I immediately pressed for the details, learning that the old shopkeeper had been quite famous back in the Republican era. In both legitimate and underworld circles, no one in Baoding Prefecture was unfamiliar with "Li, the Artifact Seller." Customers from all four corners of the country had journeyed specifically to commission him for strange and peculiar items. Many years prior, a merchant who dealt in abacuses had come specifically to order a "Diamond Umbrella," leaving behind blueprints and the secret formula for the alloy ratio. However, by the time the shopkeeper finished crafting the "Diamond Umbrella," that merchant had vanished like a "swan taking flight," never returning to claim it. Now, after all these years, it was assumed that man must surely be long dead.

I held the "Diamond Umbrella" in my hands, examining it repeatedly. The feel and material were identical to the one I had previously encountered. With this object close at hand, I felt I could brave any ordeal, even a path through mountains of blades and seas of fire, and an intense surge of elation washed over me. Without haggling over the price, I paid the exact amount the old shopkeeper had quoted.

Observing that Shopkeeper Li was an "old hand" in the jianghu, I thought perhaps I could glean some intelligence from him. I inquired about the location of "Qingxi Town" and whether there was an ancient king whose head had been severed.

The old shopkeeper said, "Seeing as you gentlemen spare no expense for these sharp instruments, and you are clearly connoisseurs, your visit to the Wushan area surely isn't for petty business. Furthermore, your unwillingness to spare money, coupled with the anxiety in your brows, suggests this isn't a venture merely for wealth. If this old man is not mistaken, it is most likely a matter of emergency aid or rescue. As fellow people of the jianghu, I should naturally offer my full support. However, I am merely a sojourner here, afflicted by illness and old age for decades, rarely venturing out. I am not very familiar with the local customs and scenery. I'm afraid I cannot be of much help."

I replied politely, "We appreciate your kind intentions, Shopkeeper Li. We will seek out others for information." With that, I prepared to take my companions and depart.

Shopkeeper Li called out, "Wait, I haven't finished speaking. I only have my youngest granddaughter, Yaomei, here. Her ancestral home is Qingxi. Why not let her tell you about it?" He beckoned Yaomei over and asked her to explain matters concerning Qingxi Town.

Yaomei, unaware of our intentions, asked in surprise, "Qingxi Town? That place has been gone for over ten years! The road there is treacherous, absolutely impassable. Why are you still looking for it?"

Hearing the old shopkeeper say Yaomei was from Qingxi Town, I thought, "Finally, a lead." I quickly pressed for the details. It turned out that deep within the Wushan mountain range, there was a very ancient town called Wuzhen. This was the official place name, known to everyone in the region.

However, due to a local legend that the site was the location of the tomb mound of Wuxian Qiu, the townspeople avoided the character 'Wu' (). They referred to their town simply as 'Qingxi,' a fact that outsiders were rarely aware of. The mountains held rich mineral resources, but they were later ravaged by war, and as the resources dwindled, the population gradually dispersed, leaving the area increasingly desolate.

In the sixties and seventies, the entire nation was engaged in 'Preparing for War and Preparedness Against Famine.' To implement the 'Three Defenses'—against air raids, poison gas, and nuclear threats—they converted the original mine shafts into air-raid shelters and depots. Around the time of July 1st, residents near Qingxi were relocated to several surrounding counties. However, the area was riddled with mines, causing severe crustal damage. The air-raid shelters collapsed as soon as they were built, making construction extremely difficult. But with changing times, the construction of the shelters halted midway and was abandoned. The entire ancient town, as time slipped by, became a forgotten, uninhabited place.

Though Yaomei was from Qingxi, her surname was not Feng. Whether there was a legend of a headless king in ancient times, no one knew. When the people of Qingxi were relocated, her family moved here. Her parents died during the Cultural Revolution, leaving her alone until the old shopkeeper took her in.

Yaomei left home when she was eleven, and she still remembered most things about Qingxi Town. She said Qingxi had three routes: one by water, but now, in the height of summer, the rivers were swollen, fast-flowing, and dangerous—impossible to travel. The roads were unrepaired, with numerous landslides, also rendering them impassable. Only one section of the ancient plank road remained somewhat intact. This walkway, built during the Qin Dynasty, was only five chi wide, hence its name, the "Five-Foot Road." To reach the interior via this ancient path would require a great deal of effort.

I immediately unfolded the map and asked Yaomei to point out the location and map out a route, preferably specifying the exact locations of Qingxi Town's "mine shafts and air-raid shelters."

At this point, the old shopkeeper spoke up, "Why bother looking at a map? Just let Yaomei guide you to Qingxi. If you have the opportunity in the future, take her out of the mountains to see the world and learn some real skills."

I hadn't expected the old shopkeeper to allow Yaomei to serve as a guide for the expedition team. While I desperately wanted this, I was also deeply concerned about putting her in danger. Our journey into Wushan to find the ancient tomb was solely for rescue purposes. It goes without saying for myself, Shirley Yang, and Fatty, but Old Man Sun also endured real trials during the Cultural Revolution. How could Yaomei withstand such risks? If anything happened to her, wouldn't I just be "robbing Peter to pay Paul"?

Just as I was about to decline, I heard the old shopkeeper say, "My Yaomei is clever and quite brave. She's studied under me for years and learned much of the Artifact Seller's craft. Besides, she grew up in the mountains, climbing and crossing ridges is no trouble for her. She can certainly offer some help."

Yaomei was reluctant to agree. She told the old shopkeeper, "No, Master. You are so old; if I leave, who will look after Grand-God [her term for him] and make his tea?"

The old shopkeeper replied, "Silly girl, your Grand-God is over eighty, how many days does he have left? You are in your prime, like a blooming flower, why waste your youth in the mountains? Do you really want to marry that bald fellow who manages the big ladle in the future? Though I am old, my eyesight is still sharp. I can tell these vultures of yours possess righteousness and benevolence; they are men destined for great things. You go follow them and see the world! Make a fortune, earn big money, and if your Grand-God hasn't died by then, you can come back to fetch me so I can enjoy my old age with you."

The old shopkeeper insisted on having Yaomei lead us into the mountains and entrusted me to take her to the city later to experience life and learn genuine skills. Shirley Yang and I discussed it briefly and agreed that having a local guide was the best possible arrangement, as long as we didn't let her take the main risks. We accepted, provisionally considering her my junior apprentice sister—though I was unclear exactly where this seniority rank originated. Just then, Professor Sun entered from the outer room and announced, "I just stepped out to check; it looks like the driver is getting ready to leave. We need to hurry up and get going."

Drivers in the mountains never wait. We hastily wrapped up some miscellaneous supplies we needed. After quickly bidding farewell to the old shopkeeper of "Beehive Mountain," the five of us, each carrying a backpack, hurried out of the sundry shop, jumped onto the already running vehicle, and were carried out of the small mountain town amidst constant jolting and shaking.

Sitting in the back seat, I looked at the "Diamond Umbrella" in my hand and thought what a truly miraculous encounter this was. I hoped this auspicious start would help us smoothly find the "Immortal's Ancient Tomb." With this thought, I immediately asked Yaomei if there were any legends about an "Earth Immortal" near Qingxi.

Yaomei replied, "In my old home area, there's a saying that an Earth Immortal is buried in the Feng King's Tomb. But the common folk say the Earth Immortal is a demon immortal, and that tomb is the Demon Immortal's Grave. They say the Earth Immortal knows demonic magic and is best at bewitching people's minds. He promised eternal life to anyone who entered his tomb, tricking many people into being buried alive with him. However, these are just old legends; nobody knows if the story of the Demon Immortal's Grave is true or false anymore. But Qingxi Town definitely has people surnamed Feng."

I wanted to pry for more information, but I noticed Yaomei looking out the car window, clearly reluctant to leave the old shopkeeper. I tried to comfort her, saying, "When I was several years younger than you are now, I already left home, shouting the slogan, 'Vast world, great potential!' I went a thousand li away to temper myself. This Fatty here went with me back then."

Hearing me recall those glorious past days, Fatty also got energized. "Ah, those were the days when we were young, filled with thoughts of rebellion being justified! We dared to laugh at Huang Chao for not being a true man! Sister, you are just past twenty, and you're still acting coy with your Grand-God? Back then, I was only eighteen, and I went into the mountains alone at night to guard the cornfields. I ran into a ghost—no one to call, nowhere to turn. With no spells left, I had no choice but to grit my teeth and hold on..."

Yaomei, after all, was young and very curious. Hearing Fatty mention encountering a ghost, she couldn't help but ask us about the experience.

I intended to test Yaomei's courage. If she trembled even hearing a ghost story, I might as well send her back quickly. So I told her, "I've heard this story. It happened to Fatty in the Northeast mountains after I joined the army. It’s enough to make your scalp tingle. Since we're sitting in the car with nothing to do, let Fatty tell you all about it."

Shirley Yang and Professor Sun were also curious and listened quietly. Fatty cleared his throat and launched into his tale:

The location was outside the village belonging to the Tuanshan Camp production team in the Dabalazi Commune. The time was a night in mid-summer, 1970, originally published exclusively. Midsummer nights in the mountains should be cool, but that night, for some unknown reason—perhaps a major thunderstorm was brewing—it was stiflingly hot, and not a single star was visible in the sky.

That very day, Wang Fatty and another educated youth were assigned to "guard the field" on the mountain—watching over a few mu of cornfields planted halfway up the slope. Wild boars in the mountains loved to feed on corn; they ate a lot and wasted even more, trampling the corn into tunnels with their rolling. So, someone had to stand guard at night, banging wash basins to scare off the pigs if they heard any noise.

That evening, the other educated youth had an unexpected emergency, leaving Wang Fatty to guard the field alone. He had trapped a rabbit during the day and "borrowed" a thermos of homemade baijiu from the village on his way out. He was delighted to have food and drink for himself. He prepared the rabbit right there in the field, humming an excerpt from the model opera "The Red Lantern." After roasting the rabbit thoroughly inside and out, he took a bite of meat, followed by a sip of baijiu, feeling quite pleased with his comfortable life in the mountains. His only regret was that no wild boars had caused trouble recently, giving him an excuse to fire a few warning shots for excitement.

Just as he was feeling content, a clap of thunder roared, and raindrops the size of soybeans began to fall. Fatty quickly tucked the flask of liquor and the half-eaten rabbit under his arm and fled back to the grass shack to take shelter. But the shack leaked everywhere and was uninhabitable. He pondered: there was an old millhouse at the edge of the cornfield, abandoned for many years. Why not take shelter there?

This extremely rudimentary millhouse had existed since before the Liberation but hadn't been entered in years for some unknown reason. Wang Fatty didn't care about the details. He kicked the wooden door open. Inside was pitch black, filled with crumbling plaster and dust, but it was certainly better than being drenched outside. He downed the rest of the baijiu, sprawled out on a wooden crate, and immediately fell into a deep sleep, snoring like thunder.

Fatty slept soundly and couldn't recall how long it was until he was half-woken by a peal of thunder. He vaguely sensed the sky hadn't brightened at all. He turned over, intending to go back to sleep. Then, he heard a woman weeping right by his ear. Wang Fatty was a man of immense nerve and little sentimentality; he just wanted to sleep. Who knew the weeping sound grew closer and closer, feeling as if it were about to drill into his head? In a haze, he cursed, "What the hell are you crying about!"

With his outburst, the woman's mournful cries instantly stopped. Fatty didn't stop to consider why and continued his deep slumber. After a while, he heard a woman's voice by his ear say, "Don't press my shoes, don't press my shoes. If you press my shoes, I'll take your life..."

This sentence was heard with absolute clarity. In his half-awake state, Fatty felt goosebumps erupt all over his body. He shot upright. Even for someone as bold as he, he broke out in a cold sweat. He looked around the millhouse—there was no woman. Outside, the sun was blazing brightly; it was broad daylight.

Fatty felt something was amiss. After muttering a few curses, he got up to look. There, placed neatly on the wooden plank beneath him, was a pair of women's cotton shoes. The toes were decorated with two vivid, dripping red peonies. Fatty wiped the cold sweat from his brow. A fierce resolve took hold, and he muttered to himself, "This one's playing for real, huh." He snatched up both shoes, threw them on the ground, stomped them hard a few times, and then strode away.

When he returned to the village, he boasted about the incident. Everyone said that over a decade ago, a young married woman had hanged herself in that millhouse. She was wearing a new pair of cotton shoes when she died, and they were buried with her. No one had entered the millhouse by the cornfield since. How could Fatty have seen those shoes just last night? Had he encountered a ghost? Some busybodies even ran to the millhouse to check, but they found no shoes. They all concluded that Fatty had simply gotten drunk and confused from the homemade baijiu.

Fatty himself was too muddled to take it seriously. All these years passed without a vengeful spirit coming to claim his life. But reflecting on it even now, sleeping overnight in the deep mountains, having slept on top of a female ghost's shoes—it did send a chill down his spine. Heaven only knew what kind of evil he had stumbled upon that night.

This experience was something Wang Fatty had genuinely encountered during his time as a sent-down youth. However, when recounting it in the car, he was deliberately showing off, unwilling to stick to the bare facts, and naturally embellished it with many sensational and terrifying details.

But Yaomei was brave and completely unfazed. She just found the story somewhat exciting and novel, not finding it terrifying at all. She even teased Fatty for being timid, saying he couldn't even tell a scary story vividly.

I nodded secretly: "This girl truly has the courage for dangerous endeavors." Just as I was about to inquire about the legends surrounding the Earth Immortal's Ancient Tomb, I seized the opportunity to praise Yaomei’s extraordinary nerve. "Do you often hear ghost stories back home? Why don't you tell us one?"

Yaomei said that Qingxi Town had a very long history, having mined Wuyan salt for several hundred years. Wuyan salt was a unique geological salt that could be processed into table salt. In ancient times, salt tax was extremely heavy, and illicit mining meant execution. Most common folk secretly dug and extracted it for immense profit. Consequently, Qingxi and its surrounding areas had thousands of large and small mines. By the Qing Dynasty, most of these were nearly depleted, and no new salt veins could be found in the mountains. Coupled with the massive construction of air-raid shelters later on, the mountains became riddled with holes.

"Natural, man-made, and semi-man-made" caves and caverns crisscrossed and stacked upon each other. In some places, they went dozens of li deep, making it impossible for outsiders to move even an inch. Digging deep inevitably led to encountering strange and bizarre things, hence all sorts of legends existed. She often played in the mine shafts and pits because she was young and didn't feel it was frightening then.

Hearing this account, I couldn't help but secretly despair. It seemed this last bit of hope was about to be dashed. All the construction in Qingxi had nearly hollowed out the mountain, yet no one had ever discovered the "Earth Immortal's Ancient Tomb." I wondered what heaven-defying methods the "Mountain-Gazing Guardian" had used? Or perhaps the "Feng King's Tomb" was merely a baseless myth that didn't exist in the world at all.

However, one thing Yaomei mentioned resonated: the topic of "digging wells for salt." Wuyan salt was an extinct resource, unseen today. Even when I served as a combat engineer, I had never heard that salt could be mined from mountains. But this fact seemed to align with the cryptic verse from the Earth Immortal's ancient riddle: "Drilling wells to mine salt, asking ghosts for money."

With this thought, I recited the verse, asking Yaomei if she knew the secret hidden within these words: "A great king, body present but head missing; the wife does not come, the mountains will not open; burn firewood, light the stove, cook livers and lungs; drill wells for salt, ask ghosts for money; bird paths crisscross, turning every hundred steps; wishing to visit the Earth Immortal, first seek the Black Sheep..."

Yaomei was equally bewildered. She had never heard this secret incantation passed down by the Feng family, nor did she understand the riddle. But when it came to "drilling wells for salt, asking ghosts for money," she was certain it referred to "Qingxi" ancient town. In the old days, the salt mine pits where Wuyan salt was extracted were called "Salt Wells," which was the local term few outsiders knew.

The "Wuyan Salt Wells" were controlled by local powerful clans; the poor were relegated to being "coolies" or "pit slaves." Wuyan salt mines often had methane gas, and underground water could surge up at any time. Miners faced great risks when working below ground, and large numbers of slaves often died underground. This is why the local folk said, "Drilling wells for salt, asking ghosts for money."

I saw that we finally had a thread to pull on, but this single line was still insufficient to grasp the full meaning. I estimated that to unravel the mystery of the "Earth Immortal Village," we still needed to first decipher the opening line: "A great king, body present but head missing." We needed to proceed step-by-step with deductions. The former residents of Qingxi Town had long scattered, making it impossible to find more locals for questioning. Those ancient legends were certainly older than the tombs from the Ming Dynasty, and modern people might not know them anymore. My mind was a tangle of thoughts, and I wasn't paying attention when, through a clearing in the clouds outside the window, a towering, lush mountain peak appeared in the distance—magnificent, unusual, serene, and misty. I found myself staring, lost in the view.