Chapter 30 Path of Shadows

Shunzi and Pan Zi were completely dumbfounded by what they saw, and Pan Zi muttered, “Fuck, what’s going on? Did we go through the wrong door?”

“No!” Fatty and I both had experience with this kind of thing, so we knew right away what had happened, “The tomb passage has shifted. When we were in that room just now, the passage moved somewhere else and this new passage took its place.”

“Is that really possible?” Pan Zi asked, mouth opened wide in shock.

“Yes!” Fatty and I both nodded vigorously, but I knew that there was probably more to come. After all, anything could happen in a tomb designed by Wang Zanghai.

I felt a little scared, but I also felt a little relieved at the same time. This was because as soon as the tomb passage changed, I suddenly understood why Shunzi’s father and the others were trapped in that room full of gold. If you weren’t familiar with Wang Zanghai’s tricks, then the strange changes to the tomb chamber and passage outside would be enough to drive you crazy. In fact, we almost lost our minds in the undersea tomb after experiencing such a trick. But once you figured out the principle behind the sudden change in the tomb passage, it wasn’t scary at all.

As soon as this tomb passage changed, the intersection that brought us here no longer existed, which meant that it was impossible to go back. Although we didn’t know what was at the end of this new tomb passage, I knew that if we stayed here, our fate would inevitably be the same as those corpses.

At that time, I was thinking that the worst-case scenario would be if there was nothing at the end of the tomb passage, and it was a dead end. But that was no big deal for us. Those bodies were likely trapped here because the path they had taken had suddenly disappeared and they didn’t have any explosives to blast their way out. In such a situation, it was only natural that they would be at a total loss and show those hopeless expressions.

Thinking back on it later, I realized that I was still too young to understand that the depth of despair on the corpses’ faces indicated that what they encountered was far more bizarre than anything I could imagine. At that time, my thinking really was too simple.

I shared my thoughts with the others, and explained the principle of shifting tomb passages to Pan Zi and Shunzi. Only then did they realize what was going on and showed enlightened expressions. Pan Zi pondered over it for a while before saying, “If that’s the case, then theoretically, the structure of this underground palace will be ridiculously complex. Maybe it’s like being trapped in a Rubik’s cube, and we’ll never get out after entering.”

“I doubt it,” I assured him. “Truthfully, Wang Zanghai’s tricks are usually designed to exert psychological pressure on grave robbers. It’s not easy to really trap people to death. I figure many of them end up dying after having a nervous breakdown caused by such a torturous experience.”

In short, we had to follow this new tomb passage first before trying to think of a way out. If we really couldn’t get out, then we would do as Fatty said and determine which direction we needed to go in and then blast our way out step by step. Now that we had explosives, things were much easier.

After saying that, I took the lead and walked down the tomb passage, Fatty and the others following closely behind. But as I walked, I suddenly felt that something was wrong—the surrounding murals were too creepy. There were so many of those big-headed shadowy silhouettes lining the tomb passage that it felt as if we were surrounded on all sides. It was starting to make me feel extremely uncomfortable. Then I suddenly started thinking that if there was a creature like this at the end of the passage, we definitely wouldn’t be able to notice it since its shadow would blend in with the other shadows on the walls.

But after walking this far, it was too humiliating to suddenly turn around and go back, so I had no other choice but to grit my teeth and continue leading the way, trying not to think about these things. Soon, the tomb door behind us disappeared from view, and we reached a point in the passage where neither end was visible.

Pan Zi, who was bringing up the rear, suddenly asked Shunzi about his father and the expedition team. After Shunzi explained everything he knew, Pan Zi said to us, “When we were following the passage before, all those holes in the sealing stones were done using directional blasting. This is the latest technology, which means that those corpses didn’t do it. They must have come in from a different route, so there’s probably more than one way out of here.”

“Of course there is,” I said to him. “Just look at A Ning and her team. We took the same route, but they got here before us and even figured a way out of here already. We lost because we don’t have enough information.”

But the problem was, I didn’t know where A Ning and her team were right now. They should have entered the treasure room like us, so did they also come out and find that the tomb passage had shifted? Or did they leave through the tomb passage we had walked through when we first entered? This also brought up another question: did the same thing happen to my Uncle Three?

I really wasn’t sure. We had already entered the underground palace after following his encoded instructions, but he didn’t give any instructions on what to do next. It seemed that after entering the underground palace, he didn’t know which way to go, just like a headless fly.

While talking, we walked for another twenty minutes or so before our flashlights reflected off of something in front of us—we had finally reached the end of the tomb passage. Everyone immediately tensed up, fell silent, and slowed their steps as we approached the end of the passage. Soon, another jade door appeared in front of us.

I immediately felt shocked as we got closer to the jade door, because it was exactly the same as the one we had left behind just now. Then I remembered that most doors in ancient tombs were done by the same craftsmen, so of course they would look very similar. The stone from which this door had been carved was also of high quality, and there was a similar hole at the bottom of it, as if someone had blasted their way through.

It seemed that someone had already been here, which was good for us—no matter who it was, this at least meant that there weren’t any traps or they had already been set off.

We all filed through the door once more. Since there weren’t many cold fireworks left, Fatty didn’t want to use them and instead pulled out a few fire sticks. We looked around and couldn’t help but feel shocked.

On the other side of this tomb door was a room that looked exactly the same as the treasure room we had left earlier. Heaps of gold and silver treasures were piled up like small mountains, and there were four huge pillars in each corner of the room. The layout was almost exactly the same.

Seeing this made me think that there was more than one such room in the underground palace, and I started to wonder how much treasure there really was. No wonder the Eastern Xia dynasty could build such a magnificent tomb and underground palace despite being so weak—they hoarded a bunch of treasures. It seemed to be a habit of authoritarian regimes: Genghis Khan’s tomb was hidden somewhere under the Mongolian grasslands, Hitler’s Nazi gold was rumored to be buried in Tibet, and the treasures of the Jurchen Jin Dynasty were hidden here.

As my thoughts were spinning wildly, I suddenly heard Fatty shout something at me. His voice was so loud that I jumped a little bit.

Thinking that something was wrong, I immediately turned to look at him and found that he was standing on a pile of gold with his mouth wide open. He kept trying to speak, but it was like the words were stuck in his throat. I quickly ran over to take a look, but also froze in shock—several dead bodies were also lying huddled together among the piles of treasure here.

“Shunzi,” I said in surprise, “how many fathers do you have…ah no, I mean how many people were in your father’s team?” But before I finished speaking, I suddenly saw something that made my hair stand on end—a bunch of things were neatly lined up on one of the gold mounds next to the corpses. I took a look with my flashlight and found that not only were they the same objects we had sorted through in that other treasure room, but they were arranged in the same order as well.

Fatty couldn’t stand it any longer and set off a cold firework, quickly illuminating the whole tomb chamber. We walked down to take a closer look and found that these things were clearly the same as the ones we had sorted through before.

Fatty had a horrified look on his face as he asked, “What’s going on? Is…is someone imitating us…?”

I frowned, stood up, and looked around, suddenly feeling a sense of familiarity hit me, “No…we came back. We’re right back where we started!”

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