Chapter 245: Mutton Soup

While Old Qian spoke off to the side, I slung my gun over my shoulder and walked up to a dried corpse. It was the first cross-legged corpse at the far end of the hall, dressed in a gold-embroidered robe with a crown on its head. A jade tablet lay by its feet, inscribed: “Guide to the Underworld, Pass for Clearance.” In ancient times, entering a city required a clearance document or travel permit, and I figured this was likely one of those. Carved on the back of the tablet were smaller characters introducing the corpse’s official rank in the Gune Kingdom, though some had become pitted and illegible. I went ahead and slipped it into my pocket, just in case.

Once Old Qian finished speaking, I scoffed dismissively. “If eating half a piece of Houtu Blood could grant someone a place among the immortals, we’d all be the King of Gune’s slaves by now. A king so cruel he sacrificed all those living people—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 monsters and demons^[1]. We can’t let our morale be crushed over some legend. This coffin probably belongs to some relative of the King of Gune. Should we open it up and take a look?”

The few of us traded glances, though none of us really wanted to open the coffin anyway. I pointed out that the coffin was made of locust wood, which wasn’t especially rare, and considering how long we’d been disturbing the dead here without them holding it against us, turning around and opening their coffin now would be thoroughly disrespectful. We’d be better off continuing forward.

Once I brought that up, everyone agreed not to open the coffin. The priority was to get into the royal city up ahead first. After all, Gune Royal City was rumored to be a place paved with gold.

We picked up our backpacks from the ground, readjusted our formation, and passed through the stone door at the end of the rear hall. Behind the Ancestral Temple lay a moat. We walked along the long bridge over the moat to the base of the gate tower. In front of two tightly shut, ten-meter-high bronze doors stood stone horses and stone figures. One of the stone soldiers was positioned differently from the rest, extending a hand as if inviting people into the royal city. In this eerie environment, their expressions were chilling.

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

Old Qian stroked his beard and shook his head. “This behind here should be the barbican, a strategic defense enclosure. Only after passing through the barbican will we reach the actual royal city. The few of us probably won’t be able to push these bronze doors open on our own.”

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 figure 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 figures 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 figure’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 figure’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 grind to a halt a second later. They had opened to a gap not even wide enough for a single person to squeeze through before stopping.

I was immediately confused and turned back to look at the stone man. The jade tablet was still resting flat in its palm, and the placement on the mechanism was correct. Why had the bronze doors stopped opening before they were even halfway clear?

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 this be related to weight? Where did you get this travel pass? Could it be that its owner held too low a rank, so the jade tablet is too light? Or since we didn’t give it any travel money, the gate only opened a crack? This stone guard won’t let us through.”

You have to hand it to kids raised by capitalists—their minds move fast. That damned King of Gune was long dead, yet he still let his corrupt subordinates run a bribery racket. A jade tablet wasn’t valuable enough on its own; if we didn’t hand over enough gold and silver to this lousy stone man, he wasn’t letting 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 the altar. It was encrusted with gems and incredibly heavy.

We placed the jade ruyi alongside the jade tablet into the stone man’s hand. Instantly, the bronze door hinges began to creak and groan once more.

We stepped back a few paces and shone 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 passage flared to life one by one with a whoosh. We relaxed, switching off our flashlights and tucking them back into our belts, then all four of us headed straight toward the first gate.

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

The barbican passage was narrow and the walls were high. People naturally prefer open spaces, so walking down the passage felt incredibly oppressive, souring our mood. If not for the ever-burning lamps lining both sides, this stretch would have been a severe test of anyone’s psychological endurance. Even He Yu, who loved to crack jokes along the way, had shut his mouth and barely said a word.

We pushed through the oppressive atmosphere for over ten minutes before reaching the second great gate. The gate stood beneath the tower, and we stopped dead in our tracks. The sight inside the royal city nearly dropped all our jaws in unison.

Behind the gate tower, the royal city was bathed in a warm yellow glow, looking utterly out of place in the pitch darkness of this tomb. I searched for a long time without figuring out where the light was coming from; it was as if the royal city from a thousand years ago was basking under the sun.

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

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

He Yu swallowed hard. “I smell it. Is that stewed mutton? Smells like stewed mutton to me. How on earth is there a smell of stewed mutton in an ancient tomb?”

As soon as he finished speaking, I saw Old Qian and Han Zhuo both cast sudden glances at me, making me draw 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 mouthwatering mutton right before we stepped into the Royal City was absolute 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 me 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 after him. Han Zhuo followed close behind. The aroma made my mouth water frantically, so I swallowed hard and followed them through the gate tower.

The entire Royal City seemed to have nine main avenues, each designated for different functions. 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 selling 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 a mold or replica; it actually looked real.

As I held the pastry, my face turned pale. These funerary offerings were actually fresh. Bringing it to my nose, I could even smell a sweet fragrance. Realizing this, my fingers jerked in surprise 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 in fury. “You fucking ate it?”

“You bet I did!” Old Qian said. “That aroma we smelled outside came from this soup. Since you guys were too scared to try it, I took the lead and scooped a spoonful to taste. Hey, guess what? It’s delicious! That taste doesn’t lie. I swear to you, this stuff 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 up 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, swallowing the mutton 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 the King of Gune could foresee the future and even prepared chopsticks specifically for us.”

“No!” I turned to glare at him, and my look silenced him completely.

Han Zhuo suddenly came up and shoved me aside, forcing his way into a seat at the table. He picked up the bowl of rice in front of him, grabbed chopsticks from the table, and began shoveling rice into his mouth. “I don’t care! Even if I die, I’m dying with a full stomach!”

Old Qian chuckled and ambled over to sit beside Han Zhuo. “Young Master, I really can’t hold back either.”

I immediately grabbed He Yu beside me. His eyes hadn’t strayed from the mutton soup for even a second, and I knew he had been itching to eat it too. I quickly shoved him into an adjacent rouge shop and threatened him, “If you dare take a single bite of that stuff, we’re through!”

His gaze went blank for a second, then he shuddered and snapped back to his senses. “What? What do you mean ‘through’?”

I repeated, “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 forced himself to resist. His eyes grew noticeably clearer. “Come on, it’s not that serious! I won’t eat it, okay? 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 realize they were eating snakes, rats, and maggots. I don’t believe for a second that the King of Gune is so kind as to stew mutton soup here specifically for us. Something is definitely wrong. No matter how I tried to warn Old Qian and the others just now, they ignored me. They might be bewitched by a Yandao.”

Hearing this, He Yu began to panic. “Th-then what do we do now? Whenever I catch a whiff of that mutton soup, I start craving it too.”

Trying to trace things back to the source, I asked He Yu, “When you first came in here, how was the table set?”

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? Are you sure you didn’t miscount? Exactly four sets?” I found this extremely odd.

“Yeah, I was wondering about that at the time, why there were exactly four,” He Yu said, before suddenly slapping his forehead. “Oh right, there’s one more thing. One of those four bowls of rice was a bit different from the rest: the chopsticks were stuck straight up in the rice. It looked bad luck as hell. When Old Qian started eating, I almost took a bite too, but seeing those chopsticks made me hold back.”

I knew chopsticks were never to be stuck straight into a bowl of rice, as that was a ritual strictly reserved for offerings to the dead. We had indeed caught the scent of mutton soup when we first entered the royal city, which was what guided us here. If this royal city was laid out by the King of Gune, did that mean he intended for this pot of mutton soup to be shared by four people—and 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 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”?