Smoke and dust filled the air, and the ground was covered with black debris from the explosion. I leaned out and shone my flashlight into the mountain crevice, which was completely blocked. The black snake outside couldn’t get in, and it wouldn’t be easy for us to leave the way we came.
Among the four of us, Fatty was in relatively good shape, with just a few cuts on his hands from the debris. Professor Chen was still unconscious, and Ye Yixin had been knocked out by the blast wave, struggling to catch her breath.
I reached out to check Ye Yixin’s breathing, and to my dismay, she wasn’t breathing. This was bad news; her frail body had been overwhelmed by the shockwave, and she needed immediate help.
At that moment, the three of us who were awake—Fatty, Shirley Yang, and I—had temporarily lost our hearing and couldn’t communicate verbally.
I gestured for Shirley Yang to perform CPR on Ye Yixin. Suddenly, I noticed blood streaming from Shirley Yang’s nose and quickly reminded her to stop the bleeding.
Shirley Yang tore a piece of cloth to plug her nose and wrote something in her palm with her blood. She pointed at Ye Yixin. I shone my flashlight on her palm and saw the letters “CTR.”
What did that mean? I couldn’t understand. Was she saying Ye Yixin was beyond saving? I shook my head in response.
Seeing that I didn’t get it, Shirley Yang, despite her own bleeding, bent down and pressed on Ye Yixin’s chest, pushing down hard.
I finally understood; she wanted me to perform chest compressions. Just as I was about to take over, Ye Yixin let out a soft groan and gasped for air, coughing repeatedly. I quickly signaled Fatty to give her some water.
Once Ye Yixin started to recover, Shirley Yang lifted her head and pressed on her ear to stop the bleeding from her nose.
Just as the situation seemed to stabilize, a new crisis emerged. The so-called Ghost Cave was located within the belly of Mount Zaglamar. The dark mountain loomed like a hollow shell, and we were likely somewhere beneath it.
Due to the hollow spaces inside the mountain, immense internal pressure had built up over thousands of years, causing numerous cracks to form. The explosion from the yellow explosives had compressed these already small fissures, increasing the pressure and creating a domino effect.
Although I couldn’t hear anything at the moment, I could feel the mountain shaking. The narrow crevice above us was gradually widening, and countless rocks were falling, with the situation worsening rapidly.
As I shielded myself from the small falling rocks, I urged the others to hurry and leave. We could only climb up the crevice, and with every bit we ascended, the debris behind us filled the gap. If we paused for even a moment, we risked being crushed or buried alive.
We stumbled forward, unsure of how far we had climbed. My hands were bloodied from sharp stones, and we were all breathing heavily, feeling as if our hearts might leap from our mouths. Thirsty and exhausted, I carried the unconscious Professor Chen and the weak Ye Yixin. Eventually, I had no strength left to move and closed my eyes, resigning myself to being buried alive.
To my surprise, the spreading cracks in the mountain seemed to have stopped. The space behind us was completely filled with debris. We lay there, gasping for breath, wanting water but hesitant to use what little we had left.
After a while, Fatty broke the silence, saying, “Old Hu, are we dead or alive?”
I looked at the dark rocks around us and replied, “It feels like we’re close to death, even if we’re still breathing for now.”
Fatty, perhaps exhausted and a bit delirious, turned to Shirley Yang and said, “Miss Yang, I’m saying goodbye in advance. Soon, we’ll be meeting the King of Hell, and you’ll be off to see your God. It’s a long journey for you, so take care.”
Shirley Yang replied, “In the name of God, can you two stop with the nonsense? Oh… I can hear again.”
I opened my mouth and moved my jaw; although I still had some ringing in my ears, I could hear again. We checked our water bottles and gear, but in the chaos, I couldn’t find mine. Ye Yixin had come into the city unconscious and didn’t have a water bottle either. Together, we had less than two bottles of water left.
I said, “As hard as it is to accept, we need to face reality. We’re trapped inside Mount Zaglamar, and there are no exits. I don’t know if the air is circulating, but if it isn’t, we won’t last half an hour before suffocating. We’ve lost the remaining explosives, and without help, we might not get out. Our team has suffered casualties, and outside, there’s only that slippery old man, An Liman. He might take off at the first sign of trouble, so we shouldn’t expect anyone to rescue us.”
Fatty said, “If that’s the case, worrying won’t help. Our throats are dry, and we have two bottles of water left. Let’s drink and then talk about the rest.”
I divided the water in half, giving one portion to Ye Yixin and Professor Chen, while the other half was shared among the three of us.
Shirley Yang took a couple of sips but couldn’t swallow more. After a moment of thought, she said, “If we really die here, it’s all my fault. If I hadn’t insisted on finding the ancient city of Jingjue, none of this would have happened, and I wouldn’t have dragged so many people into this mess. I truly…”
I interrupted her, “You can’t say that. There’s an old saying in China: ‘People die for wealth, and birds die for food.’ Fatty and I brought this on ourselves. If we hadn’t been tempted by your forty thousand dollars, we wouldn’t be in this dire situation. Besides, Professor Chen and the others are in this line of work. Even if you hadn’t funded them, they would have found a way to search for the ruins.”
At that moment, I remembered something Shirley Yang had mentioned before. She had dreamt repeatedly about the Ghost Cave, even seeing the iron chains on the queen’s coffin. She had said she vaguely saw a huge figure on the coffin but could never make out what it was. Wasn’t that the hellish flower, the Corpse Flower, growing on the coffin?
When she mentioned it, she believed it was a message from her missing explorer father. Now, reflecting on it, it seemed very strange. Did Shirley Yang have some kind of foresight? I decided to ask her about it.
Shirley Yang shook her head and said, “There was a voice calling me to the Ghost Cave in Mount Zaglamar, but when I finally saw the bottomless cave, I realized my father’s expedition never reached it. They might have died somewhere in the desert. But why I dreamt of a place I had never been, I just can’t understand.”
Fatty exclaimed in surprise, “Is that so? Maybe you were the queen of Jingjue in your past life, returning to your old haunts…”
Before he could finish, a series of cracking sounds echoed through the mountain, indicating that the earlier tremors were not over yet. We had rested for a moment, but with death looming, we were unwilling to just wait. Ahead, a large crack opened up, and when I shone my flashlight inside, I thought I saw someone sitting there.
As the rocks continued to rain down around us, we didn’t have time to examine the situation closely. Seeing a potential escape route, we rushed in. Shirley Yang illuminated the path with her flashlight, while Fatty carried Professor Chen on his back, and I dragged Ye Yixin along, all of us slipping into the newly opened crevice.
Once inside, I felt a tightness in my chest. The air was thick with dust, and the lack of ventilation made it hard to breathe. We quickly donned our gas masks. Just then, a loud rumble sounded behind us as several massive black rocks tumbled down, sealing off our exit.
With no way back, I turned to assess our surroundings. We found ourselves in a small, square stone chamber, about fifteen square meters in size. In the center lay an ancient stone box, unlike the black stones commonly found in the ancient city of Jingjue. This box was gray and looked very old, with a unique shape that we had never seen before.
The stone box was over half a meter high and more than a meter long, crafted with great precision. It was adorned with several stone carvings, but we had no idea what they were for.
As we focused on the peculiar stone box, we failed to notice two figures sitting cross-legged on either side of it. When we shone our flashlight closer, we were startled to see that they were two desiccated corpses.
One was an old man, the other a child, both had turned a deep brown. The old man’s beard was still somewhat recognizable, and he was wrapped in sheepskin. They sat in a meditative posture, seemingly guarding the strange stone box.
After realizing what we were looking at, I let out a sigh of relief and said to Fatty, “Next time, don’t just throw around the word ‘zongzi’ (zombie) like that. It’s terrifying! These two are practically fossils; they must have been dead for over a thousand years. Damn it, this place is a tomb!”
Shirley Yang shot me a glare and said angrily, “You think you can hide this from me, Old Hu? You two are clearly grave robbers!”
My heart sank. Did we accidentally let something slip? Could she, an American, understand the term “zongzi”? Thankfully, Professor Chen was still unconscious and hadn’t heard us, and Ye Yixin seemed to be in a semi-conscious state, so she likely didn’t catch our conversation either.
I quickly defended myself, “Didn’t I tell you? I’m just an amateur studying feng shui and astrology, not a grave robber. You shouldn’t tarnish our reputations without cause. Fatty and I have good names back home; we’re well-known for being good citizens. I’m a veteran, and Fatty was recognized as a model worker every year in his unit.”
Fatty, realizing I had misspoken, quickly corrected me and tried to change the subject. “Don’t listen to him! He’s the one who’s a model worker! I’m part of the youth strike team. We’re both well-trained by the Party and the people! But look at this stone box; it’s quite strange. What could it be holding?”
Shirley Yang didn’t engage with our banter. Instead, she suddenly said, “Set the plate, hang the gold, the hexagram of the sea sounds. Hook, grab, kick the pole, dig the big top, Yuan Liang, the moon calls, the distant colors can’t be wrapped.”
Her words were incomprehensible to the others, but I understood clearly; this was the “linguistic code” of tomb raiders. In our line of work, we had our own terms, much like the underworld has its slang. For instance, human trafficking was called “Kaitiaozi,” smuggling was “Beiqin,” and stealing was referred to as “Foye.” In our world, grave robbing was called “Daodou,” and we had our own rules and codes for communication. My grandfather was one of the few feng shui masters in our area during the Republic of China, and he had connections with a well-known grave robber, so I was quite familiar with these codes.
Shirley Yang’s few lines of code implied, “You’re cunning and not speaking the truth. I can see you’re a skilled grave robber, and you can’t hide that from my eyes.”
I was caught off guard by her sudden question. Typically, when fellow grave robbers refer to someone as a master, they would downplay it a bit. So, without thinking, I blurted out, “Without Yuan Liang, we chop wood on the mountain and burn it at the foot. May I ask where this top Yuan Liang is, and how many pangolins have been divided, and how many hill gates have been dismantled?”
Shirley Yang responded, “A river has two banks, both chopping wood on the mountain and burning it at the foot. The partridge divides the pangolin, the hawk dismantles the hill gate. Many have climbed the treasure hall, but there’s no place to find the dragon tower.”
I was taken aback and regretted my response. Damn it, I had just acknowledged that this American girl was onto me, which was tantamount to admitting I was a grave robber! It was strange, though; these lengthy phrases from the grave robbing code had been largely forgotten after the liberation, and even someone like Big Gold Tooth’s father, who had been a semi-professional tomb raider for years, only knew a few terms. I couldn’t believe that such phrases were coming from a young American woman. If I hadn’t heard it with my own ears, I would have found it hard to believe. Had I really encountered a fellow tomb raider?
Moreover, from what she said, it seemed she had inherited this knowledge but lacked the skills to read feng shui and identify burial sites. I couldn’t admit that, so I decided to play dumb. “These lines are from a textbook we learned in elementary school. I didn’t expect American elementary school materials to have such similarities…”
Seeing that I was stubbornly denying it, Shirley Yang sighed and said, “Forget it. This isn’t the place for a discussion. If we survive and make it back, I hope to have a serious talk with you.”
I felt a wave of relief and quickly stood up to look for an escape route, secretly thinking, “If we make it back, you won’t be able to find me. Hmph, I’ll just go back home and avoid Beijing.” But then I thought, “Wait, she hasn’t paid us yet. This is quite a dilemma… What is her true intention? Could it be that she really likes me, as Fatty suggested? Or is she planning to expose us? Could her ancestors have been tomb raiders too? That would make us a good match…”
While I was lost in thought, Fatty and Shirley Yang had already circled the small tomb several times, looking up and down, front and back, surrounded by dark rocks. There were a few cracks in some places, but they were too small to find a way out.
Just then, Professor Chen suddenly shouted and woke up. He was disoriented, alternating between crying and laughing, not recognizing anyone. We had no medical supplies to help him, so we could only let him thrash about in his madness.
Eventually, our eyes fell on the large stone box between the two corpses. Even if there were burial treasures inside, they would be of no use to us, who were on the brink of death.
Fatty patted the stone box and said, “I wonder which two poor souls are buried here. Aside from the sheepskin on them, there aren’t even any decent burial items. I doubt there’s nothing good inside.”
Shirley Yang examined the carvings on the stone box closely and suddenly looked up at me. “Do you remember what I said about the Records of the Western Regions? It mentioned Mount Zaglamar.”
I replied, “I remember. It said it was a sacred mountain, where two sages were buried. But it can’t be these two, can it? This tomb is so simple; it doesn’t fit the status of sages.” I wanted to add that I had seen many ancient tombs and that the burial site in this mountain didn’t follow feng shui principles, as there was a malevolent site below. How could anyone be buried above it? But I held back, fearing it would expose my identity.
Shirley Yang said, “The tomb doesn’t contain sages. The child is likely a disciple or son of a sage, referred to as a prophet, while the old man is his servant.”
I asked in surprise, “How do you know that? Is it from the carvings on the stone box? What else does it say?”
Shirley Yang beckoned Fatty and me to look at the stone box. “The carvings depict an ancient prophecy. The composition is simple, and the symbols are very clear. I think I can understand part of it.”
I grew more curious. “What does it predict? Does it mention where the secret passage in this tomb is?”
Shirley Yang shook her head. “No, the prophecy doesn’t seem very accurate. It mentions that after the prophet’s death, no one would come to this tomb until one day, four people accidentally opened this stone box…”
Fatty counted, “One, two, three, four, five. There are five of us! Does that mean Professor Chen, in his madness, doesn’t count as a person? It seems the prophet’s predictions are off; he must be a fraud.”
I looked at the other four people and said, “If the prophet isn’t a fraud, then this prophecy might not be referring to us. However, there’s another possibility… one of us here isn’t human.”