The crowd craned their necks toward the bizarre jar suspended in mid-air, a single thought striking every mind: "This is damn strange."

I turned to Shirley Yang and said, "Don't worry, I'll climb up for another look. If I fall into the water again, remember to give me mouth-to-mouth resuscitation quickly; if you wait too long, it'll be too late."

She shot me a look, pointed at the militia platoon leader, and retorted, "What are you thinking? If mouth-to-mouth is needed, I'll ask those militiamen to do it for you."

I sighed, "Why are you being so formal? If you were the one who fell in and couldn't breathe, I would absolutely do it for you without hesitation, I swear..."

Shirley Yang cut me off and said, "I've noticed something about you, and that fat guy too—neither of you ever takes life or death seriously; you're joking no matter the situation. By the way, what did you see up there that scared you enough to fall into the water? Is Professor Sun inside?"

I, who always prided myself on being audacious, had my weak spot exposed by that question. How could I answer without losing face? I looked at the jar hanging in the air and told Shirley Yang and the others, "Well... the moment I lifted the lid, a string of invisible, deadly golden needles shot out with a swoosh. They were incredibly potent hidden weapons. It's only because of my skill—calm and composed, not flustered—that I managed a perfect aerial dodge. Anyone else would be dead by now."

Shirley Yang said helplessly, "Forget it, I'm not listening to your bragging anymore. I'll go up and see for myself." Saying this, she wrung out her soaked long hair and coiled it up; she then had the two militiamen help her up the ladder onto the top of the jar.

Sounds were still emanating from the strange jar, and the militiamen grew tense again, afraid some monster would suddenly emerge. I warned them sternly not to fire randomly, then tossed my flashlight up to Shirley Yang, telling her there was a skeleton inside the strange jar so she could be mentally prepared and not fall off like I did.

Shirley Yang looked for a long time up there, then reached in and retrieved something before jumping down from the jar. She held up a bracelet for us to see. The militia platoon leader and I took the jade bracelet and examined it, only growing more perplexed.

I had done business in Panjiayuan for a while and my eyesight had improved considerably. I could tell instantly that this jade bracelet was a fake, a cheap trinket from a street stall worth maybe two yuan, and certainly from modern times. Could the bones in that strange jar belong to a woman? And one who hadn't been dead long? How then did she end up sealed in that jar? Was she placed in there after death, or drowned while alive inside? Burial in a jar like this can be ruled out. The Chinese value rest in the earth; they would never keep the deceased submerged in water. This tangled mess of a situation truly offered no clue whatsoever.

Shirley Yang asked me, "Old Hu, what do you guess is making the noise in that jar?"

I replied, "Could it be that the skeleton has come to life? Ancient China certainly has tales of the White Bone Spirit. But that spirit was eliminated by Sun Wukong many years ago. Are we looking at a newly emerged one here, trying to make the common folk suffer a second round of hardship?"

She laughed, "You certainly have an active imagination. It's not a White Bone Spirit. I saw clearly just now: there are three sets of adult human bones in the jar. Below them are more than twenty strange, round fish. Although they are only two or three feet long, these fish possess an incredibly abnormal strength. The water in the jar has been drained, and those strange fish are thrashing around incessantly, which is why we hear the sound. Before we hoisted the strange jar up, we saw the iron chain shaking in the pool—that might have been caused by these fish fighting and swimming inside the jar."

I said to her, "That's strange. What kind of fish are those? How did they get into a sealed jar? Do they eat dead people?"

Shirley Yang shook her head, "I don't know about that. I've never seen fish like these. I don't think these fish were put in beforehand; it's possible... it's possible these fish naturally grow in the pool of this underground cavern. Someone deliberately submerged the jar containing the corpse, which was perforated with fine holes, into the pool. Small, immature fish could swim in through the tiny holes in the jar's body..."

Hearing her words, I was quite shocked. "I understand what you mean. You're saying this was a way to raise fish using human flesh? Once the flesh was gnawed away, the fish would be fattened, and the big ones couldn't swim back out through the holes in the jar wall. But what use is raising fish like that? That's just... utterly disgusting."

The militia platoon leader suddenly interjected, "Chiefs Number One and Number Two, I’ve been looking at this bracelet for a while, and I think I’ve seen it somewhere before. It looks a lot like one worn by a woman in the village. She married out many years ago and didn't keep in touch with her family, only returning to her parents' home for the first time a few months ago. She showed us this bracelet then and told us she bought it in Guangdong for over a thousand yuan. All the village women were envious, and they went home complaining that their own husbands weren't capable enough to buy jewelry worth a thousand yuan."

This made me immediately suspicious, and I quickly asked the platoon leader what happened next.

He said, "Nothing happened after that. The woman just left without a word. The villagers thought she had another spat with her husband and ran off to another place again. Now seeing this bracelet... perhaps that woman was killed by some villain."

As we were discussing this, we suddenly heard footsteps coming up the slope of the cavern entrance. I thought it was the two militiamen posted outside, who, seeing we hadn't returned for so long, had come down to check on us. To my surprise, when I looked back, the person leading the group descending was none other than Professor Sun.

I was both shocked and delighted. I hurried over to Professor Sun and said, "Professor, you scared me half to death! I traveled a thousand miles to find you for an important matter, and I thought those piranhas had eaten you! Where did you go? How did you suddenly appear from the back?"

Professor Sun was startled to see me too, not expecting me to be looking for him, nor to meet him here. After I briefly explained the sequence of events, he finally understood the situation.

Professor Sun carefully examined the scene in the cavern and told us, "This jar is a tool of malicious sorcery, I've seen something like it before in Yunnan. It seems this matter is no longer within the scope of archaeology; we need to contact the Public Security Bureau. This is not the place for discussion. Everyone, don't disturb the scene; let's go back up and talk in more detail about anything we need to say."

So, the entire group returned the way they came. The village chief and the others were overjoyed to see everyone safe and sound. I paid the militia the labor fees I had promised them; although they didn't get the mythical elixir, receiving payment made them all happy.

Professor Sun asked the village committee to notify the police, then took me and Shirley Yang to the village chief's house for dinner. Since many questions were still on my mind, I asked Professor Sun what exactly was going on with this underground passage.

Professor Sun recounted the events to me and Shirley Yang. Apparently, he and his assistant had descended into the cavern earlier and also saw the iron chain submerged in the pool. They hadn't operated the winch then. On their way back up, at the end of the first level of the tunnel, they discovered another secret passage containing quite a few stone steles.

The tunnel structure resembled an 'H' (the left vertical line being double-lined, the horizontal crossbar being double-lined, and the right vertical line being single-lined), with two such parallel paths. One was the main path paired with a secret path. There was a two-meter drop between the levels. The double lines indicated the main path, and the single line indicated the secret path, connected by a horizontal main passage. All the stone steles were in the secret path. This so-called secret path was simply a section lower than the main path, creating a drop that wasn't easily noticeable until one was right upon it. Both the main and secret paths ended in separate stone rooms.

Professor Sun and his assistant entered the lower secret path, marked by the single line, to check the preservation status of the ancient steles inside. Unexpectedly, because this area was lower, the seepage was far more severe than above. The section connecting the two tunnels suddenly collapsed, trapping the two of them inside.

The people who went down to rescue them didn't notice the two parallel tunnels. Fortunately, the collapse wasn't extensive, and Professor Sun and his assistant managed to move the fallen stones blocking the passage after considerable effort. As soon as they got out, they ran right into the militia members who had stayed behind. Knowing that someone had gone down to the stone room cavern to rescue them and hadn't returned for a long time, they followed two of the remaining militiamen down to investigate.

After investigation, the tunnels beneath the Stele Shop were determined to be relics from the Qin Dynasty. There were several other similar sites nearby, places where Qin Shi Huang had ordered his alchemists to refine medicines. These sites were probably abandoned later, and aside from some remaining stone steles, there were no other findings. However, these steles were of immense research value.

I asked Professor Sun, "What were the six jade beasts in the stone casket and the strange jar suspended in the underground pool used for? Are those also Qin Dynasty relics?"

Professor Sun shook his head, "No. The stone casket with the jade beasts, the hole beneath the stone room, and the jar hanging by the chain are all separate issues from the pre-Qin tunnel ruins; they were all placed there by people much later. I've heard in Gutian County that people have been disappearing every now and then in recent years, and it might be related to this matter. I'm not a criminal investigator, but I can tell you what I infer based on the things I've seen at the site; of course, this isn't a state secret, so there's no harm in telling you."

Professor Sun analyzed it this way: the set of jade beasts in the stone casket was priceless, very likely originating from the ancient Dian Kingdom in Yunnan. The Dian Kingdom was a mysterious state, called a lost kingdom by historians. There is little record of it in historical texts, but it is rumored that many of its people practiced dark arts. Tuo Yin Yi Kao (a text, with transcribed historically as , pronounced tuó, the right half of plus ) records the six demonic jade beasts of the King Xian—they were artifacts used in ancient sacrificial rites. The old proprietor of the coffin shop in Stele Shop Village was one of the few outsiders in the village; it's impossible to trace back to which generation he moved here, and he has since passed away, so we have no way of knowing how he obtained this treasure.