At this moment, beneath Zhongnan Mountain, officials from the Three Departments and Six Ministries and Nine Courts and Five Directorates, imperial guards on patrol duty, craftsmen carving bricks and stone, monks and Taoist priests chanting for the deceased’s salvation, plus palace eunuchs and maids—twenty to thirty thousand people had gathered here. None knew that beneath their feet lay a long tunnel leading stealthily to the princess’s underworld residence.
Above were garrison soldiers; below were the tomb chamber gates. Three stone gates were secured with steel bars, their capstones sealed with tin solder—impregnable. Yet Wei Xun took an alternative route, first infiltrating the craftsmen to scout the tomb chamber’s shape and exact location, then far from prying eyes, digging a tunnel that angled from below to penetrate the tomb chamber from beneath. Not to mention his incredible excavation speed—this precision calculation alone was a divine skill beyond ordinary tomb robbers’ reach.
Purchased as a child by Old Chen, Wei Xun was forced to learn his trade, surpassing his master by age fifteen. But Wei Xun himself cared nothing for wealth and had terrible luck, often returning empty-handed. Though everyone expected to prosper through him, he proved so lackadaisical that after Old Chen’s death, the senior brothers scattered like monkeys when their tree fell, each forming their own groups.
Working in the dark tunnel, Wei Xun calculated the distance was about right. Moments later, his iron chisel struck with a clear ring of gold and jade—cold to the touch. These were “golden bricks” specially fired by imperial kilns for the royal family.
Golden bricks weren’t truly gold, but made from a special clay filtered through fine mesh and fired to create a fine, hard texture used exclusively in imperial construction. Not only were they expensive, but their formula was strictly secret. The tomb bricks were laid in nine interlocking layers. The craftsmen dared not slack off—the bricks fit so tightly together that not even paper could be inserted between them. But without mortar, this couldn’t stop him.
Wei Xun drew a dagger from his robes, felt along the seams and inserted the blade. Like cutting tofu, he scored around all four sides and removed the brick. With the first one gone, the rest became simple. A gap gradually appeared in one corner of the level tomb chamber.
The tomb chamber was bone-chillingly dark. Though there wasn’t a breath of wind, cold air seeped into his bones—compared to the blazing summer heat above, it seemed another world entirely. The tomb gates had been sealed less than two days ago, so the air was still relatively fresh, though a faint fishy smell lingered. Wei Xun braced against the wall and leaned inside, feeling sticky moisture under his touch. He realized the funeral had been so rushed that they’d sealed the tomb gates before the murals were even dry.
He wasn’t hasty to light his fire starter, instead listening quietly in the darkness. In such lightless places, if there were dangerous mechanisms, bodily instinct served better than eyes. Wei Xun felt around the tunnel behind him for small stones and threw them in various directions.
A strong wind rushed at him from the darkness. Wei Xun dodged slightly as a crossbow bolt shot into the brick wall, producing a hollow echo. From the sound’s reverberation, Wei Xun already understood the tomb chamber’s structure and his current position.
Though the princess’s tomb was luxurious, the hasty burial meant large-scale complex mechanisms like sand seas and fire dragons hadn’t had time to be prepared. Only six crossbow installations were placed above and below the tomb passage. After Wei Xun disabled the bowstrings, there were no other surprises. If there had been corpse gas or mercury poison fog, there wouldn’t have been enough time for them to ferment and release. Besides the fishy smell around his nose that concerned him somewhat, nothing else seemed amiss.
Wei Xun pulled out his fire starter and lit a candle. The magnificent tomb chamber began revealing a corner of its veil in the small flame’s light.
For a princess’s status, this tomb indeed exceeded regulations far too much, already approaching the specifications of an imperial “mausoleum.” Above was a skylight, with side niches, and tomb passage walls lined with groups of mural maidens—some holding fans, others carrying vessels, serving their noble mistress as in life. In the haste, many maidens’ robes hadn’t been filled in with color. The princess’s mountain-high, sea-filling burial goods were scattered carelessly in every corner.
Wei Xun held his candle, slowly examining these vast riches unimaginable to common folk. Box after box of silk and satin, golden basins and jade bowls, cosmetics and rouge—they weren’t properly categorized and arranged, but piled together with horse tack, pottery figurines, incense vessels, and various foods.
The more Wei Xun looked, the stranger it seemed. The placement of burial objects followed strict ritual protocols. Unless tomb robbers had conducted a large-scale ransacking, it would never be this chaotic. Moving deeper into the tomb passage, even the murals were left unfinished, with silk and satin hangings as decoration instead. The princess’s posthumous arrangements were both luxuriously grand beyond normal standards and surprisingly hasty and crude.
Crystal lamps with crystal cakes, golden plates with gleaming milk curd—serving the dead as one serves the living. These objects meant for the living and delicacies meant to be eaten, displayed in a cold tomb, created an eerie sense of contrast.
Ivory and rhinoceros horn, coral and mica, pearl curtains and jade tables—walking past treasures of every priceless variety, Wei Xun felt no stirring of desire. These weren’t what he sought. Before a four-footed incense burner carved from a single piece of beautiful jade, he paused for examination, discovered it contained only incense, and immediately put it from his mind.
The fishy smell grew stronger.
In the weak candlelight, a life-sized maid figurine came into view. She wore a green gauze skirt, kneeling on the ground, bowing toward the tomb’s depths where the tomb’s master lay, her posture lifelike.
No… this wasn’t a figurine.
Wei Xun’s thin-soled quick boots stepped into a pool of blood. It was a corpse beheaded by a sharp blade, the head with its fallen-horse chignon still connected to the neck by a strip of flesh, the blood having turned cold and viscous. The female corpse wore palace maid clothing, hands and feet bound into a kneeling position, her body rigid but still maintaining her dying posture.
Wei Xun was deeply shocked. Since the First Emperor, human sacrifice had long vanished. Han and Tang burials used figurines as companions—even imperial tombs almost never involved killing people for this purpose. His doubts multiplied: what was so special about Princess Wangshou’s death?
When he reached the largest central burial chamber, the night’s most cruel and bloody scene appeared: dozens of executed maids and eunuchs were all bound hand and foot, prostrated on the ground, kowtowing toward the princess’s coffin on the stone platform. The chamber was splattered with blood, shocking to behold.
Wei Xun examined the corpses one by one, seeing that not only had they died miserably, but they had also suffered various tortures while alive—tendons severed, bones broken, flesh torn to pieces, too horrible to look upon.
Was it because the princess died suddenly of illness, causing the Emperor to vent his anger on the negligent slaves and servants around her?
Wei Xun frowned deeply, both disgusted and furious, wishing he could burn it all down. But he was naturally cautious and didn’t act hastily. Holding his candle, he examined carefully, circling the burial chamber twice, and discovered that the slaves’ corpses weren’t placed randomly, but deliberately arranged according to some formation based on the celestial stems and earthly branches.
No time to categorize burial objects, yet time to arrange corpses?
Looking again at the massive stone coffin in the center, inside must be the tomb’s master, Princess Wangshou. This coffin was probably prepared for some prince, its exterior carved into a gorgeous palace with flying eaves and brackets, with halberd-bearing guards standing at the four corners.
Wei Xun reached out to touch it and discovered the coffin lid’s seams weren’t filled with beeswax as was customary. Such oversights in details were countless throughout the princess’s tomb.
Since he had already come this far, how could he not open the coffin to search for treasure? Looking at the surrounding slave corpses, Wei Xun felt a vague desire for revenge.
He inserted the flat end of his steel chisel into the coffin lid’s seam and pushed with force that moved a thousand pounds with four ounces, causing the coffin lid to slide diagonally, creating a gap. After several such efforts, the heavy palace roof crashed thunderously to the ground, shattering into several stone slabs.
What met his eyes was a precious golden nanmu inner coffin. Covering the coffin was an apricot-yellow sutra banner two feet wide and seven or eight feet long. Wei Xun had seen high officials and nobles cover their coffins with silk paintings, usually depicting auspicious scenes of the tomb master ascending to immortality and attaining the Way. But this silk was covered with incantations—at a glance, those he could recognize were all soul-suppressing, evil-dispelling suppression symbols.
Could this princess have become a zombie or malevolent ghost after death?