Chapter 115: Twenty-Four-Note Chord

Ghost-face Zhang, upon hearing Mengya's words, seemed suddenly enlightened. He spent a long time contemplating the door, which was carved with numerous monsters devouring humans, smacking his lips as he tapped out an inexplicable rhythm with his feet.

Standing at a distance, the terrifying expressions and gazes of the corpses inside the door kept flashing through my mind. Finally, unable to bear it any longer, I hurried over to Mengya and the others, feeling instantly more secure.

Ghost-face Zhang glanced at me as I approached. "I was just about to call you; you came here uninvited."

My head buzzed at his words, and I looked at him in horror. "You aren't going to make me reach into the cracks of the door to pull out corpses, are you?"

"Then why did you ask me to come?" I asked hesitantly, thinking to myself that it certainly couldn't be anything good, and braced myself for the worst.

Ghost-face Zhang lit a cigarette, took a deep drag, and studied the monster fish patterns on the door again. Smacking his lips, he said, "Aren't you a somewhat famous musician in Beijing? You..."

Before he could finish, I interrupted him. "You flatter me. I'm not famous at all. Forget it, I can't help you."

Seeing my reluctance, he let out a cold snort and tapped the door crack with a ruffian-like air. "Then you figure it out. If you don't want to help, that's fine—you can just reach in and pull the corpses out yourself. Choose one or the other; it’s up to you."

I cursed his ancestors for eighteen generations under my breath, thinking that I wasn't his slave and questioning why I had to listen to him. I turned to look at Mengya, only to see her shrug playfully, signaling her own helplessness. I let out a long sigh and struck a pose even more helpless than his. "Fine, Uncle Three, Third Senior Uncle, Ghost-face Zhang, 'Broken-mouth' Wu Yifan, I’ll kowtow to you, alright?"

Ghost-face Zhang snorted coldly. "No need." He pointed to the many strange fish carvings above. "It's nothing troublesome. Neither of our ears is as sharp as yours. The water waves inside blow through with a tidal breeze. When the breeze comes, the tail of each fish will sway, but depending on their size, the pitch should be different." He looked at Mengya. "Shopgirl! Bring the notebook over."

Mengya was stunned. She was highly displeased at being called "shopgirl," and a look of annoyance appeared on her face. She retorted sharply, "What for?"

"Give me the notebook from your bag."

Mengya reached into her bag, pulled out the notebook, and threw it on the ground. Ghost-face Zhang ignored her, picked it up, and handed it to me. "The fish are arranged in twenty-four positions. Record the location and pitch of every fish, starting counter-clockwise. Then find the twenty-second note and tell me what it is."

When I heard this, I realized it wasn't too difficult, though it would require intense concentration to record it carefully. I nodded. "That's not too hard, just time-consuming."

Ghost-face Zhang nodded and went to the side to wait, lighting another cigarette.

I steadied my breathing and waited for the tidal breeze. As promised, the wind came. As a gust of tidal air swept in, I pricked up my ears. I heard a faint sound coming from the gate—twenty-four chords accompanied by the sound of rhythmic footsteps. I listened carefully, but I couldn't make it out.

I turned around and cursed, "Old man, can you stop tapping your foot while you smoke? I can't hear clearly."

Hearing my complaint, Ghost-face Zhang moved a little further away.

I calmed my mind again, waiting for the next gust of tidal wind. The twenty-four chords sounded once more, and the faint notes reached my ears.

I nodded and wrote a "6" in the notebook.

Repeating this process over and over, I stood in front of the door for more than a quarter of an hour. I let out a long sigh. "Finished."

Ghost-face Zhang and Mengya rushed over when they saw I had mapped out the score. Ghost-face Zhang snatched it away, only to remember after a long moment that he knew nothing about music.

Mengya gave him a look of contempt and snorted coldly. "If you don't understand it, stop acting like a big shot." She snatched the notebook from him and cleared her throat.

"6-6-5-3-3-6-6-6-5-3-6-5-3-2-2-3-5-3-5-3-2-1-1..."

"This is music in the style of the Miao people!" I said, frowning. "I once went to Yunnan to collect antiques and heard similar music. It should be music used for sacrificial rituals of the Miao sorcery." I smacked my lips. "This place is even more bizarre. One moment it's the Pala Dynasty and the Kushan Empire, and the next it's Yunnan. What kind of person was the tomb owner to have such a leaping train of thought?"

"Never mind that. What is the twenty-second note?" Ghost-face Zhang asked.

I looked at the notebook. "It's 're', or 2."

Ghost-face Zhang nodded, picked up a fist-sized stone from the ground, and threw it into the crack of the door. It hit the skull of a corpse with a *thud*, knocking the body to the ground. The door shut with a *clack*, returning to its original state.

I looked at him, thinking, *Why are you taking your anger out on a corpse? No place to vent your fire?* Mengya, however, smiled. "Uncle Three, what now?"

Ghost-face Zhang took a puff of his cigarette. "There are twenty-one corpses with human heads on the tails of the large fish. In my opinion, they should represent three heptatonic scales. Help me arrange them according to what she just sang, and I'll go knock."

I frowned upon hearing this. "Uncle Three, what if these scales are an acoustic pressure trap, just like the three pipes from before?"

Ghost-face Zhang looked at Mengya. "With your skills, you are definitely much better than Kaleidoscope. How about we both go and knock?"

Mengya looked troubled when she heard this. She glanced at me as if she had something hard to say. After much deliberation, she replied, "I'm not going."

Ghost-face Zhang snorted at her refusal. "If you have something to say, just say it. Do you think I can't tell?"

His words startled me. Could he have heard what we were saying? Did he know we were suspicious of him?

Mengya was also stunned. "What are you talking about? You should be the one to speak plainly."

Ghost-face Zhang gave a cold snort, seeming to mock us, and looked at me with a hint of disdain. "This isn't your fault, but it's a big deal. There's nothing that can't be said, is there?"

Hearing him speak so callously, Mengya didn't lose her temper. Instead, she looked at me, tears streaming down her eyes, and began to sob.

Seeing Mengya cry, Ghost-face Zhang sneered repeatedly. "Fine, you two settle it yourselves. I'm going to the side to have a smoke." With that, he walked toward the red copper door to indulge his habit.

Watching the sobbing Mengya, I felt very uncomfortable. I reached out to wipe away her tears and pulled her into my arms, gently stroking her hair. "Baby, what's wrong? What is it that you can't tell me?"

She sobbed even harder, clutching me tightly as if she didn't want to be separated from me. Although we were in a tomb passage, I felt a warmth in my heart; it had been a long time since we had embraced like this.

"It's nothing, I'm fine!" she said, holding back her tears and pretending to be indifferent.

"Baby, can't we bear whatever it is together?" I stroked her hair again. "Be good, you'll always be the girl of my dreams, the 'female devil' from middle school, the Mengya I secretly loved for seven or eight years."

When I finished speaking, she could no longer hold back the secret she had been trying so hard to keep. She burst into tears again. I comforted her, wiping away her tears. "Baby, don't cry, you'll ruin your face."

She wiped the tears from her face, let out a long breath, looked at me with deep affection, and smiled. "Qiutong, I'm pregnant."