Liu Sang walked in the sea breeze, carrying several large porcelain pots. They were shaped like ancient urinals, but the opening was in the middle. "Let me quiz you. What is that idiot carrying?" Fatty asked me.

I secretly took a look at them and saw that they were typical old-style white porcelain. The glazed flower at the top of the opening was a lotus flower, and there were two peonies on both ends with an eight divinatory trigram pattern in the middle of them.

I figured they were soul jars, which were often unearthed in ancient tombs in the south. They were sometimes called five-grain sacs. But most soul jars were long or looked like bamboo shoots, and were far more gorgeous than these things. The porcelain patterns on the soul jars I had seen normally had three or four layers. It was said that the more layers there were, the higher the tomb owner’s status. If these were really soul jars, then they were really too humble.

Fatty said to me, "You don't know, right? They're sex toys. This guy is a pervert, so he’s carrying them around while he works."

Liu Sang turned around and scolded him, "Are you fucking drunk? I’ve been respectful since you’re my senior, but don’t bully me just because you’re older. This is for listening. You’re so uncultured!"

I was stunned for a moment. I had heard of this kind of thing before, but I didn't expect it to look like this.

These things were used by the ancients to guard cities from enemies who sought to dig tunnels from the outside. When buried under the city wall, they could amplify any digging sounds. And when there was no wind, you could cover them in leather so that you could hear more clearly.

I took a closer look and found that they were all Liao (1) white porcelain, which seemed to have been dug up from an ancient battlefield. I had heard that when you used them to listen, you could still hear the echoes of the battlefield at night. I didn't expect Liu Sang to use such an old method, so I somewhat changed my opinion of him. It turned out that this guy did know what he was doing.

It was very difficult to walk to the edge of the beach and reach the mudflat, and we ended up having to take off our shoes since we kept getting sucked into the mud. We had hardly taken more than a dozen steps before we quickly found ourselves exhausted. The local people used something called a "haima" (2), which was a sled-like wooden plank you would stand on with one foot, but we didn’t have that and could only walk.

We trudged after him for a long time before he finally reached the center of the mudflat. After he found the right position, it took the three of us fifteen minutes to get to the three directions he designated and bury the detonators.

At this time, I didn’t know how many times I had fallen. I was completely covered in mud and the sea breeze was getting colder and colder. Fortunately, I had Fatty's wine, so my body was warm all over.

The setting sun gradually sank towards the horizon. There weren’t any fishing boats on the sea, nor was anyone on the beach. The only things I could see were the hazard lights from Uncle Two’s cars that were far up on the shore. I took out the walkie-talkie and asked our lookout what the situation was. He said that there wasn’t anyone on the beach for several miles.

I looked at Liu Sang, who had buried the listening devices one by one in the mud in a very strange pattern. He put a copper coin in each one, bent down, and put his ears against the openings. When we detonated the explosives one by one, mud went flying in the air. The shock wave was so huge that I lost my balance and fell into the mud again.

Liu Sang lay in the middle of it all, listening carefully. He told us to use our Luoyang shovels to bury the detonators even deeper. After burying them, the explosions were no longer like a geyser, but more like a fart. A bubble would rise up from the mud until it burst apart with a wretched sound, emitting the smell of sulfur.

We started using our flashlights once it was completely dark, but our hearts weren’t in it. Not only were we numb all over after being buffeted by the sea breeze for so long, but the wine could no longer combat the cold. A bunch of large flying insects appeared and swarmed our flashlights, while disgusting-looking sea cockroaches crawled all over the mudflat.

Liu Sang didn’t hear anything at first, but as we set off more and more explosions, I started to notice that something was wrong. He was talking less and his expression started to look confused. We gathered around him during our break and asked him what was going on. It was a long time before he said, "I’m only sure of two things right now. First, there are a lot of holes in the rocks below, which are connected to the rocky mountains on shore. Second, it’s not normal for so many sea cockroaches to appear on the mudflats. Our explosions must’ve shocked them out of those holes. But since there are holes in the rocks below, I can't be sure if there’s actually a tomb down there."I looked at his expression and knew something wasn’t right. He wasn’t telling us the truth. I patted him and said, "Little Brother is here so you have to be honest."

"What the hell did you hear? If you tell me, I promise I’ll only laugh at you for two months,” Fatty said to him.

He looked at Poker-Face, hesitated for a moment, but still didn't say anything. He glanced at the listening devices with a puzzled expression on his face.

While we were wheedling him, I suddenly felt as if the mud beneath my feet wasn’t quite right and seemed to have loosened. It hadn’t reached my ankles before, but now it had suddenly reached my knees. My feet felt itchy and I could feel countless bugs crawling out of the mud. I shined my flashlight down and saw sea cockroaches crawling out of the muddy water at our feet.

Fatty and I looked at each other and then turned to Poker-Face at the same time. He squatted down, caught one, and then threw it away after looking at it. Fatty took out the flare gun and pointed it at the sky.

As the red light exploded in the air, we were completely stunned. Hundreds of thousands of sea cockroaches were pouring out of the mud all around us. Every inch of mud as far as the eye could see was squirming, and when we looked closely, it turned out to be these disgusting bugs.

"We must’ve blown up the cockroach nest," Fatty murmured.

Liu Sang was expressionless as he looked around and listened, not caring about the bugs at all.

I looked down at my feet. As the bugs came out, the mud beneath our feet became looser and looser. I was just about to make a suggestion when Poker-Face suddenly shouted, "Get ashore!"

The three of us immediately ran for the shore, but Liu Sang didn’t have this tacit understanding with us and stood there stunned for a moment. Suddenly, we heard a series of loud hiccup sounds come from the ground, before a dozen massive bubbles appeared on the beach in the distance. The mud in that area began to sink as if it were melting. I had to shout at Liu Sang before he finally realized what was going on. As the four of us rushed for the shore, the flare finished its descent and revealed all the bubbles spread across the mudflat.

It was like a giant pot of sea cockroach soup.

It was so hard to walk on the mudflat that I had to use all my strength just to run a dozen meters, but I still fell in the mud more than ten times and ended up covered in sea cockroaches.

Poker-Face suddenly stopped, and I could tell by the look on his face that something was wrong. I looked up and immediately knew what the problem was.

The cars’ headlights were missing. The direction we were running in was pitch black.

"Did we get confused and run in the wrong direction?" I cursed and looked behind us, but it was also dark.

Poker-Face pointed up ahead, and Fatty loaded another flare and fired it. As the light soared into the distance, we saw that the mudflat stretched out as far as the eye could see. Not only was there no sign of the shore, but Uncle Two's cars were nowhere to be seen either.Fatty immediately fired another shot in the opposite direction. With both sides lit up at the same time, we found that it was all wrong. The shore wasn’t in either direction. We were in the center of a huge mudflat, which was much bigger than the one we had seen from the shore before.

"Where is this?" Fatty asked. "What happened to the shore?"

"This is bad. This is bad." I took a deep breath. It appeared I had been right and something strange really was here. I kept looking in both directions, but there was nothing besides the endless mudflat.

Fatty wanted to send another signal flare, but I stopped him. "Save it. We might need it if we run into trouble."

Fatty grabbed Liu Sang, "What the fuck did you hear? What’s going on here?"

Liu Sang was trembling as he looked at Poker-Face and said, "I heard someone talking below."

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TN Notes:

(1) Short name for Liaoning province. There’s also a Liao or Khitan dynasty that existed from 907-1125.

(2) It means seahorse.

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