Chapter 24 Underwater Tunnel

The square opening was half as tall as a person and had very rough edges, with broken rocks about the size of watermelons piled up around the sides and also inside. Obviously, someone had blocked this opening before. The inside of the opening was completely dark, making it impossible to tell where it led to. As I looked at it, I found that it was kind of similar to the reservoir culverts that were often seen in the south.

Among the pile of broken rocks on one side of the square opening was a relatively flat rock with a few characters roughly carved on it. They had obviously been carved hastily considering how shallow the marks were. If not for the fact that they were English letters that clearly clashed with the aesthetics of this imperial tomb, Shunzi might not have even noticed them. Unfortunately, they didn’t seem to spell any words that I was familiar with.

Did Uncle Three carve these words to show us the way? But after thinking about it, I knew that it was impossible—Uncle Three’s foreign language skills weren’t very good, so how could he possibly come up with the idea of carving a secret code in a foreign language? It really wasn’t his style.

Curious, Fatty moved in closer to take a look. Then he suddenly let out an exclamation and beckoned me over, “Young Wu, I think we’ve seen these distorted foreign letters somewhere before.”

I also walked over and took a look, only to feel my heart skip a beat.

He wasn’t wrong—we had indeed seen this mark before. It was the same mark Fatty saw on the wall of that pool when we were in the undersea tomb. After seeing it, Poker-Face suddenly remembered what happened in that tomb twenty years ago and then rushed down to the bottom of the pool. But why was this mark here?

At the time, I thought that the mark had been carved by one of the people in Uncle Three and Chen Wen-Jin’s team, but now that I was seeing it here, I knew that my assumption was obviously wrong.

Based on how the mark had been carved, I could tell that it had been made using a pickaxe, and it also looked pretty new. This meant that either Uncle Three, Poker-Face, or A Ning and her team had left it, because they were the only ones here who had that kind of equipment. In any case, whoever left this mark must have already entered the square opening.

At this time, an idea suddenly popped into my head—maybe Poker-Face had been the one to engrave that mark in the undersea tomb so that as soon as he saw it, he would know that he had been to that place before.

Indeed, it was possible. I’d definitely have to ask whenever he showed up again.

Pan Zi looked at me standing there in a daze and asked me what was wrong, so I told them about the similar mark Fatty and I saw in the undersea tomb. While Pan Zi also found it very intriguing, he didn’t think that Uncle Three could have left the mark. “I’ve been with Master Three for ten years now, and have robbed at least fifty tombs with him, including several big ones,” he said. “But I’ve never seen him leave a mark like this. Plus, Master Three doesn’t know a single letter of the English alphabet. This mark definitely wasn’t left by him.”

In that case, A Ning or Poker-Face must have left it. I turned to the others and said, “Anyway, it seems like we’re on the right path. Someone has already entered this tunnel, which means the entrance to the underground palace should be here. Do you guys want to go in now or wait?”

“Let’s go!” Fatty immediately said. “What are we waiting for? Those foreigners are already ahead of us. I’ve always been the first in, but ever since I ran into you unlucky guys, I’ve been trailing behind. Let’s stop dawdling. Otherwise, they’ll complete their goal and come back out before we do anything. Losing to them is too shameful!”

Pan Zi ignored him and said to me, “Don’t ask us. Do you feel well enough to go?”

I nodded, indicating that it was no problem. “Fatty’s right, we can’t delay any longer. And besides, if I ran into a zombie, I’d die whether I was injured or not. Being injured just means I’ll die a little faster. There’s nothing to worry about.”

Fatty was already unloading his backpack at this time, but when he heard me say this, he clicked his tongue and said, “Why don’t you fucking say something more auspicious? Do you not see where we’re about to go in?”

I glared at him, “Even sticking a picture of two door gods⁽¹⁾ on your forehead won’t help in this situation. You should focus on reining in those greedy hands of yours first.”

We all started preparing the equipment needed for this part of the journey. Initially, everything had been packed together in the bags to make our walk easier, but now we put all lanterns, fuel, and similar items into the bags while taking all the cold fireworks, glow sticks, and explosives out and tying them to our belts. Fatty and Pan Zi pulled the bolts on their guns back, removed the magazines, and reloaded them. After that was done, they made sure that their knives were all within easy reach.

The Type-56 rifle was too long to easily maneuver and turn around in the tunnel, so Fatty gave it to Shunzi and took out a pickaxe for himself. Then we all tested the brightness of our flashlights. At this time, Fatty took out his mojin pendant, held it in his hand, and bowed respectfully to the sky.

Shunzi was also an expert in using guns. After taking the rifle from Fatty, he quickly familiarized himself with it, a look of nostalgia appearing on his face. Then he said to us, “Guys, I don’t know what kind of business you’re in, but I must remind you that in Changbai Mountain, you need to watch out for those xuemaozi.⁽²⁾ If you notice that something’s wrong, you should first plug your ears with cotton. At this time of year, that creature’s head isn’t hard so it can only crawl into your ears. But in summertime, when its shell is hardened, it can burrow directly into your skin until only its rear antennae are left exposed. If you try to pull them out by the exposed antennae, they’ll break off and the whole insect will be left inside your body. The only way to dig them out is to cut open the wound. Oh, and this thing will also crawl into the anus, so be careful when you sit down.”

Fatty glanced at Shunzi in disgust and tightened his belt before saying, “So even insects have this kind of hobby now?”

“This isn’t a joking matter,” Shunzi said. “If you guys fall prey to them, figure out a way to pull them off—don’t ask me.”

We all nodded, suddenly feeling a chill sweep over our lower bodies. Fatty then took the lead and climbed into the square opening, the rest of us following behind in single file, headed towards an unknown underground world.

Since the tunnel wasn’t that tall, we had to walk hunched over, which slowed our pace. But it had been dug in such a way that we could look around while walking, and the rocky floor was also very solid. Looking at the traces of chiseling on the walls, this tunnel had obviously been excavated using the most primitive method. I couldn’t help but wonder how long it would take to build such a large-scale imperial tomb—probably more than twenty years at the bare minimum. In fact, many emperors started building their tombs as soon as they ascended the throne. The fact that this tunnel must have been painstakingly dug for more than twenty years made me think that a large group of people must have fled back then.

The farther I walked, the more traces I saw of many people having been inside this tunnel. There were even numerous footprints left by people who had been wearing modern hiking boots. We didn’t see any xuemaozi, but I did notice some strange holes on the tunnel’s ceiling.

These holes were only big enough to accommodate one person, and were bent at a hundred-and-eighty-degree angle. After going straight up for a while, they turned sharply downward to form a curved shape like the number “9”. Looking around, these holes appeared to be placed every ten meters or so.

Ever since I set foot in this business, I had climbed into several tunnels, but I had never seen a structure like this before. From an architectural standpoint, the amount of work required to dig these holes was almost the same as that of the entire tunnel, so there must have been a reason for their existence. Otherwise, it would have cost too much time and effort to dig them. But no matter how much I thought about it, I really couldn’t figure it out.

At this time, Pan Zi suddenly spoke up from behind me, “Little Master Three, have you noticed that this tunnel is a bit familiar?”

“Familiar?” I paused and then turned around to ask him what he meant.

“When we were in the Temple of Seeds in Shandong,” Pan Zi said, “didn’t the tunnel leading to the corpse cave look like this? Wasn’t that old man hiding in one of the alcoves above, waiting to ambush us?”

When he said this, I carefully looked at the ceiling again. Back when we were in Shandong, I was so panicked that I didn’t pay close attention to the top of the cave, so I couldn’t make a comparison to what I was seeing now. But if Pan Zi was saying they were similar, then there shouldn’t be any mistake. Feeling surprised, I asked him, “Are you sure?”

Pan Zi shook his head, “We didn’t know they were there until we heard the old man mention them later. It was so dark when we passed by that none of us noticed them at the time.”

I stopped, carefully examined these holes, and then immediately understood their function. “That tunnel leading to the corpse cave was also a water robbers’ tunnel, wasn’t it?”

Seeing Pan Zi nod, I immediately continued, “These holes are actually used for breathing. You see, when water was poured into this tunnel, there would still be air in the holes because of their curved structure. All you had to do was swim for a while, stick your head into one of these holes, take a breath, and then move on.”

“What a clever method,” Pan Zi said in surprise. “So this tunnel really was underwater back then?”

“Probably,” I replied. “It seems that the water robbers’ tunnel in the Temple of Seeds must have also been dug by Wang Zanghai’s people.” But when I thought about it again, I realized that this couldn’t be right. Uncle Three had deduced that the water robbers’ tunnel was ancient, probably dug sometime during the Warring States Period. It may have even been dug by King Shang of Lu when he entered the mountain to build his tomb. Did Wang Zanghai see it after he went there and decided to borrow the idea from the ancients? It was quite possible.

We walked for a long time, but I didn’t know how far we had gone before the tunnel gradually widened and we finally saw the exit. When we climbed out, there was a very deep canal in front of us that was about ten meters deep, five or six meters wide, and totally dried up.

I looked at the way the canal had been built and said to the others, “This is a reservoir. Similar to an aqueduct, the water in the moat was drawn from here in a constant flow so that it wouldn’t become stagnant or flow backwards.”

There was a stone bridge connecting both sides of the canal, along with dikes on either side that were wide enough for only one person to walk on at a time. After we carefully walked over to the other side of the river, Fatty asked where we should go now.

“This canal is connected with the one outside, so they should be considered one and the same,” I said to them. “Let’s follow the direction of the water flow.”

Pan Zi squatted down and looked at the traces of the water flow before pointing to one side, “That way.”

We continued moving forward. Not long after, a square opening appeared on the stone wall of the river dike in front of us.

Fatty set off a cold firework and threw it over, revealing a black stone slab lying on the ground inside the square opening—this was obviously the sealing stone of the underground palace. Fatty climbed out of the canal, set off some more cold fireworks, and then scattered them around before signaling us to climb out as well.

Inside the square opening was a tomb chamber built of black rock. While it wasn’t tall enough for people to stand up straight, it was actually very wide. There were many earthen jars neatly placed around the chamber, each one half as tall as a person. I figured they were probably wine jars that had been placed here as sacrificial offerings to the tomb owner. I did a rough count and found that there were more than a thousand of them. It seemed that King Wannu may have been a drunkard.

On the four black walls were some simple relief sculptures depicting the scene of an imperial banquet. The relief sculptures were in bad shape, likely because this place was connected to the outside world. Although the volcanic gas here wasn’t as deadly as Pan Zi had said, it was still definitely more corrosive than ordinary air. The fact that the murals were preserved at all was nothing short of a miracle, but unfortunately, we could only get a general idea of what had been painted on them.

On the left and right sides of the tomb chamber were two stone doorways, behind which were two dark tunnels that a cold wind was blowing out from. Fatty picked up two cold fireworks and threw one into each tunnel, but there was no end in sight.

<Chapter 23><Table of Contents><Chapter 25>

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TN Notes:

(1) Door gods (aka Menshen) are divine guardians of doors and gates in Chinese folk religions, used to protect against evil influences or to encourage the entrance of positive ones.

(2) Reminder, it’s a local term for those centipedes.