Chapter 233: A Misjudgment

Too much information flooded my brain all at once, making me feel as though someone were clutching my throat, leaving me unable to catch my breath.

As I was thinking it over, He Yu suddenly pulled back the curtain and poked his head in. “Come out and look! Something’s happening on the other side!”

With that, he hurried off to get the horses. Seeing his serious expression, Chen Canghai and I knew he wasn’t joking, so I quickly instructed Chen Canghai, “Old Qian and Kuba are still asleep. You stay behind; I’ll go up and take a look.”

He Yu and I each took a horse. I wasn’t very skilled at riding yet, so I waved for He Yu to go ahead. It took me several minutes of struggling just to climb into the saddle before I could follow. By the time I spotted He Yu, he had already hidden his horse and was lying low on the hillside, peering through binoculars at the camp across from us.

I tethered my horse as well and ran up the slope to lie down beside him. The men patrolling the perimeter were sharp and alert, so we chose a position further back to avoid being spotted.

I didn’t have binoculars, so I scanned the area with the naked eye first. To my surprise, the camp, which had been dead quiet all night, had suddenly become a hive of activity. It seemed everyone had emerged from their tents and gathered off in the distance, staring at something.

“Take a look. Things are getting interesting tonight,” He Yu said after taking a look, handing me the binoculars.

I quickly pressed the binoculars to my eyes. Through the high-magnification lenses, I soon caught sight of Fourth Brother. He was negotiating something with Wu Yili, who appeared extremely agitated. I shifted my gaze a bit further, and finally saw what Tan Qiu’s men were surrounding.

A patch of ground had been dug up, with heaps of dirt and grass tossed aside, revealing a shallow pit at the base of a small cliff in the distance. Once the vegetation was cleared away, a circular stone archway was clearly visible where the pit met the cliffside. Stone carvings adorned the archway, which was flanked by two stone statues, one holding an umbrella and the other holding a pestle. The statues were carved in an exaggerated style with glaring eyes and bared teeth, looking quite eerie under the moonlight.

“Looks like your Fourth Brother and his crew found the tomb door. Do you think they know about the Forty-Eight False Tombs?” He Yu took the binoculars back from me and kept watching.

I hadn’t mentioned the Forty-Eight False Tombs to He Yu. It seemed Qian Deli really was a big mouth; I might have been the last person to find out about them.

“I’m not sure,” I said. “Only two people in the world ever entered the Linhu Tomb and made it out alive. My grandfather never mentioned this to me, so Old Qian is probably the only one left who knows the inside story. But the Forty-Eight False Tombs were something my great-grandfather and his peers deduced from the Burial Bone Testament. If Fourth Brother has someone versed in Feng Shui on his team, they might have caught a glimpse of the truth as well.”

Like a thief, He Yu stuck his rear in the air and wiggled forward a few inches on his belly, his posture looking thoroughly shifty. “So, do you think the one they’ve dug up now is the real Tomb of King Gune?”

I turned over. “Asking me is no better than flipping a coin. I can’t even tell real Mingqi from fakes, let alone tell if a tomb is real or fake. Even Ye Yuzhu couldn’t tell back then, so there’s no way I could.”

He Yu watched intently for a long time before suddenly clicking his tongue. “Want to hear my opinion?”

I was all ears. He put down the binoculars and slid down the slope to my side, a crafty glint in his eyes. “I think there’s an eighty or ninety percent chance this is the real tomb.”

“How can you tell?”

“Did you notice the stone statues on either side of the tomb door? Since ancient times, those have been the wrathful deities meant to guard the Underworld Hall. Their purpose is to intimidate tomb raiders as much as possible. I took a quick look just now; the door isn’t just carved with dragons and phoenixes, it has inscribed curses too. Usually, they say things like ‘anyone who desecrates my ancestral grave will die a miserable death’ or ‘entry but no exit.’ With a mix of professionals and seasoned veterans in that crew, your Fourth Brother might have actually stumbled onto the main entrance.”

Lying on the hillside, I felt that He Yu’s words sounded quite plausible. As a complete amateur in Feng Shui, his assessment helped settle my racing heart a bit.

But then another thought occurred to me. I said to He Yu, “But my great-grandfather was a top-tier master at ‘Dividing Gold and Fixing the Point^[1].’ Even he couldn’t pin down the exact location of the Tomb of King Gune back then. Could Fourth Brother and the others really find it so easily?”

“Hey!” He Yu nudged me and went back up to observe with the binoculars. “You think your Fourth Brother is stupid? He’s eaten more salt than you’ve walked miles. Your great-grandfather didn’t have the technology we have now. With today’s advanced tech and so many experts in their team, they’re bound to be more reliable than us wandering around blindly. I’d say this is the place. We’ll just crouch here, wait for them to go in, and then sneak in after them!”

Seeing how engrossed He Yu was, I left him to keep watch. I went back to explain the situation to Chen Canghai, then returned to the slope to lie down. We waited like that for the rest of the night.

At some point, He Yu fell asleep, his snoring incredibly loud. Fortunately, the workers across the way were busy moving equipment, and the ambient noise masked his sounds. I leaned against the slope and dozed for about two hours. I woke up when He Yu stretched at dawn, but he showed no sign of actually getting up, simply rolling over to continue sleeping.

I rubbed my eyes and groggily picked up the binoculars. I saw that only a few of the Liu Family’s workers remained on guard at the camp. I didn’t know what method Wu Yili had used, but the two stone doors were now wide open. Most of the people had likely entered the tomb.

I brushed the grass off my clothes, intending to wake He Yu and tell him that with fewer people around, it was time for us to move.

Just then, I heard a dull, massive boom. The sound clearly came from inside the stone doors across the way!

I froze instantly, then scrambled a few steps up the slope. I propped myself up and used the binoculars again. The workers left at the camp had clearly heard the sudden noise as well; they all ran toward the stone doors. Then, I saw a sinister wind swirling with dust and sand burst from the entrance. Immediately after, Liu Wan, Wu Yili, and a portion of the workers behind them came sprinting out of the stone doors, every one of them covered in dust, their faces masks of panic and confusion.

As soon as Liu Wan emerged, she grabbed a fleeing worker and asked him something. The man, his face deathly pale with terror, simply shook his head. She glanced back at the stone door and, ignoring the attempts of those around her to hold her back, charged back through the swirling dust and into the entrance.

I frantically patted He Yu behind me. “Hey! Hey! Wake up! Something’s gone wrong over there!”

He Yu scrambled up from the ground in terror. Half-dazed, I shoved him in front of the binoculars, and a single glance was all it took for him to snap wide awake. “Holy shit! What’s going on here? How did they get burned so badly?!”

I didn’t understand what he meant at first and immediately snatched the binoculars back from He Yu to look. Through the lenses, I saw a screaming, convulsing “person” rolling out of the stone door. It was the first time I truly understood up close what the ancient punishment of flaying actually meant. There wasn’t a shred of skin left on the person’s body; they were blood-red from head to toe, steam rising from their flesh. They left a bloody footprint with every step before collapsing in the sunlight, breathless and dead after only a few paces.

“This is bad, this is really bad,” I muttered.

My hands trembled as I raised the binoculars to scan the tomb door again. More wounded were trickling out, and the scene had descended into utter chaos. Tan Qiu emerged clutching his arm, but I couldn’t see Fourth Brother, and my heart was practically hammering in my throat.

Without stopping to think any further, I shouted to He Yu, “Help! Quick, come help!”

As I spoke, I tossed the binoculars straight to him, scrambled down the slope, and sprinted toward the camp.

“Hey! Wait! Didn’t you say-“

He Yu had still been squinting through the lenses. Forced to catch the binoculars, he instinctively reached for the horse’s reins, but looking back and seeing I was already far ahead, he scrambled to his feet and sprinted after me toward the camp.