After drinking that savory fish soup, Old Shepherd Yang transformed as if he were a hungry ghost clawing his way out of Avici Hell. Fearing someone might snatch the rest, he shoved me and Fatty aside, seized the remaining half-pot of soup, scooping with a ladle in one hand while plunging the other into the scalding pot to grab fish meat, sending food rushing to his mouth in a continuous stream, as if his maw were a bottomless pit that no amount of soup or fish could ever fill. Yet, the fish and soup were tangible things, and Old Shepherd Yang ate so much that his belly swelled taut, white foam from the soup bubbling out of his nostrils.

Fatty, Ding Sitian, and I exchanged bewildered glances, completely stunned. We had seen people eat heartily, but never like this—not this goddamn much. Fatty was visibly terrified, repeatedly pleading with Old Shepherd Yang, "Save some for us, save some for us..." Ding Sitian sensed something was seriously wrong, though she didn't know the specifics. She yanked my arm hard: "Grandpa Old Shepherd Yang... what's wrong with him? If he keeps eating, he's going to die."

The pull from Ding Sitian snapped me out of my trance. I had been paralyzed watching Old Shepherd Yang devour food like a starving specter. There had to be something wrong with this soup. Could the fish, revered as a deity on the grasslands, truly be inedible? That eating it would drive one to madness, eating until death?

Seeing Old Shepherd Yang about to burst himself to death, I had no time for further contemplation. I rushed over, grabbed the collar of his coat, his abdomen distended like a drum ready to split at any moment. I worried applying too much force would damage his internal organs, so I gently pulled him backward, allowing Fatty to snatch the ladle from his hand. Old Shepherd Yang had lost his senses, fish soup choking from his mouth and nose. Once I pulled him back, he collapsed onto the ground, foaming at the mouth and utterly senseless.

I thought, thankfully it was just fish soup; rubbing his stomach, getting him to throw some up, and perhaps inducing flatulence should fix it. But as soon as I looked up, I saw Fatty moving to scoop more soup with the ladle, mumbling to Ding Sitian, "Is this soup really that fresh? It makes the poor peasants unable to stop eating. I should try some..."

Fearing Fatty would follow Old Shepherd Yang's fate, I quickly kicked the hot pot over, spilling the rest of the soup onto the ground. I told Fatty and Ding Sitian, "Don't drink this soup; it turns you into a hungry ghost." Ding Sitian rubbed Old Shepherd Yang's belly while saying, "Yes, Grandpa Old Shepherd Yang seems to get hungrier the more he drinks. His stomach is clearly full, but he doesn't seem to feel it. The more he drinks, the more he wants. It seems there's a reason why the herders of Balunzuo Grassland never eat fish."

I deeply regretted letting Old Shepherd Yang take the first sip. At that time, we couldn't grasp the secret; we only felt that this misty, fog-shrouded forest, much like the legend of the demon dragon here, was eerily frightening and incomprehensible. Many years later, after joining the army and reaching Lanzhou, I learned that on the Loess Plateau there is a rare species of black fish. These black fish are rich, boneless, and produce an incomparably delicious soup. Anyone who tastes it becomes like a reincarnated hungry ghost, eating ever more ravenously, compelled to consume until they burst. Numerous legends surround this terrifying black fish: some say these fish are the spirits of those starved to death during famines; others claim they are the descendants of river dragons, and anyone who eats them will be cursed.

Later, as science advanced, I understood that this black fish contains a narcotic. The human sensations of hunger and fullness are governed by a set of "anti-feeding nerves" in the hypothalamus of the brain. A certain component in the black fish effectively paralyzes these nerves, causing an unbearable sensation of hunger. Once one starts eating, the appetite becomes utterly uncontrollable. Since ancient times, countless people have died because of it.

In the dense woods of the "Hundred Eyes Cave," we must have mistakenly boiled this black fish into soup. But at the time, we knew nothing of the cause, only sensing that this fish soup was absolutely forbidden.

Old Shepherd Yang’s belly was distended and he was unconscious; it seemed he wouldn't wake up anytime soon. Furthermore, bloated as he was, he couldn't be moved. If his intestines ruptured, in this desolate wilderness with no medicine or doctor, we could only watch him die.

Staring at the spilled soup and the old military horse casually grazing on grass, Fatty, Ding Sitian, and I were all deeply troubled. The fish in this pool were too strange and certainly couldn't be eaten. But the pangs of hunger were hard to endure. At that moment, we couldn't help but envy the old horse, which could simply graze anywhere on the grassland and not feel hungry, unlike humans who had such complicated needs for food.

For now, we could only wait anxiously for Old Shepherd Yang to recover before looking for something else to eat. The night mist in the forest gradually thinned, and we could vaguely make out the dim stars and moon overhead. Thankfully, besides the fish in the pool, we hadn't encountered any other immediate dangers. The surroundings were dead quiet. The three of us sat around the fire, trying to chat to distract ourselves and ease the gnawing hunger in our stomachs. But within a few sentences, the conversation inevitably drifted back to food. We fully reminisced about every feast we had ever enjoyed. During the Great Alliance period, we had traveled across half of China—recalling Peking roast duck, Tianjin Goubuli steamed buns, Xi'an paomo, Lanzhou noodles, recalling meal by meal, bite by bite.

While the three of us were deeply engrossed in talking about food, we heard the rustling sounds of rodents disturbing something behind us. We quickly turned back to see that the small half-pot of spilled fish soup, along with the fish heads and pieces inside, had attracted several fat moles. These creatures were truly gluttonous. Unable to resist the lure of the black fish's freshness, and heedless of the people and fire nearby, they boldly came to steal, gnawing happily on chunks of fish meat scattered on the ground.

Seeing how plump and sleek the moles were—commonly called "big-eyed thieves"—which usually dwell in loess burrows beneath the grassland and are occasionally found in dry patches of the woods, and noting they were much fatter than common rats and excellent wild game, I quickly signaled Fatty and Ding Sitian to stay quiet. I casually picked up a tree branch as thick as my fist and swung it down hard at the largest one. The big-eyed thief, obsessed with the fish's flavor, was as senseless as Old Shepherd Yang and didn't even try to dodge, taking the blow squarely on its head.

Fatty also jumped up, wielding a thick club with me to beat the moles. In a flash, seven or eight fat moles lay dead under our frantic blows. The three of us were overjoyed and immediately began roasting the moles. Each big-eyed thief was about the size of a smaller rabbit. As they sizzled and rendered fat over the fire, Ding Sitian initially showed some concern: "What if the big-eyed thieves are like the black fish? What if eating them turns people into hungry ghosts?"

I told Ding Sitian, "There are no legends on the grasslands forbidding the eating of big-eyed thieves. Don't many herders catch the fattest ones in autumn for provisions? I think it should be fine." As I spoke, Fatty was already devouring half of an undercooked roasted big-eyed thief like a whirlwind. Ding Sitian and I remained slightly worried, taking tentative bites. Finding nothing amiss, we then began to eat heartily.

Grassland herders consider eating roasted mole meat a staple, but in the Greater Khingan Range mountains, many people never eat rat meat. Before liberation, those who sought gold veins in the mountains abstained from eating rat meat. I once heard that tomb raiders also avoid it, referring to rats as "wives" because their entire trade involves moving earth and digging holes, just like rats; they are colleagues. Furthermore, rats belong to the "Gray" clan among the Five Great Families—Hu (fox), Huang (weasel), Bai (hedgehog), Liu (snake), and Hui (rat)—who constantly deal with earth tunnels, so offending them must be avoided, lest one be accidentally buried alive in a tomb shaft one day.

I had no intention of robbing tombs at the time and cared little about eating "big-eyed thief" meat. Ding Sitian also didn't strongly believe that weasels, snakes, foxes, hedgehogs, and rats were spirits, but she firmly believed in cosmic balance—that one should never push things to the absolute extreme. For instance, concerning eating rats: in Ding Sitian's hometown, during a famine before liberation, rats were incredibly numerous, yet despite the lack of grain, the rat population did not decrease. To survive, people caught and ate rats. After eating hundreds of thousands of rats, they finally survived the famine, but the local people developed a habit of eating rat meat even when food became available, and everyone did it. Then, one year, a plague suddenly broke out, killing countless people. After the epidemic subsided, some entire villages were left with only two survivors who ate strictly vegetarian diets.

Fatty scoffed, "What kind of cosmic balance is that? I think rats are just pests; if we wiped them out, there wouldn't be a plague. But have you heard people say there are more rats in the world than humans? It seems after we finish wiping out the Di Xiu Fan [counter-revolutionaries], we should start rat extermination." Saying this, he suddenly picked up his hunting rifle, holding the butt downwards, and brought it down hard toward a big-eyed thief peeking out of a nearby rat hole, scouting us.

The big-eyed thief, agitated by the scent of fish soup and roasted rat meat, was restlessly poking its head out of its hole, hoping for a chance to sneak out and steal some fish. Seeing a club swinging toward it, it quickly recoiled into its burrow to evade the blow. Fatty, having just eaten his fill, wanted to stretch his legs. He put considerable force into the swing, slamming the rifle butt fiercely onto the ground. Unfortunately, it missed the rat and instead smashed a large chunk of the surface earth, causing it to collapse. The crust here was brittle, with a hollow beneath, and a jab from the rifle butt caused it to give way.

The reason this patch of woods was called "Hundred Eyes Cave" was likely due to numerous underground caverns or sinkholes. However, over the years, natural environmental changes and soil erosion had covered these openings with fallen leaves and weeds, creating a hardened earth crust. Thus, finding any underground caverns directly now was difficult. This crust had been riddled with holes by the big-eyed thieves digging for earthworms, so Fatty's impact causing a collapse wasn't entirely surprising.

But we hadn't anticipated such an event then. The earth crust in the undergrowth crumbling away with a roar was completely unexpected. Even more astonishing was what the exposed opening revealed: it was crammed full of rats. Fatty pointed, exclaiming, "Oh my god, how many big rats are there?"

Following his gaze, my whole body tensed, and my scalp tingled. Inside the hole, amidst tree roots and mud, was a massive "Rat Mountain"—countless big-eyed thieves were packed tightly together, a writhing, overlapping mound almost as tall as a man. And it wasn't just big-eyed thieves; gray rats, prairie dogs, and many fat wild rats of unrecognizable species were scurrying about nearby—a vast, dark mass. This giant rat nest was unimaginably huge.

Disturbed by the cave-in at the entrance, the swarm of rats poured out like a breached dam. Due to their sheer numbers, they instantly extinguished the fire we had lit. Fatty, Ding Sitian, and I quickly grabbed knives and clubs to drive away the giant rats surging toward us. These large rodents, scattered by our attack, became even more frantic, squeaking wildly as they dashed throughout the woods. One of the natural predators of wild rats is the centipede, and night was their prime hunting time. Attracted by the rat swarm, long, yellowish-green centipedes emerged from rock crevices, tufts of grass, and bushes, descending upon the fleeing rats to bite and devour them mercilessly.

The once deathly silent woods erupted into chaos. Caught amidst so many natural enemies, the wild rats didn't know where to flee. Bumping into things in every direction, they ran in circles through the woods, with centipedes appearing from all sides. The centipedes common on the grassland were only about twenty centimeters long, and ones nearly a meter long were rare. But here, we saw spotted centipedes over two meters long. The venom from the spotted varieties was even fiercer than that of poisonous snakes. If we had blindly charged out with the rat swarm in this situation, we would certainly have been bitten by their toxic mandibles, resulting in instant death with no time for rescue.

Recalling the horrific sight of Ding Sitian’s chestnut mare being bitten to death by a centipede sent chills down my spine. If we had a few horses now, we could gamble on the slim chance of riding out, but we only had the one old horse. The horse was already panicked, its tether wrapped around a tree, neighing and struggling against it, managing only to kick its hind legs repeatedly to fend off the rats and centipedes encroaching in the chaos.

I snatched the kerosene lantern from the ground, shouting to Fatty and Ding Sitian to support the unconscious Old Shepherd Yang and escape into the rat hole exposed by the collapsed section of the entrance. By then, most of the rat swarm had bolted from the massive nest. Compared to the chaotic biting and devouring in the forest, this filthy, stinking burrow was the only refuge. Fatty and Ding Sitian instantly understood my intent. They half-dragged, half-carried Old Shepherd Yang, with his distended belly, into the rat hole. I swung the "Kangxi Precious Saber," slicing through the tether holding the old military horse. The horse was freed, let out a long neigh, but didn't immediately bolt out of the encirclement; instead, it circled the rat hole, unwilling to abandon its masters. I pointed my saber toward the forest edge: "Go, escape."

The old horse seemed genuinely intelligent. Perhaps recognizing it couldn't fit into the rat hole, and seeing its masters entering to seek shelter, it snorted once, turned, and bolted toward the forest edge. Seeing the horse flee, I immediately squeezed into the rat hole. The moment I entered, a blast of foul stench assaulted my nostrils, and I quickly covered my mouth with my sleeve.

The rat hole was very deep, damp and narrow on both sides, resembling an artificially constructed underground tunnel. Shining the lantern ahead, the depths were too dark to see the end. Some small and large rats hadn't managed to escape and occasionally scurried over our feet. Hearing the sounds of centipedes devouring and wild rats howling miserably reaching the entrance, I realized we had truly entered the "Hundred Eyes Cave." Now, there was no turning back even if we wanted to. Without delay, I pointed my knife toward the depths of the tunnel and told Fatty and Ding Sitian, "Guerrilla warfare is our army's magic weapon for achieving victory. We should look for opportunities to turn defeat into victory through (maneuvering withdrawal) and (great strides of retreat). For now, we retreat deeper. Watch your footing." Those three young men, driven by residual fervor, had rashly ventured into a forbidden zone. At first, we were merely tense and uneasy, thinking little else of it. But at that time, none of us expected that at the end of this rat hole, a colossal nightmare awaited our arrival.