by Xu, Lei
CHAPTER 16
The Water Demon
I’ve experienced it all in my life, encountered my fair share of seemingly fatal circumstances, and defied death more than once. But, looking back now, I can honestly say there have been only a few instances in which I have felt true fear. This was one of them—though it’s likely my terror was due in large part to inexperience. At the time, I had yet to encounter my first real life-or-death situation and therefore didn’t know how to react.
Truthfully, I’d only caught a vague glimpse of this face I’d labeled “hideous.” I had been shining my flashlight into the pitchblack murk. Turning my head and seeing anything appear like that from out of the darkness—suddenly and very close by—would have been terrifying no matter what it was. I didn’t have the chance to look any closer. My natural reflex was to shrink back at once. I gulped a mouthful of cold water. I began to choke and lost my composure. All I could do was flail at the surface. In a moment I was scooped out of the river and back onto the cages.
I had swallowed a lot of water and was coughing so hard I couldn’t speak. Nor could I see much of anything, but someone helped me to my feet and pulled me along as we ran across the cages, jumped once more into the water, and then somehow climbed up onto the shore. Only then was I able to regain my bearings.
It was a proper mess. Everyone was soaked to the gills. We quickly found a dry spot and started a fire. Every man removed every article of clothing and placed them by the flames. At last, stark naked, we could do nothing but huddle together for warmth. Wang Sichuan had brought along some baijiu, some white lightning. We passed it around and slowly some semblance of normality began to return. It was then that Wang Sichuan asked me what happened down there. Why had I suddenly lost control?
I told him and everyone else what I had seen, but I could tell from their expressions they didn’t believe me. Maybe it was one of the sunken corpses, suggested Pei Qing. Perhaps he’d knocked one loose while trapped in the cage, or maybe I was simply mistaken and had imagined the whole thing.
I was unable to respond. I myself had only the briefest impression of that so-called face, and what Pei Qing suggested did seem to make the most sense. Nevertheless, for such a thing to have soundlessly appeared by my side from out of nowhere—there was just something not quite right about it. That moment of extreme fright made a deep impression on me, and whenever I meet up with others from the expedition, we always discuss it. To this day I can still feel some nameless terror building inside me every time I see a channel of pitch-black water. I have the sense that somewhere, hidden under the surface, something awaits.
Of course, that all came later. Even though nobody believed my story at the time, I already felt a sense of dread whenever I looked back upon the still river. And when I realized we would have to cross the pool again on our way out, my blood froze and I forced myself to think about it no more.
We put our clothing back on as soon as it was dry. Feeling its warmth upon my skin, I thought, for the first time since being down here, of the surface and of the sunlight. But then Pei Qing rose to his feet and said that we shouldn’t waste any more time. We packed up our things and pressed on once more. At this point, we’d already used a good chunk of the time we’d allotted ourselves. We decided that if we ran into another such pond, we’d be forced to turn back. After we’d walked a short distance farther, the cave suddenly opened up and the river running beneath the rock became noticeably wider. Items left by the Japanese began to appear all around us and in great number. Signs written in peeling Japanese characters lined the walls. Green chests were wedged into many crevices in the rock. They were all ruined, some even smashed to pieces. Inside were piles of black cottonlike material. The deputy squad leader fished several out with his rifle. They were soaked.
The path now became smooth and easy to traverse. We walked on for two hours without encountering anything strange. Then, after passing through a long and narrow enclosure, we climbed atop a terrifically large boulder and shined our lights ahead. Rather than once more illuminating a swatch of total darkness, our flashlight beams instead lit upon the sheer face of a gigantic rock wall.
We stood there gaping for quite some time before we realized what this meant. It was the end of the cave. After we swept our flashlight beams across the wall, it became evident that this was a giant chunk of tectonic limestone. It had been formed hundreds of millions of years ago, when two walls were suddenly forced together by accumulated pressure within the rock strata, creating a single massive rock face. The cave went no deeper. It had naturally sealed itself shut and we had reached the end.
From the pool at the top of the cave we had traveled some four or five kilometers to get here. As far as underground rivers were concerned, this one was rather short. It is much more common to see them stretch for ten to twenty kilometers. Given the amount of water flowing through the cave, we never would have expected it to end so abruptly. All of us prospectors began to talk at once. We felt that for the cave to conclude here was a structural impossibility. Based on the textbook examples as well as on our own experience, this underground river should have extended much farther. The great quantity of water it carried would have to be flushed somewhere, most likely into a lake hidden deep beneath the rock. The main thing we kept talking about was how the river had rushed when it reached the stone-filled shoals, how it had been too deep to see the bottom. It’s not like the amount of water in the river had been lessening the deeper we got. And once that much water arrived here, it would necessarily keep flowing downward beneath the rock. There had to be a descending channel of water somewhere around here, but from where we stood, the cave really did seem to come to an end. Even after looking for some time, we could find no concealed entrance or tunnel.
We were at a complete loss, so we took a short break to assess our situation. Among us, Pei Qing had the most experience with cave exploration. He had worked in Yunnan, where the landscape is riddled with caves and waterways. Normally, he said, the force of the river would have created a small waterfall here. Over time, the water would then cause the rock around it to collapse, blocking off the rest of the cave. The path ahead still existed, he said. It was just hidden beneath our feet.
Wang Sichuan and I both disagreed. If this were the case, then how had the Japanese been able to proceed deeper into the cave?
“We must have taken the wrong branch in the river,” said Wang Sichuan. “One of the other groups is on the right path. But,” he continued, “isn’t this just what we needed? Now we have every reason to head back the way we came.”
I waved off this suggestion. Even if one were to ignore all the signs of long-term Japanese occupation here, the simple presence of the woman having come from this direction was enough to prove that, somewhere around here, there had to be a path that led deeper into the cave.
“Fine,” said Wang Sichuan, “let’s do it like this: We’ll all stop talking, stop making any noise, and just look and listen. If there really is a massive crevice hidden somewhere under the rock, the sound of water rushing through it should be relatively loud.”
Having no alternative, we split up and moved around the cave. Lying with our ears to the ground, we held our breath. Little by little, the faint sound of running water became audible. In all honesty, though, if I was able to detect any difference in the sound from one place to another, it seemed random. As I moved about the cave to better gauge the location of the river, the sound itself changed, now becoming louder, now becoming softer. With great care I attempted to track the sound across dozens of feet of cave floor, but without any luck. Sighing to myself, I yelled to everyone that we might as well give it up. One of the soldiers suddenly jumped to his feet and motioned for us to be silent.
Had he found the hidden channel? We tiptoed over, knelt down, and began to listen. We waited a moment, then, rather than the sound of water rushing beneath the rock, we heard something indescribable, almost like the noise of fingernails scratching against stone. We liste
ned in silence for some time, but were unable to discern just what the sound was. We knew only that this noise, like thorns dragging against a chalkboard, was agonizing. It felt like claws being scraped against our hearts, provoking a terrible itch. All we wanted was to scratch it with all our might.
I’m not sure who was first to begin digging, but in a moment we had all joined in and were tearing the stones from the floor of the cave, first big ones, then the small ones. After having lifted several of the rocks, I realized that something was amiss. They were all far too easy to move. Of the shattered stones that lay nearby, some were large and some were small, but they always had much larger stones beneath them. Somehow, though, not a single one of the rocks from this spot was large enough to prevent us from tunneling deeper. What did it mean? In my curiosity I couldn’t help but increase my pace. This ferocity infected the rest of the group, and we began to work faster and faster. Then, with an audible clang, I knocked against something other than rock.
Everyone paused, stopped what they were doing, and looked over at me. A rust-covered sheet of iron lay beneath the stone I had just pulled from the pit. We stared at it for a moment, our expressions baffled. Then everyone gathered around me, ripping the hole wider. We soon uncovered a massive iron door, fifteen feet long by fifteen feet wide. Mottled green paint peeled from its exterior. The faded outlines of Japanese characters were just barely visible. “Plan 53” was all we could make out. Once the majority of the door had been uncovered, we put our ears to its surface and listened silently. The scratching sound had disappeared and from within the door not a noise could be heard.
CHAPTER 17
The Iron Door
It was a double door made of variously sized sheets of iron welded together. The door was astonishingly thick, with rivets as big as a thumb and overlaid with countless layers of cement and liquid steel. It was set inside a grooved iron frame and was sturdy enough that when we stood atop it, the door neither rocked nor flexed an inch. The two doors would open in unison from the center, where there were three huge torque-operated door handles. They had been welded immobile. Even the tiniest seams between the doors had been welded shut. No matter how hard we pulled, they failed to move at all.
The deputy squad leader gave the soldier at his side a certain inscrutable look, and the latter climbed onto the door and pressed down on it with all his weight. “It’s blastproof,” he said in a quiet voice. “There’s a false layer within the iron sheeting filled with mechanical springs and cotton batting.”
“Seems when the Japs left they had already decided not to return,” whispered Wang Sichuan. We all nodded.
Having reached this point and unable to go farther, how could we explain the appearance of Yuan Xile? And where were the others who had been with her? Even if they had all died, we should have stumbled across their corpses or, at the very least, some sign of their presence. What if she had entered the cave by herself? No, that could never have happened. Then I had a strange idea. Perhaps I was overthinking, but what if the reason the Japanese sealed the iron door hadn’t been to prevent others from getting in, but rather to prevent something inside from getting out?
We’d all seen Japanese bunkers while prospecting in the mountains of Inner Mongolia. We knew that once the Japanese decided to seal off an area, they made absolutely sure it would stay closed forever. Not only would they demolish all tunnels leading to the bunker, they’d also drill into its domed roof and load-bearing walls and set explosives for pinpoint directional blasting. The bunker’s entire structure would be thoroughly destroyed. This was the most effective way of ensuring that none of the data or other materials inside might fall into enemy hands and that the ruined bunker would never be usable again. Here the only thing blocking our way was the iron door. This was not at all how the Japanese usually did things.
But there was no use in thinking about it. The simple truth was, we had no chance of getting past the door with the equipment we had. This wasn’t a matter of being unprepared; only a massive blowtorch would suffice to open a door like this. Discovering the door had excited us. Surely there was some way of getting it open, we felt. But after kneeling and knocking and feeling about for the better part of an hour, we were utterly flummoxed. We looked at one another in blank dismay.
At last it was Pei Qing who said what we all were thinking: “What do we do now? Are we really going to have to go back like this?”
We all smiled bitterly. At this point, what was there left to do besides head back? It didn’t matter how much we wanted to keep going, with the door blocking our path there was no way for us to continue. This prospecting job had reached its end.
Honoring proper work procedure, we gathered hydrological and geological samples, made an approximate description of the iron door, then gathered our things and prepared to head back. The soldiers had grown weary of exploring and were thrilled to be returning to the surface. In addition to what they were already carrying, they hefted some of our belongings as well. After walking only a short distance, though, we noticed that something about the ground had changed. Before any of us could react, the deputy squad leader, marching out in front, realized what was going on. In a low voice, he spoke just two words: “Oh shit!”
We all looked down. At once it became clear: water was bubbling up through cracks in the cave floor, and it was coming out fast. We looked at one another, our faces pale. As prospectors and engineering corpsmen, we understood all too well what was happening. The underground river was rising!
“Run!” someone yelled, and immediately we dropped all of our equipment. We sprinted like mad in the direction we had come. A shiver ran down my spine: the terrain here was far too low!
Prior to beginning river-cave exploration or prospecting work, we were always warned to pay close attention to any rise in the level of groundwater. With torrential rainfall, smaller tributaries branching onto or off of large underground rivers may begin to overflow or flow backward, causing the water level to rise and creating an extremely dangerous situation.
But Inner Mongolia in the 1960s was suffering severe drought. When we entered the cave, the sky had been a clear and boundless blue—no clouds at all. Who would have guessed rain was on the way? And because the course of the river flowed under the rocky shoal, its rise must have been soundless. Suddenly, that sound of fingernails scratching against stone sprang into mind. My God, I thought, there had been nothing strange about that noise at all—we’d read about it in textbooks, just never heard it in real life. It was the sound of water rising up through a dry cave!
We truly were running for our lives. Anyone who lives by the ocean knows how fast the tide can rise, but underground rivers rise even faster. For the first several dozen strides the danger we were fleeing remained in our imaginations, but soon the water had overflowed the cracks and begun to wash across the cave floor.
“To the water dungeon!” yelled Wang Sichuan, running out in front. “The water won’t be able to rise that high!”
I knew it was already much too late. The path to the water dungeon was rugged and difficult to navigate. The water would be over our heads before we made it there. By then we wouldn’t have strength left to resist the fierce pull of the current. Still, regardless of everything, I sprinted on. Had I taken a moment to stop and consider, I might have realized that gathering together anything that could float and preparing to be overtaken would have been the wisest course of action. At the time, though, only a single word flashed through my mind: Run!
We ran as fast as we could. By the time the water reached our knees we still had no idea how much farther we had to go. We could no longer see the rocks that stood in our way. Wang Sichuan was the first to fall. It was not some casual tumble, and when he came up his face was covered in blood, but he didn’t stop for a moment. One after another the rest of us went down as well, but we immediately struggled to our feet and kept going. With each fall, getting back up became more exhausting, our hands and knees bleeding and torn. Mindlessly, heed
less of everything, we continued on. We were moving so slowly our progress was negligible. The force of the current began to pick up and soon we could barely manage to stand in place. As soon as we relaxed our efforts in the slightest, the river would lift us up and sweep us back the way we’d come. We could go no farther.
It was then that Wang Sichuan, who was still out ahead, finally gave up running and began to scramble toward the side of a gigantic boulder. We knew what he was thinking, and that each of us had no hope of surviving on our own, so we followed his lead. By the time we’d reached it, the water was already lapping at our waists. We toyed with death in every step we took. All we could hear was the thunderous crash of the water all around, the sound amplified by the narrow cavern. The noise was deafening, and we had to shout to be heard. We locked our palms together, Wang Sichuan stepped on them, and we hoisted him atop the tall rock. Then he leaned over its face, reached down, and pulled us up one by one.
After climbing to the highest point of the rock, we huddled together and looked down. Any hint of the dry land we had crossed only a short time before was now thoroughly hidden beneath the waves.