Volume Two: The Secret Burial of the Cliff Valley - Chapter 126: An Identical Layout

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On the way from Shenzhen, I had already told Liang Yue and Third Uncle about Ma Su’s previous trip into the mountains. So Liang Yue knew about it as well.

Still, Ma Su was slightly surprised when Liang Yue suddenly brought up the subject. Even so, he answered truthfully. “Whenever we went out, Xing Mo was the one who carried the map and surveyed the route.”

Liang Yue’s eyes shifted as she asked another question. “Old Ma, don’t take this the wrong way, but let me say something. Of the four of you, you were the leader, and also a renowned professor in China, so let’s set you aside for now. Of the remaining three—Xing Mo, Zhou Zheng, and Wen Youyou—both Zhou Zheng and Wen Youyou ran into trouble. Why was Xing Mo the only one who didn’t? Was it really just a coincidence?”

Her words took both Ma Su and me by surprise.

I had never considered whether there was anything wrong with Old Ma’s team. After all, apart from Old Ma, I didn’t know the others. But after hearing Liang Yue put it that way, I too felt that one of the people involved had to be hiding something. Otherwise, there was no way to explain how they had found South Willow Village—or who had lit the fire.

Ma Su, however, was unconvinced. He shook his head repeatedly. “You mean Xing Mo is the problem? Impossible. Xing Mo has been with me for many years. He’s always been conscientious and willing to do the hard work. I’ve entrusted him with countless matters. How could there be anything wrong with him? He would never hide anything from me.”

Liang Yue gave a cold laugh. “Old Ma, if he isn’t the problem, then you are. There’s something wrong with the way you think. You’re so stubborn and set in your ways that everyone looks like a good person to you. One day, someone could sell you off and you probably wouldn’t even realize it.”

Liang Yue never softened her words, and she spoke without the slightest restraint. Ma Su had an odd temper himself; how could he possibly tolerate that? He raised his eyebrows and glared at her. “You little girl, stop talking nonsense. How many years have Xing Mo and I been together? You think I don’t know him? If you keep making wild accusations, you’ll have to take responsibility for them.”

Liang Yue waved her hand disdainfully. “With a mind like yours, knowing him for a hundred years would make no difference.”

“You—” Ma Su’s face flushed crimson with anger, and it looked as though he was about to start another furious argument.

I thought, What a mess. Third Uncle had gone missing, and now Ma Su and Liang Yue were at each other’s throats. What kind of people had I brought along?

I hurried forward to placate them. “Can we stop arguing for now? Put this matter aside for the moment, all right? Could you help me find Third Uncle first? Old Ma, when you came here last time, did you notice anything suspicious?”

Ma Su also felt that arguing with a young girl at his age was beneath his dignity. Taking advantage of the opening I had given him, he said, “Although I reached this village last time, to be honest, it was already dark. There was nothing here but crumbling walls and scattered rubble. Several years have passed, and I no longer remember the place very clearly.”

I nodded. “Whatever the case, we won’t know until we go in. Fortunately, it’s daytime now. There shouldn’t be any danger.”

With that, the three of us followed the path through the piles of rubble and made our way deeper into the abandoned South Willow Village.

Just as Ma Su had said, the farther in we went, the more collapsed walls and ruined buildings we saw. Many of the houses had fallen into complete disrepair. Broken stones and snapped timber lay everywhere, as though the village had suffered some great catastrophe.

I was certain the three of us were all harboring the same question: How had an otherwise perfectly ordinary village ended up like this?

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The stone stele in South Willow Village recorded only the origin of the village’s name and the story of how the Bird King, Qin Wuyu, had once saved it. It said nothing about how the village had been destroyed.

Ma Su walked up to a pile of ruins and picked out several smaller stones, some earthen bricks, and a few pieces of broken timber. Then he took out a magnifying glass and examined them carefully for a while.

“The materials used in these buildings really aren’t modern,” he said. “They must be at least a century or two old. What a pity. Why didn’t I think to examine them last time? I might have discovered something.”

I asked doubtfully, “Old Ma, are you saying this village was destroyed one or two hundred years ago? If so, that would mean it disappeared during the Qing Dynasty?”

“I don’t think we can necessarily call it destruction,” Liang Yue said. “Perhaps the villagers moved away together and settled somewhere else. The place was then abandoned. That would be perfectly normal.”

Ma Su shook his head. “It’s unlikely that an entire village would relocate all at once, unless they had encountered some irreversible natural disaster or been subjected to some kind of threat.”

I turned to Liang Yue. “Have you noticed something?”

Liang Yue nodded and asked me, “Haven’t you noticed that although this village has been abandoned and most of its houses have collapsed, the layout feels strangely familiar?”

“Strangely familiar?”

Prompted by Liang Yue, Ma Su and I examined the layout of the ruined village more closely.

“You mean South Willow Village resembles the South Current Village we visited?” Ma Su asked.

Liang Yue smiled. “Looks like that old mind of yours isn’t completely useless after all.”

Ma Su was rendered speechless by the jab. Unable to lash out at her directly, he could only glare at her, fuming.

Only then did I understand what Liang Yue meant.

And she was right. After taking a closer look, I found that the arrangement of the houses and the direction of the village roads really were very similar to those in South Current Village.

Ma Su remained unconvinced. “As far as I know, the villages in this region all have more or less the same layout. That doesn’t prove anything.”

Liang Yue curled her lips. “Then let’s verify it.”

She looked around, then pointed toward the right front. “If my judgment is correct, walking fifty or sixty meters in that direction should bring us to the little square where we stood that day. There were several large trees there, along with a stone well. Do you remember?”

I certainly did. That was where we had suddenly encountered the thick fog, after which we had become separated in the mist.

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Liang Yue’s discovery aroused Ma Su’s and my curiosity as well.

The three of us walked in the direction she had indicated. Sure enough, a relatively level patch of open ground appeared before us. Several abandoned houses stood beside it.

The moment Ma Su saw them, he looked around and pointed at the ruined buildings. “I remember this place. This should be where we rested and camped that day.”

As he spoke, Ma Su walked over, apparently intending to locate the exact spot where they had rested.

But just after he reached the buildings, he suddenly shouted into them, “Who’s there?”

Liang Yue and I jumped in fright and hurried over as fast as we could.

“What happened, Old Ma?” I asked.

Ma Su pointed inside the abandoned houses. “There… there was someone. I just saw a figure flash past.”

“A figure?”

We peered inside, but apart from the ruins, there was nothing to be seen.

Ma Su nodded firmly. “I may be old, but my eyes haven’t failed me. There was definitely someone in there just now.”

End of Chapter

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