Chapter 245: Mutton Soup

Old Qian spoke from the side as I carried my gun over to one of the dried corpses. This was the first cross-legged corpse at the end of the hall, dressed in a gold-threaded embroidered robe with a crown on its head. A jade tablet lay by its feet, inscribed with the words: “Guide to the Underworld, Pass for Clearance.” In ancient times, entering a city required a travel permit or a guide document, and I figured this was likely one of those. There were smaller characters carved on the back of the jade tablet introducing the corpse’s official rank in the Gune Kingdom, but some of the characters had become pitted and illegible. I decided to tuck it into my pocket for now, just in case it might come in handy.

After Old Qian finished his explanation, I dismissed it with a scoff. “If eating half a piece of Houtu Blood could make someone join the ranks of the immortals, then we’d all be the King of Gune’s slaves by now. A king who was cruel enough to use so many living people as funerary sacrifices… you’d be better off believing I could achieve Ascension to Immortality than believing in him.”

He Yu clapped his hands. “Well said! To us, all feudal superstitions are just demons and monsters. We can’t let our morale be crushed by some old legend. This coffin probably belongs to some relative of the King of Gune. Should we open it up and take a look?”

We all glanced at each other, but none of us actually wanted to open the thing. I suggested that since the coffin was made of locust wood, which wasn’t particularly rare on the market, and since we’d been disturbing the peace here for so long without the occupant taking offense, it would be downright disrespectful to go flipping their lid now. It was better to just keep exploring forward.

Once I said that, everyone unanimously agreed not to open the coffin. The priority was to get into the royal city ahead and see what was what. After all, Gune Royal City was rumored to be a place where the roads were paved with gold.

We picked up our backpacks, readjusted our formation, and passed through the stone doors at the end of the rear hall. Behind the Ancestral Temple lay a moat. We crossed the long bridge over the moat to the base of the city gate tower. Two ten-meter-high bronze doors stood tightly shut, flanked by stone horses and stone men. One of the stone soldiers stood in a different posture than the others, reaching out a hand as if inviting people into the royal city. In this gloomy environment, their expressions were enough to make one’s skin crawl.

He Yu rubbed his arms. “Is the royal city right behind this?”

Old Qian stroked his beard and shook his head. “This should be the barbican, a kind of strategic defensive structure. The real royal city should be after we pass through the barbican. The few of us probably won’t be able to push these bronze doors open.”

Han Zhuo stepped ahead of me to examine the hinges of the bronze doors. After checking both sides, he returned looking somewhat disappointed. “There should be spring-loaded tripwires behind the hinges. If we force them open, it might trigger the crossbows in the barbican connected to those wires. The mechanism is likely very complex.”

He Yu cursed, “How sinister. That old King of Gune wants to turn us into pincushions, doesn’t he?”

Seeing me staring blankly at the stone man with the outstretched hand, Old Qian leaned over and asked if I had an idea.

I pulled the jade guide tablet from my pocket and showed it to him. I guessed that since Gune Royal City was very likely built to mirror the actual city from that era, the stone carvings inside wouldn’t include anything superfluous. Handing over a travel permit before entering a city was perfectly logical. Therefore, the jade tablet should be placed in the stone man’s palm. Not only that, but the door’s mechanism was likely right there in its hand.

I walked over and placed the jade tablet flat in the stone man’s palm. A series of creaks and groans echoed from inside the stone figure, which in turn triggered the movement of the bronze doors.

Seeing the doors begin to open, He Yu ran over, about to cheer, only to see the bronze doors stop a second later. They had opened just enough for a single person to squeeze through before halting.

I was instantly confused and turned back to look at the stone man. The jade tablet was still lying flat in its hand, and the placement on the mechanism was correct. Why had the doors stopped before they were even halfway open?

What was going on? Had the hinges seized up after a thousand years?

Han Zhuo leaned in beside me to take a look, tilting his head. “Could it be related to weight? Where did you get this guide? Maybe the official who owned this pass held too low a rank, so the jade tablet is too light? Or maybe since we didn’t give it any travel money, the door only opens a crack? The stone guard won’t let us through.”

You have to hand it to these kids from capitalist families; their brains are sharp. That damned King of Gune was long dead, yet he still let his filthy subordinates run a bribery racket. A jade tablet wasn’t valuable enough on its own; if we didn’t give this damn stone man enough gold and silver, he wouldn’t let us in!

“He Yu! Quick, go back to the Ancestral Temple and grab some Mingqi! Make them heavy! The heavier the better!” I called out.

Old Qian and He Yu hurried back to the Ancestral Temple to fetch some Mingqi. They spent a long time picking through the items before hauling back a jade Ruyi scepter from an altar. It was encrusted with gems and incredibly heavy.

We placed the jade Ruyi along with the jade tablet into the stone man’s hand. Instantly, the door hinges began to creak and groan once more.

We stepped back a few paces, shining our flashlights forward. As the dust settled, the bronze doors beneath the gate tower opened one after another. The ever-burning lamps along the barbican path flared to life one by one with a soft whoosh. We relaxed, clicking off our flashlights and tucking them back into our belts. The four of us headed toward the first gate.

The distance from the first gate of the barbican to the second was quite long.

The path through the barbican was narrow and the walls were high. Humans generally prefer open spaces, so walking through that passage felt incredibly oppressive, and our moods soured accordingly. If not for the ever-burning lamps lining the sides, this stretch of road would have been a severe test of one’s psychological endurance. Even He Yu, who loved to joke around on the road, had shut his mouth and gone silent.

We endured the oppressive atmosphere for over ten minutes before reaching the second great gate. The gate stood beneath the city tower, and we stopped in our tracks. The sight within the royal city caused all of us to drop our jaws in unison.

Behind the gate tower, the royal city was currently bathed in a warm yellow glow. It looked utterly out of place in the profound darkness of this tomb. I searched for a long time but couldn’t tell where the light was coming from; it was as if the city from a thousand years ago was sitting under the sun.

The most baffling part was that the closer I got to the gate tower, the more I could smell the aroma of cooked meat and fried rice. The scent wafting from the city was so real it left me feeling dazed.

I turned to He Yu beside me. “Do you smell that?”

He Yu swallowed hard. “I smell it. Is that stewed mutton? It smells like stewed mutton to me. How can there be the smell of stewed mutton in an ancient tomb?”

As soon as he finished speaking, I saw Old Qian and Han Zhuo both cast sudden, sharp glances at me. I immediately sucked in a cold breath.

It seemed I wasn’t the only one who smelled that stewed mutton.

The problem was that it had been several hours since our last meal, and everyone’s stomach was already growling with hunger. To see such a sight and smell that fragrant mutton just a second before we stepped into the Royal City was nothing short of psychological torture for our stomachs.

He Yu couldn’t help himself and took a few steps toward the gate tower, swallowing hard as he edged forward. “Let’s stop guessing out here. Let’s get inside and look. We’ll know if there’s mutton or not once we see it, right?”

Before I could stop him, Old Qian couldn’t hold out any longer either and ran inside with him. Han Zhuo followed close behind. I felt the aroma trigger a frantic secretion of saliva, so I swallowed hard and followed them through the gate tower.

The entire Royal City seemed to have nine roads, each serving a different function. We took the central one. Once inside, I discovered that the wooden carts lining both sides of the official road were covered in trinkets. There were vendors for jewelry, sugar cakes, and snacks—it was a carbon copy of the Nieyao Ghost Market Mural. I reached out to a wooden cart and picked up a sugar cake to examine it closely. This cake didn’t look like some kind of mold or replica; it looked real.

Holding the pastry, my face went pale. These funerary offerings were actually fresh. When I brought it to my nose, I could even smell a sweet fragrance. Realizing this, my fingers jerked, and the pastry fell to the ground, rolling a few times. These were burial goods; how could they still look like this after a thousand years?

I shouldered my gun and tightened the straps of the backpack containing those two children’s skins. I looked up to call out to He Yu and the others, only to find they were no longer at the snack stall across from me. I immediately jumped off the wooden cart and ran over to search. Just as I arrived, I heard their voices coming from the next street over. I quickly cut through the interconnected shops to reach them.

When I got there, they were huddled around a round wooden table in a private shop, discussing something.

Old Qian grabbed me and pulled me into their circle, pointing at a large pot of bubbling mutton soup on the wooden table. “Young Master, I just took a sip. This stuff is actually real!”

I glared at him. “You damn well ate it?”

“You bet I did!” Old Qian said. “That aroma we smelled outside was this soup. You guys were too scared to try it, so I took the lead and scooped a spoonful to taste. Hey! Guess what? It’s delicious! That feeling doesn’t lie. I can swear to it—this thing is definitely not an illusion!”

While Old Qian was describing the taste of the mutton soup to me, Han Zhuo was already starving. Wiping away his drool, he walked to the table, picked up a wooden spoon directly from the pot, scooped a small piece of mutton, and shoved it into his mouth. Seeing this, I lunged past Old Qian and grabbed him, trying to make him spit it out. But he didn’t listen to me at all. The mutton was swallowed whole right under my nose.

Even though I had been walking as long as they had and was salivating at the sight of a pot of mutton soup, I knew that the sudden appearance of these things meant there had to be a problem.

Fury flared up inside me. I grabbed Han Zhuo and shoved him back. “What kind of place is this? How could there be fresh soup in a tomb! It defies common sense! We haven’t figured anything out yet, and you’re already eating things without following orders. This Tomb of King Ne is so sinister—what if something happens to you after eating that?!”

He Yu was also craving it, so he came over to persuade me. “Xiao Yao, don’t be so anxious. I watched Old Qian eat it just now. If it were poisonous, wouldn’t there have been a reaction by now? Besides, it’s been half an hour and nothing’s happened. This King of Gune could achieve Ascension to Immortality, there’s that Houtu Blood that can bring the dead back to life, and we even have a little ghost following us. What kind of strange things haven’t we seen? This is just a pot of edible mutton soup. Maybe King Ne could foresee the future and even prepared the chopsticks specifically for us.”

“No!” I turned my glare on him. He was so intimidated by my look that he didn’t dare say another word.

Han Zhuo suddenly stepped forward and pushed me aside. He sat down firmly at a spot by the table, picked up a bowl of rice, took the chopsticks, and began shoveling food into his mouth. “I don’t care. Even if I die, I’m going to die with a full stomach!”

Old Qian gave a cheeky grin and sat down next to Han Zhuo. “Young Master, I really can’t help myself either.”

I immediately grabbed He Yu, who was standing beside me. His eyes hadn’t moved from that mutton soup for a second. I knew he had been wanting to eat it too, so I quickly pushed him into a nearby rouge shop and threatened him. “If you dare take a single bite of that stuff, we’re through!”

His eyes went blank for a second, then he shuddered and snapped out of it. “What? What do you mean ‘through’?”

I repeated myself. “I said if you dare touch a single thing in that pot, our friendship is over!”

He Yu smacked his lips, his throat bobbing, but he desperately restrained himself. His eyes cleared significantly. “Not necessary, not necessary. I won’t eat it. What’s wrong? You think there’s something wrong with the mutton soup?”

I said, “It’s not just the mutton soup; there’s something wrong with this entire Royal City. I’ve heard stories of people being invited by fox spirits to a banquet in a cave at night, only to wake up the next morning and find they’d been eating snakes, rats, and maggots. I don’t believe for a second that King Ne is kind enough to specifically stew mutton soup for us here. There’s definitely a problem. No matter how I tried to persuade Old Qian and the others just now, they wouldn’t listen. They might be under a Yandao.”

When I said that, He Yu began to get scared. “Then… then what do we do now? When I smell that mutton soup, I start wanting to eat it too.”

I tried to trace back to the source, asking He Yu, “When you first came in here, what was the situation on the table?”

He Yu said, “On the table? There was just that pot of mutton soup. The soup was in the middle, surrounded by a circle of cold dishes—the ones they’re eating now. And there were four sets of bowls and chopsticks. Don’t you think it’s strange? When we arrived, the rice in those bowls looked like it had just been steamed and served. It was too real.”

“Four sets of bowls and chopsticks? You’re sure you didn’t miscount? Exactly four sets?” I found this incredibly strange.

“Yeah, I was wondering about that myself at the time, why there were exactly four,” He Yu said, suddenly slapping his forehead. “Oh, right, there’s one more thing. One of those four bowls of rice was a bit different from the others. The chopsticks were stuck vertically into the rice. It looked damn unlucky. I was actually going to have a bite when Old Qian started eating, but after I saw those chopsticks, I held back.”

I knew that chopsticks should never be stuck vertically into a bowl of rice; that was a ritual reserved only for offerings to the dead. We had indeed smelled the scent of mutton soup when we entered the royal city, which was how we managed to find our way here. If this city had been laid out by the King of Gune, did it mean he intended for this pot of mutton soup to be shared by four people? Specifically, three living and one dead?

As the first group to enter this place, following the scent to find this meticulously prepared meal, there happened to be exactly four of us, matching the four sets of tableware on the table.

So, among the four of us, who was meant to be the “dead person”?