Heavenly Secret

the end of the tunnel

Sun Zichu finally breathed a sigh of relief, and the sickle in his hand fell to the ground. Applause erupted from the tour bus—everyone was cheering for their bravery.

Ye Xiao and the photographer patted each other on the shoulder. In truth, their backs were soaked with cold sweat. Ye Xiao turned to the passengers and gave a stern reminder:

“We’re going ahead to scout the road. "Don’t leave the bus under any circumstances until we return!”

With that, the three men gripped their makeshift weapons and trudged into the downpour, heading toward the winding mountain road.

The photographer gave Ye Xiao a pat on the chest. “Is that wound serious?”

“It’s just a scratch—nothing serious.”

Getting injured was routine for a police officer, and Ye Xiao didn’t think much of it. He was more curious about this long-haired photographer. “Thanks, by the way.”

“What for?”

“The axe. You saved my life back there. If not for you, I’d be a corpse without eyes by now.”

The photographer laughed coolly. “Pfft, nothing worth thanking me for.”

“I’m Ye Xiao. What’s your name?”

“Alright, brother. I’m Qian Mozheng. I roam around the world, snapping photos to scrape by.”

“Qian Mozheng?” Sun Zichu finally couldn’t help chiming in. “As in, ‘don’t fight for money’? That’s a great name.”

The three men joked and laughed as they walked several hundred meters ahead. After turning a few bends in the winding mountain road, they were suddenly faced with a massive obstruction—a mountain of stones and mud piled like construction debris across the path. Streams of water from the rain ran down the mess, and rocks continued to tumble from the slopes above.

They stared in stunned silence. Was this the aftermath of a wartime bombing—or nature’s unrelenting fury?

“A landslide!”

Qian Mozheng shouted. He’d traveled all over the world and had seen such disasters before. Heavy rains in mountainous regions could easily trigger flash floods and landslides. The road is now completely buried. No vehicle could possibly get through, and with the terrain this unstable, a second landslide could happen at any time.

Man proposes, but heaven disposes.

They shook their heads in despair and had no choice but to return the way they came.

When they got back to the bus, the driver was inspecting the damaged vehicle in a raincoat. The passengers inside looked on with hopeful eyes, expecting some good news—but Ye Xiao gave it to them straight.

The road ahead was gone.

The announcement crushed any remaining hope. It felt like they had fallen straight back into the eighteenth level of hell.

Were they really going to be trapped here today?

“Everyone, don’t panic!” Ye Xiao stood among them and called out, “At least there’s no war out there! We’ll find a way out of this.”

Just then, the sound of an engine roared to life. The driver leapt back onto the bus, shouting excitedly, “The vehicle’s fixed!”

A cheer broke out once more. It was like a miracle in the midst of despair. Everyone was eager to go home—the only option now was to head back to Chiang Mai.

The driver quickly backed the bus out of its position. The windshield still bore a long, jagged c***k. On the narrow, rain-slicked mountain road, he carefully turned the vehicle around, then sped off toward Chiang Mai.

The group finally let out a collective sigh of relief.

Today’s journey had been perilously close to death. They hadn’t even caught a glimpse of the Lanna Royal Tomb, and they had almost become its sacrificial offerings instead. Exhausted, most of them closed their eyes and dozed off. Only Ye Xiao remained alert, staring out the window.

The T-shirt over his chest had been torn by Shanxiu’s iron claws. The wound was shallow, barely noticeable now, the blood already scabbed over—but just half an inch deeper, and it might have been fatal.

Only now did Ye Xiao begin to feel the fear settle in. It was as if invisible walls had risen around him, trapping him inside. Maybe this journey to faraway Thailand hadn’t been a vacation at all—maybe it was more like an exile, a punishment, banishing him to the ends of the earth like criminals in ancient times.

He tried to keep his eyes open and watch the road, but his eyelids grew heavier and heavier.

A chill crept up from beneath his seat.

Something inside him struggled violently.

His consciousness began slipping into the darkness.

Into another world of darkness…

It felt as if he had slept for an entire lifetime before Ye Xiao suddenly awoke from a dream.

The bus jolted violently, waking everyone on board. Ye Xiao instinctively grabbed the armrest, his forehead drenched with cold sweat. Outside the window, the rain still poured endlessly. The cliff's edge had long vanished from sight. On either side stretched deep ravines, a swollen stream roaring beside the winding mountain road.

He stared blankly for a few seconds, then suddenly leapt to his feet.

“This isn’t the same road we came on!”

Indeed, on their way over earlier that afternoon, he had made a point of observing the roadside landmarks—but none of them matched what he was seeing now. This ravine, this rushing stream—completely unfamiliar. The bus wasn’t retracing its original route.

Where was the driver taking them?

Others began to sense that something was wrong too. Panic erupted.

Ye Xiao rushed to the front of the bus and asked the driver, “Where exactly are we headed?”

“I’m sorry,” the driver said, finally bringing the vehicle to a halt. His face was filled with despair and guilt. “I don’t know.”

“What?!” A young man with a DV camera, just waking from sleep, exclaimed in alarm. “You don’t know?!”

“I… I was following the road back, just like before…” the driver stammered in broken Chinese. But after a while, it started to feel… off. Like it wasn’t the same route anymore. But I can’t remember… where it went wrong.”

Tour guide Xiao Fang had just awoken from a short nap and asked anxiously, “Could you have taken the wrong fork somewhere?”

“I can’t remember… Maybe the rain made it hard to see. Or maybe… maybe we’ve all been cursed or something…”

“Cursed?!” Xiao Fang snapped. “What nonsense!”

Ye Xiao shook his head. “Forget it. Losing our tempers won’t help. Let’s just let the driver focus on the road. If he panics and makes another mistake, we’re all done for.”

He turned to Yuling, hoping for clarity, but she shook her head. “I’m sorry, I wasn’t watching either. This is strange… I grew up in this region, but I’ve never heard of a ravine like this.”

Yuling spoke to the driver in Thai, trying to calm him. She suggested turning back—but the road was far too narrow for the long tourist bus to make a U-turn. Reversing all the way back wasn’t realistic either. In the end, they decided to keep driving forward, hoping to find a clearing up ahead where they could turn around.

Ye Xiao checked his phone—still no signal.

Despair crept across everyone’s faces. They had just escaped one danger, only to plunge into another.

The bus continued winding its way through the gorge. Ye Xiao stuck his head out the window and looked up. The cliffs on either side rose like walls carved by a blade, at least fifty or sixty meters high—towering stone barricades with a narrow trail running between them. Above, a sliver of sky formed a true “Thread of Heaven.” Rain poured through the c***k like silver needles, soaking everything below.

The driver drove forward in a daze. In this deep canyon, it was impossible to tell north from south, east from west. Only one road stretched ahead—leading to who knew where.

After more than ten minutes of jolting through the narrow gorge, the winding path curved sharply again and again. The driver kept spinning the wheel, with no place to turn around.

Tension in the bus mounted. The man with the sunglasses was the first to cry out, “Where the hell are we going?! When will we get back to Chiang Mai? This ‘Exorcism Festival’ is a joke—they didn’t banish the demons, they put them on our bus! No wonder the villagers were so grateful!”

“Alright, give it a rest!” a girl with a clear Taiwanese accent snapped. So annoying! Just let the driver concentrate.”

The bottom of the desolate gorge echoed like the body of a string instrument. Rain sounds rebounded endlessly, deafening in their intensity. From time to time, a beast-like howl accompanied the downpour. Just as everyone was slipping into despair—the gorge ended.

Before them rose a cliff that touched the clouds.

A dead end.

The canyon was like a long, narrow sack—or a human appendix. It had no outlet. The end had long been sealed shut.

The driver hit the brakes.

Everyone stared in stunned silence. At the base of the cliff hung thick vines, trailing dozens of meters like a woman’s hair brushing the ground. Nearby, a waterfall cascaded down—the source of the roaring stream through the gorge.

So this was the legendary “road to nowhere”?

Ye Xiao pounded his fists in frustration, while the driver slumped over the wheel, utterly defeated. Chaos erupted on the bus. Panic reigned like a routed army backed into a corner, enemies closing in.

Ye Xiao told Xiao Fang to open the door. He jumped out into the rain alone.

The waterfall crashed around him like a thousand charging horses. He examined the ground—it was covered with gravel and wild grass, but he could still see the blacktop and faded white lines beneath. This was a man-made road. But why build one that led into a dead-end canyon with no exit?

No—it couldn’t be a true dead end.

Ye Xiao walked to the front of the bus and looked up. Rain blinded his eyes, the gloom of the canyon making the sliver of sky above dizzying. The “Thread of Heaven” had closed.

An impassable cliff even apes and birds would struggle to cross.

Then he spotted something: the vines. Something behind them.

Ye Xiao reached out to touch the vines. They weren’t as thick or tough as he’d imagined—more like fresh growth. Gently, he pushed them aside. To his shock, the space behind was hollow.

There was a tunnel hidden behind the vines.

Overjoyed, Ye Xiao raced back to the bus and told the driver to drive forward. Xiao Fang thought he’d gone mad—was he going to crash the bus into a cliff?

After a chaotic explanation, the driver cautiously pressed the gas. As they approached the vine curtain, everyone held their breath.

Finally—the windshield brushed the vines. The green leaves parted like a waterfall—and revealed not cold rock, but a void of shadow.

The driver switched on the high beams, illuminating a dark, seemingly endless tunnel. The vines slipped past the windows like fingers brushing along the bus, until the entire vehicle disappeared into the black.

At the very back of the bus, the former doctor caring for the injured foreigner glanced behind her. The vines closed again like a massive curtain. They had stepped onto a vast, empty stage.

Tunnel travel. Everyone stared straight ahead.

It was a two-lane tunnel, arched like a massive ribcage, the road beneath perfectly smooth—like a high-grade expressway deep in the mountains.

Some thought of train tunnels suddenly submerged in darkness, with only the clack of wheels and the wait for the light at the end.

There was also the sound of dripping water, drowned out by the bus engine. No lights inside—only the bus’s own headlights lit the way, barely stretching ten meters ahead. The driver had to creep forward at under 20 km/h.

Ye Xiao glanced at his watch. They had entered the tunnel at 4:30 PM. Now it was 4:45. Still no exit in sight. The tunnel had already stretched for kilometers—longer than the ones beneath the Huangpu River.

What lay above them?

What was on the other hand?

Suddenly, white lights flashed past the windows. On the pitch-black walls, they seemed to float, flickering eerily.

Everyone jumped.

Those lights looked like eyes—or eternal lamps burning in the dark. Sun Zichu recalled the ghost flames seen in ancient tombs.

“Those are spirits of the dead, aren’t they?”

A girl’s whisper sparked a chorus of screams.

Ye Xiao calmly patted the driver. “Don’t stop. Keep going.”

The ghost lights faded.

But the tunnel went on and on, winding ahead through the dark.

Ye Xiao felt a strange sensation—as if they were returning to the womb.

Yes. At the start of every life, we all travel through a dark, narrow tunnel. The amniotic fluid bursts. A mother strains to breathe. The child opens its eyes and struggles through the birth canal.

If the end of this tunnel wasn’t hell, then maybe it was a rebirth.

The end!

They could see the light at the end!