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

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

Niu Bao, guarding that bloody corpse, said, "My family has been in this village for three generations, living off carpentry. My dad knew all kinds of carpentry, but my grandpa only made coffins."

"Before I was ten, 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 a corner of the heated brick bed. He grabbed a handful of ancient copper coins and handed them to me.

I picked one up and smelled it. "These are mouth-holding coins for the dead!"

"That's right! The big coins my grandpa brought back were all things like this," Niu Bao said. "At that time, no one knew he was bringing mouth-holding coins home."

"When I was ten years old, my dad went into Dead Man's Gulch for some reason and never came back. My grandpa went up the mountain to look for my dad. The night my dad disappeared, all the graves around the village were dug open, and the dead people's mouth-holding coins were gone."

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

"My grandpa came back after going up the mountain. He told me that my dad would never come back. He helped me build a cenotaph for my dad. After that, we depended on each other."

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

"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."

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

"The time my grandpa was talking about was when a boss in our village dug coal. He broke through Dead Man's Gulch."

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

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

According to the information Meng family gave me, Dead Man's Gulch should be deep within the Anling Mountains. Niu Bao's village was outside the mountains.

How far could a private mine owner dig a coal mine? Ten kilometers, or twenty kilometers into the mountains? That distance wouldn't even touch Dead Man's Gulch, let alone its outer perimeter.

Could that boss have dug through half of the Anling Mountains while mining coal?

Niu Bao nodded, "At least, that's what my grandpa said! My grandpa said that if you must go to Dead Man's Gulch, he wanted 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:

Honorable gentlemen, do not read this letter.

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

Those not vowing to enter Dead Man's Gulch, do not read this letter.

Although the handwriting was neat, each stroke carried a hint of murderous intent. It was a warning.

Anyone who didn't meet those three conditions would die if they read the letter he left behind.

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

I, Niu Tianlu, descendant of the Coffin Gate, greet my fellow disciples:

I, as a sorcerer, should not recklessly use secret methods. However, in order to protect my Niu family's bloodline, and to avenge the murder of my son, I am willing to have blood on my hands and fall into hell after death.

The Wei family mined and broke through the entrance to Dead Man's Gulch, raising living corpses to protect my grandson from disaster and die in his place, all of this was done by me alone. I will bear the sin of killing innocents.

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

Niu Tianlu is eternally grateful.

I closed the letter and said, "Your grandpa left a clue?"

"Yes, I can take you to find it," Niu Bao agreed immediately.

He could agree so readily, either because he was naive, or because he was confident and not afraid of me and Ye Yang going back on our word.

Based on the letter Niu Tianlu left behind, I was more inclined to believe the latter.

Niu Tianlu bluntly admitted to his indiscriminate killing in the letter, which meant he must have left behind a backup plan. Maybe, even after I found the clue, only Niu Bao could understand what the clue meant!

I would have to protect Niu Bao all the time!

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

Niu Bao shook his head. "If I hadn't seen this letter, I really wouldn't have known that the Wei family's deaths were my grandpa's doing."

"Before you came, I always thought my grandpa was a good person who saved people, and that's why he suffered an unexpected disaster. 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 the only ones left. From then on, my grandpa secretly taught me kung fu. But I didn't know he was going to pass 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 in the mountains. Many people worked in the mine."

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