I crouched down again, trying to decipher the strange foreign symbols, but to no avail. The lines were too chaotic; although I could tell it was the same word we had seen at the entrance of the square hole, I couldn’t figure out which letters made it up. I even began to doubt whether it was English at all.

The胖子 (Fatty) was also curious: “Are you sure this isn’t something left by your Third Master?”

Panzi nodded, indicating absolute certainty. “The Third Master wouldn’t be this fancy. If he wanted to leave a mark, he would just carve a notch. This definitely isn’t left by him. I think we should be cautious; not all marks are meant to guide.”

I understood his meaning: if this mark wasn’t for guidance, it could be a dangerous warning. However, nothing dangerous had happened after I saw that symbol in the underwater tomb, and there were only two passageways; it was either this one or that one. With no certainty about either, hesitating seemed pointless.

Fatty took the lead, and I followed behind him into the passageway. Inside, it was very wide, enough for two Liberation trucks to pass side by side. As soon as Fatty entered, he remarked that this was a mule path, used for transporting mules during construction. This was indeed possible, as I had never seen such a wide tomb passage before. The ground still faintly bore the traces of old wheel ruts. However, strangely, the passage was very cold inside, the temperature had dropped significantly, and a cold wind blew in from within, seemingly coming from outside. We all knew that ancient tombs were usually designed to be airtight; where was this wind coming from?

“This is ‘natural wind,'” Panzi said, lowering his voice to create a spooky atmosphere. “Our ancestors called this ‘ghosts breathing.’ This often happens in large tombs, but it’s not dangerous.”

“Is there an explanation? How does it occur?” I asked.

Panzi shook his head. “Most of the explanations passed down are just sayings; no one has studied it. Besides, it’s probably best not to investigate this matter.”

I thought to myself that in that era, tomb robbers were only concerned about survival. As long as they knew whether it was dangerous or not, they couldn’t afford to waste time pondering the origins of various strange phenomena.

The beginning section of the passage was relatively smooth, but soon we began to notice collapses and cracks in the ground. Many black stone slabs had been pried up, causing the ground to rise and fall. This was natural damage caused by tectonic activity. On either side of the passage, there were reinforced arch beams at intervals, each intricately carved with single dragons coiling around columns; many of them were cracked. I thought that without these reinforcements, this passage would have collapsed long ago.

We walked in silence for about seventy or eighty meters when Fatty suddenly stopped and pointed ahead. “A door?”

We all halted, shining our flashlights forward. At the end of the passage, there was a black stone tomb door. The eaves and tiles were carved with patterns of cloud dragons, grass dragons, and double lions playing with balls. The door appeared to be metallic, with a sheep carved on the left door and an unknown creature on the right. Upon closer inspection, the stone door was tightly shut, with the seams and bolts sealed with copper paste. However, on the left door, there was a hole the size of a basin in the sheep’s belly, and the cold wind was blowing out from there.

“This is not a door.” I pushed it, saying, “If it can’t be opened, it’s not a door. This is a sealing stone, built with large black stones and then sealed with molten copper to form a solid structure that resembles a door. The fat guy was right; this passage is a mule path, and it’s built this wide to facilitate the mules dragging these stones.”

The fat guy squatted down to look at the hole in the tomb door: “There’s a sealing stone in the tomb passage. It seems this passage is quite important, leading to the center of the underground palace. The path is correct; that marking seems to really be guiding us. And the hole is already made; they’ve gone inside.” As he spoke, he leaned in halfway, extending his flashlight inside to illuminate the situation.

We asked him what he saw inside. He said, “It’s still the tomb passage; there’s another sealing stone inside. It seems the Emperor Wannu lacked a sense of security since childhood.”

I said, “What nonsense! Your door has three locks, right? There are at least three sealing stones; in a world of three thousand, do you understand?”

The fat guy didn’t hear what I said; he placed the flashlight inside and squeezed through the hole in the door, arriving on the opposite side of the sealing stone. I heard him stutter and mumble to himself, “Damn, it’s cold.”

Panzi handed him the gun and crawled in after him. I followed behind, while Shunzi brought up the rear, and we all crawled into the hole. Sure enough, it was still the tomb passage, and the temperature was even lower than on the other side, making us feel tight all over. Right in front was another sealing stone, but this one was simpler, lacking the eaves of the outer one. A hole had also been blasted into this sealing stone, larger than the previous one.

We didn’t stop and continued to crawl past; the tomb passage continued on, and in front of us was another sealing stone with a hole in it.

“Damn, is this ever going to end?” the fat guy muttered.

I replied, “This is normal. Typical sealing stones weigh seven to eight tons, and a longer tomb passage might have six or seven layers of sealing stones. These are relatively good; their thickness might only be half. Our ancestors didn’t have explosives, so they had no way to deal with these sealing stones blocking the paths in ancient tombs.”

As we spoke, we passed through the last sealing stone and found ourselves at a crossroads. Another tomb passage intersected with ours at a right angle, and this intersecting passage was wider by half and much taller than the one we were in.

We gradually made our way to the center of the crossroads and discovered that this passage was not the same black as before, but a bright red. It was adorned with numerous vibrant murals that almost blended together, covering even the areas that the flashlight couldn’t reach, including the ceiling of the passage, which was also filled with colorful paintings.

I exclaimed, “This must be the main tomb passage, leading directly to the coffin chamber, the central axis of the entire underground palace. Otherwise, it wouldn’t be decorated so lavishly.”

“Enough with the admiration; we’re thieves. The same old problem—where do we go now?” the fat guy asked. “Quick, see if there are any guiding markings nearby!”

After several crossings in the narrow passage, we had long since lost our sense of direction. To distinguish which end of this main tomb passage led to the center of the underground palace and which led to the main tomb door, we could only rely on the hints left by those who came before us; otherwise, we’d have to flip a coin to decide.

Our flashlight beams swept back and forth in the tomb passage, searching for those symbols. The red murals emitted an unsettling light, reminiscent of the style we had seen before entering the mountains, in the crevices of the hot springs—depicting celestial chariots and beautiful maidens, seemingly devoid of any special meaning. Of course, if one were to consult an archaeologist, they could probably elaborate on some significance, but to us, murals without narrative quality were purely decorative; we couldn’t decipher their symbolic meanings.

After searching for a while, Panzi suddenly let out a sound and beckoned us over. As we gathered around, we indeed discovered another symbol carved into the corner of the tomb passage wall.

“This is going to save us some trouble; we’ve encountered a live Lei Feng from the tomb-raiding world,” the胖子 said. “We just need to follow this path.”

At that moment, I shook my head because I noticed that this symbol was already different from the few we had seen before.