by Xu, Lei
Both of them strolled back and forth as they analyzed the situation. They pulled the corpse’s arms and legs occasionally, but it showed no signs of ill temper, nor did it seem dangerous. My heart resumed its normal pulse rate as I asked, “What would happen to the corpse inside if the armor were removed from the body?”
“Well, that I don’t really know,” Fats answered. “At the worst he’ll completely vanish into thin air.”
I said, “He was doing fine before we came along. If we do that, aren’t we committing murder?”
Fats almost fell down from laughter. “Young comrade, if every grave robber had your ideals and fine conscience, then we would never achieve anything. How few of these ancient nobles did not have bloodstained hands? Even if he were taken out alive and intact, he still ought to be executed for all the evil he did in his life. To worry the way you are is to ask for trouble.”
He was right. It was wrong for me to stand idle, thinking and worrying while the others were so busy working. I went over to check what was in the coffin and found on the bottom a thick layer of something that looked like scales. I picked up a handful and asked, “What’s this?”
Uncle Three sniffed it and replied, “That’s the skin that came off his body.”
Feeling my stomach somersault, I dropped the scales immediately, cursing. “Holy shit. Did this guy have a disease that caused so much of his skin to fall off?”
“Don’t talk rubbish,” my uncle snapped at me. “This is the old skin that fell from his body as he rejuvenated. Every time a layer fell off, he became younger. He probably lost five or six layers, judging by this amount of skin.”
I looked again. It looked absolutely disgusting, like snake skin, not human flesh. Just before I puked, Fats yelled, “There’s something over here!”
We rushed to look but all we could see was a tiny bit of thread hanging under the armpit of the burial figure. “Fats, your vision is too sharp for its own good. Not even a piece of fucking lint can escape your exacting attention,” I sneered.
Fats stared at me and whispered, “You southern comrades are savages who always destroy burial sites as you plunder them. Grave robbing is a meticulous art— don’t you know this yet? If you didn’t have me along, you guys would already have obliterated the corpse in order to remove this armor.”
Uncle Three, feeling as though he was losing face, said, “Fuck you. We don’t even know if you’re telling the truth. My nephew may be right—this may just be a piece of useless lint.”
Fats laughed. “And you still don’t believe me.” As he began to pull on the thread, we heard a sharp noise. Something flashed before my eyes like a flare of lightning.
Uncle Three’s reaction was almost that fast. He dropped Fats with a kick on the butt as a knife whizzed into a tree trunk with a velocity that buried it deep in the wood. If not for Uncle Three’s kick, that knife would have pierced right through Fats’s skull.
We jumped back and saw Poker-face standing near the steps of the platform. His body was soaked with blood and his clothing was torn almost to ribbons. Plainly visible was a tattoo that his clothes had previously concealed—an image of a green unicorn, the legendary qilin, so large that it looked as though it covered the entire back of his body. His left hand was still poised in a knife-throwing position and the other held a strange object. When we looked closely, we all gasped—it was the severed head of a blood zombie.
He barely glanced at us as he limped up the stairs onto the platform, breathing heavily. Judging by his deep gashes and bruises, he had been in a hard-fought battle. He took a look at the coffin, and said very quietly, “Get out of the way.”
The veins on Fats’s forehead were about to explode and I really couldn’t blame him for being enraged. He jumped up and screamed, “What the fuck did you just do that for?”
Poker-face turned his head and stared at him coldly, “To kill you.”
Fats rolled up his sleeves and stormed over toward Poker-face but Big Kui stopped him. Uncle Three could tell this situation could scuttle our expedition and tried to smooth things over. “Don’t panic. Menyouping certainly must have a reason for what he just did. Let’s hear him out—and don’t forget—he’s already has saved your life once or twice on this journey, right? Calm down.”
Fats stopped struggling for a few seconds and then agreed with my uncle. He freed himself from Big Kui’s grasp and angrily plopped down on the ground, muttering, “You fuckers are sticking together and I can hardly fight all of you by myself. I give up—whatever you say.”
Poker-face put his bloody trophy on the jade bed. He coughed and said, “This blood zombie is the true owner of the jade burial armor. The Ruler of Dead Soldiers stole it and the original owner turned into this monster as a result. When someone puts on this armor he will shed his skin once every five hundred years. He can safely remove it only during the time his skin is peeling; otherwise he instantly will turn into a blood zombie the minute he takes off the jade armor. The corpse that you see in the coffin before you has already lived three thousand years. If you had pulled that thread a moment ago, he would have awakened and then we would all be corpses in this place.”
He coughed a few more times after he finished and blood came out of the corner of his mouth. He was badly hurt from some internal injury, that was plain to see.
Panzi, who was still in a lot of pain, stood in a corner without saying a word, but suddenly he burst out, “Listen, I’m a straightforward bastard, so please don’t be pissed off at what I have to say to you. You know way too much—more than any of the rest of us. If you don’t mind, please explain how this is possible; there’s no harm in that. I don’t know what kind of god on earth you may be but I know you saved my life. If I get out of here in one piece, I will certainly come to wherever you live and thank you in a way that you deserve.”
Panzi’s words were quite articulate and respectful; I figured Poker-face would be unable to resist them. But he kept silent as if he had heard nothing. He walked to the Ruler’s corpse and looked him up and down. Suddenly his eyes gleamed with hatred and before anyone realized what he was doing, his hand was already on the corpse’s neck in a stranglehold.
A shriek came from the corpse’s throat, and his body began to shake violently. Coldly Poker-face looked the dead man in the eye, saying, “You’ve lived long enough. Now die—hell has been waiting for you to arrive.”
As he applied more pressure, the veins protruded on his arms, and soon a bone-cracking noise echoed all around us. The corpse moaned; his legs shivered and kicked one last time, and then his skin turned completely black.
Stunned and speechless, we all stared at Poker-face as he tossed the corpse aside as if it was just worthless garbage. I grabbed his arm, shouting, “Who the hell are you and why do you hate this corpse?”
He looked at me for a few seconds before saying, “What the fuck is it to you?”
“What have you done? We fought our way down to this grave with every scrap of strength we have,” Fats yelled. “It was tough enough just to get this damn coffin open. Then you waltz in without saying a fucking word and strangle this living zombie to death. You at least owe us a goddamn explanation!”
Poker-face turned his head and looked at the bloody skull that he had placed on the jade bed. Somber and despondent, he pointed to a small purple jade box that was in the painted wood coffin and said, “You’ll find everything you want to know inside that box.”
Chapter Twenty-Six
SECRET OF THE PURPLE JADE BOX
Purple jade is the same stone as serpentine. It is generally used to make an amulet or an object to exorcise evil spirits—not to craft a little box. It was especially unusual that the box seemed to have been carved from a single block of serpentine and then trimmed with gold.
Since it had been placed where the corpse’s head had been, it seemed to have been used as its pillow. Pillows made of ordinary jade are immensely rare; one made from serpentine was even more valuable—it was priceless.
It was quite probable that not even emperors at that time had been honored in this fashion.
We placed the box on the ground with extreme caution. There was no lock and we opened it carefully. Within it was a scroll of yellow silk brocade with gold trimming. The gold was woven into the fabric and was beautifully preserved. Unfolding the scroll, we saw written on the top left corner: The Book of the Ruler of Dead Soldiers.
Fats was completely uninterested in the scroll since he couldn’t understand the writing on it. He muttered to himself and went over to examine the jade armor. Poker-face pulled out the knife he had hurled into the tree and lay down on one side of the jade bed. He silently stared at the corpse he had strangled, and his eyes became blurred.
Uncle Three and I sat beside him and carefully pored over the text on the silk scroll. I could only read fragments of paragraphs but when I linked the fragments together, I could figure out the gist of the text.
The records detailed in this Book of the Ruler of Dead Soldiers were simply outrageous and unthinkable. If I had not experienced so many strange occurrences already, I would never have believed such things could happen in this world.
On the edge of the scroll was a small paragraph of text that the Ruler had written himself. It was only a few lines, recounting all the important events that happened from his birth to his death. To translate all of this would take me at least half a month or more, but I could immediately understand the two most important things it said.
First came a concise account of how the Ruler obtained the devil’s imperial seal, which I deciphered and then read aloud to my companions.
He had inherited his father’s official status when he was twenty-five years old. He worked on the tomb excavation team for the State of Lu and paid his soldiers with the gold he found in the tombs.
One day he entered a tomb where he found a serpent lying beside the coffin.
The Ruler was very brave. He reasoned that there must be some evildoer inside the reptile so he chopped it in half with his sword. He issued an order for the snake to be disemboweled, and within its body was found a box made out of purple-enameled gold.
As I read this, my heart pounded. Could the box in my bag be the same one that was discovered inside the serpent? I paused but my uncle looked at me impatiently and said, “Don’t stop. Go on!” I put my thoughts aside for the time being and continued to read aloud.
The Ruler didn’t think the box was important, only an object the serpent had found and swallowed. But later when he slept, he dreamed of a white-bearded old man who asked, “Why did you kill me?”
The Ruler of Dead Soldiers was a violent man. He killed often and then forgot about it. He had no idea who this old man was, and answered, “ I kill whenever I choose and whomever I choose.”
The old man suddenly turned into a serpent and started to attack him, but the Ruler was as fierce in his dreams as he was in the battlefield. Taking his sword, he stabbed the serpent, kicked it several times, and was preparing to behead it, but the serpent begged for mercy, pointing out that, since its flesh had already been destroyed, it would never be able to achieve resurrection if its spirit was also killed.
Bargaining with the Ruler, it promised that if he would let it go, two treasures would be given to him, and a government ministry as well. Although he was answerable only to the emperor, as a soldier and grave robber his status was low, so the Ruler of Dead Soldiers agreed to spare the life of the snake’s spirit.
The serpent told him how to open the purple-enameled gold box that had been found in its belly and how to use the treasures that were kept inside. After the Ruler had finished listening to the snake and knew all of its secrets, he picked up his sword and cut off its head.
Fats ran over to me when he heard me read this and asked, “One of the treasures must be the devil’s imperial seal. What was the other one? There was no record in the ancient books. Could it be this jade burial armor?”
I gestured for him to shut up and went on with my reading.
After the Ruler of Dead Soldiers woke up the next morning, he did as the snake had told him in his dream and opened the box easily. But nothing I read told us what treasures he found within it, only that after he had used them once “quite smoothly,” he felt that this must be kept an airtight secret. So he killed all the members of his entourage and everyone in their families—even a baby who was less than a month old.
As I read this, I felt sick—how could anyone be so vicious and merciless?
Fats asked, “How could one man kill so many people? He must have used what was in the box to be able to accomplish that sort of feat. Shit, I’m going to die if you don’t read faster and find out what the two treasures were.”
“What the hell are you chattering about like an old woman?” I yelled at him. “Just go play with your burial armor and stop bothering me.”
He grinned. “Calm down, it’s okay, I have to interrupt. I’m so keyed up, my guts are itching—read faster, damn your eyes!”
I ignored him and continued.
Because of his two treasures, the Ruler of Dead Soldiers was invincible for the next few decades in both war and affairs of the state, and his reputation soared. But in his later years, due to frequent contact with dead bodies, he fell ill and his own body grew weak. In the end, the emperor stripped him of his military power when he became old and feeble. He was only responsible for robbing graves and was no longer used in battle, which of course meant that he had been demoted.
As his health declined more and more each day, he began to feel afraid of death. One day, he dreamed of the serpent he had killed several decades before, who now told him that it was his turn to die and that everyone was waiting for him in the world of the dead. When the Ruler looked around, he was horrified to see that waiting for him were all the people he had viciously and mercilessly killed during his lifetime.
When he awoke and recalled the details of the dream, he was terror-stricken and went to ask for advice from his military counselor.
This was a man named Mr. Iron-face, a master of numerology and Feng Shui. He gave the issue some thought, and said that there was a suit of jade armor that when put on, rejuvenated its wearer to be as he was when still a youth and made him immortal as well. However, it had vanished long ago, and to find it one would have to go into the ancient tombs.
These words gave the Ruler a glimmer of hope in the midst of his fear and despair—after all, grave robbing was his specialty and he did this better than anyone else alive. All that night he read every ancient book that he could find, which in that period contained knowledge that is now lost to us. Finally, in one of the books he learned that the jade armor was to be found in a large tomb.
Mobilizing three thousand men, he spent more than half a year excavating a cave in a mountain, where he discovered an immense imperial tomb of the Western Zhou dynasty.
It had been built by burrowing into a mountain and then using the natural caves found inside. The interior tunnels were constructed by the principle of the Eight Diagrams and were extremely complex. The strangest thing inside the cave where the main tomb was located was a gigantic tree, which the Ruler named hydra-cypress. A young male corpse sat under it in a meditative position, wearing a suit of black jade burial armor.
Mr. Iron-face had a look and decided that this was indeed the jade armor they had been looking for. The young male corpse who wore it looked half-alive and half-dead. Every so often, the dead skin on his body peeled away and beneath it was a new layer of skin. Mr. Iron-face believed when this young man died, he was doubtless a withered old man.
Mr. Iron-face was a competent, intelligent man who knew how to prevent blood zombies from becoming powerful, and he used a special method to remove the male corpse from the armor. Then he sealed the corpse inside a stone coffin and placed it in a nearby tomb of secondary importance.
Following the plan constructed for him by Mr. Iron-face, the Ruler of Dead Soldiers swallowed a harmless pill that he told everyone was deadly
poison and pretended to die before the eyes of the emperor. Believing the Ruler could really come and go freely between the human world and the world of the dead and fearing his power, the emperor gave him a funeral much grander than those of any of the other noblemen in the State of Lu.
The Ruler of Dead Soldiers, while excavating the cave, had built a fanlike tomb on top of the Western Zhou imperial tomb. Because he was an expert grave robber, he set many cunning traps to mislead anyone who might come to the cave, including the trap of the Seven Deceptive Coffins, then hid himself in the tomb of the Western Zhou dynasty which he placed inside the thousand-year-old hydra-cypress.
Before he entered his own coffin, he killed every worker who was involved in this project by drowning them in the river. Then he poisoned the rest of his entourage, leaving only a man and a woman who were his two most loyal subordinates to place him inside the coffin. After these two people had completed their tasks, they committed suicide by taking poison.
By the time I finished reading I was convinced that most of the ancient corpses in the carcass cave we had found at the beginning of our journey had probably been killed by the Ruler.
“It doesn’t say what happened to Mr. Iron-face,” I asked my uncle, “Could he have been interred with the dead?”
Uncle Three shook his head and said, “That type of person is very clever. He must have known beforehand that the Ruler would kill everyone to prevent his secrets from being divulged. He would not so blindly let himself be buried with the murdered bodies.”
“Of course not,” Poker-face muttered. “Because the person lying in that jade armor is not the Ruler of Dead Soldiers—it’s Mr. Iron-face.”
Chapter Twenty-Seven
A LIE
Once I heard this, a flash of light crossed through my mind as if I had come up with the solution myself. “So the two were switched at the last minute?” I asked.
Poker-face nodded. He looked at the corpse and said, “This person was incessantly scheming all along. He only wanted to use the influence of the Ruler of Dead Soldiers in order to achieve his own goal of immortality.”