The crevice we fell into was narrow and deep, the area beyond the reach of our flashlights swallowed by absolute blackness, making it impossible to discern the distant terrain due to the limited visibility.

The big man felt for Director Liu’s breath, then dropped his hand with a shake, muttering, "It's over, it's over, he’s not breathing at all."

I crawled over and checked Director Liu’s carotid artery; he was indeed dead, no pulse remaining. With a sigh, I told the big man, "Let's bury Director Liu."

As I took out my entrenching shovel to dig, Gawa stopped me, pointing toward the ground and saying, "Bugs, fire."

Gawa's reminder snapped my memory back: in the valley, our attempt to dig a grave for the engineer who fell to his death resulted in uncovering a devilish ladybug. The original fourteen-man squad had lost ten in those heart-stopping few minutes. It seemed the soil here could not be disturbed casually; who knew what monstrous things lay beneath.

I had a hunch that those bizarre insects were not merely some mysterious creatures. After incinerating two men, that single bug had split into three. Was that a coincidence? I couldn't make sense of it no matter how hard I tried.

But we couldn't just leave our comrade's body exposed. A compromise was the only option. Under my flashlight, Gawa and the big man gathered nearby (shattered stone fragments) to cover Director Liu’s corpse, fashioning a makeshift stone grave for him.

Throughout this process, Luo Ning remained seated on the ground, motionless, silently observing Director Liu’s stone resting place. Finally, she could hold back no longer, letting out a loud cry that released the sorrow pent up in her heart like a bursting dam.

I wanted to comfort her, but words failed me completely. Touched by her sobs, my own nose stung, and my heart twisted with pain. I remembered last night, how the squad had gathered around the campfire singing military songs, their clear voices still seeming to echo in my ears. Yet today, most of our comrades were forever asleep beneath the great glaciers of the Kunlun Mountains.

I helped Luo Ning stand, and together we held a moment of silent tribute for Director Liu and the fallen. At that time, regardless of the setting, one had to quote the Selected Works; I led the recitation: "The vast expanse is all white, marching in the snow, the urgency grows greater."

The other three echoed me in unison: "Over the mountains and under the peaks, the red flag unfurls, passing the great pass. Only sacrifice breeds great will, daring the sun and moon to change the sky anew."

Then, we all raised our right fists and swore the oath: "May our great leader Chairman Mao live for ten thousand years, ten thousand years! May Comrade Lin Biao, Chairman Mao’s close comrade-in-arms, enjoy good health, forever healthy! Comrades, please rest assured; the death of some is lighter than a feather, the death of others is heavier than Mount Tai. Death for the benefit of the people is heavier than Mount Tai; you sacrificed yourselves for the people's benefit. We must inherit the aspirations of the revolutionary martyrs, tread the path dyed red with your blood, and carry the proletarian ** to the end. Final victory will forever belong to us, the workers, peasants, and soldiers."

I was just a raw recruit then, having never attended a comrade’s memorial service, and I didn't know what to say. I only remembered what others said in meetings, and in that situation, there was no real distinction between appropriate and inappropriate.

After a long, long while, the group calmed down from their grief and tended to their wounds. Fortunately, they were all minor injuries that wouldn't impede movement. After hastily chewing a few bites of compressed biscuits, we huddled together to discuss our next steps. Getting out of the valley sealed by the avalanche was impossible; I figured the entire valley might have been filled in. Now, we had to find another exit.

Gawa patted his empty bullet pouch, signaling low ammunition. When entering the mountains, we carried so much gear that ammunition allotment was minimal—only three rifle magazines per person. It wasn't a combat mission, and there were no bandits in this area, so we had been somewhat careless in our planning. We lost more ammo during the avalanche. Now, each of us had only about twenty rounds remaining on average, plus two grenades in total. There shouldn't be any wild beasts underground, so having more bullets would be useless; what we had was enough for self-defense.

We were completely out of rations; whatever was edible had been consumed. We absolutely had to find an exit within two days, or starvation would claim us down here. The fortunate break in our misfortune was that Luo Ning still had a compass.

The depth of the mountain fissure exceeded imagination. After walking south for a stretch, we hit a dead end. The crack in the earth turned north, and by feel, it seemed we had walked beneath the great glacier.

We proceeded in the dark for over ten hours. The terrain kept dropping lower, and the underground space grew increasingly vast. Luo Ning used her barometer to take a reading. Converting the pressure data to altitude, it showed only about four hundred meters—comparable to Sichuan province, far below the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau’s average elevation of over four thousand meters. If we continued this way, we might end up heading for the earth's core.

Finally, the terrain leveled out. We heard the rush of turbulent water nearby, suggesting a massive underground river. Seeing no more downhill paths, I swept my flashlight around, looking for a route upward. Suddenly, I noticed that the beam of my flashlight created numerous faint reflections on the rock face, as if shining on countless fragments of mirrors.

Luo Ning gasped, "It's mica!"

The other three didn't know what mica was, but hearing the terror in her voice, they assumed an emergency had arisen. They hastily shielded Luo Ning behind them, quickly unshouldering their Type 56 semi-automatic rifles. With a clatter, they worked the bolts, preparing to fire.

Luo Ning asked in surprise, "What are you doing?"

I held my rifle ready and asked Luo Ning, "What kind of 'mother'? Where is it?"

Luo Ning replied, "It's not an animal! I mean, the surroundings are full of crystals. Mica and quartz usually grow in the same strata. Ah, there's quartz too."

Although Luo Ning's main job was map surveying, she often worked with geological exploration teams and knew a fair bit about mineralogy. The sheet-like crystals appearing around us were of a monoclinic crystal system, only found in the Archaean two-substance rock layer. Hebei had vast underground reserves, but the mica here was extremely dark, forming large hexagonal columns. Its quality far surpassed that from Lingshou County in inland Hebei. Judging by the depth of the mica's color alone, our location was unimaginably deep.

Luo Ning was captivated by the rare, massive mica formations, moving from one piece to another. I casually picked up a small fragment; I couldn't see anything particularly special about it.

Just then, we heard the big man shout to Gawa, "Gawa Lasong, what are you doing? Get up."

I shone my light over and saw Gawa prostrating himself on the ground, performing a Tibetan-style kowtow. What was the boy doing? Who was he bowing to? I illuminated the area in front of him and sucked in a sharp breath.

Standing underground was a 'Golden' character-shaped wooden tower constructed from thousands of massive timbers. Countless tiny red glints dotted the structure. Viewing it by those faint sparks, the tower's base, built from rammed earth and stone, was nearly two hundred meters wide. The shaft, built of thousand-year-old cypress wood, rose nine stories high. Each level was piled high with dried skeletons clad in strange, ancient attire—men, women, and children alike. The massive timbers were covered in intricate, secret Tibetan script. Was this a tomb? With such immense scale, who built it underground?

I walked over and pulled up Gawa, who was still bowing. "Although our Party and Army respect ethnic policies, and you, Gawa, are Tibetan, when you wear the uniform, you are a soldier of the Chinese People's Liberation Army. Since we are Communists, don't engage in that superstitious nonsense; religious superstition is forbidden."

The big man chuckled from the side, "Not bad, Old Hu, the way you put that. You have the makings of a political instructor."

Luo Ning, who had been studying the mica, came over to get a closer look when she heard us arguing.

I waved off the big man, telling him not to interrupt, and continued questioning Gawa, "What tower is this? Do you recognize the writing on it?"

Gawa shook his head vigorously.

"This kid," I said, "Why are you kowtowing if you can't read it? Did seeing all those bones scare you silly?"

Gawa's face was full of panic. He spoke Chinese haltingly: "Hu, this Gawa bear, ah let oh say, pushed oh come, la-er la-du-si, Nine... Nine-Story Demon Tower."

I didn't understand the first part, but the last four words were clear: Nine-Story Demon Tower? What was it for? Wasn't it just for burying the dead?

Before Gawa could speak, Luo Ning cautiously backed away from the tower, making a ‘be quiet’ gesture to us. She pointed toward the tower behind her and whispered urgently, "Don't make any noise that might disturb them."

Seeing her solemn expression, I knew trouble was brewing, though I couldn't see what she was referring to. I whispered back, "Disturb what? The dead in the tower?"

Luo Ning was extremely tense. "No, it’s those firefly-like bugs; they are sleeping all over the corpses—countless numbers."

Hearing Luo Ning, I finally noticed that the dense red glints on the wooden tower were emanating from those transparent beetles.

Although I possessed a certain fearless spirit befitting a revolutionary soldier, the thought of those strange beetles sent a wave of panic through me. These creatures defying common sense were too difficult to handle. The horrific scene in the valley had left too deep an impression of terror.

I signaled, and the four of us silently retreated the way we came. We hadn't taken more than a few steps when Gawa’s foot suddenly slipped, and he tumbled into a ditch.

This ditch was very well hidden and ran parallel to our path, so we hadn't noticed it on the way in. Though the ditch was only a little over a meter deep, Gawa let out a muffled groan from the fall. I immediately jumped down to help him up, seeing Gawa clutching his ankle, his face contorted in pain.

Luo Ning and the big man then lowered themselves into the ditch. With the flashlight beam, they saw that Gawa’s boot and foot had been pierced by a sharp white bone, creating a transparent hole straight through, and blood was gushing out. The ditch bottom was littered with layers upon layers of various animal bones, so numerous it was impossible to estimate. It appeared to be a pit for the sacrificial burial of animals like cattle, horses, sheep, and dogs.

To avoid alerting the beetles in the nearby tower, the big man covered Gawa’s mouth with his hand to stop him from crying out. I pulled out the bone stuck in his foot, and Luo Ning sprinkled Yunnan Baiyao from her first-aid kit onto the wound, then used white bandages to stop the bleeding.

My hands were smeared with Gawa's blood, which I carelessly wiped onto my own uniform. A thought suddenly struck me: the layout of this animal sacrificial pit was strangely non-square or circular, but dug as a long, straight trench leading directly toward the wooden tower holding the bodies. This shape strongly resembled a layout mentioned in the Secret Arts of Feng Shui called 'She' (Intimidation). If it were exactly that configuration, there should be an equally large sacrificial pit parallel to this one.

Two parallel burial trenches flanking the wooden tower structure would form a 'Two Dragons Sucking Pearls' formation. By this deduction, the ditch beside us should contain the belongings used by the main occupant of the tomb. However, it was unclear whether these trenches were man-made or natural; the latter seemed more probable.

The sound of rushing water nearby was loud. Based on the sound of the torrent, there was an underground river to the northwest, behind the Nine-Story Demon Tower, because dragons cannot exist without water.

If my hypothesis was correct, the map of this underground world was already forming in my mind; I just needed to find the second sacrificial trench to confirm my theory.

The big man nudged my shoulder: "Old Hu, what are you doing?"

I had been lost in thought and snapped back to reality when he pushed me. I asked Luo Ning, "Engineer Luo, can you estimate our current location? Roughly where are we on the map?"

Luo Ning consulted her map with the compass, calculated for a moment, and said thoughtfully, "We've been walking continuously north underground for over ten hours. Estimating by our speed, we must have long passed the glacier above us and should be nearing the exit of the Kunlun Mountains."

I explained my recent thoughts. If we went back now, we’d only return to the crevice covered by the avalanche. If my estimation was right, following the underground river should lead us out. But this required risking passage beneath the Nine-Story Demon Tower—a plan for survival through extreme danger.

The four of us conferred. While the plan was perilous, it was worth the gamble. But first, I decided to find the second sacrificial trench nearby to verify my deduction.

Before setting out, I asked Gawa what exactly the Nine-Story Demon Tower was.

Gawa spoke Chinese with great difficulty. After much effort, I understood a part of it: In his hometown of Xue Wei, there was an identical ruin to this Nine-Story Demon Tower. Legend held that these "Nine-Story Demon Towers" were the burial format for the royal family of the ancient Demon Kingdom. When the Demon Kingdom fell, that tomb had been destroyed by King Gesar, the Hero King, leaving only a pile of rotting wooden frames on the Tibetan plateau, preserved only in the narrative poems chanted by nomads, which sang the peerless martial achievements of King Gesar, brilliant as the sun, through generations.

When Tibetan nomads passed these ruins, they would prostrate themselves in reverence and chant the epic. This wasn't out of fear of the Demon Kingdom rulers' tombs, but rather to express their veneration for King Gesar. Gawa also mentioned some religious matters that I couldn't follow. Whether those ghostly, fire-like insects were the restless spirits of the deceased in the tomb remained unknown.

I left Luo Ning and the other two where they were and crawled forward. About a hundred meters away from the cattle and horse sacrificial pit, I indeed found another trench. This one contained numerous funerary objects: ancient leather boots, ancient Tibetan wooden slips, ancient Mongolian wooden tablets, painted wooden chips, gold ornaments, wooden discs, wooden birds and beasts, bronze ware, grain, and a large amount of silk.

My deduction was correct. The underground river behind the Nine-Story Demon Tower must connect to the outside world. I sneaked back to the animal sacrificial pit and signaled the other three to proceed.

I took the lead, followed by the big man holding his rifle, then Gawa, whose foot injury was not minor, and Luo Ning supporting him from the rear.

The scale of the Nine-Story Demon Tower was immense. The underground cavern was naturally vast, but the tower itself and the large mica deposits on either side nearly blocked the path northward, leaving only a very narrow passage passable between them.

We crept past the wooden tower, hearts in our throats. Seeing the beetles inside, their bodies emitting a fire-like shimmer, felt like our hearts were leaping into our throats. Every step across the two hundred meters beneath the tower felt agonizingly long.

Having finally squeezed past the Nine-Story Demon Tower, we walked less than two hundred paces forward when the ground suddenly gave way beneath my feet, as if I had stepped on some enormous animal. I shone my flashlight down and saw a giant reptile I had never encountered before. It was sticking out a long, forked tongue. Its skin color blended almost perfectly with the ground. It resembled a giant lizard in some ways and an alligator in others, but its skin was less rough. Its snout wasn't as sharp as a lizard’s but was relatively rounded. Its tongue was long and red, like a snake’s, bifurcated at the tip. Its entire body was dark, covered in large, circular white spots. Describing its appearance, it was essentially a supersized, long-tailed frog.

In my life, I feared nothing, except perhaps these disgusting-looking creatures. I was so startled that I shrank back behind the big man. He had also seen the strange animal and likely felt similar shock. Perhaps a soldier’s only reliable companion is the rifle; acting on instinct, he raised his weapon and fired a short burst. The reptile twitched a few times and then died.

Luo Ning, who was at the rear, walked up, looked at the dead creature, breathed a sigh of relief, and told us, "This is a salamander that lives underground; it feeds on insects and mayflies and is not harmful to humans."

I didn't regret killing the animal; I worried that the big man’s rash firing might have awakened the beetles in the tower. Damn it, when a man is unlucky, even cold water chokes him. The fireflies in the "Nine-Story Demon Tower" were clearly stirred by the gunfire. Countless blue fireballs, bright as lamps, ignited.

The entire underground space was bathed in blue light. The wooden tower also caught fire, and the flames grew rapidly. Hundreds of fireballs rushed toward us. Yet, despite the intense fire, we felt no heat, only a chilling cold that made our jaws chatter.

The big man saw the situation deteriorating and reached for the two grenades strapped to his belt, ready to pull the pin and throw them at the fireballs. I quickly grabbed his hand. "Throw one, save one for our glorious exit. I don't want to be burned alive by those ghostly flames."