Sun Fatty's face turned slightly sour. He said, "We have to go back? Can't we just wait here until Director Ouyang sends someone to find us?" I kept my head down and said nothing, thinking the same — I had no interest in hanging around a main tomb chamber filled with piles of corpses.
"Then you can just stay here," Hao Wenming said without looking back and walked straight toward the main tomb chamber. Po Jun habitually followed closely behind Director Hao. Before leaving, he even winked at Sun Fatty and me, signaling that we should follow them.
Sun Fatty exchanged a glance with me and asked, "Are we going?"
"What do you think?" As soon as I finished speaking, we both stepped forward, trailing behind Hao Wenming and Po Jun.
Once we confirmed the Soul-Dispelling Incense inside the main tomb chamber had fully evaporated, the four of us stood again beside the fixed-corpse bronze coffin.
Hao Wenming first paced several circles around the coffin, then stopped at the coffin's head. He reached into the leather pouch at his waist and pulled out a talisman paper. Both Sun Fatty and I were taken aback—each of us had such a small leather pouch, but no one had taught us how to use it.
He didn't light it with fire but simply waved it a few times in the air. With a soft "whoosh," the talisman paper ignited by itself. Hao Wenming pushed the half-burned talisman into the gap in the coffin.
After waiting about ten minutes, there was no abnormality with the fixed-corpse bronze coffin. Hao Wenming glanced at me, then turned to Po Jun and Sun Fatty. "It's safe now. You two can continue pushing the coffin lid open."
Maybe because I had inhaled the Soul-Dispelling Incense earlier and was still mentally shaken, Hao Wenming surprisingly spared me from helping. Was this a blessing in disguise?
The coffin lid was pushed wider and wider, and gradually, the corpse inside was revealed. I leaned in to look, unable to believe what I was seeing.
My eyes widened in disbelief. The body, wrapped tightly in linen strips, looked exactly the same as the one I had seen in the hallucination after being affected by the incense.
Sun Fatty frowned at the "big bundle" and said, "Is this really the Hundred-Joint King? Why does it look like a mummy?"
That sentence sounded familiar—I remembered Sun Fatty saying almost the same in the hallucination. Had I been tricked again?
Hao Wenming pointed to the linen strips on the corpse and said, "This is—"
"Shengma," I blurted out.
"Huh?" Hao Wenming was surprised I knew Shengma and asked casually, "How do you know about this?"
I smiled wryly, "If I said the Hundred-Joint King himself sent me a dream, would you believe it?"
"Why not just say the Jade Emperor gave you the dream? You must have seen it in the archive, huh? La Zi, didn't expect you to be so studious," Po Jun teased, pulling out his telescopic baton, ready to peel back the linen strips on Hao's signal.
Po Jun's actions seemed strangely familiar, as if they might trigger something. My mind was foggy, confused whether this was reality or another hallucination from the incense.
At this moment, with Hao Wenming's permission, Po Jun used the baton to peel away the linen strips, revealing the corpse beneath. It was identical to the one I had seen in the vision — clearly the same body.
What happened next? A chill ran down my spine, and I suddenly remembered there was a small climax coming—something about barbecue time.
"Step back, the corpse is catching fire!" I shouted, stepping back seven or eight steps as I spoke.
I spoke too hastily. Sun Fatty didn't hear clearly and asked, "La Zi, slow down. Catching fire? Damn, it really is! Why didn't you say earlier?"
Hmm? The fire started about two minutes earlier than in the hallucination.
I had witnessed the same burning scene twice: first, flames flickering from the corpse's eyes, nose, and mouth; then, after the flames engulfed the whole body, the fire turned colorless — black and white flames.
Sun Fatty, still shaken, said, "What kind of ghost fire is this? No color at all when it burns."
Before Po Jun could speak, I answered with the proper name of this netherworld fire, "It's the Ignorant Karma Fire."
"You even know Ignorant Karma Fire?" Po Jun was shocked. "You must have torn apart the archive." Hao Wenming gave me a glance but remained silent, then took out his phone to snap a few photos of the Ignorant Karma Fire.
Minutes later, the corpse inside the fixed-corpse bronze coffin had been burnt to nothingness.
"La Zi, come here," Hao Wenming finally lost patience and called me over with a grim face. "First it was Shengma, now Ignorant Karma Fire. Don't tell me you saw these in the archive. Even Ouyang Pianzuo, who manages the archive, might not find this info."
I sighed helplessly, looking at Hao's frostbitten face. "Boss Hao, can I ask something first? Does the Soul-Dispelling Incense have any aftereffects? Like being able to see real scenes in hallucinations, or things like this?"
Hao Wenming's eyebrows twitched a few times. "What exactly are you trying to say?"
I hesitated but then described the hallucination, including how the Ignorant Karma Fire burned the corpse in the bronze coffin.
Hao Wenming's eyebrows twitched faster and faster, and his face, serious as water, looked somewhat comical with his furrowed, trembling brows.
But under these circumstances, I couldn't laugh. After I finished, Hao stared at me, as if searching my face for answers, making me very uncomfortable.
After a while, he said, "Continue, what happened next?"
Next? I tried to recall. It seemed related to Sun Fatty, but what exactly? Looking at Sun Fatty, I saw him leaning against the coffin, idly stepping on the Soul-Collecting Nail, half-pressing, half-playing with it.
"Sun, don't lean on the coffin!" I suddenly remembered — Sun Desheng was about to be in big trouble.
I shouted urgently, but Sun Fatty didn't hear clearly. He looked confused and said, "La Zi, what? I didn't hear…"
Just as I was about to say "don't," Sun Fatty slipped off the Soul-Collecting Nail, stumbled sideways, and fell headfirst into the fixed-corpse bronze coffin.
What was destined to happen, happened. Sun Fatty unknowingly triggered a hidden mechanism. With a "crack," the base of the coffin split open, and he fell into the secret chamber beneath the coffin. The way he fell was almost exactly the same as in my hallucination.
Po Jun also stood beside the copper coffin. When Sun Fatty fell into the coffin, it happened so suddenly and dramatically that Po Jun didn't react immediately. By the time he realized what happened, Sun Fatty was already inside the hidden chamber.
"Sun, how are you? Are you okay?" Po Jun shouted into the coffin, his hands resting on the coffin lid.
"Still alive! Looks like I might have crushed someone. Come down and check it out!" Sun Fatty shouted back.
Hmm? This differed from the illusion — the hidden chamber was not what I had seen before. There was a vacant space in the center, surrounded by ten passageways, and someone was lying on the ground. By the time we entered, Sun Fatty had already gotten up from the floor. Beside him lay a person face down. This person was covered in dirt, the original color of their clothes unrecognizable. Slung across their back was a long wrapped bundle. Judging by the style of clothing, this person was definitely a modern individual.
"Seriously, stop standing there, flip the person over and see if they're still alive," Hao Wenming commanded on the spot.
Po Jun flipped the person over with one hand. Without even a close look, I recognized the familiar face, and in panic, shouted out his name directly, "Qiu Bulao? Hao head, come quick! It's Director Qiu!"
"It really is him!" Hao Wenming exclaimed. He hadn't expected Qiu Bulao to appear here. After pinching the area between the man's nose and upper lip a few times, Director Qiu slowly regained consciousness. Looking at Hao Wenming who stood before him, Director Qiu's surprise was no less than Hao's.
"How did you all get down here?" Director Qiu's first words after waking were addressed to Hao Wenming.
Hao Wenming opened his eyes and lied. "It's been almost a whole night, we couldn't get in touch with you. Ouyang Pianzuo was worried something had happened, so he sent the best people from our unit to find you. Seriously, why are you alone? Where are the investigators under your command?"
"Don't mention it, just a string of bad luck..." Director Qiu began to explain to Hao Wenming.
Director Qiu was usually a cold-faced man, but perhaps because he'd been bottling up for so long, he unexpectedly showed a bit of a talkative side this time.
According to Director Qiu, he never really believed this place was the ruins of the Great Yuezhi Kingdom's royal city. The Great Yuezhi Kingdom was correct, but it wasn't a royal city—it should be the mausoleum of a certain king of the Great Yuezhi Kingdom. Especially after entering the deep pit, they encountered the ancient river basin nomadic tribes' unique sorcery — the Nadajie — which further confirmed Director Qiu's suspicions.
Nadajie was a sorcery used by the major nomadic tribes of the time (such as the Xiongnu, Great Yuezhi, Wusun, and others) to guard the king's tomb.
Legend has it that on the day the mausoleum was completed, ninety-nine prisoners of war were buried at the tomb's entrance, with their bodies buried and heads exposed above ground. One foot in front of their heads, food and wine were placed.
These prisoners could only watch the food and drink in front of them but starved to death alive. Their souls were said to be filled with extreme resentment.
To intensify their grudges, the sorcerers would immediately perform rituals to prevent their souls from leaving their bodies after they starved to death. The corpses would be left under the scorching sun for three days (never more than three, or even magical artifacts couldn't contain their enormous grudges, which would threaten the king's spirit within the tomb).
On the third night, the sorcerers would extract their souls and divide them into groups, placing them at important points in the mausoleum to form a protective formation against tomb robbers.
Not long after Qiu Bulao and his team arrived, they were caught in the Nadajie curse. Fortunately, Director Qiu was cautious, and only his investigators suffered minor losses.
Qiu Bulao was quite a character; although initially passive, he quickly turned the situation around by dispelling three Nadajie formations in a row (the terrifying noises heard on the surface earlier were from dispelling Nadajie, known as "Yinpo").
Further ahead, they reached a fork in the path. Director Qiu split his team into two groups.
After entering one fork, Qiu Bulao didn't notice anything unusual at first, but he kept feeling waves of anxiety and his right eyelid twitched uncontrollably. The feeling grew stronger, making him increasingly uneasy. At the end of the path, he found the four missing teams from the archaeological group.
Those twenty-plus people were in a deep coma, with no extra footprints around, and a defensive formation arranged around them. It seemed this formation had saved them.
Director Qiu checked their conditions and found that the cause of the coma was a spell that bound their souls. This spell was harmless; it just sealed their six senses, forcing them into a deep sleep.
What intrigued Director Qiu more was the formation on the ground: a small peachwood sword stuck in the earth, surrounded by seemingly chaotic animal bones. The source of Qiu Bulao's inexplicable anxiety was likely this formation.
The person who set the formation was an expert. It unsettled Qiu Bulao even from hundreds of meters away. If it hadn't been absolutely necessary, Director Qiu would have avoided this path entirely. Even the hungry ghosts from the Nadajie would not dare approach this formation.
With the missing personnel found, the mission was halfway accomplished. Unfortunately, their radios were ineffective—the signals were blocked, and they couldn't communicate with the surface. Qiu Bulao had no choice but to return the same way.
When he reached the end of the original route, even stranger things happened. Originally, after the fork, there was only one road leading back to the surface, but now that road had disappeared—or rather, nine new roads had appeared. Ten roads appeared out of nowhere right in front of Director Qiu.
It was a demonic barrier! Director Qiu felt uneasy. The person who designed the mausoleum's formations had to be a master. The Nadajie ambushes outside were only appetizers; this demonic barrier was just the first course. Damn, even if the demonic barrier was broken, there would surely be more challenges ahead.
The demonic barrier's official name was the Ten Roads Nine Twists Formation (十出九曲阵). Enter by one road, exit by ten. Among these ten roads, only one was the correct path to survival. Whether one could live through it was purely luck. Once the formation activated, even the person who arranged it wouldn't know which path to take. Surviving it was truly a near-death experience.
Director Qiu didn't dare act rashly and cast divinations at each exit. All ten divinations gave the same result—this path is dangerous, there is entry but no exit.
At this point, Director Qiu was genuinely frightened. This was exactly the Ten Roads Nine Twists Formation. There must be one way out—it couldn't be that all ten roads were death traps.
Note:
Considering that most of the characters in the novel are Chinese, it might be a bit difficult to understand their nicknames. I have specially compiled a small table, hoping it will be helpful to all readers.
Leadership Hierarchy NamePositionNotes
Shen LaLaziProtagonist; member of the Bureau of Paranormal Investigation
Sun PangziSun Dasheng, Fatty SunShen La's partner; nickname "Sun Dasheng" references the Monkey King from Journey to the West
Gao LiangFatty Gao, Director GaoDirector of the Bureau of Paranormal Investigation
Hao WenmingHao Tou, Director HaoDirector of Department One
Qiu BulaoDirector QiuDirector of Department Two
Wang ZihengDeputy Director WangDeputy Director of Department Two
Nicolas K HugoHugoDirector of Department Three
Lin FengDirector LinDirector of Department Four
Ouyang PianzuoDirector OuyangDirector of Department Five
Wu RendiDirector WuDirector of Department Six
Glossary of Terms (Specialized Vocabulary)
Bureau of Paranormal InvestigationFull translation: Bureau of Investigation and Research into Civil Paranormal Affairs
Ancestor ShamanA powerful shamanic figure or spiritual progenitor
Heavenly EyeA spiritual or psychic perception technique
Dead Man's PoolA specific location, likely haunted or cursed
NadajieAncient shamanic sorcery used by nomadic tribes to protect royal tombs
Yin BreakSound or phenomenon triggered when breaking a Nadajie formation
Bewitching MazeAn illusion or spiritual trap in tombs
Tenfold Maze of Nine Dead EndsA deadly maze formation where only one of ten paths leads to survival
Spell Formation / Magic FormationSpiritual formation for protection, offense, or control
InvestigatorField agent working for the Bureau