Chapter 41 Mission Impossible

Although they remained motionless, seeing nine huge centipedes coiled around the coffin platform was enough to make us all tense up. One by one, everyone’s faces turned pale and we all started retreating, weapons raised and at the ready.

“You guys don’t need to be so nervous,” the expert said. “It’s winter, and the temperature here is still low, so the centipedes are still hibernating. These giant insects won’t wake up so easily.”

“They may not wake up easily, but there’s still a possibility that they will,” A Ning countered. “People like us are perfect hibernation snacks.”

At this time, Fatty’s killing intent rose up again and he said to the two of them, “Whether they wake up or not, I’ll just shoot them in the head. Even if they’re ten times bigger than normal, they’ll still die immediately. Then we can go and see if this immortal King Wannu who crawled out of the ground was a human or a monster.”

Pan Zi waved him off, “Absolutely not. Don’t you remember Shunzi saying that killing even one centipede will wake up its hibernating companions? This rift seems to run through the whole mountain range, so there’s no telling how many centipedes there are. What if even bigger ones show up to avenge their relatives?”

I raised up the night vision binoculars to take a closer look, hoping that such big centipedes were just fossilized ancient insects. I couldn’t seem to convince myself that these things were alive. But as I looked through the lenses, I was quickly distracted by the spirit screen behind the coffin. I was both surprised and excited to find that the relief sculpture on the spirit screen actually contained a lot of Jurchen characters.

There was a lot of text on the spirit screen, the place where most of the characters were gathered clearly indicating that it was some kind of narrative. The structures Wang Zanghai had built usually had very little text inside of them, but if there were so many words here, then it must be one of the most precious things you could find in an ancient tomb—the record of the tomb owner.

I quickly grabbed the man in A Ning’s team who could read the Jurchen script, handed him the binoculars, and asked him to help me translate what was written there.

When the man saw the text, his expression became puzzled and he said that although the characters were similar in shape to Jurchen characters, they weren’t actually Jurchen, but another language that was part of the same language family. Because of this, he didn’t know what was written.

I cursed to myself, immediately feeling discouraged. This King Wannu was too cunning; he hardly left any openings for us.

No wonder a scheming man like Wang Zanghai, who had directly participated in the reconstruction of the ancient imperial tomb for twenty years, couldn’t figure out what the core secret that King Wannu wanted to hide was—King Wannu had set up an insurmountable obstacle for him. And that wasn’t even mentioning those of us who were trying to figure it out based solely on guesswork.

It was a shame Monk Hua wasn’t here. He had been immersed in studying this subject for many years and had a way of thinking that was different from others. If he were here, he may have been able to come up with something.

But as soon as I thought this, I realized that I was wrong—if Monk Hua were here, the complexity of the situation would have increased beyond my control.

Thoughts kept popping into my head one after another until I didn’t know what to think anymore. I only came back to my senses when I suddenly heard Pan Zi calling, “Fatty, can you do it or do you want someone else to try?”

I wasn’t used to Pan Zi calling Fatty by his name, so I knew right away that something was up. Feeling my heart clench with anxiety, I looked up and saw that Fatty and Kirk had climbed up a chain and were carefully walking towards a spot above the coffin platform. When they reached it, Fatty started tying a rope around his waist, probably intending to hang down from the chain and suspend himself above the coffin, just like Tom Cruise in “Mission Impossible”. But instead of stopping him, the others actually started giving him suggestions on how to position himself.

I asked A Ning what was going on. Were these people going to watch nine dragons playing with a fat pearl?⁽¹⁾

“It’s fine,” A Ning said. “Theoretically speaking, doing it this way shouldn’t disturb the centipedes from their hibernation. Besides, I just noticed that their tails are chained to the stone pillars under the platform, so their range of movement is limited. Only those who get near them are in any danger. Everyone came here to see what was in King Wannu’s coffin, but now that we actually found it, we can’t even see what’s inside. Who could resist making an attempt?”

I told her that even if Fatty could lower himself down, he wouldn’t be able to open the lid of such a huge stone coffin; all we’d be doing was watching him make a fool of himself. “He’s not trying to open the lid,” A Ning said. “He’s simply placing a hook into the gap between the lid and the coffin. We hung a pulley on a bronze chain above it, so we’ll be able to use that to lift the coffin lid up.”

I felt very uneasy. Even at this point, A Ning still hadn’t given up and was doing her job—looking for something in the coffin. Although I didn’t know what she was looking for, I didn’t think there was any reason why someone would consider something more important than their own life. Moreover, there were so many bronze chains hanging above the coffin that Wang Zanghai wouldn’t have missed the possibility of someone pulling such a trick—there must be something strange here that made him think there wasn’t a need to take any precautions. Yet there Fatty was, foolishly leading such an operation. He must have wanted be the first person to open the coffin so that he could claim a larger share of the profits, but I knew I had to stop him.

I was watching him try and find a good place to lower himself down when Kirk suddenly fell from the chain, his body landing heavily on the coffin below. Nobody knew what had just happened, but before we could react, Fatty, who had frozen in shock when he saw Kirk suddenly jump ahead of him, suddenly flew up by himself, danced and twirled in the air for a while, and then fell straight down. Fortunately, he still had the rope tied around his waist—just as his head was about to hit the coffin, the rope pulled taut and stopped his descent, leaving him hovering right over Kirk’s dead body.

I nearly fainted from fright, but that wasn’t enough to stop the thought that suddenly popped into my head—this was too strange. Did something on the chain push them down?

As soon as I thought this, I quickly shouted at Pan Zi, who was still frozen in shock, “Set off a flare! Everyone else, grab your fucking weapons!”

Everyone immediately came back to their senses and started moving, but there wasn’t any time to worry about Fatty—as soon as Pan Zi shot the flair into the air, we all saw countless shadows hovering over our heads. Many of them were even hanging upside down on the chains, looking curiously at us strange creatures who had invaded their nest.

It seemed that while we were distracted, these strange birds had quietly started returning to their nests at some point. As I eyed them, I noticed that some of the ones flying in the air were still holding on to something, which was obviously their prey. I raised my hand and quickly told those who were poised to shoot not to fire.

These strange birds were half-blind, so they couldn’t see us at all in the flare’s bright light. But they were very sensitive to sound, which was why so many had gathered from all directions when we fired that shot back in the front hall. This kind of creature living in an underground volcanic crater without any light had obviously already adapted to life in the dark.

But even though I ordered them not to shoot, someone still fired—not just a single shot, but a rapid series of shots that reverberated loudly through the air at the bottom of the rift. There was a sudden flurry of movement in the air as countless shadows circled and began diving down.

I turned my head angrily to see which bastard had disobeyed my orders, only to see Fatty trying to climb back up the rope that was keeping him suspended over the stone platform. He was holding Kirk’s M16 in hand, and firing a constant stream of bullets at the coffin below him.

I took a closer look and found that at some point, the giant coffin had actually opened a tiny bit, and three—that’s right, three—bluish-purple things that looked like arms were sticking out of it. The hands connected to those “arms” had extremely long nails that seemed to slice through the air as they tried to grab Fatty.

<Chapter 40><Table of Contents><Chapter 42>

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TN Notes:

(1) This is a reference to the “two dragons playing with a pearl” that’s been mentioned before. Can’t believe Wu Xie is calling Fatty a fat pearl. He’s so mean 😭