" machine noise.

  "The pump, look, there's a wire here." Reminded by Fatty, I saw that along the iron ladder, there were two wires, one red and one green.

  He pointed to the small shells that were still stuck to the rocks on this platform, "The water used to reach here, but it was drained by them, I don't know how deep it is now."

  Behind us was a patch of bare, smooth rocks with wet moss hanging from them. There was no sign of coal ash anywhere in this place. The locals call these rocks "Mali Guang", which means hard and smooth rocks that are completely useless.

  Going down this staircase, it's less than ten meters away. The first feeling of touching the ground is icy, and through my rubber shoes, I can feel that the water temperature here is much lower than outside, even my toes are a bit numb. I tried to walk a few steps, the ground is flat, there is no unevenness, just a layer of silt, about ten centimeters thick, so it's still quite laborious to walk.

  The mountains on both sides have a width of about half a house, and no artificial excavation marks can be seen. I really didn't expect that there would be such a world in the middle of this mountain.

  The only way in front of me is to move forward, and on the ground there is a thick drainage pipe that keeps rising and falling. Looking back, I see that the pipe is along the middle of the second ladder, just below the platform where it has been drilled through, and the pipe goes out through that hole.

  Fatso is still a bit of an expert, he can see the function of this water pipe, and immediately sighed: "Good guy, big hand, look, this drainage facility is done, even Xi'an Qianye can't do it. That hole also has ventilation, these people have spent a lot of money."

  I saw Wen Bin still standing there motionless, so I asked: "Wen Bin, have you found anything?"

  He whispered: "Look ahead."

  "What?"

  "Look!" He shone his headlamp over there, about twenty meters away from us. The mist on the water surface in this pit was very thick, a vast expanse of white, not very clear to see.

  "What's going on?"

  "He said in a low voice: 'It seems like someone is floating.'"

  What's floating here?

  The water flow is coming towards us, I vaguely see a white thing floating up and down, I want to go over and take a look, but was pulled back by Zhen Wenbin, we just quietly wait there.

  Time passed by one minute and one second, after a smoke break, I was back on the stairs again. Because just a few seconds ago, a corpse with its back facing up, wearing a white robe, slowly floated in front of me. But what's even more bizarre is that after floating away for just a blink of an eye, the corpse vanished!

  At that time, I was standing in the water, and three meters behind my back was a stone wall. The corpse floated slowly from my feet, quietly like a piece of wood, only his hair and a clump of water grass floating up and down with the waves, unable to distinguish between male and female.

  The key is that within two meters of this corpse, a second corpse floated over, followed by a third. The distance between them was just right, as if they were connected like bamboo rafts.

  It's not that I'm cowardly, it's just that everyone would make the same choice as me at that time...