The New Wall
The low wall stood horizontally at the entrance to the narrow valley, not very high, reaching about chest height for Long Tian. The wall was made of the common bluish-gray mountain stone found nearby, but the mortar in the joints was still whitish, not like it had been weathered for a long time. There were a few broken stone fragments at the corner, as if they had been knocked off after being laid, their cut surfaces fresh. Long Tian stopped in front of the wall. He didn't walk around it, but first stood at the base of the wall and examined its construction—each stone was roughly the same size, neatly arranged, and the mortar filling the gaps was even, not like it had been hastily built. In the very center of the wall was a narrow gap, like a pre-reserved window, about the size of a hand that could reach through.
Yu Jin came up from behind and looked at the wall. He squatted down next to the rubble at the corner, picked up a piece, examined the cross-section, and put it back. Long Tian stopped in the middle of the wall and glanced into the crack—there was no one on the other side of the wall, nor any obvious movement, but there was a new indentation on the soil inside the crack, as if some heavy object had been dragged over. The mark extended to about one or two feet behind the wall and then turned to the left and disappeared.
He didn't rush to climb over the wall, but instead walked along its base for a while. The wall stretched for about twenty paces, connecting to the steep slopes on both sides at both ends, leaving no way to go around it. Although the wall was newly built, it was carefully constructed, with a smooth and even surface. Long Tian returned to the gap in the center of the wall, reached his right hand through the gap, and touched the drag mark on the ground behind the wall with his fingertips. He followed the direction of the drag mark and felt the smooth surface left by damp soil that had been flattened, not like it had just been left, but it wasn't completely dry either.
He withdrew his hand, turned sideways, and climbed to the top of the wall, squatting there for a moment. From the top of the wall, the scenery inside the narrow valley hadn't changed much compared to when he last passed through, but there was a small pile of disturbed soil in the direction the drag mark extended, as if someone had dug something there and then filled it back in. At the foot of the wall, there was a small patch of darker soil on the ground, which could be water stains or something else, but it was already half-dry, making it impossible to determine its specific nature.
He jumped over the wall and landed on the ground on the other side, with Yu Jin following him. The two walked about five or six zhang along the drag mark and stopped in front of a mound of overturned earth. The mound was about two feet in diameter and half a foot high, covered with a layer of loose soil, as if it had been roughly filled in. Long Tian squatted down and touched the surface of the mound with the back of his hand—it was slightly cooler than the surrounding soil, as if the drainage and heat conduction of the overturned soil layer were different from those of the compacted soil layer, and the heat accumulated during the day had dissipated through continuous contact with the air.
He gently removed some of the topsoil from the mound. Buried beneath was a rough earthenware jar, its mouth bound with oilcloth, the edge of which tied with a sturdy rope knot—a method commonly used by those skilled in this kind of work. Long Tian removed the jar, untied the knot, and lifted the oilcloth. Inside the jar's mouth was a roll of paper wrapped in old cloth. He unfolded the paper; it contained only one line of writing, the handwriting Shen Mo: "Meng Changyuan's confession mentioned a place name related to the southeast. It wasn't marked on a map. Before the confession was sealed, I copied that name— Great Abyss."
Long Tian rolled up the paper again and put it in his clothes, along with the silk map and fish skin paper. He squatted down next to the pottery jar, tied it up with oilcloth again, put it back in the pit, pushed the soil back in, and then stood up to look towards the depths of the narrow valley. Dusk was closing in from the direction of the valley entrance, and the outlines of the slopes on both sides were gradually blurring in the dimming light. The sky was gradually darkening, and the light in the depths of the narrow valley was fading even faster, as if the terrain had prematurely taken away the last bit of afterglow.
Yu Jin crouched beside the drag mark, touching the dampness of the soil. "The drag mark is about as damp as it was during the day. The person who buried the jar couldn't have gone far; they're probably still nearby."
Long Tian also crouched down, turning his gaze away from the valley entrance and looking at the darkened bend in the narrow valley. He didn't sense any aura of Soul Power nearby, nor did he see any signs of movement. But since Shen Mo chose to leave the message here instead of waiting for them to return, it meant that he couldn't show himself for the time being. This sealed message was probably hastily written under some kind of pressure.
Long Tian stood up and walked a few more steps along the drag marks. He squatted down at an angle where he could be caught in the corner of his eye from the wall but not exposed to the main passage of the narrow valley. He parted the branches of a clump of low shrubs and peeked out through the gaps—there was nothing unusual on the field outside the narrow valley, and the wind was continuously blowing into the valley entrance from the direction of the open area. He squatted for a few more moments before standing up, returning the branches of the shrubs to their original positions, and nodded in the direction of the Yu Jin.
Instead of venturing deeper into the narrow valley, the two retraced their steps along the base of the wall back to the path leading to Longfish Bay. The twilight continued to narrow behind them, the valley's outline gradually swallowed by the night. They reached the other side of the path before night completely fell, stopping to rest for half an hour beside a patch of low bushes in an open area. Each leaned against a tree trunk, drinking water from their water bags and eating dry biscuits. Long Tian, sitting on a tree root, unfolded the silk map again and examined it, matching the place name "Great Abyss" with the path on the map—the area near the central marker on the map wasn't labeled, but the wavy line that ended the path extending southeast from the central marker corresponded precisely to an unlabeled body of water, as if the map had left space for a marker but hadn't yet filled in a specific place name.
He folded the silk map and put it away, then leaned back against the tree trunk and closed his eyes for a while. Yu Jin sat on a nearby tree root, the light from the dark gray bead continuing to shine in the shadows, like an old stone lamp steadily glowing at the tree root. After a while, moonlight peeked through the gaps in the clouds, spreading a thin layer of cold light on the ground, and the air was filled with the scent of earth and grass moistened by the night dew.
When Long Tian opened his eyes, the moon had already risen completely. He stood up, shook the dirt off the soles of his boots, and set off on the way back with Yu Jin. The road surface gleamed with a grayish-white cold light under the moonlight, like an old strip of cloth that had been washed and dried by the wind, maintaining a consistent width and direction as they continued to move forward, with its edges occasionally covered by grass stems that stretched out from the roadside before being exposed again.