Courtyard House: Time Traveler Not Yet a Ghost

Three days later, at dusk, the setting sun, as red as blood, struggled to squeeze out its last few rays from the folds of the Taihang Mountains, coating the leaden sky with a weary warm hue.

The two black lacquered wooden doors of Liu's Teahouse were already tightly shut. Manager Luo, hunched over, sat behind the counter in front of a well-worn pear wood abacus. A pair of reading glasses perched on his nose, and behind the lenses, his eyes were cloudy yet occasionally flashed with a shrewdness. His fingers moved across the abacus, making a "clattering" sound, but the sound lacked the usual smoothness and speed of his calculations; instead, it seemed somewhat absent-minded and hesitant. His gaze, involuntarily, and with an almost anxious anticipation, kept glancing at the closed doors.

He is waiting.

Old Chen said he'd be back today.

Old Chen was a medicinal herb farmer who spent his days wandering deep in the Taihang Mountains, collecting herbs to sell in the city. Occasionally, he would stop by Manager Luo's teahouse to rest and have a cup of hot tea. But this time was different; Old Chen was on a secret mission. A secret concerning life and death, and possibly even the entire anti-Japanese war situation in central Hebei.

The old clock on the wall swung its pendulum listlessly, emitting a monotonous "tick-tock," as if counting down the oppressive wait. Manager Luo picked up the long-cold teacup on the table, took a sip, and the bitter taste spread from the tip of his tongue to the depths of his heart. He put down the teacup, his knuckles turning slightly white from the force.

At four o'clock in the afternoon, just when Manager Luo was almost thinking that something had happened to Old Chen, there was a gentle knock on the door of the teahouse.

"Tap, tap, tap—tap, tap."

Three long and two short.

Manager Luo's heart skipped a beat; the weight that had been hanging over him for three days seemed to have lifted halfway, but he was immediately gripped by even greater tension. He practically ran across the empty hall, not daring to light the lamps, and could only rely on the faint daylight filtering through the windows to grope his way down the bottom panel of the door.

A gust of wind, carrying a mixture of mud, decaying leaves, and a heavy chill, slithered in like an icy snake, causing Manager Luo to shiver involuntarily. Standing at the door was Old Chen. He looked far more haggard than when he left three days ago. His already dark face was chapped and cracked by the mountain winds, his lips were purple, and his usually smiling eyes were now bloodshot, yet unusually bright. His patched blue cotton-padded jacket was covered in dust, and his trousers and shoes were caked with dried mud, stiff and hard—clearly indicating a long trek along rugged, slippery mountain paths.

"How is it?" Manager Luo asked in a low voice, almost whispering in Old Chen's ear. At the same time, he quickly reached out and pulled Old Chen in, then picked up a heavy cotton robe from behind the door and draped it over him. He then turned around and picked up a large, rough porcelain bowl from the stove. The bowl contained freshly brewed hot tea, still steaming.

Old Chen practically snatched the teacup, his hands trembling violently with excitement. The trembling wasn't from the cold; Manager Luo could tell it was a result of extreme excitement and exhaustion. Ignoring the heat, he opened his chapped lips and gulped down several mouthfuls of hot tea. The scalding tea flowed down his throat, creating a warm passage through his chest and abdomen. He let out a long sigh, then hastily wiped his mouth with his sleeve, looked up, his eyes flashing with an alarming light, and said in a low, deliberate voice, "Found it!"

Shopkeeper Luo felt his heart skip a beat, a surge of heat rushing to his head, quickly cooling and turning into fine beads of sweat that seeped from his forehead. He steadied himself, his voice trembling slightly: "Explain in detail, don't leave out any details."

Old Chen nodded, carefully pulling a piece of paper from his pocket. It was a rough sheet of straw paper, its edges worn, with some lines and symbols drawn crookedly in charcoal—a copy of the map Manager Luo had given him. The map had clearly been folded repeatedly, its corners rounded. Old Chen spread the paper out on the counter and pointed heavily with his finger to the spot circled in red charcoal: "Right here! In the northern section of the Taihang Mountains, below Eagle Cliff near Wangfu Cliff, an extremely hidden cave. Manager, I searched for two whole days and nights, practically turning over every cliff face in that area. If it weren't for your accurate drawing, marking those few distinctive pine trees as markers, I might not have found it even if I searched for a year!"

"What's in the cave?" Manager Luo held his breath, his eyes fixed on Old Chen's finger, as if trying to see through the simple map to the cave a thousand miles away.

Old Chen took a deep breath, his chest heaving violently. He spoke in a very low voice, as if afraid of being overheard, but the barely suppressed trembling betrayed his excitement: "Shopkeeper, you might not believe it... inside that cave, the stuff is piled up like a small mountain!"

He stretched out his fingers, stiff from the cold, and counted them off. With each item he counted, Manager Luo's heart tightened: "Rifles, all brand new Type 38 rifles, wrapped in oilcloth, neatly stacked in bundles. I roughly counted, at least... at least two or three thousand! Ammunition boxes, wooden ones, coated with moisture-proof tung oil, piled up one after another like a wall, at least several hundred boxes! And machine guns, light machine guns, I saw at least seventy or eighty of them, and heavy machine guns, the kind that sit on tripods and make a 'thud thud thud' when they fire! Grenade launchers, mortars, there are also more than a dozen... The grain is piled on the other side, rice, flour, and compressed biscuits, stacked in sacks, almost reaching the top of the cave. At the very back, there are rows of medicine boxes. I recognize the foreign characters on them, penicillin, sulfonamides, bandages, iodine, and so on, all life-saving medicines!"

Old Chen became increasingly agitated as he spoke, his voice involuntarily rising a few decibels. Manager Luo quickly reached out and pressed his arm, signaling him to lower his voice. Only then did Old Chen realize his inappropriate behavior, and he quickly covered his mouth, glancing warily around, even though he knew there were only the two of them in the teahouse.

Shopkeeper Luo's hand trembled slightly, accidentally bumping the abacus on the counter. With a clatter, several beads rolled down, the sound particularly jarring in the quiet teahouse. He quickly steadied himself, forcing himself to calm down. This overwhelming amount of information was like a boulder thrown into a calm lake, the ripples making him momentarily dizzy. He composed himself, staring intently into Old Chen's eyes, and asked seriously, "Did you see clearly? Could it be a warehouse set up by the Japanese, or some kind of trap?"

"Absolutely not!" Old Chen shook his head vigorously, his tone resolute. "Shopkeeper, I've spent half my life exploring the Taihang Mountains. I've seen what the Japanese warehouses look like! How could they be hidden so deep and so well? Besides, the entrance was completely covered by vines and weeds. If I hadn't carefully identified the location of those pine trees according to your map and followed an almost invisible crevice, I wouldn't have found it at all! I had to force my way through all those vines and weeds to squeeze in. The cave was covered with a thick layer of dust, and there wasn't even a single footprint. It looks like it's been there for at least a month, no, maybe even half a year!" They didn't know that there wouldn't be any footprints left when He Damin's spirit was placed there.

"Is anyone guarding it? Is there any activity near the cave entrance?" Manager Luo pressed, this was the most crucial question.

"No, absolutely not!" Old Chen said firmly. "After I found the entrance, I didn't dare to go in immediately. I wandered around for most of the day, carefully checking all the places where people could hide, but I didn't see a single ghost, let alone footprints. That place is too desolate; apart from birds and beasts, no one usually goes there. When I went in, I had to use both my hands and feet to squeeze through a narrow crack. After I came out, I put the weeds and vines back to their original state. Even if someone passed by, they would never have guessed that there was a big hole behind it."

Manager Luo fell silent. He paced back and forth behind the small counter, his hands behind his back. His cloth shoes creaked softly on the wooden floor, the sound particularly clear in the deathly quiet teahouse. Old Chen stood rooted to the spot, nervously watching Manager Luo, barely daring to breathe. The steam in the teacup had long since dissipated, leaving only a cup of cold tea, mirroring their complex and unfathomable emotions.

A cave, filled with enough weapons, ammunition, food, and medicine to equip a regiment, extremely well-hidden and unguarded... This sounds like a fantastical tale from a storyteller's mouth, utterly absurd. But Old Chen wasn't the kind of person to make things up. He had been collecting herbs in the Taihang Mountains for decades, knew every plant and tree in the mountains like the back of his hand, had a keen eye, and always kept his word.

"How deep did you go in? Did you look carefully? Did you leave any traces?" Manager Luo stopped and checked again.

"I just stood at the entrance and looked inside. I didn't dare go too deep, afraid of leaving footprints or damaging something," Old Chen quickly explained. "I only got a general idea. All the guns and cannons were covered with tarpaulins. I recognized some of the writing on the boxes, and some I didn't, but judging by the scale, it couldn't be wrong! Boss, the stuff in that cave... it could equip a regiment, no, a brigade more than enough!"