The Linggong Hall is the main part of the entire tomb complex, and it is the largest structure. Upon entering, the first thing that catches the eye is the large stone pillars flanking the central Lingdao, each about five meters tall. I recalled the scene in the shadowy painting where they used “flying scissors” to suspend the coffin; it must be that everything here was hoisted up bit by bit from what we now consider the most improbable cliffs.

In the darkness between the stone pillars, one could vaguely see large black lanterns, and beyond that was a pitch-black expanse. For some reason, when I shone my flashlight there, there was no reflection at all, as if it were a void, and I couldn’t see any burial items.

The fat man struck a match, wanting to try to ignite the lanterns. I told him not to, explaining that this building still stood and had not collapsed, and the low temperature here was a significant factor. If we lit a lot of lanterns, it could melt the ice crystals on the ceiling and potentially cause a small collapse, so it was better not to.

We could only rely on our flashlights to move forward in the darkness, affecting the environment. Everyone was silent, seemingly afraid of waking something in this Linggong. The stillness around us was eerie, with only the echoes of our footsteps and the heavy breathing of those around us filling the air.

Ye Cheng, the least experienced among us, couldn’t help but say after a few steps, “It’s so damn quiet; why does it feel so chilling? The less noise there is, the more anxious I get. Let’s talk; we shouldn’t act like thieves—”

Before he could finish, the muted oil bottle made a gesture for him to be quiet. The fat man whispered to Ye Cheng, “Don’t come up with stupid ideas. Aren’t we thieves? This guy’s ears are sharp; if you say something, we might trigger a trap without even knowing it. Can you handle that?”

Upon hearing that there might be traps, Ye Cheng quickly covered his mouth and nervously looked around, fearing that some hidden weapon might come flying at us.

Master Hua said, “There’s no need to be so nervous. This is a place for rituals. The Eastern Xia regime likely came here to perform sacrifices every year, so the chances of there being traps are slim. Besides, this place has been around for a while, so there’s no need to worry.”

“That’s nonsense,” the fat man replied, wanting to refute Master Hua.

I gave him a nudge to keep quiet, reminding him that he had just told others not to speak, yet he was going on and on himself.

Once the thick ice dome outside is sealed, it is very difficult to open it again. The walkway outside has long been burned, indicating that no one intended to return after sealing the Linggong. Master Hua must have considered this, but there was no need to add unnecessary panic in such matters.

We continued forward and, after about five minutes, arrived at the center of the Linggong Hall. Ahead was a jade platform surrounded by several large bronze statues with human heads and bird bodies. These statues were neither human nor Buddhist; they resembled twisted pillars covered in lichen, and no one could say for sure what they were. They looked extremely bizarre.

The fat man asked Master Hua, “What the hell is this? Aren’t there supposed to be seated statues of the tomb owner in the spirit hall? Is the tomb owner supposed to look like this? This… isn’t it just a giant leech?”

Master Hua replied, “This might be the ‘Eternal Heaven’ from Eastern Xia’s religion, which has been distorted… their main deity.”

“This god looks too ridiculous,” the fat man muttered. “What’s the difference between this and a laundry stick?”

I tapped the fat guy again to remind him to watch his words; we’re still on his turf, so he shouldn’t be afraid of immediate retribution. However, I know that this strange black totem is not the Longsheng Tian. Although I’m not familiar with shamans, I know that Longsheng Tian has no form; it represents an omnipresent, infinite power and is a form of cosmic worship. What the monk Hua said was either to mess with the fat guy or to cover up his own insecurity.

The environment here indeed gives off an inexplicable sense of tension. Aside from Chen Pi, Ah Si, and the sullen oil bottle, who still wear their usual sour faces, the others are showing varying degrees of unusual behavior.

But if the spirit hall doesn’t contain a shrine for worship, it should hold the seated statue of the tomb owner. Could it really be as the fat guy said, that the Eastern Xia royal family looked like this? Impossible! This—this doesn’t even resemble a human shape; it looks more like an evil god from Haitian voodoo. I once saw such figures at an exhibition in Shanghai; their gods looked like clumps of crispy rice, resembling giant soft-bodied creatures.

Suddenly, I recalled the records in the copper fish: the Eastern Xia royal family were all monsters dug out from the ground. Could this be that thing? No way, this can only be called a monstrosity. I believe the Eastern Xia people wouldn’t be so ridiculous as to recognize a piece of crispy rice as their emperor.

It would be great if I could see what was recorded in the other two copper fish. I thought to myself, that way I wouldn’t have to guess so hard. I wonder when I will have that opportunity.

While I was lost in thought, Panzi called out to us, “Look over here.”

We turned our heads and found that Panzi had climbed onto a bronze altar and was carefully holding something in the beak of a human-faced bird.

Panzi is also a troublemaker, and I nervously said, “Be careful of traps.”

Panzi nodded and cautiously held on. Soon, a gilded bronze monkey with a blue face and sharp fangs was revealed, its body carved with countless peculiar patterns, resembling a tattooed little demon.

We were all very curious, having never seen such a design before. Panzi jumped down and brought it to us, and several people gathered around to take a look. After examining it, we found that it was indeed made of bronze, but we couldn’t make sense of anything else about it.

In archaeology, this kind of situation is common. On one hand, tombs have strict regulations rooted in mysticism, and on the other hand, they are also personal matters for the tomb owner. Many tombs have unearthed inexplicable burial items; you can collect and organize the established items according to rules, getting closer to the facts, but personal items can only be guessed at. Many things have only appeared once in history, and aside from the unfortunate soul in the tomb, no one can know their true intent.

Monk Hua checked the other four bronze altars and found the same thing. He speculated that if this mallet were their main deity, then the surrounding figures should be the guardian beasts of the main god. This might be related to the highly localized myths and legends of the area; since we are not from that era, we can no longer understand the true situation. What puzzled him, however, was why it was made of bronze when the Ming Dynasty was already a highly developed iron age.

After checking around the totem without any discoveries, we moved further back into the darkness, not knowing how deep it went.

At this moment, I found it a bit strange that inside the Ling Palace, there were usually large sacrificial tripods and everlasting candles for offerings, as well as warm chambers, treasure beds, thrones, and divine altars. However, none of these were present, which was a bit odd. But the situation is more important than the form; the Eastern Xia Kingdom has always been hidden deep in the forests of Changbai Mountain, and I have no idea what their living conditions are like. Perhaps these items are simply not part of the Jurchen customs.

The fat guy was starting to get a bit restless. His purpose for coming here was to touch things. After running all this way, he hadn’t seen anything he could take with him, which made him quite frustrated. As he walked, he asked us if he could go behind those lamp slaves to see what was in the darkness behind them.

The silent oil bottle waved his hand at him, indicating that it wasn’t possible. He took out a glow stick, threw it in that direction, and a green light flashed past, falling into the darkness behind the lamp slaves. The green light disappeared instantly, as if it had been thrown into black cotton.

The fat guy looked astonished and quietly asked, “What’s going on?”

The silent oil bottle shook his head, indicating he didn’t know.

I said to him, “From the outside, the main hall doesn’t look this big, and our flashlight doesn’t reflect. The walls of the hall must have some light-absorbing paint. If you wander off alone, I guarantee you won’t come back. It’s better not to act rashly.”

The fat guy said, “Then you guys tie a rope around my waist. If I find something, it counts as your share, and I’ll give you a percentage… ten percent, how about that?”

I was most annoyed by the fat guy’s behavior and retorted angrily, “You want to go crazy while we’re all out? Don’t drag us down with you now.”

Panzi also said, “What the hell are you in such a hurry for? We’ve only just arrived. If you tie a rope on and go in, and we pull you out, all we’ll have left is a thigh! Are we supposed to go in to find you or not? Look at how united Chen Laoye’s team is; you need to get it together and not embarrass us!”

The fat guy sighed in disappointment, saying, “Fine, you guys are many, I can’t argue with you. I, Fat Master, will just obey the organization’s arrangements. Before we ascertain the enemy situation, I absolutely won’t betray the organization.”

“Even after we ascertain it, you’re not allowed to betray us. You’re already trying to fish for profit; what will you do if you get into the underground palace? How much can you carry?” I glared at him.

The fat guy raised his hand in surrender, grinning. I knew his temperament; it was useless to say anything now. I couldn’t do anything about him, so I had to remind myself to keep an eye on him to prevent him from causing trouble.

As we walked further in, we reached the end of the main hall, where there was a jade door made of four pieces of white Han marble. The door shaft was adorned with a glazed, coiled dragon, and the door frame was intricately carved with scenes of music and dance. The door featured two guardian boys, and similarly, there was no natural stone behind it. The door was sealed by a sentinel, and after we pried it open, we discovered that it led to a dark corridor leading to the back hall of the Ling Palace.

Upon seeing the two dragons on the door, the fat guy suddenly became energized, his eyes brightening. He said to us, “I’ve seen this kind of door at an auction. It’s called a coiled dragon axis glazed lock. A whole door sold for two hundred million, in Hong Kong dollars! Wow, this door doesn’t look too heavy…”

I knew what he was trying to incite, so I poured cold water on his enthusiasm, saying, “Save your energy; that’s just hype. In the current cash antique market, anything that exceeds twenty million is considered a sky-high price. This door is worth at most four hundred thousand.”

“Impossible,” the fat guy said in disbelief. “From 400,000 to 200 million? Is there such a ridiculous thing?” I thought to myself, the two copper fish in my pocket are worth 20 million, but who would actually buy them when it comes to selling? Everyone knows the auction house is all about waiting three years without a deal, and once it opens, you can eat for a lifetime. If a naive fool really spends 200 million on a door, their only job in the next life will be to spend money.

The fat guy’s worldview was instantly shattered. He stared at the door with a somewhat dazed expression. We ignored him and walked into the corridor toward the back hall.

The back hall is usually where the entrance to the underground tomb is located, typically featuring a decorative coffin with eternal longevity candles that never go out or a large pile of offerings that the tomb guardians replace regularly. In a small border country like Dongxia, which has been in a state of perpetual war, there probably wouldn’t be too many good things. However, the entrance to the underground tomb is generally set inside, so we had to check it out.

As we entered the corridor, the walls and ceiling were adorned with murals, covered by a layer of ice, giving them a grayish, frozen appearance. After having seen that double-layer mural through a crack, I had been very interested in such descriptive things, so I turned on my flashlight to take a closer look.

But as I looked, I felt a chill run down my spine. The murals depicted almost entirely centipede dragons coiling amidst clouds and mist, twisting and soaring, filling the walls as if they were crawling with centipedes.

The murals were divided into several sections; some showed many soldiers in fur coats worshiping the centipede dragons in the sky. In one part, two centipede dragons were intertwined, and it was unclear whether they were mating or fighting.

In every mural, the centipede dragon was undoubtedly the main focus. The figures surrounding it appeared very diminutive and extremely humble, clearly indicating that the Dongxia people’s reverence for these centipede dragons surpassed our Han people’s admiration for the coiling dragon.

Ye Cheng took out his camera and photographed all the murals. This would be useful when selling Mingqi, as having photos of the tomb could multiply the price several times due to the uncertain regime of Dongxia.

“You guys think who was buried in this accompanying tomb? Was it Wan Nu’s wife or his subordinates? Why are there so many murals like this?” Ye Cheng asked while taking pictures.

I didn’t know either and felt a bit odd about it. Generally speaking, the occupants of accompanying tombs would fall into two categories: one is their descendants and relatives, and the other is their favored concubines. If it were descendants and relatives, the murals would mostly depict scenes of daily life; if it were concubines, they would typically show court scenes, such as civil officials managing water or military officials waging war.

Seeing so many divine dragon forms in the murals might be normal in the main tomb, but here it felt off. Moreover, there was no depiction of the tomb’s master in the murals.

Even if the dragon was the main subject, these paintings highlighted the dragon’s majesty. There should be a leader among those bowing in reverence below, and since this was an accompanying tomb, the leader would undoubtedly be King Wan Nu. The master of this tomb should be worshipped alongside King Wan Nu, but everyone in the murals was dressed like slaves or soldiers, with no sign of a leader.

This was simply unreasonable in the murals of royal tombs; it didn’t conform to the customary principles of mural painting, and painting it here was equivalent to not painting at all.

Suddenly, the fat guy asked, “Could it be that these murals are also double-layered?”

I touched the wall; some of the murals here had already fallen off, and I didn’t find anything special underneath. Shaking my head, I said it couldn’t be right. The murals in that volcanic crevice must have a story behind them; otherwise, it wouldn’t make sense to have two layers of murals in such a place.

As I pondered, I walked for about two hundred meters, but the murals suddenly stopped, and the corridor came to an end, revealing the exit to the rear hall ahead.

There was no door at the exit, but in the center stood a bronze lampstand shaped like a crane’s foot, about half a person tall, with a very peculiar design. A layer of white ice had formed on it, making its color appear darker.

We stepped out of the corridor and into the rear hall. The胖子 lit a cold firework and looked around, discovering that the layout of the rear hall was almost identical to that of the main hall, but much smaller. We could see the surrounding walls directly, which were still covered with murals of centipede dragons. The colors, which must have originally been vibrant red, had now frozen into a dull gray.

The rear hall was completely empty, with no funerary items at all; it was clear without needing to search. In the center lay three black stone beds carved with dragon patterns, covered with wooden boards engraved with cloud edges that had already cracked from the cold.

These were called “stopping coffins.” After the coffins were brought in, they were temporarily placed here. There were three of them, indicating that during the burial, it wasn’t just one coffin; the deceased’s wife and children were also buried alongside him.

The idea of the deceased being accompanied by their loved ones sounds very unfortunate, but in that era, there was no other choice.

On the ground behind the three stone beds, there was a large square stone slab protruding, carved with two human-faced monster birds in a swirling pattern, with a Tai Chi Bagua diagram embossed in the center. This was the sealing stone, and the entrance to the underground palace must be beneath this slab.

Aside from that, the rear hall was truly empty, to an excessive degree. The胖子 looked around and said, “That old man Wannu is really stingy. He spends money to build houses for his subordinates but won’t spend a dime on furniture. How are people supposed to live? He must have kept all the good stuff for himself.”

Hua the monk said, “Don’t talk nonsense. If he can build such a large tomb, he wouldn’t skimp on a few offerings. There must be some special reason for this.”

I also felt that things weren’t that simple. The situation in the rear hall seemed a bit off. Even if it was a small border nation, as we anticipated, its national strength was insufficient, but still, a broken ship would have some nails. There should at least be a few ordinary bronze items, even without gold or silver.

After searching again, I found no passages leading elsewhere. I approached the sealing stone slab, and the胖子 rolled up his sleeves and tried to lift it, but it didn’t budge at all, so he called others for help.

To prevent any traps like poisonous sand or toxic water beneath the stone platform, the 闷油瓶 carefully examined the blue brick floor around the sealing stone slab. After confirming there was no problem, Lang Feng placed Shunzi aside on the stopping coffin platform and, along with Hua the monk and Ye Cheng, went to push the stone slab.

A few burly men really had impressive strength, and with a loud crack, the stone slab moved slightly. They continued to exert force, slowly pushing the entire slab aside.

We looked under the stone platform and were taken aback; there were no signs of any secret passage entrance beneath it (no stone slabs sealing the tomb), but rather blue bricks like those beside it. However, because the stone slab had been pressing down for over a hundred years, there was a square imprint on the ground, and when we rubbed it with our feet, it felt uneven. The blue bricks beneath the stone slab had already been pressed down a few millimeters.

“What’s going on?” Panzi asked, puzzled. “Is this sealing stone fake, just a decoration?”

“Impossible, this is the most basic burial practice; no one would play around with this. The entrance must be right here,” said Master Hua.

“Could it be sealed under this layer of blue bricks?” Ye Cheng asked.

I frowned. These bricks showed no signs of being sealed with iron paste, which seemed a bit odd, but I didn’t know how to draw any conclusions.

The Fatty said, “Whatever. There’s no one around, and it’s rare to come across an imperial tomb. Let’s just tear up the bricks and take a look.”

Ye Cheng immediately agreed. In fact, I was thinking the same thing. We couldn’t really say we were tomb raiders at this point; we might as well call it a straightforward robbery. When raiding tombs, we used to worry about disturbing the surrounding residents or encountering patrolling police, but now the nearest police station was eight hundred miles away, so we had nothing to fear.

We all felt a rush of adrenaline; digging and opening a tomb is always an exhilarating moment. Sometimes, it’s even more nerve-wracking than opening a coffin—this is something no one can deny.

Dun Youping squatted down, using his long fingers to grasp a blue brick and pulled hard, forcibly yanking the brick up from the ground. Ye Cheng and Master Hua watched in amazement, their mouths agape.

The Fatty was quite pleased, wearing a look that said, “Did you see that? Our brother is impressive!” But Dun Youping ignored him and didn’t even glance in his direction. Once we had a gap, we helped out using climbing picks to dig out the bricks.

What was strange was that the bricks underneath still showed no signs of iron paste; they were all in an interlocking structure and not difficult to dig up.

My ominous premonition grew stronger. Because the entrance to the tomb is usually the most fortified part, when Sun Mazi dug up the Empress Dowager Cixi’s tomb, he couldn’t even scrape off the stone seals without explosives. Here, it was so easy to lift the blue bricks, which definitely felt off. What if something unusual was hidden below?

But Dun Youping remained silent. Generally, if there was a problem, he would notice it immediately. Since he didn’t speak, I felt unqualified to say anything.

In the time it took to smoke half a cigarette, we quickly dug out a large pit. The last layer of blue bricks was removed, revealing only seven layers. This was likely because the height of the building was fixed; to avoid hitting the ceiling of the cave, they had to sacrifice the number of bricks laid on the ground. At the bottom of the pit, a black stone appeared, resembling a patterned turtle shell.

“Is this a sealing stone?” Ye Cheng exclaimed excitedly.

“No,” replied Master Hua, who was at the bottom. He knocked on the black stone and cleared the bricks around it. Underneath, we uncovered a black stone turtle the size of a small table, and the patterns on its shell turned out to be carved in the shape of a woman’s face.

“What’s going on?” Everyone was confused. This should be the entrance to the tomb, yet there was a stone turtle buried here.

“Where’s the tomb door?” Panzi, who had worked the hardest, gasped, puzzled.

“Let’s move it out first and see what’s underneath the turtle.” Master Hua was also confused and started giving random commands. In fact, it was obvious without moving that there was nothing under the turtle; I had already seen the black rock beneath it, and we had reached the bottom of the hole.

A few people clumsily jumped into the pit, trying to lift the stone turtle. Just as they crouched down, the chubby guy let out a grunt, as if he had noticed something amiss. I leaned over to take a look and saw that the entrenching tool hanging from his waist was inexplicably stuck to the back of the turtle. When the chubby guy pulled it off with some effort, it snapped back as soon as he let go.

I found it strange—could this turtle be carved from a magnet? A few people gathered around to see, all expressing their surprise. The chubby guy took out a coin and tossed it onto the turtle’s back; with a ‘clang’, it stuck firmly. He muttered to himself, “Hey, this is ridiculous! Such a big magnet—did the tomb owner collect scrap metal?”

Chen Pi Ah Si was resting above and, seeing that we had discovered something, thought we had found an entrance. He asked what was going on, and Master Hua began to report the situation to him. Before he could finish, Chen Pi Ah Si’s expression changed. He quickly called Ye Cheng to help him down and walked over to the turtle. Taking a compass out of his pocket, he looked at it and his face turned nearly green. He slammed the compass down and said coldly, “This is bad! We’ve been tricked! This burial mound is a trap—we’ve fallen for it!”