Chapter 32: Qin-style Brazier

We stumbled into a Side Chamber purely by accident. It had been pitch black while we were running for our lives, but judging by my sense of direction, the corridor we came through was a straight shot. We ran all the way to the end, and the chamber was right there.

We held the stone door shut for a while. Once the sounds outside gradually faded into silence, Lu A’yao finally let go. He took the flashlight and began exploring the Side Chamber, while He Yu and I kept our hands on the door for another ten minutes, just to be safe.

Only after we were sure all the bugs had retreated back into the corridor did we finally relax, collapsing onto the ground in exhaustion.

Lu A’yao twisted the flashlight to its widest beam. In the center of the chamber stood a large bronze cauldron. I swept my own light across the room—it was surprisingly deep. Thick iron chains, each as wide as a forearm, hung haphazardly from the ceiling. Four massive Dragon-Coiled Pillars stood at the corners, their shafts disappearing into the darkness above.

Lu A’yao was standing in front of the cauldron, staring intently at something. I wasn’t interested in the cauldron, so my gaze drifted toward a messy pile of burial artifacts in the corner. I crouched down and picked up a flat flask, turning it over to inspect the base.

Typically, burial goods are numerous and varied, so the artisans who made them would stamp the base with a seal. Different grades of items would be marked accordingly, sometimes with serial numbers or signatures. These markings often help identify the tomb’s owner.

But when I flipped over the flat flask, I froze.

The area where the signature should have been had been deliberately destroyed.

It was clearly a manmade act of defacement—the engraved seal had been scraped off with a blade, leaving only a third of the border intact. I paused, then picked up another bronze artifact and turned it over. Same thing—completely obliterated.

That made no sense. I knelt beside the pile of burial goods and began frantically flipping through every intact item, checking the bottoms and sides. Every single piece had any identifying information about the tomb’s owner deliberately removed. And judging by the wear, these alterations weren’t recent—they’d been done a long time ago.

Someone didn’t want us to know who this tomb belonged to.

Cold sweat broke out on my forehead. I grabbed the flat flask and stood up, calling to He Yu, “Don’t just stand there—come help me check the other side. See if the inscriptions on those burial goods were scraped off too.”

He Yu didn’t fully understand what was going on, but obediently went to help.

Holding the flask by its spout, I carried it up the steps and flipped it upside down to show Lu A’yao. “All the inscriptions are gone,” I said quietly. “The damage looks ancient, not artificially aged. Got any leads on your side?”

The flask probably once held jade artifacts—something was stuck in the neck and wouldn’t come out, making it a bit heavy to carry. Lu A’yao took one look, then held the flask with one hand and set it on the ground, gesturing for me to look inside the cauldron.

The cauldron was filled with a clear liquid. Beneath the surface, I could see a pile of gold artifacts and jade discs. The liquid was so transparent it was easy to see everything inside. The inner walls of the cauldron were etched with strange markings.

Calling them “markings” didn’t quite capture it. They weren’t really patterns or totems—just irregular grooves and ridges that didn’t form any recognizable shapes. But they were definitely intentional, and likely meaningful. I couldn’t decipher them, so I just committed them to memory. The whole thing gave me a deeply unsettling feeling.

“You kidding me? Which idiot scraped off all the inscriptions?!” He Yu’s voice rang out from the other side.

I glanced over and saw him still rummaging through the artifacts. Just as I was about to respond, I caught a glimpse of Lu A’yao out of the corner of my eye—he’d already rolled up his sleeves. His arms were covered in deep gashes from the bat attack, and he was about to stick his hand into the cauldron.

I grabbed his arm. “Wait! We don’t even know if that liquid’s poisonous.”

He looked at me and said, “This could be the key to getting out of here. In a ‘Flowing Water Traps the Dragon’ layout, the danger lies in the water, not the trap. There’s no such thing as a dead end in this kind of formation. Even if it’s poisonous, we need to see what’s inside.”

He was firm, and I didn’t have much to argue with. Still, I pulled him back and dug into my backpack for gauze and bandages. “Forget it, I’ll do it. I don’t have any open wounds. You and He Yu were both bitten by those bats—who knows what kind of bacteria they carry. No point risking infection.”

I was so used to being overruled that I didn’t even wait for Lu A’yao to object. I shoved the bandages into his hands and shouted, “Second Senior Brother! Stop poking around and come help with the bandaging!”

He Yu gave a quick “Got it!” and dropped the porcelain jar he was holding, sprinting over.

I rolled up my sleeves past the elbows. Lu A’yao stood nearby, watching as I gritted my teeth and slowly dipped my hand into the liquid. It was freezing cold—I shivered from head to toe. Before long, my fingers touched something heavy and metallic: a bronze brazier.

Once I pulled the brazier out, Lu A’yao finally started wrapping his wounds.

“Whoa! This thing’s in great shape. But it doesn’t look like it’s from the Warring States period—more like Qin or Han dynasty,” He Yu said, taking the brazier and examining it closely. “No mistake, it’s a cooking stove. Old Lu, take a look?”

He Yu handed the brazier to Lu A’yao, who studied the craftsmanship and frowned. I was already too exhausted to react. Digging up a Qin-style brazier in a Warring States tomb—it was like our ancestors were playing some cosmic joke on us.

I reached back into the cauldron. The irregular grooves on the inner wall intrigued me more than the artifacts. I slowly traced them with my fingers, trying to memorize the strange, uneven patterns. I lingered a bit longer than I should have.

Just as I reached the final groove, I felt a spot beneath it that seemed pressable. I didn’t dare push it. I withdrew my hand and turned to ask Lu A’yao—

But before I could even turn around, I felt a heavy force slam into my back. Someone had shoved me hard. With one hand still in the cauldron, I lost my balance and tumbled down the four stone steps, dragging the cauldron with me. The liquid splashed all over me, and I rolled a good distance, tangled in a mess of pearls and gemstones.

“What the hell are you two doing?!” I shouted, wiping water from my face, furious.

I looked up—and was met with a ghastly human-like face hanging from an iron chain, glaring at me. I couldn’t stop myself from swearing out loud. Terrified, I scrambled backward, not even bothering to shake off the jewels clinging to me.

“Gan Ji! Don’t move!”

I turned and saw He Yu sprawled frog-like on the stone steps. Lu A’yao was standing farther back, holding the antenna he’d pulled from the bug’s head earlier. He Yu had stripped off his jacket and was waving it wildly, signaling me to dodge right.

Got it—move right.

I nodded at him firmly. He Yu raised his hand to count me down. But before he even got to three, the bastard lunged at me on two!

Caught off guard, I instinctively jumped right. We collided with a loud “BANG,” and the bat hanging from the chain flapped its wings and took off.

“Damn it! I said go left! No coordination at all!”

We both landed in a heap. He Yu’s head was absurdly hard, and I was seeing stars from the impact. Dizzy and dazed, I found myself lying right in front of the cauldron. I vaguely saw that the spot I’d touched earlier had been dented in from the fall.

Still reeling, I heard a sharp crack like a whip. I looked up to see Lu A’yao swinging the antenna like a whip through the air. The human-faced bat dodged the first couple of strikes, but within two minutes, it was flayed open and fell to the ground in a pool of black blood, completely still.

That antenna was at least three to five times heavier than a normal whip, but Lu A’yao moved so fast I could barely see it—only the blur of his body following the whip’s arc. His reflexes were unreal.

He Yu pulled me out of the pile of pearls. “The Lu family’s eye techniques really are something else. Lu Xiaosu was a master with the whip back in the day—looks like the skill runs in the blood.”

On the thirteenth strike, the bat was finished. Lu A’yao expertly coiled the antenna into three segments and tucked it into his hand.

“Bravo, bravo!” He Yu clapped as he walked past me.

I was still groggy from the fall, surrounded by scattered jewels, my head pounding. But then it hit me—the dented spot I’d touched in the cauldron, the empty stone platform, the four Dragon-Coiled Pillars. A terrible realization dawned on me.

“Oh no!”

“What’s wrong?”

Before I could answer, the ground beneath us began to rumble. It sounded like a giant beast turning over in its sleep deep underground. I looked up at the dragon heads carved into the pillars—sand was pouring from their mouths like waterfalls.

“Quicksand!” Lu A’yao and I shouted in unison.

This kind of trap was actually quite common—it relied on balance. The cauldron was the chamber’s equilibrium point. Any major shift in its position or weight would trigger the quicksand. And I’d just knocked it over.

He Yu clung to one of the Dragon-Coiled Pillars. “We’re screwed! We’re really screwed this time!”

The entire chamber shook violently. Cracks spread across the floor tiles, and the ground turned soft and unstable. My legs felt heavier by the second.

Just as I was about to sink into the sand, Lu A’yao tossed aside the antenna and pulled a soft whip from his bag. He gripped it with one hand and scaled the pillar’s carvings like a monkey, ascending ten meters in seconds.

“Climb!” he shouted, cracking the whip toward me.

It was the first time I’d seen a whip move like that up close. When used with enough force, a soft whip could actually latch onto a person. It wrapped around my waist and the next thing I knew, I was airborne.

Unbelievable. The whip was lined with barbs. I was suddenly grateful Lu A’yao had good aim—if he’d caught my neck, I’d be bleeding out right now.

As I flew upward, I reached out and managed to hook my arm around a thick iron chain. The chain swung wildly, and I heard a sickening pop from my shoulder.

Lu A’yao was below me, the whip’s head clipped to his belt. He wasn’t trying to reel it back—the tail was still wrapped around my waist. I looked over at He Yu; he’d climbed faster than both of us and was now level with me.

He had scaled the side of a pillar, avoiding the rushing sand. “You two! This place is collapsing! Hold on tight!”

I barely had time to process his words before the ground below gave way entirely. The cauldron and all its priceless contents were swallowed by the quicksand in seconds.

Sand rained down from the ceiling. I ducked my head to avoid a mouthful.

The swirling sand below made me dizzy. I turned to look at Lu A’yao—he was climbing the pillar barehanded. His only climbing tool must’ve been given to He Yu, but he was still more stable than either of us. Watching him, I forced myself to climb a few more steps.

He Yu kept going too. Of the three of us, I was the only one stuck in place, clinging to the chain, too scared to move.

Lu A’yao climbed up beside me. “There’s another chain above your head. Use your arms to pull yourself up. We have to keep climbing. Fall into that pit and we’re dead.”

What?! I looked up at the next chain—two arm-lengths away—and hesitated.

Maybe he saw the fear on my face, because he added, unusually gently, “Don’t worry too much. The Lu family’s soft whips are very sturdy.”

I nearly passed out on the spot. Thanks, I thought. That makes me feel so much worse.