I sat back on the kang, and Ye Yang was still standing in the room.

I lit a cigarette and said, "Tell me about Dead Man's Gully."

Niu Bao, guarding the bloody corpse, said, "My family has been in this village for three generations, making a living as carpenters. My dad could do any kind of carpentry, but my grandpa only made coffins."

"Before I was ten years old, my family was very peaceful. We lived a good life. My grandpa didn't have any other problems except for a habit of collecting big coins."

I interrupted, "You said your grandpa collected big coins. What kind of big coins did he collect?"

Niu Bao turned around, lifted the kang mat, and pulled out a package from the corner of the heated brick bed. He grabbed a handful of ancient copper coins from it and handed them to me.

I picked one up and smelled it. "These are ya kou qian (coins placed in the mouth of the dead)!"

"That's right! The big coins my grandpa brought back were all this kind of thing," Niu Bao said. "At that time, no one knew he was bringing ya kou qian home."

"When I was ten years old, my dad went into Dead Man's Gully for some reason and never came back. My grandpa went up the mountain to look for my dad. On the night my dad disappeared, all the graves near the village were dug open, and the dead people's ya kou qian were also lost."

"I always suspected that my grandpa dug those graves."

"My grandpa did come back after going up the mountain. He told me that my dad would never come back, and he helped me set up an empty tomb for my dad. From then on, we depended on each other."

I interrupted him again, "Are you saying your grandpa went into Dead Man's Gully?"

"I don't know!" Niu Bao shook his head. "My grandpa never told me what he saw after he went up the mountain. When I asked, he said the time wasn't right yet."

"Later, the time came, and my grandpa also disappeared."

"The time my grandpa was talking about was when a boss in our village was digging for coal and broke through Dead Man's Gully."

Ye Yang and I exchanged glances. "How do you know?"

Ye Yang also said in a deep voice, "Can you be sure?"

According to the information Meng Jia gave me, Dead Man's Gully should be deep within the Anling Mountains. But the village where Niu Bao lived was outside the mountains.

How far could a private mine boss dig a coal mine? Ten kilometers, or twenty kilometers into the mountain? That distance wouldn't even touch the outer edges of Dead Man's Gully, let alone reach it?

Could that boss dig for coal and break through half of the Anling Mountains?

Niu Bao nodded and said, "At least, that's what my grandpa said! My grandpa said that if you must go to Dead Man's Gully, he told me to show you a letter."

Niu Bao took out a wax-sealed envelope from the package.

On the front of the envelope, three lines of regular script were written with a brush:

Righteous men, do not read this letter.

Those not of the Coffin Sect, do not read this letter.

Those not vowing to enter Dead Man's Gully to the death, do not read this letter.

The handwriting of the letter writer was neat, but each stroke carried a trace of killing intent. This was a warning.

Anyone who couldn't meet these three conditions would surely die if they read the letter he left behind.

I tore open the envelope, took out the letter paper inside, spread it out on the kang, and slowly read it.

I, Niu Tianlu, a descendant of the Coffin Sect, greet fellow disciples:

As a sorcerer, I should not have recklessly used secret methods. However, to protect the incense of my Niu family, and to avenge the murder of my son, I would rather have my hands covered in blood and fall into hell after death.

The Wei family mined and broke through the gateway to Dead Man's Gully, and raised living corpses to protect my grandson from disaster and to die in his place. All of this was my doing alone. I alone will bear the sin of indiscriminate killing.

Friends, if you want to enter Dead Man's Gully, please listen to my grandson's guidance and find the secret map I left behind. But also, please protect my grandson's life.

Niu Tianlu is eternally grateful.

I closed the letter and said, "Your grandfather left clues?"

"He did. I can take you to find them," Niu Bao agreed readily.

For him to agree so readily, he was either completely innocent, or he was unafraid, and not worried about me and Ye Yang going back on our word.

Judging from this letter left by Niu Tianlu, I was more inclined to believe the latter.

Niu Tianlu frankly admitted to his indiscriminate killing in the letter, which meant he had left behind some contingency plans. Perhaps, after I found the clues, only Niu Bao would be able to understand what the clues meant!

That meant I had to protect Niu Bao all the time!

Thinking of this, I stopped Niu Bao and said, "Don't rush. Tell me, how did your grandpa trick that mine owner in the first place?"

Niu Bao shook his head and said, "If I hadn't seen this letter, I really wouldn't have known that my grandpa was the one who did the things to the Wei family."

"Before you came, I always thought my grandpa was just trying to save people out of kindness, and that's why he met with misfortune. Now it seems that's not the case at all!"

Niu Bao took another sip of wine before saying, "Since you're not in a hurry to leave, I'll tell you about what happened back then."

"After my dad left, my grandpa and I were all we had left. From then on, my grandpa secretly taught me kung fu. However, I didn't know that he was passing on secret methods to me."

"In the second year after my dad left, a boss in our village named Wei Daqiang opened a coal mine on the mountain, and many people were working in the mine."

"After that, my family suffered another misfortune, and I realized that my grandpa wasn't just an ordinary carpenter."