The setting sun gradually sank in the west, with only a small portion of the sun still peeking out from behind the clouds. The entire ice surface had slowly turned black, and the huge shadow within was indistinct. The shape of the shadow was very strange, bizarre and uncanny, resembling the frozen remains of some animal fetus, with an unusually large head and long spines all over its body, making one feel uneasy just by looking at it.

Ye Cheng opened his mouth wide and asked me, “What the hell is this? We didn’t pay our respects to the Buddha, and now we’re running into this kind of ghostly thing?”

The胖子 and I shook our heads; we had never seen anything like it either. Judging by its size, this thing was as big as a five-story building, frozen deep within the glacier. If it were a burial artifact, how on earth did it get in there? Or could it be the remains of some ancient creature?

Legend has it that the Changbai Mountain area was once a vast ocean hundreds of thousands of years ago, and it only rose from the sea due to volcanic eruptions. Could this massive thing be the remains of a giant marine creature from that time?

But that doesn’t seem right either; the mountains had already formed by the time the ancient glaciers came into being, and any remains would have long since turned to fossil.

Although we had just experienced a thrilling avalanche, to be honest, this avalanche could only be described as a snow slide; it didn’t have the force of a thunderous impact. It was fast, and while we were still a bit shaken, we had all recovered by now. The sight of the shadow in the ice piqued our curiosity.

We used ice picks to create footholds on the glacier, secured ropes, put on ice skates, and descended to the surface of the glacier to take a closer look at the bizarre black shadow frozen inside. However, no matter how hard we tried, we couldn’t make sense of it.

At that moment, Chen Pi Ah Si also regained consciousness. Huashan and Ye Cheng helped him down from above, and we carefully assisted him to the front. Chen Pi Ah Si was still slow to react; after rubbing his eyes and squatting down, he stared at the shadow in the ice for a long time before suddenly exclaiming, “Could this shadow… be a ‘Kunlun fetus’?” He then shook his head again.

“What is a ‘Kunlun fetus’?” None of us had ever heard of it, and seeing him so agitated was completely baffling.

“‘Kunlun胎’ is a strange natural phenomenon. It refers to the source of the dragon vein, which is commonly described as the place where the spiritual energy of heaven and earth converges. Often, within rocks, glaciers, and trees, some peculiar baby-like forms are spontaneously nurtured, which ancient texts refer to as ‘earth-born胎’. Legend has it that after thousands of years of evolution, some ‘earth-born胎’ can become sentient, like Sun Wukong from ‘Journey to the West,’ explained Monk Hua. ‘I remember reading about it in a Tang Dynasty notebook. In the late Western Han Dynasty, it was said that under a giant ice pit in Kunlun Mountain, local Tibetan people discovered a giant ice胎, as large as a mountain bowl, with already formed facial features, and it was a lifelike baby girl. Hence, ‘earth-born胎’ was called ‘Kunlun胎’, and later a temple was built at the baby girl’s navel, named the Kunlun Boy Temple. In feng shui, ‘Kunlun胎’ is a treasure spot determined by heaven, which differs from human-deduced feng shui locations. It is impossible to find a place along a dragon vein where ‘Kunlun胎’ could form; it can only be discovered by chance when ‘Kunlun胎’ begins to take shape, then excavated, and a tomb built around it. Such a treasure spot is something one can encounter but cannot seek. It is said that only those with extraordinary insight are qualified. The only historical record of a person buried in a ‘Kunlun胎’ location is that of the Yellow Emperor.’

‘Is there really such a bizarre thing?’ the Fatty squatted down, looking at the shadow. ‘However, this ‘Kunlun胎’ is not a human胎.’

Chen Pi A Si also seemed unsure and nodded, saying, ‘I speculate that ‘Kunlun胎’ is a divine fixed胎 position, a godly creation of the earth. If this is a ‘Kunlun胎’, then the accompanying tomb must be built within the ‘Kunlun胎’ location. However, if that’s the case…’ He gazed at the distant Three Saints Snow Mountain, his eyes filled with extreme confusion.

I understood his concerns and responded, ‘This is the naturally formed treasure spot ‘Kunlun胎 position’. But this is just an accompanying tomb; then what level of feng shui would the main tomb of the Cloud Top Heavenly Palace located in the Three Saints Mountain need to have to be considered complete? It can’t be worse than ‘Kunlun胎’, no matter what.’

‘Indeed, there is no better feng shui than ‘Kunlun胎’. ‘Kunlun胎’ is the place where the spiritual energy of the earth converges. If it were to be better than here, there would only be one possibility.’ Chen Pi A Si looked puzzled and sighed, ‘The Heavenly Palace is truly built in the heavens!’

Chen Pi A Si’s expression when he said this was very sincere; I could tell he wasn’t joking, and it sent chills down my spine. The Fatty said, ‘How could that be possible!’

‘It’s impossible, so the appearance of ‘Kunlun胎’ here definitely raises questions. Could it be that the trends of the mountains and rivers have changed, and Wang Cang Hai has reached such a level of supernatural ability?’ Chen Pi A Si looked around at the surrounding mountains.

‘No, we shouldn’t think that way.’ Suddenly, I had an idea and asked, ‘What if the shadow of this胎形 is fake? Artificially created? A symbolic technique that is quite common in ancient tomb designs. For example, the shape of Wu Zetian’s city looks like a woman’s genitalia; perhaps this shadow is just the shadow of the accompanying tomb.'”

I naturally have such thoughts because we work with antiques, and our usual job is to struggle against fake items. When we are sourcing, everything we encounter initially feels fake, so when I heard Chen Pi Ah Si speak so confidently, my first impression was: could it be a forgery? This could be considered a professional habit.

Moreover, freezing the entrance of the tomb in the ground and shaping it like a fetus indeed aligns with Wang Cang Hai’s character of being unperturbed and relentless.

Chen Pi Ah Si was focused entirely on the surrounding mountains and didn’t hear what I said. I turned to look at Men You Ping, who also had a puzzled expression, staring at the shadow with a complex look, and didn’t say a word. However, Master Hua agreed with my statement (it seemed he should also be someone from the frontline of sourcing, sharing the same professional habit as me). He said, “What you said is possible. Looking at the ‘fetal shadow,’ there are clearly subtle differences; it’s evidently not a simple thing. It seems to have variations in height, and there are spikes around it, which makes it hard to explain what it is. It might really be a structure.”

A peculiar feeling arose in my heart. Wang Cang Hai had shaped the tomb like a fetus; could it be that he hoped this tomb would become something extraordinary like the ‘Kunlun fetus’?

If this were true, it would be truly unbelievable.

The Fatty said, “Let’s not guess anymore. Anyway, if we don’t dig it out, all our guesses are just guesses. Instead of wasting time on that, we might as well think of a way to go down.”

“What if we dig down and find not a burial tomb, but a real giant ice—” Ye Cheng looked a bit scared. His teeth chattered, “What should we do then?”

The Fatty patted him on the back, “Then you stay up here. We’ll go down to confirm, and then call you down.”

I added, “If it really is an ice fetus, that would be a miraculous sight; even just seeing it would be worth it.”

Master Hua patted Ye Cheng and said, “You’re so timid; learn from these big brothers… The current issue is not whether to go down but how to get down.” He estimated the thickness of the ice and said, “Using a pickaxe, it might take half a month to dig down there.”

We’re not ice workers; working on ice is completely different from working on solid ground. We have to consider many factors, and even if we’re usually skilled, it doesn’t apply here.

The Fatty stared at the huge shadow in the glacier beneath us and waved his hand at us, saying, “What’s so difficult about this? Just leave it to me, Fatty.”

I noticed he seemed to have some ideas, and I was curious. The Fatty has always played the role of the vanguard in the team and rarely expressed opinions on technical matters, but whenever he does, his input is crucial, indicating that he actually has a very meticulous mind. I had already deeply felt this at the seabed; this might also be one of the qualities that allow him to repeatedly turn danger into safety despite his greed for wealth. However, speaking to the Fatty requires skill; he is the kind of person who doesn’t respond well to either soft or hard approaches. Most of the time, provoking him is much more effective than flattering him. So I asked him, “What ideas do you have?”

He indeed looked a bit displeased and said to me, “What do you mean? Is it only you, a college student, who can have ideas? I’ve been to Kunlun Mountain; there’s plenty of ice there, and glaciers thicker than this. My experience is richer than yours.”

I laughed and said, “Then let’s hear what you have to say.”

The fat man hummed as he shared with us the stories he had heard from his guide, many of which were about ice. The altitude of the Kunlun Mountains is much higher than here; it is a true high-altitude glacier. Large ice crevasses there frequently crack due to temperature changes and mountain movements, and sometimes ancient, strange human remains are discovered within these cracks. There have even been instances where houses frozen deep in the glaciers were found, but these structures were all collapsed, merely remnants.

He asked at the time why these ancient relics couldn’t be preserved in such a cold environment, and the guide replied that it was impossible to freeze an entire building intact in ice, especially wooden structures. When faced with an icefall or avalanche, they would certainly collapse first.

The buildings in the glacier beneath our feet must have been constructed on cliffs; the shadows within appeared so intact, resembling a baby, indicating that there were no signs of collapse below. Otherwise, such elevated structures would be completely unrecognizable if they fell. Therefore, unless the structures in the glacier are not burial tombs but rather stone, it stands to reason that if these burial tombs are frozen in ice, it must not have been due to an avalanche but rather human intervention.

The fat man’s reasoning was quite compelling, and I nodded in agreement. However, the others did not grasp the significance of his hypothesis, and Panzi asked him, “So what?”

The fat man waved his hand and said, “If it wasn’t an avalanche, then the construction of the tombs dates back over nine hundred years. Logically, the accumulation of snow and ice over nine hundred years could not possibly be this thick, so this ice must have been man-made. What we are standing on is definitely a very thick artificial ice wall. This ice wall cannot be directly pressing down on the building; it must have a curvature, forming a natural ice dome that rests on a slope, protecting the structures below. It’s similar to an ice burial mound. The ice is not as thick as we imagine; look, the transparency of the ice here is also evidence.”

Upon hearing the fat man’s words, the crowd was in an uproar, each person looking at him with newfound respect, while at the same time, they suddenly felt the ground beneath them was much less stable.

The fat man was still mindful of how I had looked down on him earlier, and knowing that I studied architecture, he asked me if what he said was possible.

I nodded and said that, theoretically, it was plausible and feasible. Using ice to construct buildings has existed for a long time. During the Three Kingdoms period, Cao Cao’s “One Night City” was built with ice and straw. The Eskimos have long used ice to build their homes, and recently, there seem to be modern ice structures appearing in Denmark, indicating that the hardness of ice is absolutely viable in architecture.

However, Cao Cao’s “One Night City” was built on flat ground; could such a magnificent ice dome really be constructed on a cliff? I had some reservations, after all, this was over a thousand years ago. Even if Wang Zanghai could surpass their era significantly, it shouldn’t be to that extent.

Upon hearing my agreement with his view, the fat man immediately became proud, tossing his hair and saying, “See, this is what I call talent.”

Ye Cheng then asked me, “Young Master Wu, can we calculate the possible thickness of this ice dome based on architectural principles?”

Most of what I learned in college has been returned to the teachers. However, I still know the weight of ice per unit volume. I calculated it in my mind, applied a few formulas, and came up with a number. I said to him, “If we assume, as the fat guy said, that we use a wooden support structure, then the thickness of the ice layer beneath our feet won’t exceed ten meters; otherwise, it would be too heavy and would collapse under its own weight, no matter what we use to support it.”

“Ten meters.” Several people exchanged glances, and Panzi said, “Damn, that’s quite a lot. The ice here is different from other places; it’s much harder, and we don’t have professional equipment. Just now, Langfeng and I hit the ice cone with shovels, and after a few hits, my hands went numb. We only made a few white marks. To break through ten meters, it might take some time; a week might not be enough.”

Gravitational ice is different from the ice on riverbeds, which is made from river water and contains impurities and a lot of air bubbles. The temperature of riverbed ice doesn’t get too low, but gravitational ice is formed by layers of snow compressed over millennia. It contains fewer impurities, and the ice beneath the snow layers can be as cold as minus fifty degrees. At this temperature and purity, the hardness and density of the ice are quite formidable.

The fat guy said, “Don’t we have explosives? Let’s just climb onto the rocks and drill a hole.”

Hua the monk and I immediately shook our heads. I thought about how I had almost died in the snow just now and said to him impatiently, “You really don’t learn from experience, do you? Haven’t you had enough of that taste yet? Moreover, if the glacier is hollow, even a small explosion could blow the entire ice dome apart—if your assumption is correct. We can’t consider methods that might cause too much destruction; if we hit a critical spot, we might not even be able to use an ice shovel, and if it goes wrong, it could lead to a chain reaction.”

The fat guy was quite averse to theoretical science and said, “You’re being dogmatic. If we can’t use an ice shovel, what should we do? Dig with a spoon? Don’t think just because you’re a college student, you can scare us with doomsday scenarios and create problems for us.”

I said I was just as anxious as he was, but facts are facts. If anyone didn’t believe it, they could try it for themselves.

Once one problem was resolved, another one arose, and the atmosphere became gloomy again. Everyone fell silent and began to think of solutions. Just as we were hesitating, suddenly, the muffled oil bottle walked over to us with a smokeless stove for making tea and placed it beside us. As soon as the hot stove touched the cold ice surface, it started reacting with a popping sound. He asked me, “Is this okay?”

I looked and thought, oh right, he’s got a point; I didn’t expect this method. Using fire could work!

The hardness of ice is directly related to temperature; as the temperature rises, the hardness decreases, and the surface of the ice wall begins to become brittle. The chain reaction caused by the ice shovel’s impact would weaken. We could take it step by step: first, we could soften the surface ice with heat, then knock off chunks, exposing the denser ice core underneath, and continue to heat it with the smokeless stove, repeating the process until we broke through.

Practice is the only criterion for testing truth, so we immediately conducted an experiment. We took out our smokeless stove, lit it, and placed it on the ice. After a minute, we used the shovel to scrape the ice. Sure enough, what the book said was correct; the high-temperature, brittle ice would crack apart in chunks.

However, due to the extremely low temperature around us, progress was very slow. We took turns trying until nearly three hours later, when it was almost completely dark, we finally managed to create a half-meter wide and seven or eight meters deep indentation in the wall. The color of the ice layer below changed noticeably, and the purity of the ice became much clearer. We could be sure that the fat guy’s claim was half right; this ice was definitely not naturally formed.

The fat guy was tied with a rope around his waist, his feet braced against both sides of the ice well. He finally used a smokeless stove to heat the ice surface at the bottom of the well, then struck it with a short-handled hammer, trying to break off another piece. Unexpectedly, with a ‘bang’, a crack appeared in the ice dome, and we suddenly felt the outside air rushing toward the hole, bringing a gust of wind that made the temperature drop significantly.

The fat guy struck again, shattering the ice block below. The broken ice fell down, and sure enough, a hole appeared, revealing an empty space below! Everyone breathed a sigh of relief. Even the fat guy was surprised and exclaimed, “I really guessed right!”

We pulled him up, and everyone gathered around the hole, eagerly picking up flashlights to shine inside.

Inside the ice well was a vast, grayish space. The entire ice dome resembled a transparent bowl perched on a steep cliff, with countless wooden beams covered in icicles rising from the cliff’s rock face, interweaving to form a scaffold-like structure that supported the outer “ice bowl.” These were the spikes on the fat guy’s body. Below the cliff, there was an abyss that was pitch black and seemingly bottomless.

About a hundred meters down the cliff’s slope, we saw the true form of the black胎影 (胎影 means “fetal shadow” or “fetal shape”). It was a gigantic胎形山洞 (胎形山洞 means “fetal-shaped cave”), and it was unclear whether it was man-made or naturally formed. The entrance was as large as a standard swimming pool, and at first glance, it looked like a massive black baby.

We were stunned, and several of us could hardly speak. The fat guy, with his keen eyes, grabbed my flashlight and pointed in one direction. “Look here!”

Under his guidance, we squinted and searched carefully, and then we saw that within the cave, there was actually a huge palace with protruding eaves and flying beams. Part of the structure extended out of the cave entrance, supported by wooden corridors on the cliff, resembling a suspended aerial pavilion, while most of the building was constructed inside the cave, making it impossible to see its full appearance.

Due to the long-term low temperatures, ice debris was everywhere, and the part of the building exposed at the entrance looked gray and unremarkable, so it was not easy to notice at first glance.

This was the spirit palace of the burial mound, also known as the Dragon Tower Treasure Hall frequently mentioned by the tomb raiders. The ‘tomb’ part of the burial mound was likely located beneath this spirit palace, within the mountain itself.

I couldn’t help but marvel, thinking that I had expected there to be only a concealed entrance to an underground palace, but I never imagined that the grandeur of the King of Ten Thousand Slaves would be so vast, with such a huge spirit palace built for the burial mound. If the Cloud-top Heavenly Palace had not been covered by heavy snow, what a spectacular sight it would have been! It was truly unimaginable; the wisdom of the ancients was indeed awe-inspiring.

The fat guy was the first to react; he burst out laughing, and soon everyone else joined in. We all high-fived in celebration, and when I bumped into the fat guy’s backside, I almost slipped off the ice.

Hua the monk hurriedly stopped us, pointing to the snow-covered cliff above, implying that we should be careful not to have another landslide; none of us would escape if it happened. We then managed to suppress the excitement in our hearts and quieted down, but several faces were still filled with barely contained joy.

Thinking back, even the greatest tomb raiders—how many could actually excavate a royal tomb of this caliber? If one could enter a royal tomb once and come out unscathed, they would no longer care about the treasures inside. Just the thrill of it would be enough; not to mention how many years one could boast about it. Their mindset would surely change. This kind of allure is irresistible. Even I, who had not yet considered myself a tomb raider, felt an overwhelming impulse rising within me, eager to descend and take a look below.

Hua the monk slapped his face, trying to relax himself, then turned to ask Chen Pi and Ah Si whether we should go down now or wait until tomorrow. Chen Pi and Ah Si cast a shadowy glance at us and asked, “If we wait until tomorrow, can you all hold back?”