Chapter 158: The Expedition Ten Years Ago

In the end, Shunzi didn't cry. After a moment of agitation, he relaxed, respectfully combing his father's hair, but the body was severely dehydrated—the hair fell off at the slightest touch. After he finally managed to tidy it, his father looked like Ge You. I knew the kid must still be hurting inside; maybe for ten years he'd clung to the hope that his father was still alive, and now that hope was shattered. He could be said to be relieved, or he could be said to be utterly despairing.

Fatty and Panzi had no idea what was going on and looked completely confused, cold sweat pouring down their faces. I briefly explained what I'd figured out to Fatty and Panzi, and I was sure I wasn't wrong.

Fatty started crying too when he heard, and said, "Shunzi, I can understand how you feel, but you have to look on the bright side. After ten years, father and son can still meet again—Heaven's been kind to you. Try to see it that way."

Fatty's crying made Panzi's eyes well up too, and he said, "Alright, alright, you two still have fathers. I never even saw my father's face. Third Uncle has always been like a father to me, and now his fate is unknown."

I quickly said, "What's wrong with you guys? Shunzi hasn't even cried, so why are you two joining in? Let's see why they died here."

Since they managed to get in here, there's no reason they couldn't get out. Dying here means some accident must have happened. We're now in the same burial chamber, and I sure don't want to follow in their footsteps. At the same time, I felt something suspicious about these corpses appearing here. Shunzi's father was just a guide, and the others, according to Shunzi, insisted on going into the mountains when they shouldn't have. They probably weren't ordinary tourists; maybe they had some hidden agenda. Was it a coincidence that they came in here? I had to know.

We searched their backpacks. They had all sorts of stuff inside: rotted, crumbly novels, notebooks, pencils, Oxford ropes, a field tent, old flashlights, an old Swiss Army knife (still usable), a 1986 edition Chinese-Korean dictionary, bubble gum, old lighters, a wine gourd, lipstick, sanitary belts, a medicine kit including gauze, alcohol swabs and several medicinal liquors, a military compass, and so on and so forth.

The novel was *How the Steel Was Tempered*—an old book. I didn't dare open it; it would have fallen apart at a touch. The notebooks were also old-fashioned work notebooks like the ones my dad used when I was in elementary school. There were three of them. When I opened them, all they contained were account records and phone numbers—that was all notebooks were used for back then. Besides that, there was nothing to identify them. Most importantly, none of them had brought a single ID card.

We laid all these things out in a row. They had almost complete gear—not as advanced as ours, but it should have been enough to get out. Even in the harshest environment, this equipment could handle most situations.

That was strange, I thought. No matter what, if they had the ability to leave, they should have died on the way out, not sitting here as if waiting to die. Could they have been unwilling to leave the treasures? That was even more unlikely.

If that were the case, then maybe their death here had a different cause? Suddenly an ominous feeling welled up in my heart, and I had a sense that something in this tomb chamber was watching us. I couldn't help but shiver.

Fatty, who was looking at the things we'd laid out, suddenly clicked his tongue and said, "Comrades? Have you noticed something missing from all this?"

We were all thinking. When Fatty asked, we looked carefully at the items again, but in my mind, everything essential was there. I couldn't figure out what was missing, so I asked him, "What's missing?"

Fatty said, "Food! There's no food! Nobody's bag has any food."

As soon as he said it, we all jolted. We looked at the row of items again—sure enough, it was all equipment, nothing at all to stave off hunger.

I said in surprise, "Really no food. That means these people didn't die by accident. If they died from an accident, it wouldn't be such a coincidence that everyone's out of food. That's not right. Could it be that they… finished all their food and starved to death here?"

That didn't make sense either. From having no food to starving to death, as long as there's water, a normal-sized person can hold out for a month (don't come argue with me if you're 2.27 meters tall and weigh only 90 jin). If they had any intention of getting out, they wouldn't have starved here. If they starved to death here, there's only one explanation: they couldn't get out.

Thinking of that, I recalled the disappearing tomb passage door in the underwater tomb. I jumped up and ran to the pile of goldware to shine a light on the tomb door we'd come in through. The door was still there, hadn't disappeared at all, and I breathed a sigh of relief. Then I got a bit panicked, afraid the door might suddenly vanish. Fatty knew what I was worried about and said that if that really happened, this time we had explosives on us, so no need to fear. That made me feel a lot better.

"Could it be like this?" While I was racking my brains and couldn't figure it out, Panzi asked Shunzi, "Do you know how many people were in the expedition your father led?"

"It seems there were only seven. That's what my mother said, but that's just what she saw. She didn't know the actual number. Anyway, when my father left, he set out with seven people."

"Then there are… 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, six corpses here. At least two more people are missing," Panzi said. "Could it be that those two killed everyone out of greed and ran off?"

I shook my head in denial. There was no sign of a fight. Judging by their postures and expressions when they died, they were huddled together. It didn't look like poisoning or death from external force. What bothered me most, and made me determined to find out the cause of death, was the uniformity of their expressions—all betrayed a deep despair, as if they had fallen into a hopeless situation.

This was the first time I'd seen corpses like this, and I couldn't let it go. I had a premonition that whatever happened here back then was definitely no simple matter. The more I speculated, the more I felt an indescribable cold and unease settling around us. The chilling sensation that something in this mountain of gold was watching us grew more and more distinct.

After pondering for a long time without figuring anything out, Fatty and the others got impatient and wanted to start messing with the goldware again. This time I stayed calm and stopped them all, saying that with these dead bodies lying among the gold, I really couldn't rest easy. Let's not touch anything for now. Don't forget why we came here.

My words snapped them out of it. Fatty suddenly thought of something and said, "I really was out of it, forgot what we came for. That mark led us here, and we blew the door open, but all that's inside is a treasure storeroom? No coffin? I think the meaning of that mark is obvious—it indicates there are artifacts here. The mark was definitely left by A Ning and the others, so their second team could come haul the treasures."

I said, "The door might have been blown open by these corpses, but this is just a burial chamber for grave goods. The coffin definitely isn't here. We need to go in the opposite direction."

Though it didn't make sense, I had always assumed this passage was the main one—one end at the tomb door, the other at the palace center. Now it seemed I was wrong. Could this still not be the main passage? Just how big was this underground palace? The thought of a maze came to mind, and that made me recall the marks. Was it because the palace was so complex that they left those marks?

"Then what do we do with all this stuff?" Fatty was a bit reluctant to part with it.

I said, "Just take one thing and you'll have enough to live carefree for the rest of your life. No need to be too greedy. Besides, we can always come back later."

Even Fatty seemed uneasy after seeing those corpses, but there was no way he'd leave empty-handed. So he picked a few small gold items and stuffed them in his pocket. Shunzi insisted on taking his father's body out, using the backpack straps to strap the body onto his back. The body was dehydrated and not heavy, so it wasn't hard to carry.

We took one last look at the dazzling pile of gold and agate, steeled ourselves, and filed out through the blasted opening in the tomb door.

No sooner had we stepped out of the tomb door than I heard Fatty grunt "Huh." I'd already had a premonition, so I quickly shone my flashlight around and broke out in a cold sweat.

The murals on the tomb passage outside had changed from when we first came in. At some point, all the red murals had turned into black silhouettes of people with oddly huge heads.