Chapter 170: Parting Ways

I was completely baffled by his words. I looked up at the column-head bracket sets in the Spirit Path. These architectural elements weren’t commonly used in tomb passages; they were more typical of palaces. The designer had likely incorporated them into the Spirit Path to provide a robust structural barrier, offering significant support.

However, I soon realized that I had never seen this particular style of bracket set before. Every joint and connection was unusual, and the design was far more complex than standard forms. Without dismantling them entirely, it would be impossible to understand their inner workings just by looking at the exterior.

“Is this the same style used in your ancestral hall?” I asked, scratching my head while holding my flashlight.

Lu Ayao looked up with me. “From a distance, it looks very similar. But I haven’t studied this field much, and I only entered the ancestral hall once when I was a child. My memory might be flawed.”

I paced around a corner bracket set. I was the only one among us with any knowledge of mortise and tenon joinery. I wanted to see the whole structure; most mortise and tenon principles are roughly the same, and with my experience, I could usually figure them out after a quick look.

But after two laps, I found myself incredibly frustrated. These things were positioned in a very tricky way, as if they were intentionally designed to be incomprehensible. Either a section was blocked, or it was embedded deep into a wall crevice. Every gap was sealed tight, making it impossible to see the interlocking structure inside.

“Do you know if your Lu Clan has any master craftsmen capable of this? Your family didn’t happen to help build this tomb complex, did they?” I tilted my head to look at Lu Ayao.

He stood in silence, offering no reply.

A moment later, He Yu and Tian Xiaoqi arrived with their gear. When we explained the situation with the stone walls, we were met with even more silence.

I decided to stop overthinking it. I took the oxygen tank from He Yu and strapped it onto my back. After the experiences of the past six months, I had learned a lesson: some problems can’t be solved by brooding. When you’re completely stuck, the best thing to do is keep moving.

“Let’s explore further,” I said. “Maybe once we get deeper, the answers will reveal themselves.”

No one objected. We set off together along the Spirit Path. After passing through the mess of broken masonry, the path leveled out. Soon after, we felt a slight chill in the air.

A massive hole had been excavated into the wall at the end of the Spirit Path. In the pitch-black tomb, it looked like a dark void capable of swallowing everything. Lu Ayao went in first to scout, followed by Tian Xiaoqi, then me, with He Yu bringing up the rear.

We squeezed into the hole together. The tunnel was low, forcing us to hunch our backs and keep our heads down to move. It was an uncomfortable posture, but fortunately, Lu Ayao stopped after less than ten meters. It seemed the tunnel had reached its end.

Suddenly, I heard Tian Xiaoqi gasp. I couldn’t see clearly from the back and had no idea what they had discovered.

Lu Ayao scanned the area outside with his flashlight, then gestured for me and He Yu to come forward. My curiosity was overflowing by now, so I scrambled ahead, using my hands and feet to pull myself up to the edge.

As the flashlight beam cut through the dark, the first thing I saw was a cavernous opening like a cliffside fissure. Below the opening was a void, roughly twenty meters across to the other side. It seemed that during construction, the hull and the rock had cracked, splitting from the top of the tomb all the way to the bottom, creating this bottomless chasm. Then, I saw what was carved into the opposite stone wall.

There were hundreds, perhaps thousands, of relief sculptures. Immortals with turtle features and human bodies emerged from the stone, riding upon a massive celestial ship, playing music, singing, and bestowing blessings. Beneath the celestial ship were carved enormous swirling clouds. The flashlight’s beam wasn’t strong enough to reach the end of the ship, but the carvings in front of us were incredibly lifelike. The entire relief was breathtaking; it wouldn’t be an exaggeration to call it a grand panorama of the celestial realm.

I was stunned into silence. Even the well-traveled He Yu started to stammer. “How… how big must this tomb be to accommodate a relief of this scale?”

I wanted to lean out and shine the light to both sides. Seeing this, Lu Ayao grabbed my arm to give me a steady anchor point. He Yu handed me his flashlight, and he and Tian Xiaoqi moved back to give me more room.

With one flashlight in my mouth and another in my hand, I leaned halfway out of the hole, squinting at the sights on either side. What I saw left me speechless. The entire fissure had been designed to resemble a colossal ship!

Furthermore, the designer had fashioned the upward-sloping part of the fissure into the ship’s prow. Both sides of the chasm were covered in long stretches of relief carvings depicting various turtle-featured immortals. The prow was relatively close to us; the hole we had crawled through was actually a large opening created by hacking off the head of one of the carved immortals.

Given the sheer size of this sculpted ship and the depth of the fissure, it suggested the tomb likely contained multiple levels of Spirit Paths and burial chambers. Such a massive scale of funerary arrangements undoubtedly exceeded the standards of any known dynasty.

Looking further down, not far from our makeshift exit, I saw a chain walkway hugging the reliefs. The walkway traversed the carved clouds; it was so subtle that one wouldn’t notice it without a careful look.

I signaled for Lu Ayao to pull me back, then recounted what I had seen. He Yu immediately voiced the same conclusion I had reached. “There must be many levels beneath our feet then. We don’t even know which floor we’re on. You don’t think we’ve accidentally wandered into the eighteen levels of hell, do you?”

I gave him a kick. “Don’t start with the horror stories. The structure here is different from anything we’ve encountered, but no matter how bizarre it is, it’s still just a tomb for burying people. At most, we can say the designer had some unique ideas and liked to innovate. Burying deep and stacking high—it houses the dead while saving space. Why wouldn’t they do it?”

“Oh! Listen to you go, and I haven’t even said a word yet. Come on then, you’re the only one here who’s studied this stuff. Tell us the logic behind what’s out there.” He Yu stared at me with an amused expression, waiting for me to make a fool of myself.

I wasn’t worried about losing face. When it comes to tombs, who can say for sure that their theory is the absolute truth? Even the most famous archaeologists wouldn’t dare claim that. Besides, we were still in the early stages of speculation. I could say whatever I wanted and spin any theory I liked, as long as it sounded plausible.

“Did you notice the Tomb-guarding Beast earlier?” I asked. “Only its head was stone, while its body was assembled from those Ship-Burial Coffins. Couldn’t we apply the same logic here? Think of the Spirit Path we’re in as a series of Ship-Burial Coffins. They aren’t connected vertically, which makes it look exactly like a collection of individual ship coffins pieced together.”

He Yu pondered this for a moment. Unable to find a good counterargument, he said, “Fine, I’ll give you that one. What’s next? How do we find a way out?”

Tian Xiaoqi spoke up. “If we can find a ventilation shaft, we might be able to follow it out.”

I was still thinking when I suddenly heard a sharp clatter behind me. Without a word, Lu Ayao had already begun climbing down the reliefs toward the chain walkway below. He hadn’t given us any warning, startling the three of us who were still discussing strategy. I was especially shaken; being closest to him, I thought for a second he had lost his footing and fallen.

“Old Lu! You’re going the wrong way! We need to get out, not go further down!” He Yu shouted.

Lu Ayao’s flashlight beam wavered. He shifted his grip, hanging from the arm of a turtle-faced immortal statue, then leaped lightly onto the plank walkway. The iron chains collided with a series of crisp, metallic clangs.

He didn’t turn around, only saying, “Lu Xiaosu is here. I’m going down alone to look for clues. You guys find a way back up first!”

I had no idea how he’d concluded so quickly that Lu Xiaosu was down there. It sounded completely unreliable to me. Lu Xiaosu had been missing for years; how could she possibly be in a place like this?

Watching Lu Ayao’s receding back, I pressed my hand against the cold stone wall, my heart racing with anxiety. I watched him stride along that ancient walkway, his flashlight beam already fading into the distance. I quickly shouted after him, “You can’t go alone! Come back up first, and we’ll figure something out together!”

No one replied. The light from his flashlight vanished soon after. I wasn’t sure if Lu Ayao had intentionally chosen a path that kept him out of our sight, but from my current vantage point, I could no longer see anything below.

“What do we do now? Should we listen to him and go up?” He Yu was clearly at a loss.

“What kind of crap is that?” I snapped. “We follow him down, of course! We came down together, we go back together. It’s dangerous down there—he thinks he can just walk off like that? What would it say about us if we just went up on our own!”

Fuming, I cursed under my breath. I tightened the straps of my backpack and grabbed onto the stone belt of the nearest immortal statue. Using the reliefs as footholds, I began to climb down slowly. Tian Xiaoqi, caught between us, looked at me and then at He Yu.

He Yu was clearly unhappy with my attitude. I could tell that, deep down, he just wanted to get out as fast as possible. Standing at the cave entrance, he began to swear loudly. “The poison in you hasn’t even been neutralized yet! Are you people fucking suicidal? I’ve had enough! Are you both insane? I don’t care anymore! I’m going back! You two can go die for all I care, I’m done!”

I looked up, intending to shout back at him, but I saw him turn and walk back into the tunnel. My heart sank, followed immediately by a surge of pure rage. Fine, let him go. I’d go down alone if I had to. If we were going to part ways, then so be it. At this rate, the group was bound to break up sooner or later anyway!

As I climbed down, I felt small pebbles falling from above. I looked up to see Tian Xiaoqi following me. Her movements were more agile and graceful than mine, and she soon caught up to my level.

I timed my move and let go, landing on the plank walkway. Tian Xiaoqi landed right after me. I reached out to steady her and asked, “Why did you follow me? Why didn’t you go up?”

She hesitated for a moment. “Well, I thought about it, and I’d rather stay with you. What did he say just now? That Lu Xiaosu is here? How does he know?”

I shook my head. Tian Xiaoqi must have caught that keyword in Lu Ayao’s words, which was why she’d followed me so recklessly. I felt a sudden wave of self-pity. We’d come all this way together, yet a single incident could scatter us to the winds. It seemed Bai Shenxian’s earlier words hadn’t been without merit.

We were moving too slowly. The walkway was empty; Lu Ayao clearly had no intention of waiting for us. At his speed, we likely wouldn’t catch up, but I couldn’t bring myself to go back up and leave him down there alone.

I tried to suppress my emotions and switched on my flashlight, looking both ways. Lu Ayao’s position earlier hadn’t been clear, and I hadn’t really believed he would just leave, so I hadn’t paid attention to which direction he’d taken. Looking at the empty walkway now, I was paralyzed by indecision.

“Should we… do a ‘eeny, meeny, miny, moe’?” Tian Xiaoqi suggested.

I sighed. Had I really reached the point where I needed a children’s rhyme to decide which way to walk?

I nodded anyway. Tian Xiaoqi began reciting a childhood rhyme to pick a direction. It landed on the right. Without further argument, we both turned our flashlights that way and started along the walkway.

The walkway was made of sections connected by iron chains, making it very wobbly. We walked one behind the other, our footing unsteady. As we moved, my heart began to sink.

The walkway swayed when used, but when we’d first climbed down, it had been perfectly still. That meant Lu Ayao was already a significant distance ahead of us. If he picked up his pace even slightly, we would never catch him.

Lu Ayao was in such a hurry because he must have found a clue—a clue that pointed directly to Lu Xiaosu’s disappearance. That was why he’d jumped onto the walkway so decisively. He must have found it when he first went out to scout.

When he’d called me over to look at the wall later, he was likely gauging my opinion on the tomb, or perhaps using my thoughts to evaluate the level of danger. His final decision to go down alone… did that prove the danger here was already beyond my capabilities?

The more I thought, the more frightened I became. My hands trembled as I gripped the iron chains. I did my best to stop my thoughts from spiraling and focused entirely on the walkway ahead.