Chapter 58 Waiting

From afar, the figure on the throne was hard to see clearly. Was it the Queen of the West’s corpse? Having experienced such situations numerous times before, I couldn’t help but feel an overwhelming sense of evil in this place, prompting me to immediately tell the others to take out the black donkey hooves.

“It can’t be the Queen of the West,” Fatty said. “She would either be buried or lying in a coffin. There’s no reason for her to be sitting here. I think it’s a statue.”

“It can’t be a statue,” Chen Wen-Jin replied. “We haven’t seen a single human figurine the whole way here, which means the people probably had no interest in such things. But the fact that we’re seeing one here, in the most secretive and sacred place of the Queen of the West’s empire, shows that this figure must be significant. We all need to be very careful.”

“It’s a pity that Pan Zi’s gun was destroyed,” Fatty said. “Otherwise, from this distance, I could have shot it in the head to see whether it’s a human or a ghost.”

If it’s a ghost, you wouldn’t kill it, but if it’s a human, you’d definitely become a murderer, I thought to myself.

Whatever the case, we still had to go over there since that was the only place where we could get close to the meteorite. We called the others over and started wading towards the stone steps.

There definitely wouldn’t be any mechanisms here, because this place wasn’t ideal for installing them. The stone steps had been very crudely carved out, and the bronze lamp holders on both sides, which must have been used for lighting, were now so rusted that they were nothing more than mere decorations. Fatty tried to put one in his backpack, but it crumbled as soon as he touched it.

As we slowly climbed the stone steps and emerged from the water, I suddenly felt as if my whole body was filled with lead. We took a short break to rest, and then carefully approached the altar with our black donkey hooves in hand. Emboldened by our numbers, there was almost no hesitation as we directed our miner’s lamps towards the figure on the throne—sure enough, it really was a person.

After taking a closer look, I found that it was the corpse of a woman.

She was wearing a very elaborate headdress, and if not for the hairpins, it would have been impossible to tell whether she was a man or a woman. Her body, dressed in a gold silk gown that was studded with jade pieces, was sitting so rigidly upright that she appeared almost lifelike.

Her face was blue, but after taking a closer look, I realized that it was because her skin had been covered in a layer of bluish-green powder somewhat similar to lime, which gave it a carefully sculpted look. There wasn’t a single trace of naked flesh on her body, which made it impossible to tell how well-preserved she was under the clothes. She looked like a clay bodhisattva statue in a temple, but one that appeared especially sinister in the light of our miner’s lamps.

Behind the female corpse stood two guards, wearing armor typical of the Western Regions. Clearly, not as much care had been taken to preserve them since the lime-like substance on their faces had crumbled away, revealing the rotten bones inside. Their armor was black, seemingly made of the same material as the jade burial armor, which was why we didn’t notice them just now.

All three ancient corpses were standing or sitting upright, making it obvious that they had undergone special treatment.

“Could this be the Queen of the West?” Fatty asked softly.

I nodded, “Looks like it. I didn’t think she’d really be here. It seems that after the ancients prepared her body for burial, they placed it here.”

When Fatty saw those jade pieces, his eyes immediately lit up, “Finally, something good. This woman is all tricked out. It seems that women are all the same—even in death, they’re unwilling to part with their possessions.” Hearing this, I quickly grabbed him before he could make a move.

Poker-Face warned us not to approach the throne, directing our attention to the pattern carved on the ground around it—a human-faced bird with a big head and a small body. The pattern formed a circle around the throne, with the queen and her two guards resting at the very center. Poker-Face touched the edge of the circle with his extremely long fingers and said, “There’s a small gap here. Probably another balance trap. Don’t go near her.”

We all breathed a sigh of relief before remembering why we had come up here in the first place. Looking up, we saw that the surface of the meteorite was almost right above our heads, close enough to touch with just a jump. There were several holes directly above our heads, and when we shined our lights inside them, we found that they extended deep into the meteorite, as if they were bottomless. The interior walls of these holes were very smooth, indicating that they hadn’t been excavated by anyone.

Why was Wang Zanghai looking for this thing? If Chen Wen-Jin was right and he was looking for the secret to immortality, then what did this meteorite have to do with that?

I looked up to examine the meteorite more carefully and suddenly discovered something strange.

Why did the outside of this meteorite look so similar to the jade burial armor? This color and sheen… it seemed exactly the same. I jumped up and touched the meteorite with my hand, finding that it wasn’t cool at all. In fact, it was actually warm and smooth like jade.

Holy shit, I thought to myself. Could this be a jade meteorite?

There was a kind of gem in this world called jade meteorite. It was actually just a special kind of meteorite, but because its texture was very similar to jade, the ancients considered it to be an extremely precious type of jade. However, the color of this meteorite was much darker than that of jade meteorite. Maybe it was a rare type of jade meteorite composed of special minerals, and those jade burial armors were made from it?

If that were true, then this thing was worth a lot of money. Something of this size, even if we broke off a few pieces and sold them by the catty, would still earn us a fortune.

When I told everyone my thoughts, they all felt that it was very reasonable.

“It seems that the creation of those blood corpses has a deep connection with this meteorite,” Chen Wen-Jin said. “The Queen of the West must have discovered this power and used the meteorite to make those jade burial armors.”

Following that line of thought, I immediately thought of something, “Gold-threaded jade burial shrouds became popular during the Han Dynasty. Legend had it that they would prevent corpses from rotting for thousands of years. However, the gold-threaded shrouds that modern archaeologists have been finding are often decayed along with the jade, indicating that this legend is unscientific. So, where did this legend come from? Did it originate from ancient alchemists who stumbled across a description of it while studying ancient texts, but didn’t know that the jade mentioned was different from ordinary jade?”

“The silk book of the Warring States Period!” Fatty said excitedly. “So you’re saying the gold-threaded burial shrouds of the Han Dynasty were made by imitating the jade burial armor described in the silk book of the Warring States Period?” ⁽¹⁾

I nodded, “It’s possible. Wang Zanghai must have discovered this mistake, so he began looking for the real materials to make the jade burial armor mentioned in the ancient texts.”

Suddenly, it felt like everything became so much clearer. “Damn, if that’s the case, then all of Wang Zanghai’s grave-robbing activities were for the sake of finding this jade meteorite? And when he finally found its location, he led a team here?”

“No.” Chen Wen-Jin wasn’t as excited as I was. “According to what you said, if he really came here, then he should have succeeded. But we didn’t see any jade burial armor in the undersea tomb, which means that wasn’t his goal.”

“Then what was it?” I asked. I really thought my theory was quite reasonable.

Chen Wen-Jin looked at the holes in the meteorites and said, “I don’t know, but I have a feeling that the answer is inside these holes.”

Her tone sounded so mysterious that we all froze in place, suddenly feeling uneasy. I glanced back up at those holes, wondering what could be inside.

After looking for a while longer, Chen Wen-Jin suddenly pulled a rope from her backpack and said to me, “I want to go in and take a look.”

I quickly moved to stop her, but Poker-Face blocked me. When I looked into his eyes, I immediately understood why: we had a choice, but Chen Wen-Jin didn’t. Anything I said right now would be meaningless.

I sighed, suddenly feeling powerless—being unable to help the person you really wanted to help made one feel truly insignificant. I always thought this sense of helplessness was something you’d only see on TV, but now I was unexpectedly experiencing it in reality. It was an uncomfortable feeling.

Chen Wen-Jin moved very quickly and began making preparations. She asked Poker-Face to help her tie the ropes together while she shined her miner’s lamp on the holes, looking for a suitable one to climb in.

I wanted to pick someone else to take her place, but found that it was impossible—although the holes were as big around as tar barrels, they were all nearly vertical. In order to climb up them, you would have to press your knees or the soles of your feet against the walls and push yourself up. We men were too tall for this—we wouldn’t be able to bend our legs enough to exert the necessary force—but there was also another issue. With Fatty’s size, if the hole became narrower the further we went in, he may get stuck. Only Chen Wen-Jin, with her petite figure, could pull it off, albeit with difficulty.

I was a little worried, but after witnessing Chen Wen-Jin’s agility firsthand, I knew that my concern was misplaced. Once the preparations were complete, Chen Wen-Jin tied one end of the rope around her waist and then climbed onto Fatty’s shoulders. After straightening up, she found the hole she had chosen earlier, forcefully pushed off of Fatty’s shoulders, and climbed in.

“Be careful!” I called after her. She hummed in response and looked down at me, her expression a little strange. It gave me a bad feeling, but before I could say anything, she suddenly smiled at me and began climbing deeper into the meteorite.

We set the other end of the rope down and watched her gradually climb up the hole. Her movements were slow and laborious, indicating how difficult the climb must be. By the time the light from her miner’s lamp had disappeared, a full half hour had passed, but she had gone no more than fifty meters in.

Watching the whole process had me feeling uneasy, much like how I felt when climbing into a grave robbers’ tunnel. But how far did these holes go? To get to the center of this meteorite, one would probably have to climb no less than two or three hundred meters in, all while feeling like you were climbing up someone’s esophagus. Not only would that definitely feel unpleasant, but there was also a chance that when you made it halfway through, you’d find that you couldn’t climb forward or backward.

I stared up at the hole she had entered for more than ten minutes before my neck couldn’t stand it any longer. Unable to look anymore, I decided to copy Uncle Three’s men and sit down to rest. Then I took off my clothes and wiped my body with some of the alcohol to drive away the cold. The rope continued to disappear inside the meteorite, but every ten meters or so, Fatty would tug on it and wait for a corresponding tug to confirm that Chen Wen-Jin was fine.

The atmosphere was so tense that we didn’t speak, let alone know what to say. On the one hand, the female corpse behind us was really creepy, and on the other hand, we were worried about Chen Wen-Jin’s safety.

After waiting for about an hour, I suddenly heard Fatty give a thoughtful hum. I immediately stood up and asked what was wrong, only to hear him say, “Boss Lady isn’t responding.”

We all gathered around and saw Fatty tug on the rope a few times. A few feet of rope slid down, but no one pulled it back up.

My brain seemed to freeze as I wondered if something had happened. I quickly motioned for Fatty to try again, but when he did, more of the rope slid out of the hole. He suddenly frowned and said, “Not good. The rope feels very light, as if no one’s tied to the other end.”

As soon as Poker-Face heard this, his expression changed and he immediately said to Fatty, “Pull her out!”

Fatty immediately yanked the rope hard, but as I watched him pull, I realized that something was wrong—there was no need to exert so much force since the rope was sliding out like running water. After one final tug, the rope fell out of the hole in a loose bundle, landing right on me.

After breaking free from the tangled rope, I looked at the end that had been tied around Chen Wen-Jin and found that there were no traces of it having been cut—Chen Wen-Jin had untied the rope herself. We all looked at each other in dismay, and I suddenly had a very bad feeling, “Damn it, did Chen Wen-Jin really untie the rope?”

Poker-Face’s expression turned grave before he suddenly pressed down on Fatty’s shoulder, leaped onto his back, and used him as a stepping stone to jump into the hole. He moved so fast that none of us had time to stop him. “Rope!” Fatty shouted at him. “Take the rope!” But Poker-Face completely ignored him, quickly climbing deeper into the hole.

Realizing that he had no intention of taking the rope, I immediately shouted at Fatty, “Squat down!”

“What am I, a fucking stool?!” Fatty shouted back angrily. Ignoring him, I clumsily climbed up his back until he gave in and helped me out. Once I was standing on his shoulders, I jumped up as hard as I could, and made it into the hole. But unfortunately, I didn’t have enough strength—I was able to cling to the walls with my hands, but when I tried to lift my feet up, I immediately slipped back down. Within a few seconds, the breath I had been holding rushed out and I fell right on top of Fatty. Trying again only ended in the same result, and that was when I finally had to admit it—with my physique, I simply wouldn’t be able to climb up there.

I stood up, rubbing my sore spots, and glanced into the hole, only to see that even Poker-Face was struggling to climb. He was too tall to use his knees for leverage, so he could only move in small increments, which consumed a lot of energy. I suddenly had a strange thought that this meteorite was alive, and these holes were traps used to catch its prey. If that were true, then wasn’t Poker-Face willingly delivering himself to it?

But then I realized that such a thing was impossible. I tried to focus on more logical thoughts, but my mind was in complete chaos. All I could do was look up and watch Poker-Face climb higher into the hole. I didn’t know how long I stood, but eventually Poker-Face completely disappeared into the depths of the meteorite.

Unable to sit still, I stubbornly stood below the entrance to the hole and looked up, hoping to see the light from one of their lanterns signaling their safe return.

Time passed by as I continued to wait anxiously. Eventually, my anxiousness turned to calmness, calmness turned to numbness, and then numbness turned to emptiness.

Ten hours later, everything was still the same. Poker-Face didn’t come back, Chen Wen-Jin didn’t come back, and not a single sound could be heard in the hole. It was almost like this hole had taken the two of them to another world.

<Chapter 57><Table of Contents><Chapter 59>

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TN Notes:

(1) Reminder, Warring States Period was from 475–221 BC. Han Dynasty was from 202 BC – 9 AD and 25–220 AD.

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My poor man Fatty keeps getting stepped on (literally) 😭 They should be nicer to him