"Don't... don't..." Besides repeating "don't," Bisazhu didn't know what else to say. In fact, anything he might have said would have been superfluous; for a man suffering from a severe mental disorder, long denied any release, all words were empty platitudes!

And so, a classic letter home came to be written.

"You dictate, I'll write," Zhang Shusheng offered.

"Just tell them I'm out here striking it rich, and they won't have to go around naked anymore," Bisazhu replied.

Zhang Shusheng chuckled, "Brother, I have to say, that's vulgar, utterly vulgar. When writing to family, you need something presentable. Eloquence isn't the most important thing, but there are certain delicate matters we must avoid, such as... well, such as the 'bottom' you just mentioned."

"What in the blazes do I care about delicacy? If I mention that to my family, they’ll understand. If I use your flowery language, they won't get it at all and will think I'm lying to them."

What Zhang Shusheng said next completely reassured Bisazhu: Don't worry, they'll certainly understand.

Zhang Shusheng, using everything he had learned in his life, composed a letter that could only be described as monumental, working from morning until dusk before finally declaring it finished.

Regardless of the final quality, the sheer spirit of responsibility he displayed deeply moved Bisazhu.

"Good brother, I can't let you work for nothing. Here, this is what you deserve!" Saying this, Bisazhu pulled a silver dollar from his tunic and tossed it onto the table.

Unexpectedly, Zhang Shusheng showed a trace of backbone—the backbone of a scholar. He refused the money.

"Are you looking down on me?" Bisazhu grew slightly irritated.

"You are mistaken. The fact that you asked me to write for you is already a great honor to the Zhang family. Asking for money now would be out of the question!"

"Good brother!" Bisazhu slapped Zhang Shusheng's thin shoulder.

Bisazhu walked to the door, then suddenly turned back. "Are you willing to change careers?"

"Change careers?" Zhang Shusheng looked somewhat bewildered.

"Yes, change careers!"

"But I only know how to write..."

"Writing has a promising future, but the problem is..."

"The problem is I'm not good enough at it; I'm simply not cut out for calligraphy."

Bisazhu smiled, and Zhang Shusheng smiled too.

"When you say change careers, what exactly do you mean?"

"Making money. Big money!" Bisazhu smiled mysteriously.

"In what field?"

"Tomb robbing!"

"Tomb... tomb robbing?" Zhang Shusheng didn't understand this coded term for grave robbery.

"If you're serious, meet me at the Earth God Temple by the west end of the village tomorrow. I'll be waiting there." Bisazhu winked and left.

The next day, Zhang Shusheng showed up, and the two men found they hit it off immediately.

This time, as Zhang Shusheng watched himself being chosen to enter the rat-infested tunnel, he dared not breathe loudly. He turned to Jia Zhuangyuan and said, "Brother Zhuangyuan, if I happen not to make it out, you must find me a ghost wife. Don't let me die a bachelor!"

Jia Zhuangyuan found it amusing and laughed, "Tell me, how many wives do you want?"

Zhang Shusheng answered honestly, "One is enough!"

Jia Zhuangyuan patted his head. "Your brother will see to your wish. Go on, may the Buddha protect you!"

But in this world where ghosts existed, it was precisely Zhang Shusheng's words that came true. After half an hour inside, there was silence.

Jia Zhuangyuan's heart nearly leaped out of his chest. Was Zhang Shusheng alive or dead?

Jia Zhuangyuan trembled for a long time, a sense of ominous foreboding accelerating his heartbeat.

He gritted his teeth, grabbed a shovel, and went in.

By the faint light of the lamp, he edged along the wall, moving deeper.

The desert outside was hot and dry, but this place was another world entirely: cold, astonishingly cold; damp, with waves of chilling moisture washing over him.

Jia Zhuangyuan gripped the shovel tightly, his eyes sweeping around. Suddenly, he tripped, stumbled, and nearly fell. He quickly raised the lamp to see: a gourd ladle—a human skull!

A scent of blood began to drift over, or more accurately, it drilled directly into Jia Zhuangyuan’s nostrils. Having dealt with reanimated corpses for so long, Jia Zhuangyuan was intimately familiar with that bloody stench. Every instinct told him: Zhang Shusheng had kicked the bucket! Gloriously sacrificed to the supremely glorious profession of tomb raiding!

"Shusheng is a scholar after all; he can handle writing and painting, but when it comes to serious life-or-death matters here, hmph!" Jia Zhuangyuan sneered, taking the moment to remind himself: Be careful, will I be next?

Still, clinging to a sliver of hope, he called out toward the interior, "Zhang Shusheng!"

The result was much as he expected: no echo, the only sound reaching his ears being his own pathetic croak.

Those two damned rats must be watching him crawl inside with their wicked eyes.

Jia Zhuangyuan, if you go in now, you’ll end up with the same fate as Zhang!

This mental warning came just in time. Before a man's mind is completely flooded with adrenaline, it's best to retain a degree of clarity.

He backed away; in other words, he prepared to try a different approach.

After emerging, Jia Zhuangyuan dared not let his guard down. Even outside the entrance, facing two massive rats simultaneously, even if he didn't die, he would be half-dead for certain.

After some thought, there seemed to be only one solution: using fire.

This method was nothing unusual for an experienced tomb raider.

And so, a fire began to burn. Initially, it didn't have much effect, but as time went on, it became more potent because Jia Zhuangyuan began to hear the rats squeaking, "Squeak, squeak."

"You bastards, die in your mothers' graves!" Jia Zhuangyuan vented all his pent-up rage into the flames, continuously tossing firewood into the tunnel opening.

However, the two rats didn't surrender meekly to death. Several times, they tried to leap out of the fire, but perhaps fearing they would become "roasted rats," they retreated back into the tunnel after a few attempts.

Seeing this, Jia Zhuangyuan grew even more confident.

Thus, the outcome was inevitable: the fire roared higher and higher.

The effect was immediate, something one might describe with an idiom: instantaneous.

Not long after, the sound of the rats vanished completely. Jia Zhuangyuan suspected they had met their ancestors, but he remained unconvinced, continuing to burn wood for another ten minutes before finally relaxing.

Go into the tunnel to retrieve the bodies of his brothers? That wasn't a good plan. What if those two beasts were still alive? Wouldn't he just be sacrificing himself as well?

There was no "what if"; the two rats hadn't been burned to death, but suffocated by smoke.

Jia Zhuangyuan solemnly knelt toward the tunnel entrance: "Brothers, I, Jia Zhuangyuan, am ashamed. Ashamed that I didn't go with you!"

Though he spoke those words, the dead were gone, and the living still had to carry on.

Jia Zhuangyuan decided it was time to leave, not back to the desert, but home...

However, one question continued to plague him: Could these two rats be the objects of worship for the legendary Shamanistic Cult? The Shamanistic Cult once held a primary religious stronghold in Tibet.

The theoretical foundation of Shamanism is animism, favoring nature worship and totem worship.

Their objects of worship were extremely broad, including various spirits, animals and plants, as well as inanimate natural objects and phenomena. In other words, even rats could potentially be deities. Therefore, in the tombs of Shamanistic wizards widely revered across the various states of Tibet, rat imagery would very likely appear among the funerary objects, or at least in the murals. It was similar to keeping pets at home, except their status was much higher—they had become objects of veneration, with their every need, from eating to excretion, meticulously provided for.

Shamanism might very well be the world's earliest religion, predating Christianity, Buddhism, and Islam. However, Christianity, Buddhism, and Islam seemed to be the established orthodox faiths, while Shamanism remained a minor, unsystematic religion lacking an organized structure or specific founder, possessing no temples or unified, standardized rites. Consequently, it never gained massive influence. In truth, the history of Shamanism might stretch back as far as the appearance of modern humans, perhaps existing even before the dawn of civilization, back when people still hunted with stone tools.

Wizards were the professionals dedicated to Shamanism, typically passing down knowledge orally within their tribe or clan, generation after generation. However, with the collapse of primitive communism and the advent of class society, Shamanism gradually declined as the upper echelons of society converted to Tibetan Buddhism, Christianity, and Islam.

The point was, Shamanism still held significant cultural relevance among certain minority groups in China. These two enormous rats could well have been objects of veneration kept by a wealthy landlord class, or perhaps they were buried with the tomb's owner to continue their worship in the afterlife.

In any case, Jia Zhuangyuan had no time to ponder this complex religious history; someone else would surely study that question later.

As the sun began to dip toward the horizon, Jia Zhuangyuan’s story concluded.

It was indeed a bleak tale. One shouldn't be blinded by the thought of striking it rich overnight in tomb raiding; those were the lucky few. From ancient times until now, the number of people who died in this line of work is incalculable. Compared to high-risk professions like modern mining, this trade was arguably far more perilous—to knowingly enter places riddled with traps.

Seeing that Jia Zhuangyuan offered no immediate reply, Fan Debiao grew impatient and asked, "Senior Jia, what are your plans?

Jia Zhuangyuan clearly hadn't recovered from the terror of that last expedition; he merely said, "Let's eat first. It's not dark yet."

Fan Debiao and Young Master Liu realized Jia Zhuangyuan was buying time, and they grew even more anxious. "We didn't travel this far just to eat a couple of bowls of millet porridge!"

Jia Zhuangyuan glanced at his wife. She stopped eating. Young Master Liu, sharp-eyed, recognized that Jia Zhuangyuan was waiting for his wife's decision. There was no choice; a married man often had to heed his wife's counsel on certain matters, a point neither Liu nor Fan Debiao could challenge.

After a long silence, the old woman sighed, "Old Jia, no matter what, these two young men cured your madness. They are, in a way, your saviors. I have nothing to say..." With that, she let out a long breath.

Jia Zhuangyuan finally felt settled. "I swore to wash my hands of this life and never step foot in the desert again. But I can't stop worrying about those five brothers. They deserve a proper burial. Once they are laid to rest, I can die contentedly."