by Sean Ding
“So they were tomb raiders? Damn it!” Nelson howled, turning his fiery eyes towards Wong and let out a pent-up breath that he’d not been aware of holding. “Damn it,” He repeated, “So who is this guy? A tomb raider moonlighting as a bloody tour operator?”
“I can hardly breathe now,” Paul lamented, “We must find a way to get out.”
“You bet,” Howard replied, waving the crinkly map in his hand, “this tells us where we are now but unfortunately, I believe we are trapped.”
“Let me have a look.” Johnny scrutinized the map for about a minute and said despairingly, “Umph...This is where we are and ...that is the excavation chamber. You are right Howard, seems no other way out. Shall we ...” Before Johnny could finish his sentence, a series of loud explosions rocked the underground facility.
The solid ground where the group was standing suddenly felt soft and it reverberated with the thundering sounds that rumbled through the narrow passageway, like tsunami waves radiating from an epicenter somewhere in the excavation chamber.
The tourists cried out in fear and darted in all directions to seek cover as fragments of rocks and heavy coats of dust and debris came raining down the roof.
A heap of mangled pipes crashed a few feet away from young Pauline Chan who was staring blankly at the chaos around her. She was so traumatized by the turmoil that she could hardly move. A blanket of debris toppled toward Pauline and in the split of a second, Howard dived forward and swiftly pulled her into safety underneath an iron structure that had provided momentary shelter amidst the fallen wreckages.
CHAPTER 11
“Watch out!” Sarah Tan shrieked at the top of her voice as she shoved Madam Kim aside before a cluster of rocks fell onto her.
Madam Kim fell flat on her belly, cursing in Korean when she tumbled. Judging by the distance between Madam Kim and the fallen rocks, a mere two feet was all that separated Madam Kim between life and death.
The fearful rumbling from above halted for few seconds before another explosion shook the dusty air.
Debris rained and a bundle of electrical cables and pipes from the ceiling fell onto Gupta and he screamed in pain, “Arrrgh! My leg!”
“Pete! Hide under that table!” Mr. John Chan cried, pointing to a huge workshop table that was standing a few feet away from his son, Pete. Pete nodded at his father but stood motionless.
A gargantuan piece of sand rock about the size of a truck tire landed just beside Pete, producing a deafening thud which made John Chan’s heart sink at that very instance. Luckily, the fallen rock had missed Pete by inches. If the sequence of events that followed were captured on film, it would be a hilarious scene. What happened was that Pete literally jumped when the rock crashed beside him. Instinctively, he lugged his shaken body forward and forced himself under the workshop table, like a rat disappearing into its hideout in the blink of an eye.
“Pete, are you okay?” John Chan shouted with all his might as the thick dust in the air slowly dispersed.
“I am alright dad, I am here.” Pete stuck his head out from underneath the table and waved gaily at his father.
“No, keep your head in!” John Chan cried, “Stay there.”
There was a moment of silence. The rumbling seemed to have stop but nobody was crazy enough to move out of their temporary shelters which were made up of fallen structures, conduits and water pipes. After the dust in the air cleared, people realized that the entire lift landing was literally in a mess. Sudden outbursts of moans and sobs resonate in the constricted passageway which was littered with tons of mangled objects and scores of fallen rocks.
It was another few minutes before somebody took the initiative to comb the passageway to check on each other. Ironically, it was a lucky moment on an unlucky day for the tourists as most of them went unhurt and suffered only minor abrasions and bruises.
The most severe injury among the group was that of Gupta who was pinned under a bunch of fallen electrical cables. With the help of Mr. Chan and Paul, Howard and Wong gently removed the fallen cables weighing upon Gupta and they were surprised that his injury was not as bad as they thought.
Sarah came forward with Kevin by her side and she knelt beside Gupta, who was moaning like a baby. Working with the speed and confidence of a seasoned practitioner, Dr. Sarah Tan surveyed Gupta’s leg wounds and tried lifting up his leg gently. Gupta responded with a crude scream. A small crowd started to gather around them.
“Guess you had a minor fracture,” Sarah said to Gupta and she looked around her, “Is everyone else ok?”
Nobody said anything and Sarah made the assumption that they were all fine.
“What the hell was that really? Are we safe now?” Mr. John Chan asked, looking specifically at Wong.
“It’s an earth quake, it happens all the time…but never so strongly.” Wong said with a deep tone, his face gleaming with guilt.
All of a sudden, a gust of icy-cold wind blew ferociously into the confined passageway, catching everyone by surprise. Kevin Tan’s long hair swayed slightly, like overgrown grass pulsating in a gentle breeze before an incoming storm.
“Can you feel that?” Kevin Tan asked.
“Yes, fresh air!” Sarah Tan said optimistically to her fiancé.
Paul took a few steps forward and lifted his head up. He seemed to be glaring in the direction of the wooden door leading to the underground chamber, which was obviously not within his sight. He paused for a moment to savor the fresh breath of air before saying jubilantly, “Yeah, it’s really coming from the chamber!”
“Hooray! We can breathe properly now.”Mr. Park exclaimed in delight as he squeezed the hands of Madam Kim. The gust of fresh air had not only revitalized the oxygen level in the otherwise asphyxiating environment but brought hope back to the group of breathless tourists.
Howard, Wong and a few of the grown-ups surveyed the elevator landing and they took a closer look at the level of damage the consecutive earthquakes had caused to the surroundings. Unanimously, they agreed that it made perfect sense for the group to leave the wrecked passageway immediately and seek a safer site.
“Okay, everyone, time to get out of this dump,” Howard said, his sharp eyes still scanning the surrounding. He then turned toward Paul and his gang, “Paul, do you think you guys can help Gupta?”
“No problem man,” Paul grinned, “We are trained by the Singapore Armed Forces to evacuate the casualty.”
“That’s great,” Howard replied with a smile. He looked at Sarah who had just secured a splint made up of three foot-long wooden planks around Gupta’s injured leg. Without saying a word, Dr. Sarah nodded back at Howard before she reassured Gupta.
“Gupta, we have to go now. This will keep your leg still for the time being. Paul and Johnny will walk with you.” She then opened up her purse, took some pills from within and placed them into Gupta’s palm. “Here, take some painkillers, you will feel better.”
Gupta gulped down the painkiller pills and managed to stand up on one foot with the help of Paul and Johnny. “Thanks, thank you so much guys.” Gupta said with intense gratitude.
Howard, Wong and Nelson picked up the duffel bags and stuff on the ground. Howard check the lift landing for the last time to make sure that nothing that was crucial for their survival was left behind. He took a quick glance at Lang’s lifeless body and said firmly to the group, “Everyone, follow me closely.”
The tourists marched closely behind Howard who led the way through the passageway and out of the wooden door at the far end. Along the way, Nelson and Wong helped push aside fallen wreckage and debris to clear the path as they moved forward. Luckily, there were no big obstacles standing in the way. Paul and Johnny were walking with Gupta, arms around him and helping him take his first step forward followed by the next. The three of them were the last few in the line, moving slowly but judiciously toward the underground chamber.
The bitterly cold air continued to blow in from the underground chamber. Like a spell being casted,
it had succeeded in drawing the tourists closer and closer to their destinies on that stormy and frigid night.
CHAPTER 12
The famous Eastern Wing of the Han Dynasty General’s Tomb was officially opened to the public in 1968, twelve years after a Chinese peasant accidentally discovered an underground river beneath a remote village near Jin An town in Sichuan province. The underground river stretched hundreds of miles north of the village and in 1958, it carried a team of archeologists to a buried gate door which turned out to be the main entrance to the East Wing Chamber in the General’s Tomb. Both the underground river and the eminent gate door were not recorded in any of the historical books and were completely unknown to the world until then.
The level of public interest and media coverage surrounding the discovery of the West Wing Chamber in 1974 was very much lower as compared to the discovery of the Eastern Wing in 1958. That was mainly due to the fact that the Chinese government had learnt their earlier lessons and had decided not to over publicize the discovery. The purpose of doing that was not just to protect the precious artifacts that could be uncovered, thereby allowing the government scientists to work on the findings with reduced interference but also to prevent localized tomb thieveries.
In fact, the news on the discovery was barely noticed by anyone. Some scholars later commented that the government need not go through such meticulous efforts to block out news of the discovery as the number of artifacts unearthed in the Western Wing was incomparable to that in the East Wing. Historians and archeologists were deeply puzzled over the tiny amount of treasures and artifacts that were excavated and because of that, many believed that the West Wing Chamber was nothing but an empty enclosure since the Han Dynasty. In Dec 1976, the Chinese government announced that they had completed their excavation and research of the West Wing Chamber and had abandoned the site due to safety considerations.
It might be bad timing or poor Feng Shui whatever the Chinese people called it but a very tangible reason why nobody had paid attention on the news related to the discovery of the Han General’s Tomb West Wing Chamber was because during the same week when that discovery was made, a group of farmers in north western China accidentally uncovered the location of Emperor Qin Shih Huang’s Mausoleum. The herculean archeological discovery of the tomb of China’s first emperor and his terracotta warriors had practically overshadowed all other discoveries combined together in China during the same period.
Many superstitious people at that time believed that the excavation of terracotta warriors, who were meant to protect Emperor Qin’s subterranean palace would bring upon misfortunes to the intruders of the tomb - the scientists and the archeologists. Some of these people had believed that the misdoings of the government archeologists in Emperor Qin’s tomb had angered the earthly divine deity and subsequently brought about bad luck to the archeologists.
The punishment was a string of misfortunes including numerous work site accidents and the disappointing quantity of artifacts ultimately excavated in the General Tomb’s West Wing. A few tabloid journalists at that time were jailed for their attempts to release news reports about the work site accidents and deaths in the mysterious West Wing Chamber that eventually forced the authority to close off the excavation site.
Howard, Sarah and the group of traumatized tourists were back in the so-called West Wing Chamber which was roughly four hundred yards underground. There were fallen debris and metal pieces all over the place but strangely, only two stone statues were destroyed by the earlier earthquakes. The statue of a Phoenix and that of a Monkey God had toppled over and broken into several pieces among piles of wreckage.
The tourists were standing right in front of the defunct vending machine but they were definitely not in the mood of getting themselves any thirst-quenching beverages, something else had caught their full attention.
Wong was shining his flashlight at a large and uneven crack punctured on a stony wall adjacent to the vending machine. Everyone was looking at the large opening in the wall and feeling the blast of cold wind that was spurting out of it. The gargantuan crack was definitely not there before the occurrence of the earth quakes, otherwise someone in the group would have noticed it before the black out. The unusual fissure in the wall measured about three feet wide and four feet high from the ground. Nobody could tell how deep the fissure was but a long crack line that extended from the tip of the fissure all the way to the roof of the chamber did create a spectacular sight.
“Look, the air that had saved us all is coming from within!” Wong said in great excitement, his forefinger trembled slightly while pointing into an abyss of unknown depth beyond the cleft.
“The earlier earthquakes must have caused this,” Howard said, “if fresh air is coming out from here, I suspect there could be an exit on the other side.”
Voices of cheers and excitement broke out among the tourists and the hope of finally getting out of the cold and inhabitable place rekindled in their minds like fire on oil.
When the uplifting outburst of cheers abated, the excited group noticed that Kenso-san was peering hard into the crack. Kenso turned around and said, “Hey guys, I think I just saw a flicker of light. It’s gone now. What could that possibly be?”
“There is only one way to find out. You guys wait here.” Howard said bluntly as he pushed himself into the fissure with great dexterity. Before he submerged into the abyss of darkness, he swirled around and gave a cheeky smile to the group, “I’ll be back.”
Howard was only gone for a couple of minutes before a muscular right hand suddenly stuck out of the hole, scaring some of the tourists who had been peering into the blackness.
“It’s ok, it’s me,” Howard said reassuringly as he emerged from the fissure, “Come quickly. You guys would not believe this.”
One by one the tourists squeezed themselves into the gorgeous fissure which had miraculously appeared on that rocky wall before them, under the most bizarre circumstances one could possibly anticipate.
CHAPTER 13
Pete Chan followed his mother closely as he strode the uneven ground inside the fissure, trying to avoid several protruding rocks and potholes. The tunnel where he was squeezing himself thru was larger at the opening and became smaller and smaller as he trotted further, like a never-ending funnel that will magically reduce the size of the person walking through it. For Pete, the constricted tunnel at the other end still appeared to be capacious due to his petite built. In fact, Pete was the smallest person in the group and the only one who can still jump in the tunnel and not hit his head on the roof.
After walking for about two minutes in darkness, Pete could see lights shimmering ahead and he could feel his mother squeezing and pulling his little hand.
“Pete, we are almost there.” Mrs. Chan said elatedly as she moved forward at a faster pace, unconsciously hauling Pete along as well. By the time Pete and his mother stepped out of the dark and windy tunnel, it should be early morning by their watches but the brightness that almost blinded their eyes were not from the sun. It was disappointing but they could not possibly see any sunlight at all as they were still hundreds of feet underground.
The glistening glow and incandescent spectrum of yellow, red and violet lights actually came from the peculiar rock formations that lined the enormous crystal cave that they had walked into. In an almost harmonized setting, the glaring brasses of violet, red and yellow beams intertwined to produce a magnificent symphony of multicolored lights overlapping and crisscrossing one another in the cave, bouncing off reflective surfaces of the rocks and illuminating the weird looking plants and trees that flourished in the subterranean cavern.
Another strong beam of colorful lights descended from the roof of the cave and was reflected by the glassy igneous rocks that encrusted the entire cave floor. Like a rainbow that came to life but was trapped in a thick piece of glass, trying madly to hit all walls so as to escape from it, the glaring beam of multicolored lights penetrated the sparkling waters in the numer
ous ponds and subterranean streams that garnished the landscape, glided over the violet and green stalagmites that protruded from the ponds and finally arrived at the eyes of the bewildered tourists.
Mrs. Chan and Pete joined the group of wide-eyed tourists who were standing on a small clearing of strange looking vegetation; everyone was amazed by the wonderful imagery that had unraveled before them.
Another astounding feature of the beautiful cave was the luminous glow emitting from scores of stalactites and stalagmites that hung from the roof and bulged from the cave floor, like the fingers of two lovers trying to reach out to each other, some of them were coming from the top and some rising from below. A spectrum of green, yellow and violet lights brightened up the cave naturally, creating a spectacular imagery similar to that of a sea of glimmering fluorescence tubes wavering rhythmically in a rock band concert.
“This is beautiful.” Mami said in absolute awe, her hands tightly clutched with those of her boyfriend Kenso who was standing right next to her. The strange looking flowers that bloomed and glowed sparingly on the rows of petite trees reminded them of the beautiful cherry blossoms festivals that they had embraced in Japan.
“I can’t believe my eyes.” Mrs. Chan said in disbelief, her eyes wandered from the colorful rocks sticking out from the ponds to the purplish shrubbery and flowers that carpeted one-third of the cave floor.
Pauline Chan hurried over to her mother’s side and grasped her mother’s hand, “Mum, look at those plants, they are glowing!”
“Yes my love, beautiful isn’t it?” Mrs. Chan replied, holding both her children’s hands so tightly that under normal circumstances, Pauline and Pete would be sure to squeal but with such breath-taking imagery to savor, they hardly moved an inch.