Chapter 239: Entering the Linhu Tomb

“What do you think? Should we head up and take a look?” He Yu asked me.

Old Qian and I both gave him an incredibly certain look. Setting aside the fact that we’d been falling all this way and didn’t even know our exact location, if the King of Gune’s tomb had truly been shaken loose by that sudden earthquake and was sitting right behind that stone door, there was no way we were passing up the chance. Besides, I had a feeling that the group of freaks who had headed toward the dead end would eventually realize there was nothing there and double back. If the three of us ran into them, no matter how you looked at it, we would be at a disadvantage.

Action followed thought. He Yu shifted Han Zhuo from my back to his, and I took his equipment pack. I began to scale the stone wall, gripping the crags. Old Qian wasn’t carrying anything, so he climbed the fastest. By the time I looked up again, he was already crouched in front of the stone door. However, he seemed to be suffering from a bit of vertigo; now that he was up there, he didn’t dare move a muscle.

I called out to him, “What’s the situation, Old Qian?”

He shouted back, “Young Master! This door is blocked by rocks! We can’t get in, what do we do?”

I didn’t need him to tell me; I could see the stone door was obstructed. It must have been blocked by falling rocks when the earthquake caused the fissure to open. I told him to stay put, then scrambled up the rest of the way. I delivered a sharp kick to the pile of rubble at the entrance. The stones weren’t particularly large, and my kick sent them tumbling down to the ground below, revealing a pitch-black opening.

Old Qian was the first to charge through the doorway. As soon as his feet hit the ground, he lost his balance and pitched forward. I had just grabbed the edge of the stone door to steady myself when I heard him let out a sharp yelp. I quickly reached out with one hand and grabbed him by the back of his collar. Shining my flashlight inside, I realized that what lay behind the door wasn’t a corridor at all, but a massive man-made pit. Old Qian was currently dangling halfway over the edge, so terrified he nearly wet himself, already blubbering with tears and snot.

I hauled him back to the edge of the doorway. He slumped onto the ground, and as soon as I pulled him up, I noticed the crotch of his pants was already soaked.

He sat there paralyzed, his legs too weak to stand. I twisted the flashlight to its maximum brightness and stood by the door, scanning the interior. It was a massive sacrificial pit, filled with the scattered skeletal remains of pigs, cattle, and horses. Our current position was about four or five meters above the pit floor. Just as I finished my initial sweep, He Yu made it up with Han Zhuo on his back.

I pulled him over to the doorway and warned him to watch his step so he wouldn’t end up like Old Qian.

“Old Qian, I understand you’re eager, but you can’t just charge in without looking. If I hadn’t been quick enough just now, you’d be down there as a sacrificial offering,” I said. “What if this is another Decoy Tomb?”

Old Qian had regained some of his composure by now. He used the wall for support and stood up. “Oh, Young Master, you don’t understand! Look at the lotuses carved on the side of this door. Those aren’t ordinary lotuses. That’s the totem of the Gune Kingdom, the Twin-Petal Lotus on a Single Stem! One stem producing two blossoms. The legends of the Gune Kingdom describe their lotuses exactly like this. There’s no mistake! I only tried to go in because I saw the totem. How was I supposed to know there was a pit down there?”

“Xiao Yao, why a twin-petal lotus? Do lotuses actually grow like that in real life?” He Yu asked, gesturing toward the floral carvings on either side of the stone door.

I stepped closer to examine the lotuses and found they were exactly as Old Qian described. A single stem was carved with two blooming lotuses, one positioned above the other on opposite sides of the stalk. The design was very peculiar. I had never heard of such a lotus existing in reality, so I rubbed my chin thoughtfully. “I don’t know. Totems are usually symbolic. We analyzed before that the people of Gune worshipped the Lotus Bodhisattva. This twin-petal lotus totem is likely connected to their faith.”

He Yu leaned over the edge of the pit. “This King of Gune had some strange ideas about tomb construction. Why dig a pit right behind the door instead of a tomb passage?”

I replied, “In a standard tomb layout, this would be the sacrificial pit for livestock and chariots, usually located at the outermost perimeter of the burial complex. However…”

I turned back toward the stone door and shone my light at the opposite rock wall. The cross-section of the wall on the other side was perfectly smooth, with no sign of a corridor or any other structure.

“However what?” He Yu asked.

I brought the flashlight back and pointed at the ground. “If this is a door, normally there should be a passage leading to other burial chambers or Side Chambers, what we call a tomb corridor. But here, we have a four-meter-deep pit behind us and nothing but open air in front. There doesn’t seem to be a corridor at all. So, what was the point of putting a door here?”

Once I raised the question, the other two began to notice the anomaly. They fell into a confused silence, following my lead and searching the area for any trace of a corridor. After a full circuit, they found nothing.

Old Qian thought for a moment and said, “Maybe this was an escape hatch the ancient craftsmen built for themselves, but they got caught just as they finished it, so the door was just left here, useless.”

He Yu couldn’t wrap his head around it and told me to stop overthinking. “Who cares what the door was for? The point is, this tomb is almost certainly the real deal. Should we go in and scout it out now, or wait for the people above to send someone down to coordinate?”

His eyes were gleaming with anticipation, and his hands were practically twitching. He clearly wanted to go in right now. This was the Linhu Tomb that even Ye Yuzhu hadn’t been able to find; it was impossible not to be excited. Not only would he get to go down there, but he’d have enough material to brag to people for three days and nights once he got back. Normally, I would have talked him out of it, but right now, I was itching to leave. The area below the fissure wasn’t safe to linger in, and I really didn’t want to cross paths with that group of dangerous-looking people.

I gave him a slight grin. “We don’t know what’s happening up there, and there hasn’t been a sound for a while. It looks like there were a lot of casualties. Let’s go in and scout first. If it’s the real tomb, it won’t be too late to go back and tell them to come down.”

“That’s what I wanted to hear!” He Yu adjusted Han Zhuo’s weight on his back and asked me for the folding shovel. He pointed toward the side. “The path is over there. We’ll hug the wall and climb down. Keep your eyes peeled and stay sharp!”

He Yu and I each shouldered a rifle, tucking spare magazines into our belts to ensure we were ready for anything.

Old Qian was the type who couldn’t handle a weapon to save his life. I tried to give him the Horse-Head Blade, but he insisted it was the Chief Chief’s treasure and refused to touch it, no matter what. I told him the man had been dead for years and there was no point in being superstitious, but he just kept saying his soul was too weak to handle such an artifact. He claimed that if he tried to use it, he’d likely end up slicing one of us by mistake.

I thought about it and realized he had a point. I didn’t expect him to pull us out of the fire if we ran into a Zongzi, but at the very least, he shouldn’t be the one stabbing us in the back. Dying at the hands of your own teammate would be a pathetic way to go.

Since we’d been in such a rush to escape the earthquake earlier, He Yu had only managed to grab the two rifles. We didn’t have any smaller daggers to give him.

Old Qian had a powerful voice, though. If he hit a slightly higher pitch, he’d be a prime candidate for a folk singing troupe. He Yu and I talked it over and decided it was best if he didn’t carry anything at all. He would just stay right on our heels, and if anything seemed off, his only job was to scream for help.