Tomb raiding is no child's play; it's a field that demands rigorous scientific reasoning. It's nothing like the television dramas filled with corpses springing up everywhere, rice dumplings hopping about, and corpse beetles crawling all over.
After thousands of years, most bones would have decayed into nothingness.
Following the flow of the ritual libation down the tomb passage, Jade Sister swayed her headlamp back and forth. She was scrutinizing details we might have overlooked.
It's no wonder everyone in the tomb raiding circle speaks highly of Master Yao. Just take Yao Yumen, this woman is extraordinary. Upon reaching the end of the tomb passage and studying a stone wall for a moment, she noticed a problem.
"Look here," she beckoned us over, crouching at the northwest corner of the wall.
"Yumen, are these characters?" Yao Wence, who had been quiet before, spoke up.
Curious, I crouched down to look.
Where Jade Sister pointed, a section of the stone's surface had peeled away. After the pooled water had receded, some of the mud had dried at the corner of the wall, and I could vaguely make out what seemed like inscriptions.
She took a bottle of water from her bag and poured a bit onto the wall.
The stone absorbed the water quickly. After rubbing the area back and forth with her hand, carved characters slowly became visible.
"This... this is Ancient Gold Text... Nine-layered Seal Script!" Eldest Elder Sun exclaimed as he discerned the inscriptions.
Jade Sister furrowed her brows. "A curious tomb indeed. To my knowledge, this script was discontinued after the Late Shang Dynasty. How could it still be in use during the Western Zhou?"
We splashed more water.
Then, to our astonishment, we discovered that the entire stone wall, in a scattered yet orderly fashion, was entirely inscribed with Ancient Gold Text Nine-layered Seal Script!
We were all startled. Eldest Elder Sun immediately proposed a hypothesis, suggesting, "Could this possibly be the tomb owner's inscription?"
"Exactly, could this be the tomb inscription?" the third elder chimed in.
Jade Sister, after her initial shock, shook her head, "Unlikely. Tomb inscriptions weren't popular during the Western Zhou. Have you considered that this wall... might be a door?"
"A door? What do you mean?" I was perplexed.
Jade Sister pulled out a powerful flashlight from her bag and began to feel the stone wall, inch by inch.
Seeing this, the rest of us joined in the search.
We felt around the wall for a long time—up and down, left and right, several times over. Aside from the indecipherable Nine-layered Seal Script, we discovered nothing...
Eldest Elder Sun spoke in a cold voice, "Third Brother, do you have a detonator in the bag?"
"Big Brother, I brought four."
"Drill a hole and set it up, blast it open for me." A glint of cold light flashed in Eldest Elder Sun's eyes.
"Have you all gone mad?" Jade Sister stood up to stop them. "Using explosives at the ceiling is one thing, but this is inside the tomb passage! Do you want to bury us alive?"
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"What do you suggest we do?" Third Elder Sun was still relatively calm.
"Let's look around nearby. If it really is a stone gate, the Western Zhou craftsmen would have used natural stones to seal the entrance. There must be some hidden compartment left by the workers around here; otherwise, they would have trapped themselves inside."
"Jade... Jade Sister." I raised my hand, wanting to speak.
Everyone turned to look at me.
Taking a deep breath, I pointed to the west and said, "Jade Sister, there's a large earthenware jar in the corner of the West Ear Chamber, and beneath it is a dark hole that seems very deep."
"Let's go have a look," she said, nodding and heading directly towards the West Ear Chamber.
Upon reaching the West Ear Chamber and seeing the large jar, Eldest Elder Sun walked over and pushed aside the bluestone slab covering it.
Seeing the dark hole at the bottom of the jar, he turned and asked me, "Cloud Peak, how did you know about this?"
Looking at the dark hole, I said with a lingering fear, "Big Brother, you don't know, I dug out a dead man's bone from below, and it stank that day. Today, for some reason, the smell is gone."
"And, Big Brother, there's a Corpse Corner Immortal down there that bites; you mustn't reach in blindly!"
Third Elder Sun asked in confusion, "What's that? Corpse Corner Immortal? Wasn't it a snake that bit your hand?"
"No, no, it wasn't," I shook my head vigorously.
"It definitely wasn't a snake; I could feel it."
"Little Cloud Peak, are you talking about... a beetle with a single white antenna on its head? Something akin to an oversized rhinoceros beetle?" Jade Sister asked me with a stern face.
I hadn't seen such a creature that night, but Granny Liu had told me about it. She said the Corpse Corner Immortal had a white antenna, and that matched her description.
I thought for a moment and said it might be.
Seeing me nod, Jade Sister and Yao Wence turned pale in an instant, their change in complexion quite evident.
"What's wrong, Miss Yao?" Third Elder Sun asked her.
Taking a deep breath, she looked at me and said, "You can call that thing a Corpse Corner Immortal if you like. I've heard my uncle mention it. It only lives for two or three months and can only survive by consuming rotting flesh. It's a very rare type of Burrowing Poisonous Insect."
"This only proves one thing," she said, her face as cold as frost while pointing at the earthen jar, "there's a ninety percent chance that there's a dead body underneath, and it certainly hasn't been dead for more than three months."
"Step aside," Yao Wence said, pulling a Sleeve Iron Stick from his bag. The stick wasn't long and had holes in it, though I had no idea what it was used for.
He took the stick by the end and started poking underneath the jar.
After a little more than three minutes, much like fishing, he carefully began to retract the stick.
To our surprise, the end of the stick was carrying two flat, large beetles!
We were all startled; the beetles looked strange, and none of us had ever seen anything like them. We didn't know what they were.
The two flat beetles had numerous legs, rivaling a centipede's, and in addition to their mouthparts, they had a white antenna about one centimeter long on their heads, similar to an old man's white beard, making them look both ugly and bizarre.
"Be careful not to get bitten; these creatures are poisonous," Jade Sister warned.
Flat-headed Man Yao Wencai flicked the stick, then stepped forward and stomped on them.
The beetles burst under his foot, oozing out a yellow-green, foul-smelling juice.
Swallowing hard, Third Elder Sun said, "What's next? Should we drill down from here?"
The jar was quite large in diameter. I estimated that anyone who wasn't particularly overweight, be it man or woman, should be able to fit through. I even wondered if Second Brother might have gone down himself.
"Drill? Have you lost your minds? Those beetles are poisonous, and who knows how many more are down there? Going down is a death wish," Jade Sister retorted, shaking her head at Third Elder Sun.
Perhaps a bit angered, Third Elder Sun squinted his eyes and asked, "Oh, Miss Yao, do you have any better ideas?"
Jade Sister snorted coldly and said, "Indeed, I've taken King Leader's money, but the only reason my brother and I are here is out of respect for my uncle. We came to help find someone, not to join you in a foolhardy adventure to our deaths."
"We won't be going down that hole. If you want to go, be our guests," she declared.
"Why the sudden quarrel? Everything was fine just a moment ago," I interjected, seeing the tension rise between them and hurriedly stepped in to mediate.
"Or... maybe we could start a fire? See if we can burn all these ugly bugs to death?" I suggested.
That night.
A curious sight appeared halfway up Moth Mountain.
Somewhere, it seemed, an ancestral grave was emitting wisps of blue smoke. (To be continued)
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