NR | Chapter 16

I wasn’t sure why Tian Yuqing insisted on having the men from his own family and the Tan family go down first. From what I knew of him, he was shrewd, calculating, and obsessed with efficiency. He would never do anything pointless. There had to be a reason he wouldn’t let the archaeologists go down. As for whether he was after treasure, I couldn’t see through him.

“Are you done arguing?” Before Wu Yili could answer, Lu Ayao’s voice came from inside the cave. He poked his head out of the low tunnel, his pants caked in mud, a shovel slung over his shoulder.

He casually tossed the shovel onto the grass nearby, lifted a hand to shake the dust off his hair, then picked the shovel back up again.

I watched him stroll toward Wu Yili, thinking Tan Qiu and the others were still simmering with anger. Going over now would just be pouring oil on the fire. I was about to reach out and stop him, but to my surprise, he treated me like air and brushed right past me without even glancing my way.

What kind of attitude was that? The atmosphere instantly became awkward, and I, the person at the center of it, froze on the spot.

Seeing my hand still hanging in the air, He Yu helplessly patted me. “Their family has always been weird like that. You’ll get used to it.”

I lowered my hand and saw Lu Ayao stop in front of the others. He planted the shovel he’d been carrying into the ground and braced himself on it with one hand. A little impatiently, he said, “The tomb below is huge. The walls were coated with a layer of fire oil. This tunnel was driven in from the side, so it probably happened to dig upward from beneath the tomb into the sacrificial pit for people, carts, and horses.”

Wu Yili thought for a moment, then nodded. “Then there must be bones all over above this tunnel. It’s no good here. We’ll have to find another entrance.”

But Lu Ayao shook his head. “It’s not no good. I found a place with very few bones. We can dig straight in there. That’s the fastest way right now, but it’s very likely to damage the structure inside and the tomb walls. Can you accept that?”

“No, we can’t,” the bald professor hurriedly said.

Lu Ayao gave a soft “Mm.” “Other than that, I can give you another backup option. We can reset the point using the compass, then dig down from the top of the tomb. We’ll open a small enough hole by moving the bricks on top, and lower people down with ropes. That can take us straight to the bottom of the tomb chamber.”

“Hey! That’s a good idea!” the bald professor said again.

Hearing this, I clearly saw Tan Qiu and Tian Yuqing both frown at the same time. If you thought about it carefully, you could immediately hear the problem with this method. First was the structure of the tomb’s roof. These buildings had been buried underground for who knew how many years, and the bricks and tiles supporting the top would be brittle. How many bricks should be removed, and which ones, would test a person’s skill. You couldn’t just tear into it at random.

Second, even if you opened up the roof and could descend directly from top to bottom, without a clear view of the entire tomb, there was a very real chance of getting lost once you reached the chamber floor. Of course, all of this was just my wild guess, guesswork with no experience to back it up.

“Wouldn’t that take a long time to find the tomb roof?” Wu Yili asked. He looked around. Everywhere he could see was waist-high wild grass, and nothing stood out at all. “And it has to be the roof above the chamber. Some parts are deeper, some shallower, all different. Don’t take ten days or half a month looking. If that’s the case, we might as well head home now.”

Lu Ayao smiled easily. “My ancestors taught that craftsmanship is how you make your living. Lose the craft, and you smash your own signboard. I’ve already fixed the spot. It just depends on when you want to go down.”

That way of doing things left both professors dumbfounded. It was obvious Lu Ayao had sorted out every option before coming to ask them, and it wasn’t even really a discussion. He was simply putting the prepared choices in front of them and letting them decide.

Just like he did with me.

He Yu whispered to me, “It’s exactly like the formula says. The Lu family is best at locating burial points. I’ve heard they have a pretty unique training method, one that lets them measure the size of an underground palace by stride length. They don’t even need to go down there to know how many tomb chambers and side chambers are below.”

“That’s really that amazing?” I found it hard to believe. In a place this huge, I couldn’t even tell east from west.

Wu Yili clearly had the same thought, so he said, “Then of course we should go down now while it’s still light. By night, this forest will be too deep, and the danger will only go up.”

Lu Ayao nodded, then took a Luoyang shovel handed over by one of the Tian family’s workers. He walked off in one direction for more than five hundred meters. Sunlight filtered through the dense leaves and fell over him, and everyone watched as he stopped in a patch of tall grass.

With a single motion, Lu Ayao stabbed the Luoyang shovel into the soil, then turned back and waved.

Before I could even make out what was happening, the workers around me sprang up. They all rushed over with their shovels. He said a few words to them, but the distance was too far for me to hear clearly. From the way he moved, it looked like he was telling them, “Dig this place, half shovel at a time.”

Then the workers started digging according to the spot where his Luoyang shovel had been driven in.

Wu Yili and the bald professor were both extremely curious. They crowded over together to watch the workers dig.

I wanted to watch too, but Tian Yuqing insisted on bringing me and He Yu into the tent that had just been set up. Tan Qiu followed behind us as well. I could only blame Lu Ayao’s performance for being too eye-catching. When I first arrived, I hadn’t noticed there were so many tents here.

The tents were far from the tunnel. Maybe they were placed that way for easier access to water. To get there, you had to cross the tangled shrubs in between. I roughly estimated there had to be at least fifty of these army-green tents, clearly divided into two sections.

One section was for the professional archaeologists, and the other for Tian Yuqing and Tan Qiu. The shrubs on both sides of the tents had been cut back. Just after I walked over, I saw Tian Tinghan pushing Tian Xiao out into the open space to sun himself.

I nodded to Tian Xiao. He nodded back at me, and then Tian Yuqing led us straight past Tian Xiao without greeting him.

Tan Qiu strode over and yanked open a tent. We followed him in. Once inside, he grabbed the enamel mug on the table, took a gulp of water, and started cursing, “You fucking shouldn’t have stopped me just now. That stubborn old bastard who thinks one broken duck can still keep talking tough, a beating would’ve fixed him right up.”

He Yu pulled me down onto the camp bed. As soon as I touched the fabric, I knew these tents weren’t ordinary. The material of the folding bed that came with them was better than anything I’d seen on the market, and it felt very likely to be military issue.

“He just still can’t fully trust us,” Tian Yuqing said.

Tan Qiu snapped, “Then you’re just going to let them go down?! Anyone who’s even slightly studied feng shui can tell this place is not normal at a glance. How easy do you think a tomb with a Klong dragon trap[[1]] is to scout? If that kid surnamed Lu weren’t here, just finding this ‘spring eye’ would take us at least ten days.”

As soon as he said that, Tian Yuqing frowned and lifted the tent flap again, signaling that he wanted to talk privately. Tan Qiu was a beat slow, but he seemed to notice us too. He immediately shut up, got to his feet, and walked out.

Tian Yuqing said to us, “Stay put. Don’t run around.”

After he left, I immediately turned to ask He Yu, “Did you hear that?”

He Yu’s eyes were shining. He even pulled out a notebook and fountain pen. “I heard it! He said something about a Klong dragon trap. What kind of formation is that? Your grandfather isn’t a famous feng shui master? Tell me about it.”

I said, “Are you kidding? My grandfather never taught me anything at all. My fourth brother is the one who takes on the house-location jobs. It has nothing to do with me. Why does nobody believe me?”

He Yu scratched his head, troubled. “So you really don’t know anything? I originally wanted to ask you what kind of formation this Klong dragon trap was. But if you don’t know anything and it’s that dangerous below, why did Tian Yuqing bring you here?”

I wanted to say something, but then I hesitated.

He Yu seemed not to notice anything wrong with me. “Don’t think Tan Qiu is just all that. He’s capable too. Even he said just now that this tomb is no small matter. If you really don’t know anything, I suggest you don’t listen to Tian Yuqing. Don’t go down. The Tian family is like that. For the sake of achieving their goal, there’s nothing they wouldn’t do.”

Compared to that, I suddenly felt far too petty and small-minded. In the end, they were only thinking about my safety, while I was sitting there wondering whether I should tell him the truth.

At the thought of that, I was instantly drowned in endless regret. If I wanted to make friends with someone, why was I still thinking one thing after another and distrusting them so much? I felt like I wasn’t any different from Wu Yili. Truly damned.

So I said, “I know a lot about mechanisms. I’ve studied diagrams of many ancient tombs and military engineering devices. Tian Yuqing thought I’d be able to help if I went down too, but he lied to me and made me think my fourth brother, Chen Si, was here. From the very beginning, I actually wasn’t part of your team.”

“You’ve studied mechanisms?” He Yu’s expression immediately became lively.

I nodded. “I have, but I can’t say I’m proficient. Compared with those professors, I probably’m not much good.”

He Yu was silent for a while, then came back to himself and said, “People who understand mechanisms are really rare these days. No wonder Tian Yuqing still brought you here even after lying to you. Besides, you don’t need to compare yourself to those professors outside. What they learn as so-called ‘orthodox’ knowledge isn’t very useful to us.”

Later, the two of us talked about a lot of things in the tent, and I also learned quite a bit about He Yu’s experiences from the side. Only then did I realize his life was far, far more exciting than mine, which followed a strict routine of home and school, back and forth every day.