I really didn’t want to hand over the snake-browed copper fish, but recalling my uncle’s instructions, I impulsively took it out. I didn’t expect An Ning and the others to react so strongly.

After a long while, one of them finally reacted and asked me, “Where did you get this? You… are simply a deity! Are you saying you found it in the Lu Wang Palace? This is the dragon fish script! I always thought there was only one, but I didn’t expect…”

I wasn’t in the mood to discuss this with them, so I waved my hand and said, “Does anyone here know how to read it?”

An Ning immediately shouted, “Wu Lao Si!” A Chinese man walked over, and when he saw the fish in my hand, his expression changed. He rushed over and exclaimed, “Heavens!”

I asked him, “Can you translate it?” He nodded vigorously, as if receiving a sacred object, and took it from me. He began to shine a flashlight on the fish’s scales, and soon a large number of Jurchen characters appeared on the ground. Someone nearby immediately helped to transcribe them.

An Ning’s subordinates were indeed impressive; they could translate while copying, far better than Huasheng. After they finished, I basically understood the main idea. I found it puzzling at first, as it seemed ambiguous, but as I listened further, it became clearer, resembling a narrative poem. I couldn’t record everything, but a few passages left a deep impression on me.

The entire text was very concise. It began with a few sentences stating that the secrets hidden in this dragon fish script were of great importance. Wang Canghai had engraved it, hoping it would never see the light of day. However, if someone were to find it, he hoped that person would be Han rather than Jurchen.

The text then described his experiences after being captured by Dongxia, which closely resembled the records on his murals. It also mentioned that to obtain treasures not found in Dongxia, he had led people to rob many ancient tombs. In the most spiritually potent places, he secretly placed the copper fish to give this secret a chance to be discovered.

I gasped in realization, thinking, so that’s how it is. As I continued reading, the subsequent content astonished me to the extreme—what was recorded was his gradual discovery of a bizarre secret about the Dongxia king during the renovation of the Dongxia royal tomb.

What shocked me was that Huasheng had previously mentioned the first half of this segment, which stated that the Wan Nu Wang of Dongxia was a monster that crawled out from the ground, a demon. Hearing this part directly related to what Huasheng had said.

It described how Wang Canghai had been trapped here for ten years and had once been taken to see a subterranean door known as a miracle. It was said that the Wan Nu Wang of successive generations did not inherit the throne but crawled out from that underground door after the previous generation’s death. Moreover, that underground door could only be opened when the previous Wan Nu Wang died; otherwise, the hellfire would consume everything about the one who opened it, preventing Changbai Mountain from ever seeing a white-haired figure. I felt as if a volcano was erupting, wondering if the Wan Nu Wang crawled out of a volcano.

He was fortunate enough to witness one such succession of the throne and felt immense fear when he saw that the Wan Nu Wang crawling out from the underground door was actually a monster, not a human at all.

The text describes a mysterious underground door located beneath the royal tomb in Changbai Mountain, dating back to ancient times, possibly from the Xia dynasty. It mentions that a bird with a human head guards the passage to this underground door. The narrator feels a chill at the thought of this strange bird, but the more bizarre content follows.

On another copper fish, there are records of someone sneaking into the underground door, but the narrator cannot comprehend it, as it seems to be written in a frenzied state after a shocking experience. A character named Fatty interjects, questioning why the one who opens the door isn’t harmed by the hellfire, suggesting it’s nonsense. The narrator speculates that the person must have used some unknown method, but the records are too chaotic.

Suddenly, someone reports finding a mark, leading them to discover that several coffins in the coffin pit have been opened, revealing their contents. On one side of the coffin pit, a hidden door has been opened, which also bears a mark. Anning asks if the mark was left by them, to which the narrator pretends not to know.

Another person reports that the coffins are all shadow coffins, fakes containing only jade bodies, and the real coffins are not there. When they opened them, a mechanism was triggered, releasing centipedes. They carefully searched and found a secret passage, indicating a double-layered tomb, with the real coffins possibly below, a burial method popular during the Yuan dynasty.

The narrator is astonished by the large coffin made of gem and glass and looks at the opened hidden door, realizing it is steep and seems aimed at digging deeper. They think to themselves that the place the muffle bottle doesn’t want them to go is indeed here. Anning glances at the narrator, seemingly sharing the same thoughts, and gestures for someone to go down, but everyone else looks at the narrator and Fatty instead.