Chapter 243: Human Skin

I coughed as I leaned over the jade railing of the long bridge, glancing back toward the hole we had fallen through. To my shock, I realized it wasn’t just a hole, but a carved stone dragon head protruding from the ceiling of the cavern. It looked incredibly sinister. This wasn’t a dragon from traditional mythology, but a multi-legged insectoid creature with long, centipede-like feelers.

I estimated the distance between us and the creature and began to worry. “This is going to be trouble. How are we supposed to get back out the way we came?”

He Yu told me to relax, saying we hadn’t seen anything yet. Legend had it that the King of Gune was a tyrant who loved human sacrifice. He believed his subjects were his personal property and insisted on taking at least half of them with him to the grave so he could continue reigning in the underworld. Consequently, the Tomb of King Ne was also known as the Gune Royal City. Parts of the mausoleum were supposedly built to the standards of a capital city. Rumors claimed the Gune Royal City had streets paved with gold and bridges made of jade, with magnificent palaces that rivaled the heavens. We had to go in and see it for ourselves.

Judging by the sheer scale of the cavern, the mound we had been standing on earlier was likely right above the King of Gune’s head. He had probably hollowed out the entire mountain to build his tomb, which explained the saying: “None shall enter unless the earth shakes and the mountains crumble.”

He Yu walked over to me, and we used the barometer from his pack to check our position. Converting the reading, we were only about seven hundred and eighty meters above sea level, roughly the same as the lowest point of the Tarim Basin in Xinjiang. Given that the average elevation here should have been over fifteen hundred meters, I wouldn’t have realized we had descended so deep without the measurement.

The space at the far end of the long bridge was vast, but the pool beneath the bridge was so wide that the far side remained distant. We couldn’t see anything clearly with just our flashlights. I signaled to Old Qian and He Yu to get their gear ready; we would likely be entering the actual burial chambers soon.

The three of us formed a loose single-file line and advanced toward the middle of the bridge. Han Zhuo didn’t want to listen to me, but since his words carried no weight here, he had no choice but to trail along behind us.

As we walked, Old Qian suddenly leaned over the jade railing and bit down on one of the carvings. He actually managed to chip a piece off.

He Yu burst out laughing. “I say, Old Qian, if you’re hungry, just speak up. We’ve got plenty of food. We aren’t exactly starving to death yet. I didn’t know you had a taste for this sort of thing!”

Old Qian caught the small piece of jade in his hand and spat on the ground. “Pah! You’re the one with weird tastes! Come over here and look at this.”

Skeptical, we crowded around his hand. The small piece of jade he had bitten off was densely packed with fine veins of gold. He Yu and I were stunned. The jade was actually filled with gold! If we could cut out even half a block of this, there was no telling how much it would be worth.

He Yu’s eyes gleamed with greed, and he moved to follow Old Qian’s lead and bite the railing. I slapped his shoulder to stop him. “We’ve barely started. Didn’t you say the Royal City has streets paved with gold? How much gold could there be in this bridge compared to that? We’re almost at the main hall. The bridge is just an appetizer. Besides, we don’t have any proper cutting tools. How do you plan to get it out? By chewing it?”

He Yu realized I had a point and quickly abandoned the idea of gnawing off a piece of jade. Unable to wait any longer, he bypassed me and broke into a trot, eager to see what the main hall looked like.

We picked up the pace and covered the rest of the bridge in a minute. However, when we reached the end, I realized it wasn’t the main hall. Facing the bridge was an open-air Ancestral Temple. Two statues of wrathful heavenly officials, over three meters tall, stood before the temple. Their majestic expressions seemed to glare down at us intruders.

“It seems the King of Gune really spent a massive amount of labor to build his tomb,” I said. “Once we pass the temple, we’ll be officially inside the mausoleum. Everyone stay sharp!”

He Yu immediately raised his gun, and I did the same with mine, which had finally dried out. We ascended the stairs between the two wrathful heavenly officials one after the other.

The Ancestral Temple was semi-open, supported primarily by numerous carved pillars, with thinner columns acting as decoration. The jade walls surrounding the temple’s front hall were lined with alcoves for corpses. Mummified bodies sat upright in a meditative posture, their gazes directed downward. Judging by their attire, they were likely members of the Gune Kingdom’s royal family.

He Yu tugged at my sleeve and gestured for me to look straight ahead.

As soon as I looked over, goosebumps broke out all over my body.

Directly in front of us, two bodies hung in midair by ropes—a boy and a girl, both children. To be more precise, they weren’t bodies, but two human skins. The skinning technique was so masterfully executed that the skins were perfectly intact from head to toe, leaving us with a bone-chilling sense of dread.

Old Qian took only a few steps forward before retreating to a corner to retch. Han Zhuo tried to hold it in, but seeing the two human skins was too much for him. Abandoning all pride, he joined Old Qian in vomiting.

He Yu and I had already experienced the horrifying sight of human skin back in Gansu, but seeing these two children still made our stomachs churn. I pulled out a fire-starter, lit it, and walked up beneath the boy’s skin to take a closer look.

The skin was as thin as a cicada’s wing, with no trace of tissue or fat clinging to it. If I wasn’t mistaken, the skin had likely been peeled off in one piece. It had then been coated in a special anti-oxidant material and hung here, capable of remaining uncorrupted for a thousand years.

Old Qian leaned against the wall, still nauseous. “I’d heard the King of Gune liked skinning and flaying people, but I didn’t think he was… ugh… he was really this much of a damn psychopath.”

“I read about how these are made in a book once,” He Yu said. “Supposedly, they cut a hole in the top of the person’s head and pour mercury inside. The skin has to be harvested while the person is still alive. If they die halfway through, the skin is ruined.”

I couldn’t help but imagine the agony of being flayed alive, and a violent shudder ran through my whole body.

He Yu leaned in close to me. “Do you think that kid following us earlier might have been one of these two?”

His question forced me to pay attention to how the two skins were hanging. They were suspended upright, heads at the top and feet pointing down toward the ground. If proper burial customs in Warring States tombs^[1] required hanging bodies upside down, then an upright suspension signified eternal damnation. Hanging these two skins upright was likely intended to prevent them from ever reincarnating, trapping their souls here forever after death.

It was impossible not to feel a deep sense of sorrow and indignation. That damned King of Gune. Those poor children had suffered so much torture in life, yet they weren’t even granted peace in death.

I composed myself and drew the Horse-Head Blade from my belt. “I’m going to cut the ropes off them,” I told He Yu. “Let’s wrap them up, put them in our packs, and take them out of here so we can give them a proper burial.”