Hong Kong Young Writers Anthologies Fiction 4567 | Page 177

We are staying in a secret house with other explorers. Kono Kimio pointed out the key of our task - collect the
gallbladder of the viper. According to the legend, the owner of the tomb was a very famous geomancer. He put a
gallbladder of a viper into his tomb and the gallbladder contains very toxic venom, which can make any
biochemical weapon stronger.
I was extremely angry and scared when I heard this, but dad and Mr.Hu seemed very calm. I didn’t understand
why they came here to help our enemy destroy our hometown.
At night, they finally told me the truth. The key to getting into the tomb is finding the right entry. These kind of
ancient tombs usually have lots of entries but there is only one leads to the main chamber.
My dad went to this tomb once when he was my age with my grandpa. He remembered that the tomb was
under a huge mountain and the right entry was under a little river. “We will lead the expedition into a wrong
entry beside the river and when they are trapped, we will go out and go to the right entry. We will take away
the gallbladder and destroy it, so that the Japanese army will never find it,” he said.
9 th May, 1973
We started our venture at dawn. It took two hours to get there but it was obvious when we arrived – the
mountain was breathtakingly big and was covered by rows of endless trees. My dad took out his compass, he
drew a simple graph of the tomb underneath the mountain and gave it to Kono Kimio… but he didn’t draw the
little river.
“Mr. Zhang, I wish you didn’t trick on me,” Kono Kimio said angrily.
“Of course, I didn’t,” my dad said.
“You cannot betray me because I have your wife. If you do anything wrong in this amazing journey, I can assure
you won’t see your wife again,” grinned Kono Kimio.
We led them to the wrong entry as we planned. It was a really dark tunnel with a smell of decomposed bodies.
Even though we flashed the torch, it was still very scary and I felt like something was staring us through the
darkness. The Japanese took the lead, so we couldn’t escape easily. Dad seemed notice my worry and pointed to
the top of the tunnel- there was loads of holes in it.
When we got deeper, we suddenly heard somebody singing at the other end of the tunnel. It was like a Peking
Opera. With the help of the sound, dad asked all of us to turn off the lights and stand against the wall and be
quiet. Then, we just climbed up the tunnel and hid ourselves in a hole. I remember feeling so scared.
When Kono Kimio finally found out, he shouted abuse angrily. After about half an hour, they gave up trying to
find us and moved forward.
When we left the tunnel, we found the river immediately and we dove into the deep. Just below, there was a big
entry. We swam into it but I was running out of breath. I can’t remember what happened next. When I woke
up, we were sitting in a coffin chamber, but it was just a chamber for the tomb.
I asked dad about the Japanese. Dad just told me, “They are probably dead.” ‘But what killed them?” I asked
curiously. “The tunnel they walked was full of hair in the other end, and it is not ordinary hair. When people
touch it, it will stab into people’s skin and blood vessels. Eventually, it will reach the brain and kill the cells.”