Chapter 21 Moat

I lay there in a complete daze for several minutes, not knowing what was going on or whether I was dead or alive. Then an acrid liquid rose up from my stomach, filled my throat, and flowed back into my windpipe, causing me to cough nonstop. A stream of blood came gushing from my nose and flowed down my chin.

It took me half a cigarette’s time to slowly recover, the feeling in my body returning little by little. I sat up on shaky limbs and looked around, but the surroundings were so dark that I couldn’t see anything. I felt the ground around me and found that it was all dry rock and sand—it seemed the bottom of the moat had been dry for some time. Fortunately, these rocks were fairly flat; otherwise, I would have been impaled on their jagged edges even if the fall didn’t kill me.

My gas mask was cracked and one of the lenses had broken. I touched it and found that the whole mask was sunken in, as if it was dented. When I felt the ground in front of me again, I found that there was a sharp rock where my face had landed when I fell. It was thanks to this mask that my face hadn’t been smashed in, but now the gas mask was completely useless.

I unfastened the clasp with some difficulty and carefully removed it from my face, but as I held it in my hand, the mask suddenly broke into four pieces—I clearly couldn’t wear it anymore.

Without the mask, the smell of sulfur in the air became stronger, but after taking a few breaths, I didn’t feel any major discomfort. It seemed that what Pan Zi had said about the severity of the toxic gas here wasn’t true, or the air quality at the bottom of the moat was fine. I secretly cursed to myself as I threw the gas mask on the ground, spit out the remaining blood in my mouth, and looked up.

The moat was at least ten meters high, and the top looked like it was surrounded by a grayish fog. I could vaguely see the others’ flashlights shining from above, moving back and forth as if searching for me. I could even hear them shouting something, but my ears were still full of that buzzing sound from when I landed, so I really couldn’t tell what they were saying.

I tried to shout a few times, but as soon as I took a deep breath, a searing pain spread from my chest to the rest of my body, and my shout suddenly turned into a pained moan. I didn’t know what I was saying, or even if I was making any sound.

In order to let Fatty and the others know that I was still alive, I picked up the gas mask I just threw away and starting banging it against the ground, making a series of “papapa” sounds. It wasn’t loud, but the bottom of the moat was so quiet that it made a distinct echo that should easily be noticed by those above.

After knocking for a while, a cold firework suddenly fell from above and landed beside me. I dodged with a curse and looked up, noticing that a person’s head was leaning over the side of the bridge. Judging by the size of the head, it seemed to be Fatty.

I crawled over, picked up the cold firework, and waved it at him. He saw it right away and yelled something, but I couldn’t understand what he was saying so I just made a few unintelligible noises. Fatty pulled his head back and soon tossed a rope down from above. As it dangled there at the bottom of the moat, Fatty began climbing down with one of the rifles slung across his back.

A dozen meters was about the height of a four- or five-story building, which meant that it wasn’t too high but it also wasn’t too short either. Fatty quickly slipped to the bottom, let go of the rope, and swept his gun around the area. Seeing that there was no immediate danger, he quickly ran over and knelt down beside me. “Shit, are you ok?”

My voice came out in a weak croak, “Ok? How about you try falling like that and see how you feel?”

Fatty was relieved to see that I could still joke, and quickly whistled to the others up top. Almost immediately, Pan Zi and Shunzi climbed down with all of our equipment on their backs.

They helped me up, leaned me against a nearby rock, took out the medical kit, and had Shunzi hold me down while they examined my injuries.

I felt a little relieved when I saw the medical kit and thought to myself, it’s a good thing we’re well prepared. Pan Zi made sure that I didn’t have any broken bones and then took out some bandages and started wrapping the largest cuts while scolding me, “Why did you jump when I told you to stop? It’s a good thing you’re so lucky. If you had died, I don’t know how I could ever explain this to Master Three.”

I immediately became angry, “What are you talking about? When you shouted at me, I was already in midair. This isn’t some fucking videotape that you can stop and rewind—” But before I could finish speaking, I suddenly felt a crippling pain in my chest that had my whole body contorting in agony.

Pan Zi was startled, but he quickly held me down and told me not to move.

I gnashed my teeth, wanting to curse him out, but it was so painful that I couldn’t even speak. In the end, all I could do was lay there and gasp for breath.

Fatty handed me his canteen full of water and said, “But you really are lucky. Falling from that height and with all these rocks below…most people would have either died or become crippled.”

I took the canteen, quietly telling myself that this should really be called a crappy fate. The only reason I didn’t die just now was because I hit those two iron chains on my way down. Recently, it seemed like I kept falling from great heights but always somehow managed to survive. I didn’t know if it could be considered good luck or bad luck, but it seemed kind of pointless to put a name to it considering how you could die whenever.

After taking a few sips of water, the blood was finally washed out of my mouth and my throat felt a little better. I asked them what had grabbed me earlier when I jumped into the air. Pan Zi said that they were finally able to see it clearly—it was a very strange bird that was as tall as a person and had a huge head. Unfortunately, they weren’t able to shoot a single one; otherwise, we could have examined it more closely.

“Damn it,” Fatty said. “The person I saw on the spirit path before may have actually been this thing. It must be a human-faced bird…maybe a type of owl.”

Shunzi tilted his head back and looked up, “Strange, those birds don’t seem to be flying down here to get us.”

I also looked up—sure enough, that invisible pressure from before had disappeared, and nothing was swooping down at us anymore.

“Maybe there’s something strange down here, and that’s why they don’t dare to come down?”

As Pan Zi also hesitated, Fatty suddenly spoke up, “I’ll take a look around first. If there are any problems here, we’d better go up as quickly as possible. You guys stay here. Young Wu, get some rest.”

I nodded. Pan Zi said that he would help Fatty search, so the two of them split up and walked in opposite directions.

Not long after, we heard a whistle come from the direction Fatty had gone in—it seemed he had found something.

Pan Zi came back over to us with his gun raised and at the ready, looking in Fatty’s direction. We could see that Fatty had already walked far enough away that his flashlight’s beam looked dim in the darkness. But right outside the circle of light, we could see that there was a large black shadow behind him, as if many people were standing close together in the distant darkness. Those black shadows were so closely intertwined with each other as they stretched out in a seemingly endless line that it was impossible to count how many there were.

We all immediately became alert. Pan Zi pulled the bolt back on the gun with a click while Shunzi pulled out his hunting knife. “What’s going on?” Pan Zi shouted at Fatty. “What is it?”

“Come over and take a look. Then you’ll understand,” Fatty shouted back.

Based on what we could see when we were on the bridge before, the moat here was nearly sixty meters wide, very deep, and stretched out in both directions for quite some distance. Considering the absolute width of the moat here, Fatty actually wasn’t that far from us, but because of the thick darkness all around, we couldn’t see what his flashlight was shining on.

Still, judging from Fatty’s tone, there didn’t seem to be any danger over there.

Shunzi looked at me and asked, “Can you walk? Do you want to go and take a look?” I nodded, and he moved to help me up. Then, the three of us hobbled our way over to where Fatty was.

The ground at the bottom of the moat was uneven due to the various-sized black rocks scattered everywhere, some of them so large that it was mind-boggling. Based on some of the chisel marks on them, it must have been a very huge project. The black intertwined shadows that Fatty was illuminating with his flashlight happened to be under one of the bridge’s support columns.

The walk towards Fatty was a difficult one, but those shadows were finally becoming a little clearer. Once I was close enough, I took the flashlight from Fatty’s hand and leaned in to get a better look, only now able to see what it really was.

In the place where Fatty was standing, there was a fault in the riverbed, below which was a ditch about one meter deep and twenty meters wide. Countless black life-sized statues of ancient humans and horses, along with the wreckage of bronze chariots, were arranged at the bottom of the ditch in a continuous line. As I got closer, I found that the surfaces of the statues were severely corroded, and their faces were blurred to the point that their facial features were no longer distinguishable. Many of the statues were still holding bronze wares that were covered in green rust spots.

Most of these statues were standing close together in a dense cluster, but many of them had collapsed, their broken fragments randomly piled up here and there. As I stood there with Fatty’s flashlight pointed ahead, it almost seemed like these things went on as far as the eye could see. Such a large mass of black shadows at the bottom of a dark imperial tomb…how could you not feel creeped out?

“What are these things?” Shunzi asked, no doubt feeling completely shocked after seeing such a thing for the first time.

“They look like sacrificial statues of those buried with the tomb owner. These chariots and horses either symbolize the ruler’s welcoming procession or the procession that accompanied him when he traveled—” I stammered. “But that’s odd. Why the hell are these things here? Shouldn’t they be placed in the underground palace or the burial pit?”

Fatty also knew this, so he was surprised as well. This place was an imperial tomb; it wasn’t a place where you did things willy-nilly. The number of things in the underground palace and the arrangement of all the sacrificial objects in the burial pit had to be done in a particular manner. It was totally different from the tombs of ordinary palace nobles, who could basically do as they pleased. For imperial tombs, there was a particular focus on ensuring that the necessary environment was created in order to promote qi circulation. This method of piling sacrificial objects in the open air was equivalent to a dark spot on a piece of high-quality white jade—it was the taboo of taboos. If the emperor at that time had seen this, the culprit’s whole family would have been slaughtered. Although Eastern Xia was a small, hidden country at that time, they had the famous Wang Zanghai building this tomb. There was no way he would make such a low-level mistake.

Fatty climbed down into the ditch, holding his gun at the ready in one hand and shining a flashlight on one of the headless statues with the other hand. “Looking at their outfits, they seem to be clothes from the Yuan Dynasty⁽¹⁾—maybe one of the ethnic minorities,” he said while stretching his hand out towards it.

“Don’t touch it,” I warned him. “We don’t know what’s going on with these things. They might have been placed here for a strange reason.”

Fatty disagreed, “What are you so afraid of? Do you think it’ll come to life or something?” But my words still seemed to have some effect—he drew his hand back, slung the rifle over his shoulder, pulled out his hunting knife with his free hand, and then poked the statue with the sharp end of the knife a few times. Seeing that the statue didn’t react, he turned to us and said, “It’s the real deal. One hundred percent stone man.”

Pan Zi, looking curious, also climbed into the ditch and went to stand by Fatty. I was still feeling a little uncomfortable, so I said to them, “You guys be careful.”

Fatty waved his hand dismissively, clearly showing disdain for my caution. He put the hunting knife back into its holster and tried to lift the nearest statue, “Young Wu, you’re in the antique business—are these things worth any money?”

I nodded, “It’s actually a bit tricky. I can’t say much about the whole statue, but some people are fine just buying the fragments. I know that the head of a terracotta soldier is a prized treasure worth two million. Those horse heads are rarer than the human heads so they’re considered more precious, but it’s hard to give a solid estimate.”

Fatty looked around regretfully, a heartbroken expression on his face, before saying, “Such a shame, such a shame. These things won’t be easy to carry out—”

I still couldn’t shake the feeling that there was something strange going on. After all, these statues really shouldn’t be here. It was said that there was a reason behind the placement of every item in an ancient tomb, so these statues should either serve some purpose or have a story behind them. What was the designers’ intent in placing these statues here?

Looking at the distance between the two walls of the moat, the ditch where these figurines stood was located in the deepest part of the center of the moat. When the imperial tomb was first built, these things should have been submerged beneath the water at the bottom of the moat. The blurred faces of the figurines were also evidence that they had been submerged in water for a long time. In other words, after the completion of the imperial tomb, anyone standing up top wouldn’t have been able to see that these things even existed.

So, what was the point of putting these statues here? Were they just construction waste and defective statues that the craftsmen were too lazy to dispose of properly so they threw them into the moat like garbage? But that seemed unlikely considering how neatly arranged they were. After all, you wouldn’t normally arrange defective products like this.

I sighed to myself—it was impossible to guess what the ancients were thinking. If I hadn’t fallen down here, we never would have noticed that there was something under the bridge. It seemed like such a lucky coincidence, but maybe God wanted to show me something?

At this time, Fatty suddenly clicked his tongue and said, “Have you guys noticed that all the figurines here are facing the same direction and are carved to look like they’re walking? It’s very different from what you’d usually see.”

I didn’t notice it at first, but as soon as Fatty said it, I followed his gaze and realized that he was right.

In general, it was very common for burial statues to be arranged together and all facing the same direction, but carving them to look like they were walking was indeed very strange. In fact, I had never seen it done before. I used my flashlight to take a careful look at the lower parts of these statues and suddenly felt surprised.

“These people…” I frowned. “They seem to be marching.”

“Marching?” Pan Zi gave me a questioning look.

I nodded, “Judging from the outfits of those in the chariots, this is a procession that accompanies the ruler when he travels. Look at the positioning of the horses, chariots, and people—they’re all going in the same direction. The arrangement of these statues and their movements all seem to point to such a scene.”

We all looked in the direction the statues were facing, noticing how this long line of strange figurines extended deep into the dark recesses of the moat. It was impossible to tell where their destination might be.

<Chapter 20><Table of Contents><Chapter 22>

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TN Notes:

(1) Yuan or Mongol dynasty was from 1279-1368. Info here.

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We’re a little over halfway through now *sobs*