What lay before us resembled a staircase that stretched endlessly downward, each step luring us closer to an abyss. From the old tree at night came the eerie "ghost signals," remnants of a U.S. Air Force C-130 transport plane, and beneath it, a jade coffin. Inside the coffin was the corpse of an old man, alongside a skinned Teng python, its flesh sprouting red tendrils that reached the bottom of the coffin. The coffin's base, made of a special kind of paulownia wood, was like a thick, soft resin, allowing the red tendrils to pass through without leaking a drop of the liquid inside.
The large hole in the old banyan tree was filled with countless animal and human corpses, all entangled in the red blood vessels that had grown from the jade coffin. These vessels seemed to drain the blood from the bodies, channeling it back into the coffin. Thus, the liquid inside was a preservative formed through this process, keeping the corpse from decaying by sustaining it with fresh blood.
At the top of the tree hollow lay the bones of a pilot in a flight jacket, long turned to dust but still frozen in his final moment. One hand reached out from beneath the jade coffin—this was the same hand we had seen gripping the double-headed whistle. It appeared he had been pulled into the tree hole by the red tendrils, struggling until the end. His hand had just managed to grasp a branch beneath the coffin, but that was as far as he could go. As he reached out from the rotting wood, the bloodsucking tendrils had already invaded his mouth, nose, and ears...