Chapter 241: Two Dragons Playing with a Pearl

While I was still studying those ever-burning lamps, He Yu had already moved a significant distance ahead. I wasn’t worried about him going off alone because the situation here was quite different from many we had encountered before. The ever-burning lamps hanging on the passage walls provided a wide field of vision; even if He Yu walked quite far, I could easily keep track of his position.

After running ahead for a bit, he doubled back. “I feel like this tomb passage is a little strange. It’s curved. Was it designed this way to bypass the mountain rock?”

He gave us a rough description of this horizontal stretch of the passage. In short, the two ends exhibited a centrosymmetric curve, and the bends were designed so naturally that the entire passage lay before us like a winding river. However, such a layout did not actually conform to the standard requirements for an emperor’s mausoleum.

As far back as several thousand years ago, ancient emperors had a specific set of doctrines for constructing tombs. It was only during periods of war, when dynasties changed too rapidly and many people were dragged off the throne shortly after ascending, that these construction methods could no longer strictly adhere to specifications and systems. For example, in the late Northern Song Dynasty, many officials’ tombs began to imitate the layout of imperial mausoleums. Later on, one could even find the “Heavenly Treasure Fire Dragon Glazed Ceiling”—a defensive mechanism against grave robbers used in Song tombs—inside the burial chambers of the Jurchen Jin people.

But I had truly never seen a deliberately curved tomb passage in any ancient text; it didn’t even fall within the conventions of any specific dynasty. Most tomb passages, whether they were vertical shafts or sloping ramps, were at the very least straight without exception. The King of Gune, who was buried here, had appeared out of nowhere. He left not a single clue in official histories, yet appeared frequently in unofficial histories and county annals. He must have been quite a figure in his day, so I didn’t believe for a second that this curved passage didn’t hide some profound meaning.

Old Qian rubbed his chin. “A passage like this… it reminds me of a very specific layout.”

He Yu and I both looked at him.

“The tombs in a Dragon-Trapping Marsh lack water. They are sunken in the middle and high on all four sides to create that ‘trapped’ effect. But this layout requires the creation of two dragons to act as a suppression, forming a ‘Two Dragons Playing with a Pearl’ formation.” Old Qian led us forward another ten meters or so to the end of the passage. “If this passage is one of the dragons of the Dragon-Trapping Marsh, then there should be another animal funerary pit behind this wall, directly opposite the one we saw earlier.”

He Yu asked, “Why would it have to be set behind the wall at the end of the passage?”

Old Qian gave a low chuckle. “Two circular funerary pits, one at the head and one at the tail, sandwiching a centrosymmetric curved passage in the middle… don’t you think that resembles a familiar pattern?”

It clicked for me instantly. Damn it, it forms a Bagua map! No wonder the middle passage was shaped like that. According to what Old Qian said about forming the Two Dragons Playing with a Pearl to suppress the Dragon-Trapping Marsh, there had to be more than just the one animal funerary pit we saw when we entered. There had to be at least four. That way, they could make up two dragons and form two complete, symmetrical Bagua patterns. But the Bagua is a Taoist symbol—could it be that the King of Gune was a Taoist priest?

Seeing that we had reached the end of the passage, I said we should stop overthinking it. It wasn’t as if the mounds of these funerary pits were all self-contained. If they really didn’t connect to one another, we were still a hundred thousand li away from the King of Gune’s actual Underworld Hall. We should all look around for another path leading deeper into the tomb.

He Yu set Han Zhuo down on the ground. Now that the ever-burning lamps in the passage were lit, none of us were afraid anymore. Old Qian and He Yu began to confidently scatter to search for a passage.

I leaned my rifle against the tomb wall and knelt down to check Han Zhuo’s dislocated wrist. My own wrist had been dislocated before, so I had specifically asked Chen Canghai about the technique for resetting a joint. I hadn’t expected the opportunity to practice it would come so soon.

I felt Han Zhuo’s wrist to confirm the position of the dislocation. Then, I supported his arm with one hand, stabilized his wrist with the other, and gave it a sudden, sharp lift in a specific direction. The pain from my crude and forceful resetting technique made Han Zhuo’s whole body shudder, and he actually showed signs of waking up immediately. I quickly propped him up from the ground, called his name a few times, and gave him a few sips of water. I didn’t know how long the guy had been thirsty, but after drinking, he basically regained consciousness.

He looked up at me for a long time. “Where is this?”

I gave him a brief summary of how we had brought him in just now. I also kindly reminded him that we weren’t far from the tomb entrance above; if he didn’t want to go down with us, he could go up by himself and wait for rescue. We were a very loose team and would never force an injured person to take risks.

Han Zhuo snatched the backpack containing the Nine-Ring Jade Casket from my hands, looking at me as if I were a thief. “Why did you save me?”

I stood up from the ground with my rifle, understanding the implication behind his words. “I saved you because I couldn’t bear to leave you outside to be eaten by wild wolves! You don’t think I saved you for that thing in your bag, do you? Let’s get one thing straight: back then, it was me who couldn’t get rid of that casket, not me chasing it all over the place. Being able to dump it on you now is exactly what I wanted, alright?”

Han Zhuo opened the bag to glance at the jade casket. Only then did he relax enough to pull the zipper shut, rubbing his wrist. “I don’t believe you.”

His words nearly made me choke on my own spit. I’d heard this guy spent all his time following Han Cheng around the business world; clearly, his brain had been corrupted by their capitalist ways. He saw everything in terms of profit. Did I look like the kind of person who would abandon loyalty for greed? I was a fine, upstanding youth raised on socialist values!

I ignored him and walked forward with my gun. “I’ve said my piece. Believe it or not, I don’t give a damn.”

I had only walked a few steps when I saw He Yu and Old Qian huddled together, their backsides in the air as they stared intently at something on the bluestone floor. I walked over, and He Yu quickly beckoned me to look.

“Old Qian says there’s something wrong with these floor tiles.”

I leaned in to look. The tiles Old Qian was referring to were carved with a complete Fuxi Bagua diagram. The center of the diagram aligned perfectly with a seam in the floor. Finding a complete Bagua diagram here was quite rare. This spot was located at the exact center of the entire tomb passage, and the diagram was perfectly bisected by the floor seam. Even someone who knew nothing about the Bagua could tell just by looking that there was definitely something hidden beneath this.

“You think this is the mechanism to open the Underworld Hall?” I asked.

Old Qian gave the two floor tiles a nudge, but they remained perfectly flush. “I’m not sure, but the appearance of the Fuxi Bagua here is definitely abnormal. In this entire tomb passage, these are the only tiles marked with the Eight Trigrams.”

I motioned for Old Qian to make some room. Rolling my sleeves up to my elbows, I dropped into a prone position over the two tiles. I leaned down, pressing my ear close to listen for any sound beneath them. After about ten seconds, I shook my head and climbed back up. I hadn’t heard the sound of any gears or axles moving, which meant there was no water beneath the tiles. Without water, there was no natural kinetic energy, which meant I could rule out the possibility of any automated mechanical traps.