Chapter 6 Main Hall of the Spirit Palace

The spirit palace’s main hall was the main part of the tomb aboveground, and it was also the largest in size. After entering, the first things we saw were the large stone pillars lining both sides of the spirit path,⁽¹⁾ which ran down the middle of the hall. Each of these pillars was about five meters in diameter. I recalled the scene depicted in one of the shadow paintings in the undersea tomb where a group of workers was using a type of hoist to pull a huge coffin up the cliff. Everything here had presumably been brought up the same way, even though it seemed impossible when thinking about those steep cliffs we had climbed up earlier.

In the darkness between the pillars, we could vaguely see large black statues of slaves holding lamps, behind which was more darkness. For some reason, when we pointed our flashlights behind them, the light didn’t reflect off of anything, as if there was a void. We didn’t see any funerary objects either.

Fatty pulled out a fire stick, clearly intending to light the lamps, but I told him not to—one of the main reasons why this building was still standing and hadn’t collapsed was because of the low temperature. If a large number of lamps were lit, the ice on the roof would melt and may cause a small collapse. So, it was better not to.

We relied on our flashlights as we moved further into the darkness. Everyone seemed to be affected by the environment and didn’t speak, as if they were afraid of waking something in this place. Our surroundings were eerily quiet, with only the echo of our footsteps and our heavy breathing filling the air.

Ye Cheng was the least experienced among us. After taking a few steps, he couldn’t stand it anymore and said, “It’s so fucking quiet. Why do I feel cold all over? The quieter it is, the more panicked I feel. Let’s talk. It’s not like we’re thieves—”

But before he finished speaking, Poker-Face motioned for him to shut up and Fatty whispered to him, “Don’t bother coming up with any stupid ideas. Is that not exactly what we are? Little Brother’s ears are sharp, but if you’re chattering away, he can’t hear if there are any mechanisms. Are you willing to risk it?”

When Ye Cheng heard that there might be a mechanism here, he quickly covered his mouth and looked around nervously, for fear that a hidden weapon would coming flying out of the darkness.

“Don’t be so nervous,” Monk Hua said. “This is a place for worship. Eastern Xia’s rulers likely came here to offer up sacrifices every year, so there’s little chance of there being any mechanisms. Plus, so much time has passed. You don’t need to worry.”

“Nonsense,” Fatty argued.

I smacked him and told him to quit messing around. Just now, he had told the others to stop talking but continued to talk himself.

The outside of the ice dome was so thick that it would have been difficult to re-open once it was sealed closed, and the plank road had been destroyed long ago. These two things showed that no one had planned to come back here after the spirit palace was sealed off. It was impossible for Monk Hua not to have thought of this, but there was no need to add unnecessary panic by bringing it up.

We continued walking for about five more minutes before we reached the center of the main hall. A jade platform appeared in front of us, surrounded by four huge copper wine vessels shaped like birds with human heads. On the platform itself stood a large black statue that was neither a person nor a Buddha. Instead, it looked more like a spiral pillar covered in lichen. No one could tell what it was, but we all agreed that it looked very strange.

“What the fuck is this?” Fatty asked Monk Hua. “Shouldn’t there be a statue of the tomb owner in the main hall? Did the tomb owner really look like this? Isn’t this… a big leech?”

Monk Hua said, “In Eastern Xia’s religion, this may be what they imagined their head god, Tengri, to look like….”⁽²⁾

“This god looks so ugly,” Fatty muttered to himself. “How is it any different from a wooden club used to wash clothes?”⁽³⁾

I smacked Fatty again, silently telling him to watch his words since we were still in this god’s territory. Was he not afraid of receiving immediate retribution?

But I knew that this strange black totem wasn’t Tengri. Although I didn’t know much about shamanism, I knew that Tengri had no form. Tengri represented a ubiquitous and infinite power that was universally worshipped. When Monk Hua said this, he was either trying to mess with Fatty or cover up his own insecurities.

The environment here really did give people an inexplicable sense of tension and fear. Except for Chen Pi Ah Si and Poker-Face, who still had indifferent looks on their faces, everyone else was more or less acting nervous.

But if this statue in the main hall wasn’t a god to be worshipped, then it must be a statue of the tomb owner. Was it really as Fatty said and Eastern Xia’s royal family looked like this? That wasn’t possible, right? This…this thing wasn’t human at all. It looked more like an evil god from Haitian fetishism.⁽⁴⁾ I saw something similar once when I went to an exhibition in Shanghai. The god over there looked like clumps of scorched rice from the bottom of the pan stuck together to look like a giant snail.

I suddenly remembered the words on the copper fish: Eastern Xia’s rulers were all monsters that crawled out of the ground. Was this referring to the thing in front of us? No, this thing could only be called a monster. I highly doubted the Eastern Xia people would be stupid enough to recognize scorched rice as their emperor.

It would be nice to see what was recorded on the other two copper fish, I thought to myself. Then I wouldn’t need to exhaust myself coming up with wild guesses. There’s no telling when I’ll get the opportunity.

Just as I was thinking this, Pan Zi suddenly called out to us from the side, “Guys, check this out.”

We turned to look and found that Pan Zi had climbed one of the copper wine vessels and was carefully lifting something out of the human-faced bird’s mouth.

It seemed Pan Zi was also a troublemaker. “Be careful,” I said nervously. “There might be traps.”

Pan Zi nodded and carefully lifted the object out, revealing a gilded copper monkey with a ferocious-looking face. Countless strange patterns were engraved on its body, making it look like a tattooed imp.

We had never seen a wine vessel designed like this before, so we were all very curious. When Pan Zi jumped down and held it out for us to look at, we all gathered around to examine it. After looking it over from top to bottom, the only thing we found was that it was actually made of bronze. As to what its purpose might be, nobody could say.

This kind of thing was common in archaeology. On the one hand, tombs had strict rules regarding mysticism, but on the other hand, it was a private matter of the tomb owner. There were many tombs with indescribable burial goods. You could collect and sort out those things that conformed to the established rules in order to figure out what their true purpose was, but when it came to unique things, you could do nothing more than guess. There were many things that only appeared once throughout history, but no one except for those buried in the tomb would know what their purpose was.

Monk Hua checked the other copper vessels and found the same thing inside. He speculated that if this wooden club was their head god, then the ones surrounding it must be guardian beasts. They probably had something to do with the local myths and legends, but since we didn’t exist during that time, it was impossible to understand their real purpose. But the main thing he couldn’t figure out was why they were made of bronze—after all, the Ming Dynasty was a time when iron production was already very well developed.

We checked all around the totem but didn’t find anything else so we moved on. There was more darkness in front of us, but I couldn’t see how far it went.

At this time, the main thing that kept bothering me was the lack of items you’d usually see in the main hall of a spirit palace. Generally, there would be giant ding for sacrifices, candles that never went out, a partitioned section of the room that was kept warm, a large table to hold treasures, a throne, and a spirit tablet, but there were no traces of any of these things here, which was a bit strange. But maybe the intent of creating the spirit palace was more important than its physical form. After all, the Eastern Xia kingdom had been living deep in the forests of Changbai Mountain, so there was no telling what their living conditions were like. Maybe such things didn’t even exist in Jurchen customs.

Fatty was starting to feel a little upset at this time. His main purpose for coming here was to take some things back with him, but after coming all this way, he still hadn’t seen any burial objects that he could take. How could he not be depressed? None of us were surprised when he suddenly asked if he could go look behind those slave statues to see what was in the darkness behind them.

But Poker-Face waved him off, silently telling him no. Then he took out a glow stick and threw it over there—the green light fell into the darkness behind the lamp before suddenly disappearing, as if it had landed in black cotton.

Fatty was stunned when he saw this and asked softly, “What’s going on?”

Poker-Face shook his head, indicating that he didn’t know.

“When we were outside, we saw that the main hall wasn’t that big,” I said to him. “But our flashlights aren’t reflecting any light, which means that there must be light-absorbing paint on the walls. If you walk away from us, I guarantee you won’t be able to come back. It’s better not to act rashly.”

But Fatty continued to argue, “Then tie a rope around my waist, and if I find something, you guys can get a share. Consider it an investment. How about… ten percent?”

I was starting to feel really annoyed with Fatty’s unscrupulous behavior, and said angrily, “If you want to go crazy, then wait until we get out of here. Don’t drag us into it.”

Pan Zi also spoke up at this time, “Why the fuck are you so impatient? We just got here. For all we know, if we tie a rope around you and let you go over there, when we go to pull you out, only your legs will be left. Do you think we’ll go in and look for the rest of you? Look at how united Grandpa Chen’s group is. Calm down and stop embarrassing Master Three.”

Fatty sighed in disappointment, “Well, I’m clearly outnumbered here so there’s no use in arguing. I’ll just follow whatever orders the team lays out. I promise not to betray our team before we find out what exactly is going on.”

I glared at him, “Even after we find out what exactly is going on, you’re not allowed to betray us. If you start fucking looking for treasure now, then what will you do when we reach the tomb’s underground palace? How much can you carry?”

Fatty raised his hands in surrender, a playful smirk on his face. I was familiar with his character, so I knew that it was useless to say anything else. There was no way to deal with him, so I had to remind myself to keep an eye on him, lest he get into trouble.

Further inside, we could see the end of the main hall, where there was another jade door inlaid with four pieces of white marble. Hundred-legged dragons made using the colored glaze firing technique⁽⁵⁾ were coiled around the door shaft, and scenes of dancing and merriment were carved on the lintel. Two boys had been engraved on the door to act as gatekeepers. There was no stone bar behind the door, but it had been doused with water that had long since frozen into a solid sheet of ice. After we pried it open, we find that there was a dark corridor leading to the rear hall of the spirit palace.

When Fatty saw the two dragons on the door, his eyes lit up and he became more spirited, “I saw this kind of door shaft at an auction once. It’s called a ‘Coiled Dragon Glazed Shaft’. The whole door went for two hundred million Hong Kong dollars. You know, this door doesn’t look that heavy…”

I knew what he was trying to do, so I threw cold water on him by saying, “Forget it, that was all because of the hype. Nowadays, any antique transactions that exceed twenty million in cash are considered sky-high. This door is only worth four hundred thousand at most.”

“No way.” Fatty refused to believe it. “You’re telling me the price went from four hundred thousand to two hundred million all because of hype? Such a ridiculous thing actually happened?”

The two copper fish in my pocket are worth twenty million yuan, I thought to myself, but when it comes time to sell them, who’d be willing to pay that much? Now, everyone was familiar with the auction houses’ shady business. They all hoped they could do minimum work and be able to earn enough to eat for a lifetime. If the auction house ever met someone foolish enough to pay two hundred million yuan for a door, they wouldn’t have to work anymore and would focus on spending money instead.

Fatty’s worldview was immediately shattered, and all he could do was look at the door with a lifeless expression on his face. We ignored him and continued walking down the corridor toward the rear hall.

The rear hall was usually the place where the entrance to the underground palace was located. Generally, a decorative coffin would be placed there, along with candles that would never go out. Or, there would be a lot of offerings piled up, which would be replaced regularly by those guarding the tomb. Since Eastern Xia was a small, hidden border country that was always at war, we didn’t expect there to be too many good things in this hall, but the entrance to the underground palace was usually located inside, so we had to go and take a look.

Entering the corridor, we found that murals had been painted on the ceiling and walls. They were covered in a layer of ice, which made them look cold and gloomy. Ever since I saw the double-layered mural in the fissure, I became more interested in this kind of narrative, so I pointed my flashlight at them to get a better look.

As soon as I did, I felt my whole body go cold all over—almost all the murals depicted hundred-legged dragons coiled in the clouds. Spiraling, twisting, and soaring, they were all over the wall, making it look like the wall was covered in centipedes.

The murals were divided into several parts, some of which showed many soldiers in furs, bowing to the hundred-legged dragons in the sky.

On the ceiling, two of those hundred-legged dragons were intertwined, but I couldn’t tell if they were copulating or fighting.

On each of the murals, the hundred-legged dragons were the main focus. The people around them all seemed so small and humble in comparison, which made it obvious that the Eastern Xia people worshipped this centipede dragon more than we Han worshipped the coiled dragon.

Ye Cheng took out his camera and photographed all the murals. Such photos could be used when selling the grave goods—since little was known about Eastern Xia, photos of the tomb could help increase the price several times over.

“Who do you think is buried in this tomb, King Wannu’s wife or one of his subordinates? And why did he have these murals painted like this?” Ye Cheng asked while continuing to take photographs.

I didn’t know the answers either, but I definitely found it a little odd.

Generally speaking, there were two kinds of people buried with the main tomb owner: one was their own children and relatives, and the other was their favored subordinates. For children and relatives, the contents of the murals would mostly be scenes of everyday life, but for favored subordinates, there would usually be scenes of the court, such as civil officials dealing with floods or military officers cutting down soldiers. But the images depicted on the murals here were all deified dragons. It wouldn’t be surprising to see such a thing in the main tomb, but in a place like this? Something was definitely wrong here. And besides…there weren’t any images of the main tomb owner in any of the murals.

Even if the dragons were the main focus and these paintings highlighted their majesty, those kowtowing piously below should still have a leader. Since this was the tomb of someone buried with the main tomb owner, the leader should be King Wannu, and the owner of this tomb should be next to him. But all the people in the murals were dressed as slaves or soldiers; there wasn’t any sign of a leader at all.

As murals in an imperial tomb, this simply didn’t make any sense. Their lack of conformity to any of the generally accepted norms was tantamount to violating the three principles and five virtues.⁽⁶⁾ Like this, they were basically meaningless. They might as well have left the walls blank.

“Could these murals also be double-layered?” Fatty suddenly asked.

I touched the closest one. Part of the mural had already crumbled away, but I didn’t find any special surface underneath so I shook my head no. There must be a story behind the mural in that fissure we were in before. Otherwise, it didn’t make any sense for a double-layered mural to be in such a place.

As I was lost in my thoughts, I walked another two hundred meters and found that the murals suddenly disappeared—the corridor had come to an end, and the entrance to the rear hall had finally appeared.

There was no door marking the entrance, but in the center of the opening, there was a bronze lampstand shaped like a crane’s leg. It was half as tall as a person and covered in a layer of ice, which made it look darker.

We walked out of the corridor and entered the rear hall. Fatty lit a cold firework and looked around—the layout of the rear hall was almost the same as that of the main hall, but much smaller. We could see that the walls were covered in more of those hundred-legged dragon murals. The colors should have been bright red when they were first painted, but now they were all frozen to a dull gray.

There weren’t any grave goods here either. In fact, there was no need to search because we could tell at a glance that the rear hall was completely empty. There were, however, three black stone platforms in the middle of the hall that were decorated with dragons. Upon each of these platforms sat a cracked and frozen wooden coffin with clouds carved along their edges.

This was called a resting coffin platform, and it was meant to hold the coffins for a short period of time after they were carried in. There were three platforms here, which made it obvious that there was more than one coffin at the time of burial—presumably the wife and child of the person buried with the main tomb owner.

It seemed like a great misfortune to be buried with someone just because they were going to be buried with the main tomb owner, but in those days, they didn’t have much of a choice.

Behind the three stone platforms was a huge square stone slab protruding from the ground, on which two strange human-faced birds had been carved. These birds encircled a Taiji Bagua symbol⁽⁷⁾ that was in the middle of the slab. This was a sealing stone, which meant that the entrance to the underground palace should be under it.

Besides, there really wasn’t anything in the rear hall—it was too empty.

Fatty looked around and said, “Old Man Wannu sure was fucking stingy. He gave money to build a house for his subordinate but didn’t give them any money to buy furniture. How are they supposed to live comfortably in the next life? He must have taken all the good things for himself.”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Monk Hua said. “How could he build such a big tomb yet begrudge a few offerings? There must be some special reason for this.”

I also felt that it wasn’t that simple. No matter how you looked at it, the situation in the rear hall was a bit strange. Even if Eastern Xia was a small border country lacking national strength, the ones buried here were still nobles—if gold or silver wasn’t available, you could always find some common bronze items.

We searched the hall again, but didn’t find any passages leading to other places so we returned to the sealing stone. Fatty gathered his strength and tried to lift it, but the stone didn’t budge an inch. Veins bulging, he hurriedly called the rest of us to help.

In order to ensure that there weren’t any traps such as poisonous sand or poisonous water under the stone, Poker-Face carefully inspected the floor around it. After receiving confirmation that it was safe, Lang Feng set Shunzi down on the nearby coffin platform, and then went up with Monk Hua and Ye Cheng to help Fatty push the stone slab.

The strength of several burly men working together was totally unbelievable—with a quiet rumbling sound, the stone slab moved a little bit. They continued exerting themselves and slowly managed to push the whole slab aside.

When we looked at what was under the stone slab, we were all taken aback—there was no sign of an entrance to a secret passage, nor even a tomb door. Instead, there was only the bluestone brick like that of the rest of the hall. But because the weight of the slab had been pressing down on it for hundreds of years, there was a dark square imprint on the ground. I rubbed it with my foot and found that there was a feeling of unevenness, as if the bricks under the slab had sunk a few centimeters.

“What’s going on?” Pan Zi wondered. “Is this sealing stone fake? Is it just a decoration?”

“Impossible. This is the most basic requirement for a funeral rite. Of all things, you won’t mess around with this. The entrance must be here,” Monk Hua said.

“Could it be sealed under this layer of bricks?” Ye Cheng asked.

I frowned. These bricks hadn’t been sealed with molten iron, which was a standard practice. It seemed that there was something wrong here, but if asked to explain it, I wouldn’t know how.

“Who cares?” Fatty said. “Anyway, there’s no one here, and it’s rare to find an imperial tomb. Let’s remove the bricks and take a look.”

Ye Cheng immediately agreed. Actually, I was of the same mind as well. Right now, it could no longer be said that we were grave robbing; what we were doing was simply called open robbery. When robbing tombs, we were usually afraid of disturbing the surrounding residents and running into patrolling cops, but now the nearest police station was four hundred kilometers away, so we didn’t have to be afraid of anything.

We all felt a sudden adrenaline rush. Digging and opening underground tombs was always an exciting experience—sometimes, it was more exciting than opening the coffin itself. This was definitely a fact no one could deny.

Poker-Face crouched down, squeezed his two unusually long fingers between the seams of one brick, and forcefully yanked it out of the ground. Ye Cheng and Monk Hua were so shocked that their mouths fell open.

Fatty’s expression turned smug, as if to say, “You see that? Our brother here is amazing.” But Poker-Face didn’t pay attention to him or even bother to look at him.

Things became easier now that there was a gap, so we quickly grabbed our ice axes and got to work digging out the bricks. Surprisingly, the bricks below still didn’t have any traces of iron around their seams, and they had been placed in a haphazard way so it wasn’t difficult to dig at all.

My ominous premonition from before became a little stronger, because the entrance to the underground palace was usually the most guarded part of the tomb. Back when Sun Mazi looted Empress Dowager Cixi’s tomb, he wouldn’t have even been able to remove the sealing stone blocking the underground palace’s entrance without the help of explosives.⁽⁸⁾ So, the fact that we could remove these bricks so easily was definitely suspicious. Maybe there was something strange down below?

But Poker-Face didn’t say anything. Generally, if there was a problem, he would definitely notice it right away. But he continued to remain silent, and I didn’t feel qualified enough to speak up.

In the time it would take to smoke half a cigarette, we soon dug a big hole in the floor, and lifted out the last layer of bricks. There were only about seven layers in total, probably because the height of the building here was fixed (in order to avoid hitting the cave ceiling, a few layers of bricks had to be sacrificed when building the floor).

At the bottom of the pit was a black stone that looked like it had been painted with a tortoise shell pattern.

Ye Cheng immediately became excited, “Is it a sealing stone?”

“No.” Monk Hua, who was standing at the bottom of the pit, knocked on the black stone and then removed all the bricks around it, revealing a black, two-headed stone tortoise. It was the size of a square table that could seat eight people, and the pattern on its shell actually turned out to be that of a woman’s face.

“What’s this?” Everyone was confused. In the place where the entrance to the underground palace should buried, there was nothing more than a stone tortoise.

“Why is there no tomb entrance?” Pan Zi asked in bewilderment. He was out of breath after doing most of the work digging just now.

“Let’s remove it first! We’ll see what’s under it.” Monk Hua also couldn’t figure it out and began to issue commands indiscriminately.

In fact, there was no need to move the tortoise because it was already clear that there was nothing under it—I could see the black rock under the tortoise, which meant that we had dug to the bottom of the cave.

Still, we all hurriedly jumped into the pit to try and lift the stone tortoise out. But as soon as Fatty crouched down, he suddenly made a sound, as if he had found something wrong.

I leaned over to take a look and saw that the folding shovel hanging around his waist appeared to be stuck to the tortoise’s back for some reason. Fatty yanked it free, but as soon as he let go, the shovel immediately stuck to the rock again.

I was surprised when I saw it—could this tortoise have been carved from a magnetized rock?

Everyone gathered around and watched in amazement as Fatty took out a coin and threw it on the tortoise’s back—it stuck firmly to the stone with a quiet “ding” sound. “What a fucking joke,” he muttered to himself. “With a magnet this big, was the tomb owner collecting scrap metal or something?”

Chen Pi Ah Si had been resting up top the whole time, but when he heard us making a commotion, he thought that we had found the entrance and asked what was going on. Monk Hua reported the situation to him.

Before he finished speaking, Chen Pi Ah Si’s expression changed and he quickly asked Ye Cheng to help him down. He then approached the tortoise and took out a compass from his pocket. After checking it, his face turned green and he smashed the compass to the ground. “We’ve been tricked!” He said coldly. “This tomb is a trap, and we fell for it!”

<Chapter 5><Table of Contents><Chapter 7>

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TN Notes:

(1) A spirit path (aka spirit way, spirit road, or sacred way) is the ornate road leading to a Chinese tomb of a major dignitary. The spirit path is lined on both sides by a succession of statues, pillars, and stele. The statues along the spirit path depict real and mythical animals, as well as civilian and military officials.

(2) Tengri is the “All-Encompassing God of Heaven” in the traditional Turko-Mongolian religious beliefs. It is also one of the names for the primary chief deity of the early Turkic and Mongolic peoples.

(3) Like this:

(4) Not sexual fetishism. A fetish is an object believed to have supernatural powers, or in particular, a human-made object that has power over others. Essentially, fetishism is the attribution of inherent value or powers to an object, which is then worshipped. More info here.

(5) The colored glaze firing technique is a local traditional handicraft skill in Mentougou District, Beijing and Shanxi Province. The process can take more than ten days, and can only be completed after more than 20 steps are followed. After the clay is formed, it’s put into the kiln for plain firing, and then glazed according to the pattern, and then put into the kiln for color firing.

(6) The three principles and five virtues of Confucianism are considered the moral and political requirements of Confucianism as well as the eternal unchanging “essence of life and bonds of society.” The three principles are the three foundations of power: ruler guides subject, father guides son, and husband guides wife. The five virtues are the moral qualities that people should abide by: benevolence, righteousness, propriety, wisdom, and fidelity. According to the Russian translation, these nonconformist murals are basically tantamount to violating the rules for the existence of the universe.

(7) Taiji Bagua is a combination of 2 things. Taiji is the Absolute or Supreme Ultimate, the source of all things according to some interpretations of Chinese mythology. Bagua is the eight divinatory trigrams of the Book of Changes.

(8) The tombs of Empress Dowager Cixi and the Qianlong Emperor were looted by troops under the command of the warlord Sun Dianying in 1928. Sun Dianying was called “Sun Mazi” because he had pockmarks from smallpox. Here’s info on the incident.