Chapter 19 Octagonal Sandalwood Coffin

Based on her way of speaking, I could guess that Shen Qianjue was a girl who came from an educated background and went to a decent university. It was absolutely impossible that someone with this kind of experience would put lipstick on cultural relics. No matter what she was doing now, this kind of educational experience would definitely leave her with a strong sense of awe as soon as she saw such relics.

But her partner was different. Shen Qianjue didn’t disclose the name of her partner, but it was easy to guess from her narrative that this person was the one who had used lipstick to play a prank. At that time, this partner put forward a suggestion to Shen Qianjue—when Old Bing and the others were focused on digging the grave robbers’ tunnel, they should directly poison their drinking water. You needed to be hydrated when doing a lot of physical activity, so Old Bing and his team could be poisoned within two hours.

The poison they’d use would take effect after dawn, at which point the grave robbers’ tunnel should be complete. Shen Qianjue and her partner could step over the bodies, go down into the tomb, take whatever they wanted, and then leave.

Shen Qianjue strongly disagreed, but at this time, her partner showed a particularly distressed expression. Shen Qianjue immediately had a bad feeling. Sure enough, her partner looked at her and said, “Oh, I didn’t think you’d disagree. I gave them the medicine a few days ago.”

Shen Qianjue flew into a rage. It turned out that every time her partner went to eavesdrop on Old Bing’s team, she secretly put slow-acting poison into their water without telling her.

“But you don’t have to worry. My poison gives you a quick—if very painful—death,” her partner comforted her while painting her nails.

I’m just here to learn, Shen Qianjue thought to herself. I don’t want to bear the weight of someone’s death for the rest of my life. At this time, she completely broke down and urged her partner to save those people. Her partner told her that the detoxification method for this kind of poison required a few treatment courses, which were very complicated. It was impossible to produce a passive detoxification effect in their drinking water. The only thing they could do now was pretend to be doctors and treat them whenever they showed signs of being poisoned.

Of course, it wouldn’t take a fool to know what was going on if two female doctors suddenly appeared out of thin air when Old Bing and his team were poisoned and said that they were very familiar with these mysterious poisoning symptoms and just happened to have medicine.

Shen Qianjue debated with herself at that time, but in the end, her integrity overcame all evil thoughts and she made a decision: she would take her partner to apologize and find a reason for Old Bing and his team to cooperate so that they could detoxify first. Her female partner was silent for a while before saying, “Fine, I’ll do as you say.”

When I heard this, I knew that Shen Qianjue was just like me and must’ve been the more responsible one of the two when it came to administrative functions. Her partner, who had poisoned others and dared accompany her crazy partner to go and apologize, had to be a very capable fighter.

So, the two women went over to the grave robbers’ tunnel that Old Bing and his team had dug. At this time, Old Bing and his team had already gone down, so the two women quickly went in after them. To make a long story short, it was a very standard grave robbers’ tunnel. It took the two women about thirty minutes to crawl to the end, and when they reached the exit, they saw the Diamond Wall (1).

Old Bing and his team didn’t have any skills, so they couldn’t find the front hall directly. As a result, they ended up entering directly from the Diamond Wall.

In fact, I had never seen a lotus-shaped underground palace before, so even I might not be able to locate the front hall. Since this underground palace had such a special shape, it was probably a burial system that was different from that of the Central Plains.

After Shen Qianjue and her partner passed through the Diamond Wall, they found themselves in the main hall. This underground palace was very strange. Not only was it not designed like a labyrinth, but almost the whole tomb was a huge open space. The two women couldn’t see Old Bing and his team since it was so dark inside, so they lit a cold firework. They were immediately shocked by what they saw.

Just as we suspected, this space was the scene of a huge banquet. There were thousands of stone tables of varying sizes, each with a complete set of colorful porcelain wine vessels. There were also a bunch of huge bronze containers that were used to chill the wine. Although these things were covered in an extremely thick layer of dust, they were stacked on top of each other and piled up like mountains. The scale of this banquet was simply staggering.

No matter what dynasty it was, this kind of banquet definitely belonged on an extremely luxurious level. The wine vessels, wine jars, stoves for warming the wine, and even the fruits and food on the stage were very practically piled on top of each other in a complicated manner. All the meat had been balmed (2), but it was gradually blackening now that air was coming into the hall. Despite this, they could still see the bright red gem-like texture of the marinated meat. The most amazing thing, however, was that all of the fruits were made of precious stones. Under the light of the cold fireworks, they looked radiant and gorgeous.

The whole banquet was divided into three levels, much like a huge staircase. The bottom level had the most tables while the top level only had a coffin bed. A giant black octagonal sandalwood coffin had been placed on the coffin bed and was surrounded by funerary objects. They couldn’t see it clearly since they were so far away, but they could tell that there were a bunch of stone pagodas placed all around it.

What made them both terrified was that ceramic figurines had been placed around every table like they were eating. These figurines had been made in such a way that they looked like they were participating in the banquet. Each one was different and very lifelike. Their clothes, postures, headdresses, and even their expressions were just like living people. The color on them was fading, but it was obvious that the previous colors had been very bright and gorgeous. Shen Qianjue immediately understood that the most valuable things here were these figurines. Their artistic value alone couldn’t be estimated.

Her partner sighed, “Ah, I poisoned them too early. We can’t move these things by ourselves.”

Shen Qianjue came back to her senses at this time. She thought of how Old Bing and his team had disappeared and became very worried that they had all succumbed to the poison and died. She immediately asked her partner to accompany her to find them, but the other woman turned on a flashlight and pointed it at one of the tables on the second level. “Look. They’re over there.”

When Shen Qianjue followed the source of light, she saw Old Bing and his team sitting awkwardly in front of a stone table in the dark. None of them had turned on their lights, no one was speaking, and their bodies were as stiff as the ceramic figurines. It’s over, she thought to herself. They’re all dead. But at this time, they smelled a strange scent that was filling the air around Old Bing.

The two women leaned over cautiously. Shen Qianjue found that there weren’t any gems in the dishes on Old Bing’s table but strange black stones that looked just like black sarcomas. The whole table was covered in them. There was also a sign next to it that had the name of this food written on it.

<Chapter 18><Table of Contents><Chapter 20>

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TN Notes:

(1) Not actually a wall made of diamonds. It’s a vertical, reinforced load-bearing wall in a tomb. Some people call it an impregnable wall. It’s made from a special, man-made soil. I was only finding some limited info on baidu but someone wrote an article about tombs here and it mentions a Diamond Wall.

(2) The raw said “wax” but I thought “balm” was better (I was thinking of the Egyptians embalming meat using a special balm/resin from this article here).

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FYI, there won’t be an update tomorrow or Sunday. We’re throwing my mom a birthday party down at the lake and we all pitched in for a margarita machine for her present so I may not be sober the entire weekend lol.

On a more serious note, I know we’re 1300+ posts in (wow) but do you want me to change all the “Little Brother” references to “Xiaoge”? Nobody’s complained so far (thank you), but I was reading some DMBJ fanfiction and everyone uses Xiaoge. It would obviously take me a while to implement it on the site but I don’t think it would be too hard to fix it on the pdfs since I can just use the “replace all” function. Just let me know what you all think. If you don’t care, awesome. If you do want it changed, god help me hahahaha. (Sidenote, you fanfiction writers are AWESOME. I’m one of the jerks that don’t comment but I love your works anyways) (ﾉ´ з `)ノ Til next week~~

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