The Lost Tomb : Tibetan Sea Flower

Chapter 16: Guardian

According to the general description, there must have been a very fierce chase or fight afterwards, but Little Brother was only describing one thing, so he didn't write the middle process at all. I don't know what the details are, so if I make it up, it won't conform with the facts at all. Since I chose to look at these accounts rationally from the beginning, I must also use a rational method to link them up here.

After perusing the records, I can probably guess the situation at that time, because I'm too familiar with what Little Brother would do.

Initially, Laba was alive when he was rescued. But afterwards, his mind became slightly abnormal, so I can no longer describe it from his perspective.

What is certain is that first, Little Brother didn't see the thing under the snow at that time. Laba was the only one who saw it, but he was delirious after being rescued. The thing under the snow must have greatly frightened him.

Second, Little Brother must have saved Laba in three minutes. Although being buried in snow was better than drowning, three minutes was still the limit. If Little Brother failed this time, Laba would certainly die.

So I'm almost certain that this is probably the case.

Although Little Brother didn't catch Laba when the thing suddenly pulled him into the snow, he must have plunged his hand into the snow several times during the next few minutes.

I've seen his speed. He can use his fingers to hold extremely fast aquatic insects in the water, so the process must have been very fast.

His fingers caught somewhere on Laba's body in the snow— maybe a belt or a collar— and because Little Brother had great strength, he could lift people out of the snow even if it was just with two fingers.

At the same time, I believed that they must have been by a rock, and Little Brother's other hand must have caught the rock's edge; otherwise, he would have probably been dragged into the snow as well.

The question was, how did Laba see what was in the snow?

I wasn't at the scene— and Little Brother didn't record it— so I could only make one guess: that is, when Laba was dragged out, that thing was pulled along. But Little Brother didn't see this thing for some reason, and only Laba saw it.

When I excerpted this paragraph, I had a discussion with Chen Xuehan and Old Lama which was very interesting.

Little Brother came out of the snowy mountain, met Old Lama, found the body of Deren Lama, and began to slowly recall what had happened during the past ten years. Since it was a gradual recollection and the process was difficult, things weren't completely described, so Little Brother told Old Lama that in addition to recording these things, he needed to ask him some questions.

After hearing the questions, Old lama found that he couldn't answer them with his wisdom, so he led Little Brother to see a teacher [1] who had high cultivation in the temple. At that time, the teacher arranged another lama from the temple to go to the other temples at the foot of the mountain to invite various teachers, hoping that their wisdom could answer these questions.

These questions, including those strange stories Little Brother mentioned, as well as some strange experiences, were all recorded.

I'll talk about this information later, but for now, let's talk about their discussions. Only then will we talk about what might have been in the snow.

Based on my experience at that time, I asked Old Lama if he knew of any Tibetan folklore that mentioned such a thing that could move under the snow. According to the information we found on the internet, such things usually led to legends of the Himalayan snowman. If you were more professional, however, you could call it a "snow ape", which goes more along the lines of a common magical novel. But often, what you really hear from the local people is very unexpected.

Almost instantly, Old Lama said that that kind of thing was a brown bear, which sometimes hunts in snow nests.

I wanted to object immediately because it was absolutely impossible. Altitude wasn't a problem since brown bears could live at an altitude of five or six thousand kilometers, but the place where Little Brother and the others were in distress was almost completely covered in snow and showed no signs of life. How could a brown bear survive in this area? Maybe it had a chance to get food for once in its life.

Then again, if it was really a brown bear, who was hunting whom?

The biggest problem was that I was sure Little Brother wasn't likely to make mistakes. The Tibetan was waving, but why would he wave to a brown bear?

Did it mean "Hey, watch your paws" or something? Was this man an idiot?

Chen Xuehan said that maybe the Tibetan wanted to remind Little Brother not to stay in that place, since it was dangerous?

It was possible, I thought. At that time, Old Lama told me not to doubt that it must have been a big brown bear because he knew that people used to feed bears to guard Tibetan temples. Brown bears are very clever animals and can recognize who to protect and who is a stranger. He also heard that a lama once used food scraps to feed a brown bear living near the temple in a year when food was scarce. Later, when the British invaded Tibet, several troops were attacked by the brown bear when they raided the temple.

Brown bears are fierce and terrible. The largest brown bear seen in Hoh Xil was like a sumo wrestler who stood taller than Yao Ming, at a height of 2.5 meters. It was conceivable that the British must have been smacked dead and dragged into the woods in an instant.

Later accounts also proved that Old Lama's statement was very likely, and this brown bear may have been raised by those Tibetans by the lake for protection.

It may even be a habit of breeders to wave at brown bears. But the brown bear found the intruders, so instead of going to the Tibetans, it chose to attack the intruders instead.

In this case, it was not easy for Little Brother to save Laba from a brown bear.

These were only our initial speculations, and we didn't really know what it was until the later part of the story, but without any shadow of a doubt, we kept thinking it was a brown bear the entire time.

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Note:

[1] Character is 师 , pinyin is "shi" which means teacher/master/expert. Some translation sites use "guru" but that's from Sanskrit (Indian) and since we're in Tibet, and they're Buddhists who teach the Dharma, I thought "teacher" was more appropriate.