This story was told by my uncle, who encountered it himself while serving in the army. It happened deep in the Qinling Mountains, in the early 1960s.
At the time, China was facing military pressure from both the United States and the Soviet Union, along with a severe economic blockade. In response, the government launched the massive "Third Front Construction" campaign, relocating key industries and research institutions into the remote mountains of the southwest and northwest, creating a strategic rear base hidden among rugged terrain.
That same year, Beijing dispatched a team of geological experts into the heart of the Qinling range to survey a potential railway route. A local military unit was assigned to escort them. According to the plan, the team should have emerged from the mountains within two weeks.
They never did.
In those days, there was no GPS, no satellite phones. Once a team entered the mountains, all contact with the outside world was lost. When weeks passed with no word, the military district began to worry that the scientists had run into bandits or remnants of Nationalist forces. An infantry company was immediately assembled, fully armed, and sent into the mountains to search for them. My uncle was one of the soldiers.
After seven or eight days of trekking through dense forest, guided only by maps, compasses, and field experience, they finally found traces of the missing expedition. Two days later, at dusk, the unit arrived at a vast mountain basin.
The basin was surrounded by thick forest and tall grass, shrouded in drifting mist. Scattered across the ground were bits of camp equipment and cold ashes. It was obvious this had been the geologists' final campsite.
The company commander ordered the unit to set up camp on a small rise overlooking the basin, tightening security and waiting until daylight to investigate further.
That night, the mountains were unnaturally quiet. Not even insects could be heard.
Sometime after midnight, my uncle was jolted awake by a deep, resonant sound—something like a drawn-out moo. It sounded like a cow, yet not quite, as if the noise were coming from deep underground, carrying a vibration that made his scalp prickle as it echoed through the valley.
Then came another sound: thud… thud…—a heavy, rolling rumble, as if something enormous were slowly crawling across the ground. With each movement, the earth trembled faintly.
The soldiers all woke at once, grabbing their rifles and staring toward the basin. The moon was bright that night, and through the thin mist they could make out a massive opening in the basin—a black hole in the earth, like a gaping mouth.
Then something began to emerge.
A creature slowly raised its head from the darkness. It had the head of an enormous ox—but only a single eye. Below the neck, its body was serpentine, covered in dark brown scales, thick and powerful, as wide as a railway carriage. It writhed across the ground, its scales scraping against stone and soil with a dry, whispering hiss.
The creature lifted its head toward the moon and let out a long, thunderous bellow. It sounded like a cow's call, magnified dozens of times over, so loud it made their ears ache.
Instinctively, fingers tightened on triggers—but no one fired. No one knew what would happen if they did.
After several minutes, the creature exhaled a cloud of white mist, roared a few more times, and slowly withdrew back into the cavern. The basin fell silent again, as if nothing had ever moved there at all.
The soldiers held their positions until dawn. No one slept.
At first light, the commander led the unit cautiously toward the cave. The entrance was enormous—over ten meters high and wide, large enough for a locomotive to pass through. The rock around it was worn smooth, as if something massive had brushed against it again and again over many years.
The air reeked of a sharp, nauseating stench.
Nearby lay shattered instrument cases, crushed canteens, spent shell casings—and several Type 54 submachine guns twisted out of shape, their metal scarred and gouged, as if mangled by overwhelming force.
The commander, a veteran of the war against Japan, crouched down and rubbed the soil between his fingers. His voice was low when he spoke.
"They fought something here."
A young soldier couldn't help asking, "Sir… was what we saw last night the same thing?"
The commander didn't answer immediately. He looked toward the pitch-black cave entrance, then slowly shook his head.
"I don't know what it is," he said at last. "But it's not something we can deal with. We don't have heavy weapons. Going in would be suicide."
He ordered the entrance marked and the unit withdrew the same day.
When they returned to headquarters, the incident was reported and immediately classified. Officially, the geological team was said to have been killed in a landslide. No further details were released.
Later, rumors circulated that Beijing had sent in another unit—better equipped, carrying specialized gear—deep into the mountains. What became of that operation, no one ever learned. All anyone knew was that the area was designated a military restricted zone, and strictly off-limits to civilians.
Many years later, my uncle would still say that the creature he saw—the ox-headed, serpent-bodied thing—was the nightmare that haunted him for the rest of his life.
By chance, I once came across a passage in The Classic of Mountains and Seas, in the section known as The Eastern Mountains:
"There is a beast whose form resembles an ox with a white head, a single eye, and the tail of a serpent. Its name is Fei. When it appears, great pestilence spreads across the land."
The text goes on to say that wherever Fei walks, vegetation withers, livestock die, and calamity follows.
How many secrets still lie hidden in the depths of the Qinling Mountains is something no one can truly say.
PS: This story stands alone. No prior or subsequent reading is required.