My third uncle spent ten years in prison. After he was released, he locked himself in the old house and drew maps for three years. He died that night after he finished drawing. I took out the notebook from under his bed and discovered that what he drew was not a map at all, but an entire ancient Miao city that had been submerged in the earth under the Shiwan Mountains in western Hunan. But when I turned to the last page of his notes, I found that he had traced the same sentence three times with red pen: "Don't open the bronze door, something is waiting inside."
