The Lost Tomb : Sea Of Sands

Chapter 196: Legend of the Ancient Temple

"Isn't the female the most important one?"

"Why are you thinking like a male dog? No, a Longzhi is made up of eight males lying on the female's back. One of them is the biggest and has blue hair. It's the most fierce and cunning Longzhi king, and if you kill his wife, he won't let you go. The one I killed just now and stuck in my backpack is a male. You killed a female. The fate of the other males is unknown. In other words, if we're lucky, those six males are still around us, including the Longzhi King. This temple serves foxes, which shows that the Longzhi has been living here for a long time. It also indicates that there are some people around here who raised the Longzhi in the mountains. Raising one can wipe out hundreds of people, birds, and animals within the mountain's vicinity. This thing is very clever, so I figure the other males must be lurking somewhere now, waiting to ambush us. This temple and the path behind it are the only way out, so it will be very dangerous."

I looked up ahead and saw that we could make it out in fifteen minutes at the most. It was such a short amount of time, but it had become so tricky.

"Che Zhong, what do you plan to do?" I didn't know how powerful the Longzhi King was, but I recovered a lot of memories after listening to what Che Zhong said. It appeared that Grandpa had more or less disclosed these things during a lot of small talk, so I decided to believe him.

In fact, Grandpa had only briefly mentioned those things, and said things like: "You have to learn how to raise a dog." Or: "Compared with dogs, people have no conscience." Or "Go to Yunnan when you're free." Although I couldn't remember the details, many of these fragmented memories seemed to be messages my grandfather had intentionally left me.

Che Zhong said: "I came prepared. Although my ability to raise dogs is far inferior to your grandfather's, I'm still the person your grandfather left the kennel to. I just need your cooperation. Right now, there are more than twenty dogs I brought with me near this mountain depression. Among them are four ear dogs who can hear up to a mile away."

Ear dogs were a type of dog that had very sensitive ears and specialized in listening. Grandpa appointed them as a kind of lead dog in his dog pack configuration.

It was the lazy dogs that were usually chosen as ear dogs. They were usually required to be as quiet as a maiden, and to move like a rabbit, and were given the greatest reward when they acted violently. Like this, the dog was very quiet most of the day, and didn't have any interest in anything. It was only when he heard his master's orders that he would carry out a wide range of activities.

(If you find a Border Collie to act as your ear dog like Uncle Three did before, then the whole herd will be taken to catch rabbits and toads. As a result, Uncle Three dismissed the idea of raising dogs.)

Waiting was the most basic characteristic of an ear dog.

The whole dog group's training was hierarchical, so there was usually a group of hounds that was led by a special dog in the group. The ear dog was the type of lead dog that waited, so when it heard its owner's call, it would bark to find the source of the sound and try to approach. The hounds would act as banner dogs when they followed the ear dog, because they gave off a special scent that attracted the large attack dogs to follow.

These large dogs were only trained to follow, so they could be commanded separately in a special way until they heard their masters' instructions.

This was because the large attack dogs tended to lag behind the pack hounds. Most of the time, they would only react when the pack hounds ran out of sight, so a single banner dog often couldn't guide them to the owner's side. Grandpa later invented the method of using dogs as a large medium to avoid this kind of problem.

Che Zhong took out a strange whistle and handed it to me, saying, "Up to now, we've had to take risks. Take this whistle. If a dog approaches you, blow it, and the dog will know that you're one of its own. Now, if you'll give me a moment, I have one more thing to tell you. We can let those Longzhi wait a bit more; they're the kind of thing that gets impatient."

Che Zhong continued, "The place where we are now is close to a very famous area called Qingtongxia. The Qingtong Gorge is in the lower reaches of the Heishan Gorge, and is considered the dangerous section of the Yellow River. To use a common saying: it's a place where soldiers must fight. There have been intermittent battles in the Helan Mountain area for thousands of years, and a tenth of the able-bodied men from the Central Plains and Qiang populations have always died near this area. Through the ups and downs of the Six Dynasties, this place has undergone great changes."

While speaking, Che Zhong pulled me away from the temple door, brought me to the bottom of the steps, and handed me a cigarette. It appeared he wanted to discuss things with me before he took action.

I had formed the habit of acting first and understanding later, and had passed by many places without looking at them again. Although the chances of my survival were much greater this way, I had fewer thoughts, and my heart felt empty. But I also thought it was a bit much to light up a cigarette and start chatting. "How long are you going to wait? Aren't all those snakes behind us?"

Che Zhong motioned with his hand, "They won't be able to get out for a while. I'm telling you this because it's useful, so listen carefully." He continued: "There used to be a lot of mass graves in these mountains here. The bodies that went unclaimed or were too late to be buried during war were all thrown into this mountain depression. The corpses of previous generations ended up piled up layer after layer. Mudslides were frequent here during the Ming Dynasty, and when the mountain split, hunters found that the soil layer was full of human bones. In addition to the bones, there was also a large number of debris, weapons, and armor. At that time, most of those living here in the mountains were the Qiang people. They needed these materials badly, so many of them came here to dig."

"They excavated the ironware for twenty or thirty years, until it had basically been cleared out. By that time, they had also dug down to the bottom of the mountain. As a result, they began excavating a layer of strange bones, the skulls of which were all wearing bronze fox masks. The Longzhi's figure began to appear after that. It ate people and liked to kill animals, and soon, a large number of people and animals had been killed here. People began reporting the presence of a nine-tailed fox after the Longzhi was sighted several times, so they didn't dare continue digging. Later, more and more Han people heard of the incident, and felt that it wasn't very auspicious, so they raised money to build a bodhisattva temple. Three years after the temple was built, there was a rare snowstorm that closed the mountain for six years. After those six years, someone entered again, and found that the temple was gone. No one knows how many mudslides had occurred, but the area was completely different compared to the six years before."

He used his flashlight to illuminate the ancient temple in front of us: "If I've guessed right, the temple built at that time should be this temple. But we won't investigate why it's here. What I care about is why the bodhisattva in the temple became a fox-faced Taoist."

I recognized what Che Zhong was getting at, "It's really weird."

"During the six years when the mountain was closed by heavy snow, something must have happened here," Che Zhong said. "If we get out alive, you might as well investigate this aspect. The temple was built towards the end of the Republic era, which wasn't too long ago. There should still be some clues about what happened in those six years when the mountain was closed by heavy snow."