Tales of the End of the Century

When he reached the end of the ventilation alley, Tie Niu stopped.

It wasn't that there was no path anymore. The path suddenly widened—the rock walls on both sides receded, and the rock strata overhead rose abruptly, so much so that the beam of my headlamp couldn't reach the top. Before me lay a massive, man-made cavern, more than ten times larger than the previous resting chamber. The ground was flat, plastered with cement, but the cement had cracked, and clumps of grayish-white lichen grew from the fissures. The chisel marks on the cave walls were neat and precise; they weren't dug haphazardly, but rather carved out piece by piece according to engineering blueprints.

Tie Niu stood at the cave entrance without immediately entering. He took the axe from his waist and held it in his hand, his headlamp slowly scanning every wall of the cave. He had learned a principle from his time as a security guard on Project Aurora—before entering any enclosed space, confirm there was more than one exit. This cave had three exits: the ventilation alley they had come in through was the first, a rusted iron door directly opposite was the second, and a square passage on the left rock wall, boarded up, was the third. He paused his headlamp at each of the three exits for two seconds, memorizing their locations, before finally stepping into the cave.

Bai Ye followed behind him. His feet touched the concrete floor, and he felt a layer of extremely fine ash on the soles of his shoes. It wasn't slag, nor rock fragments, but paper ash. Grayish-white, very light, almost imperceptible underfoot, but it would float in the headlamp beam like a swarm of startled midges. He lowered his headlamp, the beam sweeping across the floor—the entire cavern floor was covered with this thin layer of paper ash, as even as sifted flour. Someone had burned a lot of paper here, for a long time, until the concrete floor was soaked with ash, leaving a very faint gray footprint when stepped on.

In the center of the cave was a fire pit made of firebricks, filled with a pile of paper ash about half a person's height. The ash was very fine, almost like powder, and some scraps of paper were not completely burned, their edges curled and embedded in the ash, with a few Russian letters still discernible. Next to the fire pit was a soot-blackened kettle, its bottom burned through. Beside it was an enamel mug, its bottom still covered with dried tea stains. The mug rested on a flat stone, its surface worn smooth, with a shallow groove just large enough to hold the mug in place.

Tie Niu walked to the edge of the fire pit and squatted down, poking at the ashes with the tip of his dagger. Deep within the ashes, there was still a lingering warmth—not from an open flame, but from a tiny, smoldering red glow beneath the ash, which had been stirred up much later, flashing briefly in the air before fading away. He sheathed his dagger and stood up. "These fires have been burning for more than just a day or two. He's lived here for a long time."

Lan Susu walked to the cave wall. The beam of her headlamp illuminated the entire wall—densely covered with writing. Not Russian, but Chinese. Every stroke was written in chalk, the characters starting from the upper left corner, row by row to the right, changing lines at the edge of the wall, as if she had used all her strength to move a book onto a stone. Many lines had been repeatedly erased and rewritten; some strokes had sunk into the cement due to excessive force, and even after the chalk dust was wiped away, the indentations were still clearly visible as a light gray under the side beam of her headlamp. She walked slowly along the wall, deciphering each character. The earliest date was the year Sergei marked the first batch of people to be transferred on the subject list, the group that had been marked before the Aurora Project was terminated during the rift period. The dates became shorter and shorter afterward, updated weekly, with some paragraphs showing sudden tremors in the handwriting before returning to normal.

Bai Ye followed her deeper into the cave. The rear half of the chamber was separated by a brick wall about waist-high, which didn't reach the ceiling, leaving a narrow passageway. He squeezed through the passageway, the beam of his headlamp sweeping across a corner—where a bed was laid out. It wasn't a cot, nor was it covered with bedding; it was a bed made of several planks of wood, covered with a layer of dry straw, and on top of the straw was an old, faded sheet. The sheet was carefully folded, with all four corners tucked under the planks, as if waiting for a guest who would never return. A kerosene lamp sat on the bedside table, its lampshade polished to a high shine. Beside the lamp was a book without a cover, with a long-dried birch leaf tucked between its pages—the leaf was thin, its edges almost transparent, yet it still retained the complete outline of its veins, gleaming with a dark golden light under the headlamp.

He picked up the leaf, looked at it against his headlamp for a while, and then put it back. A birch leaf. Exactly the same one that Old Hu had collected decades ago when he was collecting secondhand goods at the foot of the Yanshan Mountains—Old Hu had said that the old locust tree under Yunlong Temple was full of these leaves, which would fall to the ground in autumn and rustle underfoot, like stepping on ashes.

In another corner of the cavern was a table made from the chassis of a minecart. The chassis was upside down and rested on several stacks of bricks. The tabletop was covered with a piece of polished iron sheet, on which were placed a few items: an enamel plate with half a hardened bun on it; a pair of chopsticks made from two thin, rounded bamboo sticks bound together with thin wire; a tin kettle with a dented spout; and a mirror.

The mirror was a regular square mirror, about the size of a palm, lying face down on the table. Bai Ye reached out and flipped it over. The mirror wasn't cracked; it was clean and spotless, completely out of place in this ash-filled cave. His own face was reflected in the mirror—the beam of his headlamp, the brick wall behind him, the blurred chalk writing on the wall. The reflection looked at him in sync, without delay. He flipped the mirror over, back up, and placed it back on the table.

There was a tin box on the table. It wasn't large, about the size of a book, the tin was rusted black, but the hinges were still tight. He opened the lid. Inside weren't documents or tapes, but a few small items. An old-fashioned silver collar insignia with a pin on the back. A ballpoint pen that could no longer draw its lead, the barrel gleaming from his sweaty hands. A piece of paper folded into a square, very thin, unfolded to reveal only one line of text: Russian, blue ink, the handwriting steady—Sergei's. Lan Susu took it and examined it against her headlamp for a while. It read: "Someone in the direction of the mine. Stable frequency. No distress call, just light on." This was the original text of the line Sergei had marked on the back of the test subject list in pencil, blue ink, not pencil—Sergei had formally written this line on another piece of paper and had someone bring it here.

At the very bottom of the box was a photograph. Black and white, its edges worn and frayed. It showed a woman and a child, dressed in clothes fashionable more than twenty years ago, standing in front of a birch forest. The birch trunks were straight, and a few rays of sunlight filtered through the canopy, falling at their feet. He turned the photograph over; on the back was a line of text, faintly scratched into the photographic paper with his fingernail. Under the sidelight of his headlamp, a row of neat Chinese characters appeared: "Spring 1985, etc." Just as he was about to put the photograph back in the tin box, his gaze swept over the birch forest in the picture, and he suddenly noticed a very subtle detail—on a rock about half a person's height at the edge of the frame, sat an enamel mug, the faded peony on its surface exactly the same as the one Old Hu had used for over a decade.

Lan Susu walked over from the other end of the cave, holding an oscilloscope. "The signal source is in this cave. Very close, extremely close. Less than ten meters away."

Ten meters. Bai Ye surveyed the entire cavern. Fire pit, brick walls, bed planks, mine cart table, tin box. He had checked all the exits of this cavern since entering through the ventilation shaft: a rusted iron door, a square passage boarded up, and the way they had come.

He walked to the passageway where the planks were nailed shut and shone his headlamp into the gaps. The planks were nailed tightly shut, the nails rusted black, and the nail heads were covered with a thick layer of dust. He glanced at the edge of the planks, then looked at the rock wall next to them, and found that there were only a few centimeters of space between the planks and the rock wall, which was stuffed with dry grass.

He reached into the gap and touched the cold rock. The passage was blocked less than a meter further by a landslide of rubble. He looked back at Tie Niu. Tie Niu stood beside the fire pit, took the axe from his waist, and walked to the rusted iron door. This iron door was different from the one in the ventilation alley—thicker, heavier, the steel plate surface was covered in rust, and reinforcing ribs were welded to the door frame. The iron bolt was bolted from the outside, and a rusted padlock hung on the bolt.

Tie Niu tapped the padlock twice with the back of his axe. The lock didn't budge. He switched the axe to his left hand and chopped down on the latch. The padlock snapped open and bounced twice on the concrete. He pulled out the bolt and pushed open the iron gate. Behind the gate was a shallow, upward-sloping alley, blocked by a landslide of rubble a dozen meters away. Several rotten, dark brown supporting timbers lay on the rubble, indicating the landslide had occurred at least ten years ago. But next to the rubble, there was a small, man-made hole, about waist-high, with fresh chisel marks on the walls—no more than a few months old. The stones used to carve the hole were neatly piled to one side, and several pieces of blackened chalk were scattered on the ground.

"He dug for a long time." Tie Niu squatted down to look at the chisel marks. "He dug from here to the ventilation alley, a very long stretch."

Bai Ye closed his eyes, using his consciousness to probe the depths of the stone door. His senses pierced through the rubble, through the cracks in the rock strata, and on the other side of the wall, he touched a deeper, darker crimson—the embers of a extinguished fire, devoid of warmth, no longer flickering, yet still retaining the outline of a charcoal core. From the spark that ignited in Chapter 20, Bai Ye had followed it all the way from Elm Gully to the mine on the edge of the wasteland, through narrow ventilation shafts, and into this ash-filled chamber. Now he finally understood—it had arrived before everyone else, but his previous perception hadn't been enough to distinguish it from the background noise of the mining area.

He opened his eyes, looked back at the waist-high ashes in the fire pit, at the words on the wall that had been wiped and rewritten, and at the spotlessly clean kerosene lamp by the bedside. "Someone has been waiting here for a long time. Not just for us. He's also waiting for those who come later—he marked all the fellow travelers he could find on this wall, and then waited until they had all left before he was the last to depart."

The square mirror on the table was facing up, its metal frame gleaming coldly under the headlamp. Engraved in the center of the back was a tiny symbol and a number—a number Bai Ye recognized well. He'd seen the same markings on the mirror in the backup vault. He turned the mirror over, face up. "He has a mirror."

Lan Susu crouched down and shone a flashlight into the mirror from the side. There were several extremely fine scratches on the mirror surface, not cracks, but curved lines left by repeated pressing with fingernails, polished very shallowly, like the caresses left in the same spot day after day. "He practiced with the reflection mirror. He practiced for a long time. He practiced until the glass surface was worn with curved lines."

After putting the axe away and tucking it back into his belt, Tie Niu stared silently at the bed for a long time. That wasn't Sergei's—Sergei's bed was in the bottom drawer of the backup cabinet, a cold, bare sheet of metal. This bed had been carefully made. The hay was freshly changed, the sheets were faded but clean, and the four corners were tucked under the wooden planks, as if it had been tidied up every day. He put the axe down next to the doorframe. "He put out the fire before he left. The blankets were folded neatly. The steamed buns in the plate were broken. The door wasn't locked—only the outermost bolt was bolted from the outside, which someone else had bolted for him later."

Bai Ye stood in the center of the cave, looking down at the ashes. Not the ashes beneath the concrete seals of Research Institute No. 17, not the ashes from the empty cabinets in the backup vault, nor the ashes from the burnt test subject list papers in the relay station's iron barrel. They were diaries, letters, practice records, test subject lists, letters written to those who came after, burned again and again in the fire pit for many years.

He picked up the enamel mug and placed it on the table, then turned and took the note in blue ink, handwritten by Sergei, from the tin box, folded it, and put it in his inner pocket. Tie Niu slung his backpack over his shoulder and put his headlamp back on. The three men walked out of the stone gate and retraced their steps along the reflective rope. Passing the ventilation tunnel, the first cavern, and the collapsed section at the fork in the road, the depths of the mine behind them gradually disappeared into darkness under the headlamps. By the time they emerged from the mine shaft, it was completely dark. Tie Niu half-closed the iron gate, walked to the base of the mine shaft, and looked up at the bare lightning rod. A small piece of kite string hung silently from its tip, fluttering in the night wind.

Bai Ye walked to the jeep, placed the enamel mug on the back seat, and then looked back at the mining area. The distant piles of waste rock gleamed grayish-white in the moonlight, like a group of giant beasts that had long since fallen. He walked back to the derrick, bent down, picked up a small piece of slag, put it in his pocket, opened the car door, and sat in the passenger seat.