Chapter 16 Volcanic Crater (Part 2)

The scale of the building complex was beyond anything I could imagine. If the underground palace was under these buildings, then the scale of this place may be comparable to that of Qin Shi Huang’s tomb.⁽¹⁾

According to the shadow paintings in the undersea tomb, the real Heavenly Palace on the Clouds should have been above our heads, but after the avalanche, the spirit palace may have been completely buried under the snow. There was no telling how deep the snow acting as the seal of this underground palace really was.

The signal flares dimmed and went out, plunging our surroundings into darkness once more. At this time, our only sources of light were the few flashlights in our hands, which obviously lacked power compared to the flares.

With the exception of Shunzi, everyone’s faces were full of manic excitement. Grave robbing represented one of the most primitive desires of human beings: seeking wealth and exploring death. For humans, this kind of stimulation was probably too good to pass up.

It took a full ten minutes before we calmed down and prepared to descend. Chen Pi Ah Si turned to Monk Hua and said, “Leave the useless things behind and prepare the ropes. We’ll travel light.”

Monk Hua immediately began preparing. We reorganized our equipment and put some of the discarded things on the protruding rock in order to avoid unnecessary risks that came with climbing with a heavy load.

Then we all put on gas masks, and followed the standard climbing procedures to climb down the cliff step by step with the ropes.

There were a lot of dead trees below, and the air was filled a strange smell that even the gas masks couldn’t filter out. Once everyone reached the bottom, I heard Pan Zi say, “This is a death pit. We have to hurry. If we stay for too long, we may die from lack of oxygen. When I was in the army, I heard that even birds can’t fly over this kind of place.”

That was because the air was filled with sulfur-containing gases that had been released by volcanic activity. The toxicity was so strong that it was hard to imagine.

When Monk Hua set off a cold firework to light up our surroundings, we all looked around—beneath our feet was a stone road paved with stone slabs. It was wide enough to fit two vehicles side-by-side and seemed to lead straight ahead. This was the tomb’s spirit path, and it led straight to the tomb’s main entrance. We looked into the distance and could vaguely see a huge black shadow at the end of the path.

“How should we proceed?” Monk Hua asked Chen Pi Ah Si.

“Follow the spirit path. We’ll go straight to the imperial tomb first,” Chen Pi Ah Si replied.

None of us had any experience with imperial tombs, nor did we have any other ideas at this time, so we kept our mouths shut and followed behind at a trot.

After climbing over many dead trees that had collapsed on the spirit path, we soon came to a stone gate. It was very tall, a bit like the arch you’d see at the entrance to an ancient village.⁽²⁾ This was the first stone gate of the imperial tomb, and it was called the Gate of Heaven. After passing through the stone gate, there would be a lot of stone carvings on both sides of the spirit path.

As we were passing through the stone gate, Chen Pi Ah Si said, “When you come out, remember to walk backwards so that you don’t get decapitated by the mechanism in the gate.”

I had read about this in my grandfather’s notes. This first stone gate had a very strange function—it was the place where the coffin bearers and funeral procession attendants were slaughtered. After the funeral ceremony was completed and the coffin was interred, everyone leaving through this gate would have their heads cut off. So, this gate was basically equivalent to the gate of life and death. If grave robbers entered along the spirit path or entered through the first gate of the underground palace, then they had to walk out backwards. Otherwise, they’d be in trouble.

Of course, there were almost no grave robbers who had the opportunity to enter an imperial tomb along the spirit path, so we were probably one of the lucky few. Those who were able to rob imperial tombs in the past were either warlords or formidable characters, so they obviously weren’t afraid of the so-called Gate of Decapitation.

After passing through the Gate of Heaven, there were white stone statues of men and horses every five meters on both sides of the spirit path. We weren’t archaeologists, and we couldn’t take these things with us, so we ignored them and continued moving forward.

We ran and ran until Fatty, who was running in front of me, suddenly came to an abrupt stop. I was following closely behind him so I ended up bumping into him and falling to the ground.

It all happened so suddenly that Fatty didn’t even have time to react and almost fell down with me. When I asked him what he was doing, he turned to look at me with a pale face and said softly, “There seems to be a person standing by the side of the road.”

The others had been running up ahead, but when they found that we had stopped, they all turned back. “What’s wrong?” Pan Zi asked.

Fatty told him what he had seen just now, but the others didn’t believe him. “It’s just a stone statue, right?” Pan Zi asked. “Maybe you saw wrong?”

Fatty shook his head, “It was there and gone in the blink of an eye; I didn’t even have time to react. But it was definitely looking at me. It freaked me out so much that I’m covered in a cold sweat. I know I didn’t see wrong.”

“Did you get a good look at it?”

“It looked like a woman, but I can’t be sure,” Fatty said. “I was running too fast so I didn’t see it clearly.”

We all pointed our flashlights at the stone figures behind us—they were placed every five meters along the path, so we had already run past six or seven of them just now. We didn’t see a woman within our flashlights’ range, but it was possible that she had gone further back.

“Boss, should we go back and take a look?” Monk Hua asked. “Maybe it’s that woman from the other expedition?”

Monk Hua was referring to A Ning, but I didn’t see how that was possible. They were headed for the main entrance of the Heavenly Palace on the Clouds, so even if they had successfully crossed the border, they should still be digging a grave robbers’ tunnel above our heads right now. There was no way they were as fast as us.

“It definitely wasn’t her,” Fatty said. “I’d recognize that bitch at a single glance.”

Chen Pi Ah Si hesitated for a moment before saying to Monk Hua, “You and the others go first.” Then he patted Shunzi on the shoulder and said, “You come with me to check it out.”

<Chapter 15><Table of Contents><Chapter 17>

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TN Notes:

(1) Qin Shi Huang, or Shi Huangdi, was the founder of the Qin dynasty, and the first emperor of a unified China. Rather than maintain the title of “king” borne by the previous Shang and Zhou rulers, he ruled as the First Emperor of the Qin dynasty from 221 to 210 BCE. Info on his tomb here.

(2) He specifically used 牌坊 (aka paifang or pailou), a traditional style of Chinese architectural arch or gateway structure. Info and pics here. 

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Heihua Russian Adventure pdf/epub have been updated with 6 new manga pics. Enjoy~~