Chapter 24: Main text Chapter Twenty-four Stone Tomb

Main text Chapter Twenty-four Stone Tomb

Sand Sea Demon Nest 13 (Stone Tomb)

Only saw Ye Yixin with half her body sunk in the sand, she kept struggling, Shirley Yang was grabbing her arm and desperately pulling her out.

In the chaos, nobody knew who shouted: "Quicksand!"

We followed the footprints on the ground and rushed forward, heedlessly grabbing Ye Yixin to prepare to rescue her; a few people didn't have time to look for rope, so they took off their own belts, hoping to loop them around her arms.

Unexpectedly, without using much strength, we pulled Ye Yixin out of the sand; looking at her, it wasn't quicksand. Ye Yixin was terrified and threw herself into Shirley Yang's arms, crying.

Everyone asked what was going on? Was it quicksand?

Shirley Yang, while comforting Ye Yixin, told everyone: "We had just walked behind the dune when Ye Yixin stepped into empty space, her whole body sank halfway; I quickly grabbed her and blew the whistle for help, but it doesn't seem like quicksand—quicksand swallows people fast with strong suction; if it really were quicksand, with my strength I couldn't hold her, and after she sank halfway she stopped, as if below was solid; otherwise, when you heard the news and rushed over, delaying these ten-odd seconds, rescuing someone from quicksand would already be too late."

Ye Yixin also came to her senses, wiping her tears, she said: "I seem to have stepped on a stone slab under the sand; beneath the slab there was an empty section that collapsed when I stepped on it."

Shirley Yang wondered: "Could those be stone tombs? Let's go take a look."

We dug a few times with a shovel at the spot where Ye Yixin had been trapped; under a thin layer of yellow sand, parallel to the dune's slope, a sloping stone wall suddenly appeared, and someone had blasted a large hole in it with explosives.

It seems the blasting happened not long ago, just these past few days; wind and sand have thinly covered the mouth of the breach, and Ye Yixin fell in after stepping on the loose stones at the edge of the break.

Everyone stared at the stone cave, looking at each other; this is clearly a stone tomb, huh—could it have already been looted?

I carefully examined the rubble at the mouth and the blast direction; it was a precise small-scale directional blast. Having been a combat engineer for many years, I consider my familiarity with explosives to be about average—if I were to blast this stone tomb, the most I could manage would be this level.

This shows a full understanding of the rock's breakability; the explosion merely collapsed the stone wall, scattering debris outward, without damaging the tomb's interior in the slightest.

Judging by the explosive power, it's definitely not civilian-grade. After being out of the army for several years, could it be that even active-duty PLA tomb raiders have turned to grave robbing? Certainly not; perhaps the explosives were stolen. Moreover, in this vast, boundless desert, how do grave robbers locate these ancient tombs? The terrain here is completely uniform—could it be that, besides someone of my middling skill, there truly are other experts in celestial topography and wind techniques who rob graves?

The cleared area of the dune keeps expanding; this is a hammer‑shaped stone wall, and aside from the face that was blasted, the rest lies deep buried under the yellow sand.

This is a typical stone tomb of the Wei‑Jin period, massive thick stones built into an arch, the joints glued with fish‑glue; such stone tombs are very common near the Western Night Ruins. In the early nineteenth century, a European explorer once described it thus: "Stone tombs are scattered everywhere in the desert, big and small, countless; more than half are buried under the yellow sand, exposing only their black pointed tops, like miniature Egyptian pyramids. Walking among the forest of stone tombs in the desert, the sight is breathtaking."

Now these stone tombs have been completely covered by the desert, making them hard to find; Professor Chen speculates it may be related to the great sandstorm a few days ago—the wind exposed part of this tomb, but I never expected the grave robbers to arrive so quickly; the archaeological team still came a step late.

The ancient tombs and ruins of Xinjiang suffered history's greatest looting before World War II, in the early nineteenth century—the eastern Taklamakan's Loulan and the southern fringe of Niya; their artifacts were almost completely stripped away. Now grave robbers have turned their claws to the southwest's Black Desert, where the natural conditions are harsh, few people venture, yet it is a paradise for tomb raiders.

Along this route we have already seen several looted and damaged ancient tombs; no wonder Professor Chen is so anxious, risking his life to enter the desert—if we don't stop the tomb‑robbing here, soon nothing will be left.

The tomb's breach was pitch black; I, Professor Chen, Hao Aiguo and others entered with flashlights to inspect. The burial chamber was about the size of a small cottage, inside lay four or five wooden coffins, their lids pried apart and tossed aside; everything had been ransacked into utter disorder.

Looking at those coffins, big and small, it seems to be a joint burial; inside the coffins only a young woman's dry corpse remained, her hair long and braided, only the head relatively well preserved, the body shattered, the rest presumably taken away by the grave robbers.

In Xinjiang's desert tombs, the dry corpses are as valuable as treasure; I heard Professor Chen say that ancient corpses are divided into wet corpses with moisture, like the Mawangdui female corpse, and wax corpses, which are specially treated bodies; frozen corpses exist in glaciers where snow never melts for millennia, tanned corpses resemble zombies, and there are also specimens like injected corpses and gnawed corpses, etc.

Among dry corpses there are several kinds: some are formed by placing desiccants such as lime or charcoal in the coffin; others are like the ancient Egyptians' special embalming techniques, artificially made mummies.

However, Xinjiang's dry corpses are formed naturally in a special environment of high temperature, dryness, and sterility; such dry corpses, if somewhat ancient, are quite valuable, and overseas museums, exhibition halls, and collectors compete to buy them at high prices.

Professor Chen saw that the remaining dry corpses in this stone tomb had all been stolen, and the damage was utter chaos; he couldn't help sighing, so he had a few students tidy up the broken objects in the tomb, to see if anything could be salvaged.

I worried the professor was too agitated for his body to take, so I urged him to rest early; Professor Chen also gave Hao Aiguo a few instructions, telling him to bring people to record the tomb's situation in detail, and then Pangzi escorted him back to camp to rest.

The next day the wind still hadn't stopped, blowing gently; when the archaeological team set out, Professor Chen found me and said that the stone tomb we saw the night before had been looted no more than three to five days ago—perhaps a gang of tomb raiders had already entered the deep Black Desert ahead of us; we can't delay, we'd better catch up and seize them.

I gave a casual reply, thinking, 'Damn, I hope we don't run into them—colleagues are enemies, and moreover the gang that looted this stone tomb has military‑grade explosives, maybe even some sharp equipment; if we meet them we'll surely have to fight, I don't mind, but the problem is these scholarly members of the archaeological team—if any casualties occur, the responsibility would be huge.'

But having said that, in the vast desert, for two groups to meet is no easy feat; if we hadn't seen yesterday that this dune was the highest around, we wouldn't have camped there, and we'd be even less likely to bump into that looted stone tomb by chance—there's hardly a second such coincidence; maybe those guys took the dry corpses and left.

Over the following ten or so days, the archaeological team went deeper and deeper into the Black Desert, finally losing the trail of the Shadow River; for several days straight they kept circling the same spot—'Zidu' means 'shadow' in ancient Uyghur, this underground river is like a shadow, impossible to grasp; Old An Leman's eyes turned red with frustration, he finally threw up his hands, utterly at a loss; it seems Hu Da Zhi permits us to have come this far.

Everyone was exhausted, man and beast alike, unable to move; these days there wasn't a breath of wind in the desert, the sun hung in the sky unusually long; to conserve drinking water, team members dug pits in the sand by day, put up rain‑proof canvas, sucked in the cool ground air to retain bodily moisture, and only traveled at night and in the morning—half the way on camelback, half by driving vehicle No. 11.

Going further, food and water would run out; if we didn't turn back within a day or two, on the return trip we'd have to slaughter the camels to eat.

Looking at these people, utterly exhausted with cracked lips, I knew we were near our limit; seeing the sun rise and the temperature climb, I had everyone dig pits to rest.

After settling in, Shirley Yang found me and An Leman to discuss the route.

Shirley Yang said: "Captain Hu, Mr. An Leman, in my British explorer's notebook there is such a record: that explorer also lost the trail of the Shadow River deep in the Black Desert; in this lifeless Sea of Death, two huge black magnetic mountains stand opposite each other in the sunset's afterglow, like two ancient warriors clad in black armor, silently guarding an age‑old secret; passing through a valley like a gate, a legendary city appears before our eyes."