Chapter 145

Main Text Chapter 147 Skylight

I fell from the big wooden beam, the rope hanging me in midair like those empty clothes, I was suspended head‑down, feet‑up there. Just as I thought the mercury mechanism in the rear hall might be intended to preserve some secret there, I felt a tightening at my waist—Shirley Yang and Pangzi were pulling on the rope, slowly hauling me back onto the beam.

My mind raced as I watched the mercury inside the hall rise higher, already submerging the belly of the six‑legged bronze cauldron; a moment more and it would completely cover the mural wall and stone stele. The spot that would trigger the mercury mechanism at the slightest touch must be where that "secret" is hidden, and it must lie somewhere in this mural, stele, or the black bronze cauldron—but where exactly?

It's likely that among the many Yi corpses inside the bronze cauldron lies some important object or remains—no, wait, all the corpses inside the cauldron were instantly burned into a pot of foul oil as soon as the lid was lifted; even something extremely important would have long been gone, so why go to all the trouble of setting up the mechanism of the hollow mercury dragon?

Time ticked by second by second as Pangzi and the others gradually hauled me upward; probably due to the reversed blood flow, the hall's scene looked different from the front, yet at this moment my mind was unusually clear. Since I was hanging head‑down, when I tilted my head back I saw the hall's floor; from midair the most prominent feature was the several walls arranged in the shape of the Bagua Nine Palaces.

The eight‑trigram‑shaped mural wall flashed into view, one section jutting out especially, where a "Zombie Person" had been crushed by the cauldron lid against the wall, its flesh a bloody blur. The white‑splashed wall looked as if ink had been spilled, covered in dark‑green blood and tissue, and because the lid was heavy, the wall was cracked open, fissures radiating outward.

The murals on the eight brick walls were many, but the most special one—depicting the various strange shamanic rites of the Dian Kingdom—was the sole wall that had been smashed by the cauldron lid. Once this wall was breached, the hall's side corridor was instantly sealed, and a large amount of mercury poured out from the dragon's mouth. All this shows that something important is hidden inside the wall; any external disturbance triggers the hall's mechanism. Those unable to dodge are swallowed by the mercury, turning black and dead; if an intruder is nimble enough to escape to the hall's roof, the mercury can flood the rear chamber in that instant. Outsiders would hardly notice that the wall conceals anything.

This thing must be very important; the reason they didn't install a lethal extermination mechanism is probably because they intended to retrieve it later. Yet for some unknown reason, when King Xian was buried, he did not take it into the underground mystic palace but hid it atop the Minglou Baoding. The urgent task now is to extract its contents before the mercury seeps through the crack in the mural.

At the time I hadn't thought it through in such detail; in that instant I relied on the intuition of a Gold‑Probing Colonel and believed something was hidden in the wall. So‑called "intuition" is merely a synthesis of several memory fragments in the brain with the data received by the five senses, bypassing logical steps and directly reflecting the averaged result into thought; its reliability largely depends on a person's judgment ability.

At that moment I couldn't worry about hanging in midair; I shouted, "It's right in this wall!" My sudden yell startled Pangzi and Shirley Yang, who were pulling on the rope on the beam, making them jump. Both puzzled, they asked, "What's in the wall?"

I noticed the mercury vapor in this hall thickening, I could no longer stay longer; at this moment there's no time for detailed talk, so I let them not pull me up first—I want to descend to the broken mural wall to see if there's still a chance to take out what's inside. Also let Pangzi use a lighter to burn that set of haunted witch clothes, and especially emphasize to Pangzi that no matter how strange the clothing is, ignore it completely, just light it.

Then let Shirley Yang hurry to climb to the highest point, blast the hall tiles, and the three of us split up to act, striving to leave Lingyun Heavenly Palace as quickly as possible; otherwise, if we delay further, not to mention the danger of the mercury, just the fact that it's getting dark outside and we remain in this haunted palace would be very bad.

Shirley Yang and Pangzi didn't know what I intended to do, but having been together for a long time, they understood I must have my reasons; we can talk later after we get out, so the two of them split up from the large wooden beam.

Pangzi relied on the hall's pitch darkness; though he couldn't tell how high he was from above, he could still act. I saw him pluck up his courage, sliding from the beam to the corner where the witch clothes hung, trembling as he took out the lighter. Knowing his reckless, hateful nature, even ghosts and gods would fear him a bit, so I stopped watching him, instead I pulled the waist pulley, kicked off a nearby stone stele, and swung my body from midair toward that mural wall.

As I swung across, my climbing helmet even scraped the mercury on the floor; as soon as my hands reached the mural wall, I quickly climbed up half a meter to avoid the mercury below. The development of heated sulfidation mercury technology during the Qin and Han dynasties still stemmed from the relentless efforts of Qin Shi Huang and Emperor Wu of Han in their pursuit of immortality through alchemy.

I saw that at the spot where the cauldron lid had shattered the mural wall, half a jade box was indeed exposed, wrapped with several loops of gold rope; the rising flow of mercury was about to flood the crack in the wall. In the hurry, I didn't have time to examine it closely, first I flipped my inverted body upright, then immediately got to work, using a climbing pick to smash the wall—this kind of wall‑breaking task I had mastered back when I was a combat engineer. Enduring the pungent mercury smell, I kept swinging the pick, continually widening the crack in the wall.

The mural wall was entirely built of tian earth bricks, with no stone, so it wasn't sturdy; a few special bricks might be movable, allowing things to be hidden inside, but due to the huge external impact, the joints of those movable bricks have deformed, making it hard to tell which are fixed and which are movable, so I had to dig them all out completely.

The jade box hidden in the wall was not small; I needed to chisel away a large area of tian earth bricks to extract it. Just as I was busy chiseling the wall, I suddenly heard a loud boom from above, a shower of bricks and tiles fell, and a blinding shaft of sunlight pierced the gloomy palace.

I looked up at the hall's ceiling and saw that Shirley Yang had already opened a skylight in the roof; however, the palace's glazed roof was thin, so no explosives were needed—she simply used a combat engineer's shovel and a climbing pick to break a large hole. Sunlight slanted in, landing exactly on the set of witch clothes in the wall corner, and Pangzi had just lit his lighter at the same moment; the red witch clothes, stained as if with fresh blood, burned and fell down, turning into a pile of ash that was instantly covered by mercury.

Seeing that they had both succeeded, I now exerted all my strength, chiseled away the last two obstructive earth bricks, reached in and pulled out the jade box hidden in the wall; I hefted it—it wasn't very heavy—and, having no time to guess what was inside, I casually tucked it under my arm, turned the pulley to rise onto the main beam. At that moment the several beast heads in the hall were still spewing mercury; if I had been even half a minute slower, I would never have gotten this jade box.

As soon as I got onto the main beam, I immediately met up with Pangzi, hastily climbing the wooden rafters, and crawled out of the skylight cleared by Shirley Yang from this perilous heavenly palace.

Outside, the sunlight was already slanting. Due to the special terrain, the deep part of the Insect Valley receives sunlight for an extremely short time each day; once the sun shifts, it is blocked by the mountains, and the valley gradually falls into darkness. Standing on the slick, large glazed tiles, I saw the dragon halo beneath the heavenly palace, which had been seven-colored when fully sunlit, now turned into a dim glimmer of gold. Even deeper, the funnel-shaped water pool was already so black that its surface could not be seen, as if merging with the black vortex at the bottom of the Deep Pool.

Recalling the successive encounters I had just experienced in the heavenly palace, what still puzzles me most are those bronze beasts and bronze figures; as for the strange garments hanging throughout the hall, the woman's icy, frost-like sharp laughter, the large amount of mercury pouring out, and the jade box hidden in the mural wall, I didn't pay them any mind—my head was filled with the blazing flames rising from the great cauldron below, and the bronze statues whose poses and attire were utterly out of the ordinary. There must be something unusual I haven't yet recalled, but the more I think, the less I can grasp any clue.

At that moment, Shirley Yang gave me a light push, bringing me back from my deep thought; I collected myself, took out the jade box I had pulled from the mural wall, showed it to Pangzi and Shirley Yang, and briefly recounted what had happened.

The jade box was wrapped in several loops of gold cord, its jade color ancient and simple, with a few specks of vermilion stain—at a glance it was clearly an artifact thousands of years old. However, the box is flat and rectangular, so it probably isn't the container for a phoenix gall. So secretly hidden in the rear hall of the heavenly palace, its contents must be extraordinary; I immediately wanted to open it and have a look, but the box is sealed tightly. Without special tools, if I wanted to open it, I would have to destroy this piece of ancient jade on the outside.

Shirley Yang said: 'The jade is small, but what's inside is big; we might as well wait until we get back to examine it closely—there's no point in rushing to look at it now, given the pressing time.'

I nodded in agreement, then had Pangzi wrap up the jade box and put it into his backpack. I asked Pangzi: 'When you burned that red garment, did you notice anything strange about it?'

After Pangzi had packed the jade box, he set his large pack beside him and complained to me: 'You still have the nerve to ask? That garment is truly damned evil; if I, Master Pang, had even a little less courage, you'd be collecting my corpse right now. If we ever get another life‑threatening task like this, it would be more fitting for Commander Hu to go himself—even the blind fortune‑teller says you have a big life.'

As the sky grew dark, we planned to go straight down to the pool bottom to locate the tomb passage. While I was busy getting equipment ready with Shirley Yang, I asked Pangzi: 'Didn't that blind man also say something about you? He claimed you are the reincarnation of Lü Bu, courtesy name Fengxian, from the Three Kingdoms era, possessing the strength to withstand ten thousand men—so what could possibly frighten you? Come on, tell me in detail what the half‑female corpse inside the garment looks like.'