As we moved along in a state of numbness, we suddenly noticed something ahead that left us momentarily stunned. It was rare for anyone to react immediately. Both Lao Yang and I instinctively stepped back, wanting to keep our distance, but for a moment, our legs felt frozen, and our hearts raced with fear.

Lao Yang, slightly braver than I, took a deep breath and shouted at the figure, “Who… who are you?”

The figure didn’t respond at all, standing completely still, resembling a stone statue.

Lao Yang lowered his voice and asked me, “Why isn’t he responding to us? Old Wu, could it be that Liu Laotou’s words came true, and we’ve encountered a ghost soldier?”

A cold wind blew past, and I regained a bit of clarity. I said, “Don’t panic. If it’s a person, we have nothing to fear. Let’s get a better look first!” I pulled out my flashlight and pointed it at the figure.

The “person” was dressed in strange ancient clothing, with grayish-white skin on its exposed arms, standing rigidly in the middle of the gully. In the dim shadows of the mountains, it appeared extremely eerie. The flashlight illuminated it, but it showed no reaction.

At that moment, I noticed something odd.

It turned out that this figure was covered in green moss. No matter what it was, except for a turtle, how could anything allow moss to grow on it? I looked closely and discovered that this “person” wasn’t made of flesh; it seemed to be carved from stone. However, the sculpting was so lifelike that in the dim light, it could easily be mistaken for a real person.

Even so, I couldn’t bring myself to laugh. This stone figure was incredibly skillfully made, so lifelike that even standing close to it made me feel uneasy, and I was breaking out in a cold sweat.

We cautiously approached, only to find that the lower half of the “stone person” was buried under a pile of rubble, likely having fallen when the stones above collapsed. The head was missing, leaving only a neck. I looked up and indeed saw a loose section of rock above, but the entire mountain slope was tilted, creating a dead angle where I couldn’t see the actual situation.

The stone figure had bare arms, and its clothing was not of Han cultural style. I noticed a double-headed snake pattern on its attire, a design I had never seen before. The colors had faded somewhat, and the head of the stone figure was missing, likely shattered when it fell.

Seeing all this, I was certain that this was a funerary stone figurine.

I glanced up; the stone figurine must have collapsed from above, indicating that there was something up there. Lao Yang, impatient, didn’t wait for me to get a better look and clumsily climbed up. I followed him, lying on the cliff and moving slowly along the slope. Before long, we reached the area where the collapse had occurred.

It seemed there was a shallow pit carved into the mountainside above, where several similar stone figurines were placed inside the cave. Strangely, all these stone figures were missing their heads, and human skulls were placed on their necks, joined together with clay.

I recognized this as a head figurine. In ancient times, during battles, bringing back entire corpses was too cumbersome, so heads were cut off. These heads were placed on stone bodies to serve as living sacrifices in burial.

The Western Zhou originally had murals, but they have been washed away by rain into indistinguishable color patches. At the bottom of the cave, there is a half-body statue carved in accordance with the mountain’s shape; from the chest to the head, it has been blown off, leaving only one hand and part of a shoulder discernible.

In the middle of the collapsed entrance, a dark hole the size of a basketball has been blasted out. I suppressed the excitement in my heart and shone my flashlight inside, discovering that the space within was vast. My intuition told me that there might be an ancient tomb behind this enormous stone statue, and it was very likely the main burial chamber serving the large sacrificial pit that Lao Yang mentioned. However, I didn’t know which expert had already ventured in there.

Generally speaking, anyone who could think of building a tomb in such a place must have a prominent identity, but to be able to blast such a place open requires an extraordinary level of skill. An ordinary tomb raider, even if he walked back and forth in this narrow gorge hundreds of times, would never suspect that there was another world above his head.

Lao Yang and I discussed it and decided to go in for a look since our destination was nearby. If there was nothing inside, we could always come back out. For people in our line of work, not exploring a cave is simply unbearable.

He was relatively thin and went in first. The entrance was high inside, and he couldn’t reach the bottom, so he had to cling to the wall. I handed him the flashlight; he took it and shone it inside, saying, “Damn, there’s standing water inside.”

I leaned in to take a look and saw a large arched stone chamber that had been excavated. There were traces of murals on the ceiling, and the water level was very high, almost reaching the edge of the arch. Through the surface of the water, I could see shallow pits carved into the stone walls all around, filled with headless stone figurines covered in moss. I wondered if this standing water was from rainwater that had flowed in through the hole or if there was another reason.

Lao Yang told me that when he came last time, the stone figurine had not collapsed yet, which means this blasted opening must have been made in the last three years. The water inside couldn’t possibly be rainwater.

I advised him to be careful. Lao Yang, confident in his swimming skills, let go and jumped in. Suddenly, the water reached his chest, startling him and almost causing him to slip.

I looked on, astonished; the water was deeper than expected. I asked him, “Can you feel the bottom? Is it mud or stone?”

Lao Yang replied, “I can’t reach the bottom. Damn, this water is really cold.”

I took out the waterproof cloth from both backpacks and wrapped them up; I gave one to him and carried the other myself. Then, I carefully slid into the water, and immediately, a chill surged up from the soles of my feet, making me shiver.

The bottom was empty, and indeed very deep. I realized that I hadn’t anticipated working in the water and hadn’t prepared any equipment for it. We could only swim in while holding the flashlight.

After swimming for a while, we saw a stone door opening in the innermost wall. Due to the water level, the stone door appeared very low. Inside the low doorway was a stone path about two trucks wide, completely dark. The areas illuminated by our flashlights revealed grayish-blue stone walls with rough signs of excavation. In a few places, there were also murals above, but they had corroded to the point that they were unrecognizable.

I swam in for more than ten meters when suddenly the stone path made a 90-degree turn. I shone my flashlight around and found that it was frighteningly deep inside. I couldn’t help but stop, not daring to go any further.

In fact, given the current situation, it wasn’t wise to venture deeper. The water was so deep and I couldn’t see what was beneath it, which made me quite anxious. If something were to suddenly emerge from the water, even a piece of wood could scare me half to death.

Old Yang looked around at the stone walls and asked me, “Have you noticed that although this tomb is quite large, it’s been built very roughly? Look at these rough stones—each one uglier than the last, clearly not polished. Do you think the owner of this tomb might not be very wealthy? Maybe they ran out of money after starting the excavation.”

I replied, “This might just be the outer edge of the entire mausoleum area. Look at all these unfinished stone statues; this could be where the tomb craftsmen quarried and carved the stones. If we go further in, it should become clearer.”

We continued forward, swimming for a few minutes. As we passed through that turning point, I heard some muffled sounds of water coming from the darkness ahead, as if something was moving stealthily in the water.

I grabbed Old Yang’s hand and forcefully turned the flashlight in the direction of the sound. Immediately, I saw a triangular wake appear on the surface of the water, which quickly sank below.

Before I could react to what it was, Old Yang had already slapped my hand away and turned to shout, “Run!”