The fat guy immediately raised his hand, “Me!”
“Me too!” Panzi also raised his hand.
Shunzi suddenly had an undeniable aura about him, and he waved his hand, “Anyone who has fired a gun stay! The rest run! Keep running forward! Absolutely do not look back!”
I looked around and counted—oh no, all our people stayed behind. What should I do? Following Chen Pi and A Si would mean certain death, so I hurriedly raised my hand, “I… I forgot, I fired too!”
Ye Cheng and the others were momentarily at a loss for how to react. At that moment, we heard the sound of tiles shattering from the roof of the hall, as if many things were crawling up to the roof. The number was unimaginable. A few people were shocked and didn’t know what was happening.
“We don’t have time, let’s go!” Shunzi shouted.
Chen Pi and A Si glanced at us, waved their hands, and said to Huasheng and the others, “Go!” With that, the three of them quickly ran out of the front hall.
I felt something was strange, but the situation left me no time to think. The sound of tiles breaking overhead grew louder. The fat guy tossed his bullet pouch to Panzi, both guns were loaded, and we formed a circle, asking Shunzi, “What exactly is up there? What should we do?”
Shunzi replied solemnly, “I don’t know.”
“Then why did you tell them to run?” Panzi asked, bewildered.
Shunzi said, “I just wanted to separate you from that old man. This isn’t my idea, it’s your third uncle’s order.”
Upon hearing this, we all turned to look at him, thinking, what? My third uncle ordered this? Panzi asked, “Who are you?”
“Don’t ask so much,” Shunzi said. “I’m taking you to see your third uncle. You can ask him then.”
I tensed up, wanting to ask: Is my third uncle also in this royal tomb? Suddenly, a series of shattering sounds came from above, and tiles began to rain down. We covered our heads and looked up. In the beam of the flashlight, countless shadows were moving, seemingly the same kind of things we had seen before.
Shunzi waved his hand, “As soon as your gunshots rang out, the sounds from the dead forest came from all directions, all converging here.”
“Then why don’t we run?” Panzi, hearing the overwhelming sounds of crawling around us, asked nervously, “Aren’t we just waiting to die here?”
“Wait until they move a little farther away.” Shunzi glanced back; it seemed Chen Pi and A Si had already run far. He turned to him and said, “Go!” With that, he patted us and took the lead, running toward the exit of the front hall, and we followed closely behind.
Outside the hall, we could see the derived hall of the Sacred Way. Ahead was a twenty-arch bridge made of Han white jade, with two unknown materials of coiling dragons hanging from it, winding around the railings on both sides. The jade was of excellent quality, without a single gap, as if it had been carved from a single piece. Below the bridge was the moat of the inner royal tomb, and I wondered if there was water underground.
We had only taken a few steps when a strong wind arose behind us. We all rolled to the side, and the fat guy fired a shot without a target. In the darkness, we heard a faint hiss, unsure of what he hit, but something fell into the abyss beneath the bridge.
A sense of restlessness filled the darkness, and I vaguely felt that whatever it was seemed able to fly, but no matter how wildly I swept the flashlight, I couldn’t catch a glimpse of anything.
We got up and continued to run forward, feeling a strange sensation above our heads, as if something was hovering close to our scalps. The fat guy was shooting at the sky while running, and soon we found ourselves on a bridge. Suddenly, I felt something hit my back, and I was thrown out. I quickly turned around to get up, still disoriented, when the fat guy swung his rifle butt right past my ear, and I felt something fall off my back.
Looking back, I saw a black shadow struggling to get up. Panzi raised his hand and shot it in half, then the fat guy fired a few rounds into the sky, the tracer bullets flashing by, with countless shadows swirling above us.
“What the hell are these things?” I gasped.
“There are too many; we can’t kill them all. How do we get out?” Panzi shouted, asking Shunzi. “Where the hell is Third Uncle? How do we get out?”
Ahead was the second hall of the Four Dragon Lou Temple, and there we would inevitably run into Chen Pi and Ah Si. To be honest, I felt a lot of psychological pressure being around them, and now that we had news of Third Uncle’s whereabouts, I was itching to find him and ask what was really going on.
“Your Third Uncle should be in the underground palace,” Shunzi said.
“Underground palace?” The fat guy hit something with his rifle butt again, not sure what he was hitting. “Great, damn it, that saves us trouble. Where’s the entrance to the underground palace?”
“I don’t know,” Shunzi replied.
All of us were momentarily stunned, looking at Shunzi, and from his expression, we could tell he wasn’t joking. The fat guy cursed, “You don’t know, yet you said you’d take us to see him? This royal tomb is so big, how are we supposed to find it?”
Generally speaking, the proper entrance to the underground palace is through the third Dragon Lou leading along the Sacred Way—inside the Hall of Heaven. However, it’s bound to be under the bronze cauldron, with more than seventy layers of blue bricks plus lead and iron armor waiting for us. It would take modern engineering teams at least ten days to dig through, but there must be a secret entrance to the underground palace, likely within the royal tomb’s structure, along the central axis. The entrance to Cixi’s underground palace is hidden in the shadow wall of the tomb palace, but in this situation, we had no time to dig a hole.
Shunzi remained very calm, crouching down and said to me, “Your Third Uncle said this is the ‘Xuanwu Refusal of Corpses’ place. He told me to convey this to you, and you would naturally understand where it is. Think if you have any impression of it.”
I found it strange; ‘Xuanwu Refusal of Corpses’ is a joking term referring to a place with the worst feng shui in the world, similar to the top-grade treasure site ‘Nine Dragons Coiling Flowers’ in feng shui theory. Such places are theoretical and don’t exist in reality. I asked, “Did he really say that? Did he say anything else?”
The burial text states: “The earth has four forces, and the qi comes from eight directions. Therefore, the left side is the Green Dragon, the right side is the White Tiger, the front is the Vermilion Bird, and the back is the Xuanwu. The Xuanwu bows its head, the Vermilion Bird soars, the Green Dragon winds, and the White Tiger crouches. If the shapes are reversed, the law should break the death. Hence, the tiger crouching is called ‘holding the corpse,’ the dragon resting is called ‘jealous of the master,’ the Xuanwu not bowing is ‘refusing the corpse,’ and the Vermilion Bird not soaring is ‘fleeing…’”
Shunzi looked around with his head lowered and said urgently, “That’s all. At that time, your Third Uncle seemed to be avoiding someone, so he was in a hurry. He arranged for me to meet you in the village, to take you into the mountains, and then just conveyed these few words.”
I was listening when I suddenly stopped in my tracks, feeling a sense of shock in my heart. If this really is the “Xuanwu Rejecting Corpses,” then being buried here, with descendants dying out, wives cheating, and anything else happening, would not be surprising at all. Wang Canghai and the Wan Nu Emperor had such a deep grudge? According to the old man Chen Pi, the feng shui here should be extremely good; how could it be “Xuanwu Rejecting Corpses”?
I instantly regretted not paying more attention to these things in the past. If I could have understood some of this when I first arrived, I would have grasped its meaning right away.
The Fatty also understood these matters, and in some respects, he knew even more than I did. At this moment, he was also puzzled and exclaimed, “Nonsense! It’s impossible. How could the royal tomb’s underground palace be a place of ‘Xuanwu Rejecting Corpses’?”
Panzi, while sweeping away the encroaching threats, turned back and said, “It’s not impossible. Feng shui matters to people; didn’t you hear that monk say it? The royal tomb isn’t buried with humans; perhaps these strange layout differences are related!”
I knew Panzi’s words were purely out of frustration. Given the weak national strength of the Dongxia Kingdom, constructing these buildings must have required all their strength and resources. Only Wan Nu Wang could have initiated such a massive project, and I didn’t believe that the last Wan Nu Wang had such authority. The construction of this royal tomb must have been intertwined with some religious elements; during that time, Wan Nu Wang was likely a religious idol, embodying both man and god.
The copper fish mentioned that the Wan Nu kings of all generations were monsters that came from the earth. I believed this shouldn’t be taken literally; the information on the copper fish likely held deeper meanings. What it specifically referred to might only be revealed by deciphering the two copper fish in my possession.
As we spoke, we had retreated to the end of the stone bridge. Beyond that was the square of the royal tomb. In the darkness, I could see two parallel stone tablets standing at the end of the bridge, each over ten meters tall, one of which was already broken, supported by a massive black tortoise beneath it. Not far behind the stone tablets was a towering, huge shadow.
I knew this was the “Royal Tomb Boundary Stele.” Beyond the stele should be the path to the “Rebirth Hall,” the gateway to the underworld. The “Royal Tomb Boundary Stele” could be said to be the true dividing line between the mortal realm and the underworld. Because beyond the “Royal Tomb Boundary Stele,” the guardians of the tomb could not enter. Since the moment the royal tomb was sealed hundreds of years ago, no one had stepped into the area beyond the boundary stele.
The moment I saw the stone tablets, I suddenly had a very ominous premonition, as if in that massive shadow ahead, in some corner of this silent inner city of the royal tomb, something was waiting for us.
Just then, the Fatty running in front suddenly stopped, spreading his arms to block us. When I went up to see, I realized that the end of the stone bridge had collapsed. Between the bridge and the opposite “Royal Tomb Boundary Stele,” there was a chasm about three meters wide, shrouded in a dark mist that seemed to contain water, though I couldn’t tell how deep it was.
“What should we do?” I looked at Panzi. Without a moment’s hesitation, Panzi raised his gun and said, “What else can we do? One by one, jump over! Hurry!”
As soon as I saw the distance, I couldn’t help but swallow. How far can those people at the Olympics jump? About eight meters? Three meters isn’t too far, but for someone like me who doesn’t exercise at all, it really is a bit difficult to jump over easily.
The fat guy next to me had already handed the gun to Shunzi, then stepped back a few paces. After a short run-up, he leaped forward, gliding through the air, and landed on the rocky ground on the other side. Shunzi tossed the gun back to him, then threw our gear over as well. After that, Shunzi also jumped over, and Panzi wanted to hold the rear for me, telling me to jump first. Looking at the abyss ahead, I braced myself and thought, “If I die, I die,” then shouted to the fat guy on the opposite side, “Pull me!”
The fat guy readily agreed. I stepped back a few paces, steadied myself, and suddenly accelerated. Unfortunately, just as I was about to jump, Panzi suddenly yelled from behind, “Wait—!”
At that moment, I couldn’t stop myself. I leaped high into the air, jumping toward the opposite bank, and instinctively glanced back to see why Panzi had called out to me.
When I looked back, I saw a huge black shadow diving down from my upper left. It grabbed the back of my collar in mid-air, its claws snagging my clothes and pulling me sideways. I lost control of my position in the air, and then the grip loosened, causing me to flip and fall into the abyss.
In an instant, my mind went blank, and I didn’t know what to do. Everything in front of me seemed to be in slow motion as I watched the fat guy rush over, leaping up to try to grab me in mid-air, but his hand just brushed past my collar. Then Panzi raised his gun and fired three quick shots, “Bang, bang, bang,” the bullets whizzing past, and then I fell into darkness as their flashlight beams vanished.
The descent was extremely fast. I spun a few times in the air, and a series of thoughts flashed through my mind: What’s below? It’s a moat. How deep is a typical moat? Is there water? Will I die from falling, or will I be reduced to a pile of bones in this sulfuric water?
Before I could think of answers to those questions, my back slammed into something resembling a chain. My whole body nearly snapped, and I was in so much pain that my vision blurred. Then my body twisted around the chain, and I fell further down. Before I could recover, I crashed into another chain. This time, due to the previous impact, it didn’t hurt as much. I reached out to grab something but caught nothing, continuing my descent.
This series of impacts left me dizzy, and I lost the curled-up position I should have taken while falling. Then I landed heavily on my back. I could hear the dull sound of all my bones cracking, and then a loud buzzing filled my ears, rendering me unable to hear anything.
