Chapter 29: The Mural

The pointed hammers went to work. The Sun brothers took turns, one striking as the other followed, never letting their hands rest. The bluestone was not particularly hard; what had been expected to take a full day took only a few hours with everyone working together.

Once the groove for the ox-nose-shaped recess had been chiseled out, we used the same method as before: we slipped a rope through the hooked pin.

“I’ll pull when I count to one. This thing is much smaller, so we should be able to bring it down in one go.” Third Brother Sun was the first to take hold of the rope, and the three of us quickly followed.

He drew a deep breath, lowering his voice.

“Three... two...”

“One!”

The ropes snapped taut at once. We were pulling toward the left.

With a thunderous crash, the stone blocking the entrance toppled inside.

Third Brother Sun’s estimate had been right. Having learned from our first attempt, we had found the correct method and succeeded in a single try.

Following the principle of putting caution first, Third Brother Sun lit a white candle and placed it in the crack between the doors. This was to test the oxygen level inside.

The candle stood on the ground, its flame flickering bright and dim. We could not feel any wind, yet the flame leaned to one side.

“Is everything all right, Third Brother?” I asked softly.

He waved a hand, signaling that we should observe it for another two minutes.

Several minutes passed. The candle continued burning as before, without suddenly shrinking. That meant the oxygen level inside was relatively stable.

“Watch your footing,” he instructed.

Together, we pushed open the second stone door.

The temperature beyond it was extremely low. The moment we entered, we could feel it. Though we were all dressed in thick clothing, the cold still seeped through, and the white vapor of our breath was unmistakable.

“Whew... It’s freezing, Third Brother. The temperature in here must be more than ten degrees lower than outside.” One Mole rubbed his hands continuously.

Third Brother Sun found it strange as well.

“The temperature around Moth Mountain is usually fairly stable. I never expected a place like this to be so peculiar. I can’t make sense of it.”

“If you can’t figure it out, stop thinking about it, Third Brother. None of us are geologists. Let’s scout the place first,” Big Brother Sun said, offering his opinion.

“Big Brother, Third Brother, look up!” I suddenly noticed something as I swept my flashlight around.

A large number of vividly colored murals still remained in the southwestern corner of the stone wall.

“Murals... These... These don’t seem to be murals in the style of the Western Zhou.” Third Brother Sun raised his flashlight to illuminate them, his expression one of disbelief.

“Not Western Zhou? What do you mean?” I looked again.

The murals on the stone wall were dominated by black and red. There were many of them; wherever the flashlight reached, they seemed to cover nearly every inch.

Their subjects were varied—and bizarre.

There were men in ancient dress wearing hats, women with their breasts exposed, and children tied upside down to wooden beams. At the center of one scene stood a pure-white coffin. Around it, numerous raggedly dressed people knelt on the ground, apparently worshiping the coffin. The murals as a whole carried an unmistakable air of occult worship.

The reason Third Brother Sun had immediately suspected that the murals were not from the Western Zhou period was the mineral pigment used in them. According to common knowledge, this particular mineral red had not yet appeared during the early Western Zhou. It became popular much later, in the Chu region during the Warring States period.

A tomb from the Western Zhou period, but murals that were not from the Western Zhou...

The contradiction made no sense. And whose coffin was that white one in the mural?

So far, we had not seen a single worthwhile burial object. Yao Yumen had declared with absolute certainty that this was a state-level underground palace grander even than the Mawangdui tombs. She had also speculated that it contained national treasures too important to be moved.

But where were they?

“Third Brother, come here!” One Mole suddenly shouted.

We hurried over.

In the northwestern corner of the stone wall, another mural had appeared—one with an eerie and unnatural style.

When we saw what it depicted, every one of us, myself included, turned deathly pale.

What I saw was this:

In the somewhat faded mural stood three men and one woman. It was rendered with astonishing realism. Two of the men appeared to be in their forties, the woman in her thirties, while the last man was clearly much younger.

These modern figures were all holding flashlights. They stood clustered together, illuminating a white coffin.

I turned around in horror. There was nothing behind me—no white coffin at all.

The four people in the mural were unmistakably us.

“Th... Third Brother...” My voice trembled.

Smack!

Third Brother Sun suddenly slapped himself hard across the face.

“Impossible. Impossible. I must be seeing things.” His face ashen, he turned toward One Mole. “Little Red, what do you see?”

One Mole’s voice shook. “I... I see the four of us, and... and a monster with horns growing out of its head.”

“A horned monster?” I rubbed my eyes furiously. “There’s no such thing! Where is it? I clearly see a white coffin!”

Third Brother Sun drew a deep breath.

“I see the four of us surrounding two venomous snakes twisted around each other.”

Big Brother Sun shook his head as well.

“What I see is different from all of yours. I see a child squatting on the ground, hiding his face and crying.”

When he finished, we exchanged glances, each seeing disbelief in the others’ eyes.

A single strange mural.

Four people looking at it together, yet seeing four different images.

I saw a coffin. One Mole saw a horned monster. Third Brother Sun saw two intertwined venomous snakes. Big Brother Sun saw a child crying into his knees.

Third Brother Sun had encountered many sinister things in the past, but the phenomenon of one painting showing four different scenes had clearly exceeded his understanding.

The only reasonable explanation we could come up with was that we were hallucinating. Somehow, all of us might have begun hallucinating at the same time.

“Something’s wrong. Sit down, all of you. Don’t go any farther yet.” Third Brother Sun motioned for us to sit where we were.

After thinking for several minutes, Third Brother Sun reached into his pack and took out a small, round iron tin. It was made of old white bronze, not very large, and bore no designs or markings.

He unscrewed the lid and carefully poured a little yellow powder into his palm.

The powder had a pungent smell, somewhat like realgar, though far stronger.

Third Brother Sun told us to extend our right hands, then poured a little into each of our palms.

He raised his hand to the tip of his nose.

“Inhale it through your nose in one breath.”

He demonstrated first.

“Achoo!”

“Damn, that’s potent.”

He inhaled through his nose twice in succession, shaking his head vigorously.

The moment I breathed in the powder, a sudden chill ran through my mind. Its stimulating effect was astonishingly strong—far more powerful than mentholated oil, floral water, or anything similar. They were not even in the same class.

Once we had inhaled the yellow powder, we looked carefully at the mural again.

The crying child was gone. So were the horned monster and the snakes. Now all of us saw the same image.

The mural showed only several strangely dressed people from ancient times. There were no animals and no coffin.

“Damn, good thing I had the foresight to buy some soul-awakening medicine from someone in the trade before we came.” Third Brother Sun cursed under his breath as he rose to his feet. Then he turned to look back at the path we had just taken.

“That nanmu fragrance. It’s the same fragrance we smelled earlier. This was also an ancient method of preventing tomb robbers, concocted by the sorcerers and ritual masters of that era.”

“The people who came in from the south must have hallucinated just as we did. That’s why they turned on one another and killed each other.”

“Fortunately, I was well prepared, and we discovered it early.”

After speaking, Third Brother Sun looked up at the murals.

“If we had been five minutes later, we might have died without ever knowing how.”

“This is killing by borrowed hands.”