I told inley Yang, "You wouldn't know. There have always been legends in the military about this. Some units stationed in remote mountainous areas often pick up inexplicable signals on their radios—signals that are intermittent, sometimes a call for help, sometimes a warning. The content of these broadcasts is wildly varied. Units receiving such waves often assume a victim is signaling for rescue and frequently dispatch teams to search the signal's source. But the people who go never return, as if they vanished into thin air. Those spectral signals then disappear immediately. That’s why it’s called the soul-snatching signal in legend."

Inley Yang, preparing to climb, had already secured her climbing helmet and said to me, "How reliable can such unsubstantiated rumors be? This sound is coming directly from the tree opposite us. We are already within the perimeter of the Xian King's Tomb, so every unusual occurrence here could be related to it. We must investigate this thoroughly. Besides, what if someone is trapped and calling for help? We can't just stand by and do nothing."

With that, inley Yang hooked her ice axe onto a thick vine clinging to the trunk and began to ascend with surprising agility, halfway up in just a few movements. Those two intertwined ancient 'married' trees towered nearly twenty meters high, their canopies, spanning over ten meters in diameter, completely obscured the moonlight. Coupled with the extreme density of leaves and buds on the branches, our 'Wolf Eye' flashlights could only illuminate about ten meters up the trunk from below.

Our main searchlights were destroyed. Our strongest remaining illumination source was the flares fired from signal pistols, which we couldn't afford to waste here as we hadn't yet entered the 'Insect Valley' and wouldn't have opportunities for resupply. Seeing inley Yang climb higher and higher made me extremely anxious for her safety. I quickly woke Fatty up from his sleeping bag, instructing him to stay below as backup, then I too donned a climbing helmet, switched on my head-mounted tactical light, grabbed a vine, and followed her up the tree.

Fatty, only just awakened, hadn't grasped the situation and was frantically swinging his 'Jian Wei' sword around below, shouting questions at me about what was happening. Having climbed about a third of the way up, I saw Fatty spinning below like a headless fly, so I hooked my ice axe onto a gap in the bark, paused, and looked down at him. "Don't point your muzzle upwards, you might accidentally fire and shoot me. There seems to be something in this tree. We're going up to check what the fuss is about. You stay on the ground and maintain vigilance. Don't let your guard down."

At that moment, inley Yang, already high up in the ancient banyan tree, suddenly shouted, "There's half a piece of aircraft wreckage sticking out of the treetop—it looks like a U.S. Air Force plane."

Hearing her, I scrambled up frantically, using all four limbs, following the beam of light from inley Yang's helmet lamp. Passing through layers of thick, varied flora and blossoms, I saw inley Yang in the mid-canopy area, her hand tracing over something dark. From a distance, I couldn't tell if it was plant matter or aircraft debris.

I climbed closer to inley Yang, and only then could I see clearly. Bathed in the crystalline moonlight, a massive section of an airplane fuselage was embedded upside down between the two trees. The wings and tail section were nowhere in sight. The airframe was severely damaged, riddled with several large holes blocked by a jumble of unrecognizable items inside. The main hatch had separated from the body and was almost fused with the tree trunk, while the landing gear was jammed between the branches. Unless one climbed to the very top and examined it up close, no one would ever guess that a piece of aircraft wreckage lay concealed here.

I turned to look toward the imposing, vast silhouette of Mount Zhaolong on the other side and concluded that the plane must have struck the mountain, shattering into fragments, with this particular cabin section fortunately landing directly in the canopy. Such an impact force could only be withstood by these two exceptionally large 'married' trees nearby.

Inley used her paratrooper knife to scrape away a large swath of green, mossy growth covering the fuselage, revealing a serial number: 5-R1-2 (the rest was too blurred to decipher), several characters already illegible. Not being an expert on U.S. Air Force classifications, I asked inley Yang, "A U.S. Air Force bomber? One of the Flying Tigers assisting China during the War of Resistance?"

Inley Yang replied, "I haven't seen any Flying Tiger insignia on the body. It's likely the wreckage of a U.S. Air Force transport plane. Perhaps it was flying from Calcutta, India, during WWII, ferrying supplies to the Chinese Expeditionary Force fighting in Burma and China. If it belonged to the Flying Tigers supporting the China theater, there should be other Kuomintang markings on the fuselage."

I nodded. "We aren't far from Burma. News reports say dozens of U.S. transport plane wrecks have already been found in the nearby Salween River Grand Canyon and the Gaoligong Mountains. Between 1942 and 1945, the U.S. lost no fewer than six or seven hundred planes that crashed within Southwest China along the China-Burma border and the later Hump route. I never expected one would have gone down here."

Fatty, waiting anxiously below, bellowed up, "Old Hu, what kind of shady dealings are you two conducting up there? Leaving me to stand guard below for you two! What exactly is up in that tree?"

I snapped off a branch and tossed it down to Fatty. "What are you shouting about? We found a downed U.S. transport plane up here. I'll come down once I figure things out..."

Suddenly, I remembered the SOS tapping sound that had come from the tree earlier. Looking at the wrecked state of this transport, how could anyone possibly have survived? What was that signal about? Could it be the lingering spirits of the flight crew, their lingering ghosts still sending out distress calls...?

At that moment, the cloud cover suddenly eclipsed the moon, plunging the forest into immediate darkness. I slowed my breathing, held my breath, and signaled inley Yang. We both pressed our ears against the fuselage, straining to detect that eerie Morse code distress signal inside.

The moment I pressed my ear to the metal, I heard three sharp, rapid taps: clang-clang-clang. The sound was so sudden it startled me; if my left hand hadn't been firmly secured by the ice axe, I might have tumbled right off the canopy.

We had been deliberately quiet throughout, speaking only in whispers, save for my two shouts to Fatty below. We hadn't heard that 'ghost signal' since we started climbing. Now, this noise erupted from within the fuselage. Being so close, the sound was startlingly clear, enough to chill the blood.

Inley Yang and I exchanged a look; her face was equally etched with bewilderment. "This is genuinely haunted. Maybe there really is something inside. I saw a piece of bent metal plating on top of the cabin earlier. Let's pry it open and see what's inside."

Since inley Yang showed no fear, I certainly couldn't reveal my own apprehension. I nodded in agreement. "Alright. If there are any remains of American airmen inside, we'll find a way to temporarily bury them and take their dog tags back. The rest is notifying the American consulate so they can arrange to repatriate the remains. Americans aren't big on the 'burying heroes everywhere' sentiment; they'll definitely want to take them home draped in their flag."

Inley Yang agreed. "That's what I figured. Let's get to it. If there happens to be... anything in the cabin, we'll use the Black Donkey Hooves of the Tomb Raiders to deal with it."

I forced a steady laugh. "Whatever is in there, we don't need to fear it. This is a military transport. There might be military supplies inside, maybe even explosives. That would certainly be useful for looting the Xian King's tomb."

I located a sturdy tree fork capable of bearing weight, stepped onto it to stabilize my body, inserted a tension-secured piton into a crack in the tree for an anchor, secured myself with a rope, and began to pry at the deformed, ruined metal plate on the cabin roof with my ice axe.

Inley Yang worked beside me, using her paratrooper knife to sever the tenacious vines wrapped around the plate, assisting me in opening it. Because the aircraft had been destroyed over 40 years ago and severely compressed by the growing banyan tree, the plate only gave way halfway when I pried it; the other half was jammed fast. We couldn't exert full force up in the tree to budge it further.

I leaned into the gap in the fuselage, trying to see what was sending the signals. Inley Yang stood ready beside me, holding her Makarov pistol and the Black Donkey Hooves. The tactical light on my helmet was far more effective in the open jungle night than it had been in the pitch-black tunnels; its effective range of twenty-three meters was more than enough to illuminate the cabin interior.

I took a breath before looking inside, my heart lodging itself in my throat. The forest was unnervingly quiet, but from inside the cabin came a rhythmic teng-teng-teng of tapping. With every strike, my own heart jumped higher.

The beam of my headlamp pierced the inky blackness of the cabin. The first thing I saw was a pilot's helmet. It seemed the airman's remains were suspended directly beneath the section of plating I had pried loose. But his head was bowed, perhaps his neck broken in the crash, his skull dangling near his chest. The airframe distortion was severe, and the opening narrow, so I couldn't clearly discern the state of the body beneath the helmet. However, the angle between the head and torso was unequivocally an unnatural posture no living person could maintain.

Just as I reached out to lift the helmet, the formerly drooping pilot's helmet suddenly twitched slightly, as if attempting to lift its head. With every small movement, there was a distinct clang as it struck the metal skin.

At this point, a cold sweat broke out over my entire body. I cursed inwardly. This time, I had definitely encountered a genuine Jiangshi (Chinese hopping vampire). In all my tomb raiding, I had never met a true Zongzi, only once encountering a Corpse Fiend bound by an evil talisman. Although that creature resembled a Jiangshi, they were entirely different beasts. Since childhood, my grandfather had told me many tales, often recounting the story of a Jiangshi tapping on its coffin lid. Now that I’d met one, I didn't know if the Black Donkey Hooves, used by Tomb Raiders since antiquity to subdue Jiangshi, would be effective.

Gritting my teeth, I used the ice axe to rip off the shattered pilot's helmet. With my other hand, I raised the Black Donkey Hoof and thrust it forward. But instead of meeting resistance, a brilliant burst of golden light shot out from beneath the helmet...