[{"data":1,"prerenderedAt":-1},["ShallowReactive",2],{"origin-the-grave-robbers-chronicles":3,"chapter-the-grave-robbers-chronicles-the-grave-robbers-chronicles-chapter-55":6},{"origin":4,"title":5},"chinese","The Grave Robbers' Chronicles",{"chapter":7,"nextChapterSlug":20,"prevChapterSlug":21,"totalChapters":22,"novelImage":23},{"id":8,"novel_id":9,"title":10,"slug":11,"index":12,"content":13,"wordcount":14,"created_at":15,"updated_at":16,"volume":17,"translator":18,"content_hash":19},15912,44,"Chapter 55: Raging Sea: Bottom of the Pool","the-grave-robbers-chronicles-chapter-55",55,"\u003Cp>Poker-face finished his sentence, ignored my further questions, and quickly ran downward. Seeing a glimmer of hope for the truth, I naturally wouldn't let it go and hurried after him.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>The mist at the bottom of the pool kept rising. I had only taken ten steps when I entered the thick fog, and visibility plummeted. At first I could still see Fatty's back, but after a few steps, all I could see ahead was the dot of his flashlight. Plus, Fatty, being bold, ran by taking three steps in one stride, leaving me far behind in no time. Before I had even gone one full circle, I couldn't even see the dot of Fatty's flashlight.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>This made me a bit panicked. I was now in a haze of mist and fog, unable to see more than half a meter in any direction. This feeling of being able to see but not clearly was even more uncomfortable than being in absolute darkness.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>The vertical distance from the pool surface to the bottom wasn't great. After about the time it takes to smoke a cigarette, Fatty called out from below, \"I've reached the bottom!\"\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>I heard the sound of his feet splashing into water, so I hurried down several steps at once. Suddenly my feet felt cold as I stepped into water. It turned out that not all the water at the bottom had been drained; there was still water about calf-deep. No wonder I couldn't see clearly when I looked down from above.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>I looked around and realized this was almost the center of the fog, with even lower visibility. I groped along the pool wall and took a few steps when I heard Fatty shout from the left, \"Watch out under the water! There are holes here where water comes in. Don't step into them.\"\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>I probed with my foot and sure enough, there were bowl-sized pits all around. It seemed I had to be extremely careful walking here. At that moment, Fatty emerged from the mist, waving his flashlight, and told me to follow him.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>I nodded and followed him wading through the water. After a few steps, I suddenly saw several black silhouettes ahead. I didn't know what they were, but Fatty had obviously seen them before and wasn't afraid at all. He waved for me not to dawdle. I walked over and saw it was four stone monkeys, each half a man's height, squatting on stone pedestals, facing the four directions, as if praying. I knew these were called Sea-Calming Stone Monkeys, usually sunk at the bottom of ponds to ward off evil. It was normal to see them here.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Relieved, I walked a few more steps in and saw that in the middle of the four stone monkeys stood a large bluestone stele over two meters tall. Poker-face was shining his flashlight on it and examining it carefully.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>I walked over and asked him, \"So? Seeing these, did anything come back to you?\"\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>He pointed to the base in front of the stele. I looked and saw a few lines of small regular script. Fatty couldn't read it and asked me what it meant. I said, \"These words tell us that the tomb owner built a heavenly palace. The door to the heavenly palace is inside this stele. If you are fated, the door will open. Walk through this door and you can ascend to heaven.\"\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Fatty looked at the stele and said, \"There's no damn door.\"\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>I said to him, \"This is kind of like a Zen saying. Everyone interprets it differently. Its original meaning isn't that there's a real door inside the stele, but rather that the content on the stele might hide something.\" Fatty said to me, \"Damn it, is there any 'content' on this stele? I can't see a single word!\"\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>I looked up and saw that the front of the stele was bare, polished to an extraordinary shine, almost like jade, but there wasn't a single word on it. I was puzzled too, and said, \"It says here that only the fated will open it. You have no fate with the heavenly palace, so of course there's nothing.\"\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Fatty spat, sighed, and bent down to feel around in the water, muttering as he did, \"No fate with the heavenly palace, that's fine. As long as I have fate with the burial goods, that's enough.\"\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>I turned to look at Poker-face. His expression was terrible. I asked him a few questions but he ignored me, just staring intently at the stele as if searching for something. I found it strange—it was just a blank slab. I wondered what he was so focused on. Just then, Fatty clapped his hands. I turned and saw him fish a diving mask out of the water. He said, \"Looks like quite a few people have been here.\"\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>I walked over and said to him, \"When my Third Uncle left, he didn't have any diving equipment. These might be his. See if there's an oxygen tank.\"\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>As soon as I said that, Fatty fished out a crushed oxygen tank from the water. He tried to use it but it seemed no good, so he tossed it back into the water and said, \"This place is full of junk. And here I ran all the way down here, all for nothing. I think we should get up quickly. Who knows when the water will rise again? Then we won't even have time to fly away.\"\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>I checked the water level and thought Fatty was right, so I went back to look for Poker-face. When I looked, he was no longer there. I called out a few times, but no one answered. My heart suddenly skipped a beat.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>That guy was like a ghost, often appearing and disappearing suddenly. I hoped he wouldn't vanish again this time.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Thinking of this, I quickly called Fatty to search around. Although the fog was thick, the area wasn't large. We made two rounds and finally found him sitting in a corner of the pool wall, staring blankly ahead. The moment I saw his eyes, I knew something was wrong. His eyes no longer had the usual calmness they often held; instead, they showed a despair ashen and almost dead, making him look like a corpse.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>I quickly asked what was wrong. He looked up at me and said in a voice so low it was almost inaudible, \"What happened twenty years ago... I remember now—\"\u003C\u002Fp>",1083,"2026-05-28T17:13:44.893Z","2026-06-01T04:28:20.357Z",1,"deepseek-v4-flash","1bb6f79db199a8e862afe6bd07e79dd8d519a7434583443d011d9351aab3db57","the-grave-robbers-chronicles-chapter-56","the-grave-robbers-chronicles-chapter-54",513,"https:\u002F\u002Fnovelzhen.com\u002Fimages\u002Fcovers\u002Fthe-grave-robbers-chronicles-cover.jpg"]