Seeing My Own Grave

Lu Zhe, Shen Bing and Qian Qian swam back from the bottom of the hot spring, washed and dried their clothes, and took over an hour more.

When they came out, it was almost two o'clock in the afternoon.

Shen Bing said, "They must be worried to death!"

Lu Zhe was also a little worried: "Yeah, we've been missing for almost a whole day, I'm a little worried about what silly things they might do!"

Qian Qian thought for a moment: "I don't think so. Going out and having some situations happen is normal. I think they must be very happy to see so much delicious food."

"Hopefully so..."

The three of them walked back the same way they had come, but they hadn't gone far before they saw some strange things.

Lu Zhe sighed, Shen Bing held her forehead, and Lin Qianqian was dumbfounded.

There were three small mounds of soil, and a cross was inserted into each mound.

On the right one, there was even a dirty little shoe hanging on it.

"Hey? My shoes..."

Qianqian curiously took it down and washed away the mud with water from the bottle, then put it on her feet after wiping it dry.

Looking at the words on the other cross again, Qianqian's jaw almost dropped:

"Grave of Lin Qianqian, Department of Finance Grade 22 of Magic City Jiaotong University..."

Below was a list of dates, as well as: Erected by good friends Ning Shu, Jiang Yao, Tang Xiaoguo!

Lin Qianqian immediately imagined the scary scenes in horror movies: "Ah, I'm dead!"

Shen Bing was also puzzled: "What are these three girls up to?!"

"What kind of brain circuits could do something like this!"

The two of them turned around together.

Needless to say, the other two, one was the Grave of Narcotics Officer Shen Bing, signed: Good citizen Ning Shu, Jiang Yao, Tang Xiaoguo of Magic City.

The other one was the Grave of the deceased husband Lu Zhe, signed: Girlfriend Tang Xiaoguo, Jiang Yao, Ning Shu!

At the bottom of each cross was inserted "incense"!

No, that wasn't incense!

That was the firestick Lu Zhe had made with great effort.

Lu Zhe hurried to put them out.

Oh my, they had almost burned through.

Below were three leaves, on which were placed some bananas, vegetables and dried fish.

There were even offerings???

"Lu Zhe, how do you feel?" Shen Bing asked.

"My head is buzzing."

"Qianqian?"

Qianqian said weakly, "Um...should we worship too?"

"I can tell, you four are cut from the same cloth."

Lu Zhe went over and pulled out all three crosses and threw them aside.

"Ah, I hope they haven't done anything silly!"

"Let's go back quickly!"

At this time at the campsite, the three girls had cried their eyes out and were discussing what to do next.

"I say, stop crying. We need to make some paper..."

"...What's the point of making paper when we're all dead?"

"Even if we go to the underworld, we still need money to spend, right. In a few days when we die too, no one will burn paper for us, so we'll have to ask Lu Zhe for it. What if Lu Zhe, Sister Bing and Qianqian are also penniless then, what will we do?!"

"Ah, that would be too miserable."

"Our families will burn some for us, right..."

"Our families don't know 1) the exact date we passed away, and 2) where we passed away, so even if they burn some we won't receive it."

"You're right, so we really need to make some... Oh yes, when Lu Zhe and I went into the woods, we found a birch tree whose bark can be used as paper."

"But just having paper is useless, it needs to have things like coin stamps burned on it to be effective!"

The three girls thought some more.

"...Right, we can use the handlebars of the bike, where the rubber has fallen off exposing the metal pipe, and press that onto the paper to imprint a coin shape."

"But people stamp real coins in a round shape, these makeshift ones would at best look like 1 yuan coins, what if they're not accepted in the underworld?"

The three girls imagined Lu Zhe, Shen Bing and Qianqian going to the counter in the underworld, trying to buy a can of Underworld Cola, but pulling out a bunch of unusable coins, and getting laughed at by a group of little ghosts, which made them start crying again in sorrow!

"We really are useless..."

"Can't even help our companions after they've passed away!"

"Ahhhhh......"

The three girls cried so sadly that even the mother cow and calf couldn't help shedding tears and kept mooing.

Finally, exhausted from crying, they lay side by side on the ground and gradually lost consciousness.

Ten minutes later, Lu Zhe, Shen Bing and Qianqian came back.

Seeing the three girls crying like wilted flowers, they didn't know whether to laugh or cry.

Lu Zhe squatted down: "Hey, wake up, we're back."

The three girls opened their eyes in confusion.

In the blinding daylight, three familiar silhouettes came into view.

They even brought back a large pile of fruits that none of them had seen since coming to the island...

"We must be dead..."

"Yeah, obviously we're dead already. They didn't leave, they came to get us..."

"And brought so many delicious things!"

"It's great that the whole family can finally be together..."

Lu Zhe laughed in anger: "Not getting up, huh? Should I have Qianqian pour some pee on you to wake you up?!"

Lin Qianqian was startled: "Huh??"

Ning Shu sat up: "Lu Zhe, is it really you?"

"Nonsense, has your head rusted... Ow! Why are you twisting my arm hair again?"

"This feeling... it's Lu Zhe. My god, didn't you fall into the swamp?"

"Who told you I fell into the swamp?"

Tang Xiaoguo rubbed her eyes: "Qianqian's shoes... wow, she's wearing them, and they're clean too, she must be a ghost!"

Jiang Yao said happily: "Didn't it occur to you that the shoe found in the swamp might not have been Qianqian's?"

"The shoes are indeed mine, but we did fall into the swamp. Lu Zhe knew there might be danger so he tied a safety rope in advance, so we didn't fall in."

"But your clothes?"

Ning Shu realized: "I get it, you washed them in the river water, right? But what about all this food?"

Shen Bing sighed: "It's a long story, calm yourselves down first and we'll explain it to you slowly."

As the three girls ate jujubes and gnawed on papayas, they listened to Lu Zhe, Shen Bing and Qianqian recount their experiences along the way, and finally understood what had happened.

With the joy of having "survived disaster", they took some time to comfort their hurt hearts. Hearing that the bottom of the volcano was such a fun place, everyone clamored to go.

Lu Zhe looked at his watch: "We've been messing around all day, definitely can't go today. Let's eat something and rest well. I'll take you guys there tomorrow and we can all soak in the hot springs."

"Yay!!"

The girls cheered together.

"Then let's prepare to enter the next phase! Let's make more charcoal and bamboo charcoal for now. We'll also need to prepare more firesticks. Tomorrow when we go to the volcano, we'll look around the vicinity for clay and mine for rocks to prepare for entering the Iron Age."

Tang Xiaoguo said, "Why not start smelting today? I want to make a vegetable knife!"

"It's not that easy."

Lu Zhe pondered: "To make simple pottery we just need charcoal and a kiln, but to melt iron ore, we need the furnace temperature to reach over 1200 degrees. In addition to high quality charcoal we'll also need a bellows!"

Tang Xiaoguo took out a pneumatic water gun: "Can we use this?"