Chapter 11 Mezzanine

This was indeed an unexpected situation, and everyone panicked.

Pan Zi grabbed the folding shovel hanging on his belt, jumped into the pit, and swung it at the hand, but Fatty’s leg kept jerking around so he ended up missing. The shovel head hit the bricks on the side, sending sparks flying everywhere. Fatty, seeing how hard Pan Zi was swinging, immediately shouted at him, “Be more fucking precise! Don’t cut my leg!”

“Then stop fucking moving!” Pan Zi shouted back. “Otherwise, I’ll cut your whole leg off!” As he spoke, he changed positions and swung the shovel again, but still missed.

“Substitute, substitute!” Fatty shouted. “This guy has never liked me and is trying to get his revenge!”

Ye Cheng and Monk Hua, who had been standing on the other side of the crater, immediately jumped down to try and hold Fatty’s leg still. But before Ye Cheng could steady himself, the entire section of floor beneath him collapsed, and he also sank down.

This just added to the fucking chaos. Monk Hua rushed to grab him, but he lost his footing and stumbled into my hand, which was holding onto Fatty. I was already at a bad angle so I couldn’t use my full strength, but when Monk Hua hit my hand, the force of the blow caused me to lose my grip and Fatty was dragged down even further.

Not only did this all happen too fast, but the lighting wasn’t good, so everything became a chaotic mess. We all fell into a heap as Fatty suddenly sank to the bottom of the pit, just like a meatball. Pan Zi tried to catch him, but fell heavily on the slope of the brick pit. I suddenly had a bad feeling, but before I could stand up, I heard a series of cracking sounds coming from under the layer of bricks beneath us.

All the blood drained from my face as soon I heard it. I was all too familiar with this sound—it was the sound of a large-scale longitudinal crack appearing in frozen stone materials. I had heard the same thing back in college when we were doing stress experiments on building structures.

Before I could figure out what to do, everything started to shake around me, and then the whole pit suddenly sank down, causing the surrounding section of floor to collapse as well. Nobody had time to react—we all suddenly lost our balance, rolled down the brick-covered slope like we were on a slide, and then fell into the hollow space formed by the collapsed wooden support structure.

Before I could congratulate myself on my foresight or regain feeling in my butt, which had gone numb after falling down the slope, I started to slide down again. Fortunately, I had connected my carabiner to the rope earlier, so my descent was stopped with a sharp jerk. But as I hung there, a bunch of bricks came raining down from overhead.

With my butt still hurting from the fall, I tried to sit up while protecting my head with my hands, but the slope was too steep for me to find a good foothold. I used my hands to block the falling bricks and asked the others if they were ok. No one responded, but I could hear a bunch of cursing amidst the sound of falling bricks.

Finally, the bricks stopped falling, and I was able to raise my head and look around—everything was a complete mess. A few flashlights were lying among the scattered bricks, but some had also fallen down the slope into the darkness below. Fortunately, these German mountaineering goods were built strong and none of them had broken. But the little light they provided through the gaps in the bricks wasn’t enough to illuminate things clearly, so it was still pitch black all around. I looked up and vaguely saw a big hole overhead—it was the collapsed floor that we had fallen through just now.

We were currently in the hollow space beneath the spirit palace’s main hall, on a section of rock that had been cut into the steep rocky slope. If not for the rope, we would have all rolled down to the bottom of the slope.

Ye Cheng was hanging next to my head, looking like he had been badly beaten. I grabbed him and asked if he was ok, but all he said was that he had already eaten lunch. He had obviously been stunned by the impact.

At this time, I heard Monk Hua shout from somewhere in the darkness, “Be careful, there may be a zombie here. Grab your weapons, and if you have any black donkey hooves, take them out! Fatty, where are you? Is that thing that grabbed your leg still there?”

Fatty was at the bottom, which meant that he suffered the worst since all of us, as well as the bricks, fell on him. I heard him groan from under a pile of bricks, “It’s still holding on, but now it’s almost at my crotch. I’ve got it clamped between my legs, so hurry up and fucking pull me out! Otherwise, I’ll lose my dick!”

“That’s my hand!” Pan Zi shouted from the side.

“Fuck!” Fatty said angrily, “If you wanted to grope me, couldn’t you have picked a better time?”

Without our flashlights, those of us who weren’t crushed under the pile had to grope for the bricks in the dark. Once we grabbed them, we threw them down the slope. I dug Pan Zi out first, but Fatty still had his hand trapped between his legs so he couldn’t pull it out. We continued to dig and soon breathed a sigh of relief as Fatty was finally freed. He gasped for breath and said, “Being crushed under you guys was like death by a thousand cuts. Fortunately, my body is blessed with fat. Otherwise, I would have really died this time.”

Pan Zi wasn’t in the mood to argue with him and asked, “Where’s that thing on your leg?”

In the dark, we heard the sound of Fatty moving his leg and then apparently feeling it for himself. “It’s gone!” He said. “It would have been impossible for it to keep holding on after such a fall. Maybe it got crushed and fell to the bottom of the slope? But how can there be zombies in a place like this?”

Monk Hua said, “It must still be nearby. We all need to be careful. Hold on to your black donkey hooves and find the flashlights first!”

I hurriedly reached under the bricks to try and grab one of the flashlights, but I couldn’t find them no matter how hard I looked. Ye Cheng, on the other hand, was able to grab one from where he was standing. The surrounding area immediately lit up as he pulled it out of the pile of bricks, but then he directed the flashlight’s beam down the slope.

I was positioned right below him, so I was nearly blinded when he did that. I raised my hand to shield my eyes, and was just about to ask him to dim it a bit, but then I suddenly saw his face turn green.

As soon as I saw his expression, I immediately broke out in a cold sweat and thought to myself, is something behind me? I clenched my teeth and quickly turned to look over my shoulder, only to see a strange, withered, bluish-purple face about a foot away from my nose.

I was so shocked that I jerked back with a shout, instinctively grabbed a blue brick with my left hand, and threw it at that face. Then, without waiting to see whether I hit it or not, I quickly turned and climbed up the slope.

At this time, the rest of the flashlights were dug up, and the surroundings suddenly became much brighter. I climbed up a few steps, but Ye Cheng was right above me, blocking the way, so I ended up slipping down again. When I happened to look to the side, I couldn’t help but gasp in shock.

On the steep cliff below the spirit palace’s main hall, a bunch of simple, terrace-like protrusions had been cut into the cliff. Level by level, each of these protrusions were filled with neat rows of frozen, bluish-purple corpses. It almost looked like the arhat hall of a temple.⁽¹⁾ They were all densely packed together and sitting cross-legged, as if they had frozen to death while meditating. I didn’t know how many there were, but the number of black shadows stretching off into the distance seemed endless.

Ye Cheng, the least courageous among us, said in a trembling voice, “Shit, is this a secret corpse chamber for monks?” Then he sank to the ground, as if his legs had gone weak.

Chen Pi Ah Si picked him up and waved his hand, “Don’t be afraid. They’re just corpses.” Then he pointed at my feet. I looked down and saw that under the pile of bricks at our feet, there was actually a mummy that had basically been crushed to dust.

“The corpses here are so frozen that they’re basically like stones. They’ll shatter at the lightest touch,” Chen Pi Ah Si said. “It’s absolutely impossible for these things to transform. There shouldn’t be any zombies here.”

“Then what grabbed my leg just now?” Fatty asked.

“Your leg probably just happened to get caught on one of the corpse’s hands just now,” Chen Pi Ah Si said. “If it was a zombie, do you really think you’d still have your leg? If you don’t believe me, take a look at your pants leg.”

Fatty looked down and saw that, sure enough, there was a hole in his pants leg and a withered hand in the shape of a hook lying in the pile of bricks not far from his feet. I picked it up and saw that it was so hard, it would have been impossible for it to stretch out and grab onto his leg.

As everyone immediately breathed a sigh of relief, Pan Zi gave an exaggerated sigh and said, “You’re so timid. You must have imagined it.”

Fatty was furious and wanted to refute, but he couldn’t find anything to support his argument and just ended up sulking. “That hand really did grab my foot just now,” he muttered. “You really think I can’t tell the difference between getting hooked on something and being grabbed? Fine then, don’t fucking believe me.”

We used our flashlights to look around and found that this space under the main hall was quite large. We couldn’t see where the end was because the corpses were so densely packed together, but other than that, there was nothing suspicious.

“Why are there so many corpses here?” Pan Zi asked Monk Hua. “I’ve never seen anything like it.”

“Looking at the situation, it seems like this is the place where those who were buried with the tomb owner were laid to rest. But this…I don’t understand it at all. There’s no imperial tomb like this in any dynasty… Who are these dead people?” Monk Hua muttered to himself.

I suppressed my fear and shined my flashlight on one of the corpses, finding that its facial features were still well preserved. Its eyes were closed and there were wrinkles lining its face, but it didn’t have any facial hair. There was also a thin layer of ice covering its body, which was why its skin had that bluish-purple tint to it. But the most frightening thing was that its mouth was wide open, revealing sharp fangs.

“These things may not be human,” Fatty said after examining at it. “Look at these teeth. If they tried to kiss someone, they’d take that person’s face off.”

“Not human?” Ye Cheng’s face turned pale again. “Then what are they? Monsters?”

“They may be abominable snowmen, except without hair,” Fatty started spouting nonsense.

“Bullshit!” Monk Hua shouted. “What abominable snowmen? The teeth were sharpened by the owners of these bodies. This was a practice commonly seen in ancient shamanism. But because it was too much trouble, masks were later used instead. These are definitely not Jurchens from the Ming Dynasty. Look at their clothes—they’re all very primitive and the style doesn’t match what the Jurchens or Mongolians usually wore. Look, some of these corpses are still wrapped in linen. These are mummies from an ice burial.”

I suddenly remembered the ice burial pit we saw that night when we camped in the valley on Little Sacred Mountain, “Could these bodies be the remains of some ancients who were buried in the ice, and Wang Zanghai found them when he was excavating the mountain to build the tomb?”

Monk Hua nodded, “That’s right. This fetus-shaped cave may have been a burial ground in the past, where the locals carried out ice burials. But Wang Zanghai needed the land to build his fake subordinate tomb, so these corpses must have been dug up when he was excavating the cave.”

“If what you said is true, then why not just burn them?” Fatty asked. “Why place these bodies here?”

“Who knows? Look at how terrifying these mummies are. Shamanism has a lot of strange and primitive rituals and curses that require corpses. Maybe the layout here is related to a shaman ritual, and something strange will happen. It might also be the reason why we couldn’t get out of here no matter how much we ran. We have to be careful.”

I suddenly recalled the corpse array back in Qinling Mountain—it seemed that wherever there were a lot of corpses, we always encountered a ghost-hitting-a-wall type situation. Was it really the result of witchcraft?

Shamanism wasn’t really a religion, but more of a kind of primitive witchcraft. In other words, it had practical value in pharmacology, and was closely connected with spirit worship. My understanding of it was limited to the dancing shamans I saw in Qing Palace dramas. However, it was said that shamanistic sorcery was similar to Chinese Qimen Dunjia in that many parts had been lost throughout history. Some of the good aspects were introduced into Tibetan Buddhism, while some of the more evil aspects suddenly disappeared. According to ancient texts, many shaman rituals in the distant past were extremely sinister and perverse, with a lot of content about curses and corpses that were inextricably linked with Gu techniques. The She people also believed in Gu techniques, ⁽²⁾ so did that mean that there was some kind of connection between them and the Eastern Xia people?

Fatty listened to Monk Hua’s words and suddenly came to a realization, “No wonder when I entered this spirit palace, my feet always felt like they were burning and I was uncomfortable all over. As it turns out, there were so many zombies buried underneath. King Wannu really didn’t have a conscience.”

“I’m also just guessing” Monk Hua said. “The most important thing right now is to find a way out. Let’s split up and look around. Maybe there’s an exit around here.”

After saying that, Monk Hua added, “But be careful. No matter how you look at it, this place is a little strange. Not only are there bound to be hidden dangers, but the cliff here is too steep. If something happens, you won’t be able to run away even if you want to.”

Everyone readily agreed. Fatty, unable to wait any longer, quickly untied the rope from around his waist. The rest of us unhooked our carabiners, picked up our flashlights, and dispersed to carefully begin searching the steep cliff.

It didn’t feel pleasant walking among so many corpses, but surprisingly enough, the more bodies there were, the less uneasy I felt. It was probably because once you reached a certain level of fear, your emotions had nothing left to do but go in the opposite direction.

The rows of corpses were so densely packed together that there wasn’t any room for us to walk down the middle of them. As a result, we had to squeeze our way through the gaps between the bodies. The corpses consisted of both old and young people, but all of them were frozen to the point that they looked like purple rocks. I saw that some of them were holding copper ritual utensils, which had all turned green with rust. Almost all of corpses’ lower bodies had fused with the rocks below, so it was impossible to move them unless you smashed them into pieces.

After searching for a long time, I still didn’t find anything. I felt uneasy when I noticed that I was getting farther and farther away from the others, so I was going to pretend that I had finished my search and go back to the collapsed hole to see if the others had found anything. But just as I turned around, I heard Pan Zi cry out, “You damned fatty, what are you doing?!”

We all followed Pan Zi’s voice and looked in the direction Fatty had gone to search just now. As it turned out, Fatty had stopped searching at some point and was instead crouched among a row of corpses below. Since he was facing us, we could see that his mouth was hanging open and his face was completely expressionless. At first glance, it looked like his face had taken on a blue and purple tint, just like the corpses next to him. I didn’t know what the hell was going on.

<Chapter 10><Table of Contents><Chapter 12>

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TN Notes:

(1) The Arhat Hall is a hall used for enshrining an arhat or arhats in Chinese Buddhist temples. Arhat is another term for Arahant, one who has gained insight into the true nature of existence and has achieved Enlightenment and liberated from the endless cycle of rebirth.  

(2) Gu techniques consist of preparing poison by placing many venomous insects (e.g., centipede, snake, scorpion) in a closed vessel and allowing them to remain there until one had eaten all the rest. The toxin was then extracted from the survivor and administered to the victim. Gu was used in black magic practices such as manipulating sexual partners, creating malignant diseases, and causing death. Info here. The She people were mentioned back in Vol 2 “Qinling Mountain Sacred Tree” and were thought to be the ones who made the giant bronze tree.

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According to the licensed version, we’re halfway through but according to the Chinese raws, we’re about a third of the way through (yay!). Guess they left quite a bit out of this book? If you’d like a slightly inaccurate visual of this chapter, it’s episode 15 of “The Lost Tomb 2”, around the 9:10 mark. Viki link here.