“Do you think I can’t count?” grumbled Kai. “I’ve got it. Enough talking—let’s get moving!”
In my mind, I silently ran through the secret mantra “Dragons from a thousand miles, all around us, five steps toward yang, one toward yin.”
With all our might, the two of us moved the base of the pillar, counting out loud to make sure we got the combination right. As the last side rotated into place, we heard an enormous grinding noise, and the stone slab toppled into nothingness, revealing a tunnel stretching into endless darkness.
I let out a sigh of relief. We’d managed to get the tunnel open without attracting any more unwelcome company. Shining my flashlight into its depths, I saw a staircase carved out of black stone snaking down. My light wasn’t particularly powerful, though, so the illumination didn’t reach all the way to the bottom.
Kai waved to summon back the other five, who’d been waiting by the entrance. They hurried over, full of praise for my feng shui skills.
I humbly thanked them, then said we should get moving. It was already past noon. I told them we should drink some water and have a quick meal to fortify ourselves, then leave behind as much of our equipment as possible. There was no knowing how deep this tunnel was, so we might as well prepare for a long journey.
As we were chewing on our rations, Sa Dipeng asked me how on earth I’d managed to locate the one stone slab that concealed our path.
“It was obvious from the positioning of these sixteen columns,” I told him. “This is all according to the Vast Door constellation—you know where the name comes from? It’s because this configuration is often used to hide entrances. It’s based on a Luo mathematical formula, derived in turn from the map of the stars. But there are deeper mysteries at work here, and I’m afraid if I say too much it’ll only confuse you.”
After a quick rest, the group was ready for me to lead them beneath the temple. Just under the opening, we found a lever that opened the stone slab from the inside. It was an ingenious mechanism, and it worked perfectly well even after two thousand years. Although it was designed on the basis of complex mathematical calculations, the actual structure was simple enough to have remained functional all this time. If this was the doing of the Jingjue queen, then she must have been a supernaturally talented woman.
We were worried about the possibility of hidden traps, so we proceeded with great caution, spacing ourselves out and taking slow steps. Finally, we got to the bottom of the stairs, and before our eyes was a passage about fifteen feet wide and nine feet high.
The walls here were no longer black stone, but were built from typical Western Region bricks, made from a mixture of sand, soil, and cow dung. The tunnel rose to an arch above our heads, and on the walls were brightly colored paintings, a series of bizarre images.
Since the Jingjue people treated eyes as a totem, a great number appeared in this passage from the temple: large and small, open and shut, sometimes as stark eyeballs, other times complete with lids and lashes. I imagined only priests and the queen herself would have had the privilege to enter here.
The professor and his students couldn’t take their eyes off those walls. They were gaping with wonder.
Professor Chen told us that the ruins discovered by foreign archaeologists in the early nineteenth century also contained giant wall murals, mostly of religious subjects, but unfortunately, the government of the time didn’t do enough to protect them. They all ended up getting stolen and shipped overseas. Yet here was a perfectly preserved specimen, one from the most ancient, most mysterious of the Western Regions’ thirty-six kingdoms. This discovery would surely send shock waves around the world.
Hearing the professor talk, I remembered the legend about the queen being a demon. This city was so spooky that I was starting to wonder if there was any truth to that, and I wanted to be as well prepared as possible. Pulling out my flashlight, I studied the pictures more closely.
The strange thing was, despite the number of paintings along this underground passage, not one depicted the queen. Many of them showed the same sequence of events: a jade eyeball emanating light, a black hole appearing in the air above it, and an egg shaped like a giant eye dropping out of that void. Some also showed countless monstrous black snakes climbing from their egg, sinking their fangs into slaves whose hands and feet were bound.
There were also landscapes of the black mountains, with more of those snakes slithering down the slopes, and herds of wild animals on bended knee, bowing in worship to those strange creatures.
We’d just experienced some of those scenes ourselves. Seeing them all laid out like this, we thought Professor Chen must be right, and those bizarre black snakes must have been treated as guardian beasts by the inhabitants of Jingjue. The people knew how to summon and control these creatures, and even offered them human beings as living sacrifices. Who would have thought that a thousand years after the Jingjue Kingdom was buried beneath the shifting sands, these snakes would still be in existence?
We’d been walking along as we examined the pictures, but our footsteps halted at the final image: an enormous hole in the ground, with a narrow staircase winding down its sides.
Julie turned to the professor. “Do you think this could have anything to do with the origins of the Guidong tribe?” she asked him. “After all, guidong means ‘ghost-hole.’ ”
“It’s possible,” he replied. “Look how narrow those steps are. They’re out of proportion with the hole. And something so big, tunneling straight down into the earth, couldn’t have been created by humankind. Could this be the ghost-hole?”
I remembered hearing the legend that the Guidong tribe had appeared from underground, but at the time I’d thought it must just be the ancient people talking nonsense. Looking at these pictures now, I wondered if I’d been wrong. The murals weren’t just scenes made up to scare people; we’d witnessed some of them come true with our own eyes. For all we knew, deep within this city, we really would find a gigantic hole like this.
Kai laughed. “There couldn’t be a hole as big as this anywhere in the world,” he said. “Unless you think it reaches all the way across the globe?”
Julie ignored him and kept questioning the professor. “Those statues with giant eyes—could it be that this is what the Guidong tribe originally looked like? And if they used to live in the darkness of underground, no wonder they found eyes so important.”
“That’s one theory,” acknowledged the professor, “but there are other possibilities. This giant hole is something that appears again and again in the Guidong civilization. It’s the unreal space you talked about, but in physical form. In ancient times, when the Guidong people found this, they’d have been unable to understand why such an enormous hole would exist in the world. They worshiped the power of the natural world, and might have taken this as evidence of the divine at work. They longed for their eyes to become more powerful so they could see to the bottom of the hole. Then some people probably claimed they could see the world that lay at the bottom, and they were elevated by society, eventually becoming rulers or priests. Their eyes were the source of their power, so vision became a form of strength.”
Kai stood openmouthed as he listened to the professor speak. “Nice one, old man,” he said, giving Professor Chen a big thumbs-up. “You make it sound like all this actually happened. You should have a market stall. With a tongue like yours, you’d be able to sell ice to Eskimos.”
Professor Chen was clearly in no mood to joke with him, and answered tartly, “It’s just a hypothesis. I can’t say for certain. Why don’t we get out of this tunnel and see if we can find a giant hole? Nothing like the evidence of our own senses.”
For some reason, hearing them talk about the giant hole made me remember a story I’d heard from my grandfather about a nine-story underground demon pagoda he’d found in the Kunlun Mountains. Quite a few of his comrades had died during that adventure. Thinking of that tale, I worried what would happen if there were some accident now. If we
hadn’t needed to go into the palace to find a source of water, I’d have been tempted to drag them all back. After all, we’d already made one important discovery on this expedition. There was no need to go any farther.
I turned to the professor. “Let’s not take too many risks,” I said. “All of you have important positions in society. There’s no need to put yourselves in danger. After we refill our water containers in the palace, we should go back. We’ve found the Jingjue Kingdom. Our task is done. Why not just put all this in a report to the authorities and let the government deal with whatever comes next?”
Professor Chen shook his head but said nothing. His whole life, he’d wanted to plunge into the mysteries of the Guidong civilization, and now he was finally here. Of course it must have been scratching at his heart to find the answers. Besides, Julie was convinced that her father and his team had been to Jingjue, and she was determined to search every corner of this place for traces of them. I didn’t think I’d be able to convince her to turn back either.
So I had no choice but to forge ahead with them.
The tunnel wasn’t particularly long. At the other end, we found not a staircase, as I’d expected, but a stone pillar, with no sign of a door.
Kai studied the wall blocking our path, then turned to me. “Tianyi,” he whispered, “do you have any tricks up your sleeve? If not, we’ll have to bust out the dynamite.”
“Do you have to blow up everything in your way?” I snapped. “Use your brain. Let’s have a closer look. I bet there’s a secret mechanism in this pillar.”
This pillar was many times smaller than the sixteen giant columns in the temple, but it was proportioned exactly the same, down to the carved hexagon at its base. The empty side faced the dead-end wall.
This had to be the tail of the sixteen dragons above. Getting Kai to help me, I turned the base according to the manual, reversing the “dragon summoning” ritual to get the “dragon shaking” charm.
As we turned the final panel into place, the mud-brick wall in front of us obligingly split open. Kai went first, rifle at the ready, and the rest of us followed single file.
Once we were all safely out of the passage, we got out our flashlights and studied our surroundings. Even though we were still beneath the surface, this was an imposing hall. The paint and decorative carvings had long since eroded away, but we could still tell how magnificent it must once have been. We were surely in the underground palace.
This seemed to be the main reception room. The tunnel let us out behind a throne carved from jade, and as the door swung shut behind us, we appreciated how well it was constructed; once it closed, it was impossible to tell there was any kind of secret entrance there.
And so we’d finally arrived at the Jingjue Imperial Palace, which up to that moment had seemed to exist only in legends. To see as clearly as possible, we made use of every form of illumination we were carrying, throwing light in all directions. We were in a vast chamber, with both the floor and that enormous throne made entirely of jade. Several of the chains holding up the ceiling lamps had snapped, and these now lay sprawled and broken on the ground. Sand mice skittered about in the corners, suggesting that the air here was breathable. Although the jade had survived intact, the other artifacts—ceramics, wood, iron, bronze, and silk—had not weathered as well, and were in a state of advanced deterioration.
The best-preserved object was the throne, which had an eyeball made of red jade set into its back. Inlaid gold and silver filigree covered the rest of the throne’s surface, with misty mountains and all kinds of animals intricately carved into it. The seat was the hue of sheep’s milk, eye-catching in this giant, mostly dark-colored chamber.
Kai looked disappointed. He slumped onto the throne and thumped his hand on the armrest. “This is the only thing here worth a cent,” he said glumly. “As for the rest of this stuff, we might as well call the recycling center to come pick it up.”
That was Kai all over: absolutely no sense of how to behave. No discipline. Trying to lighten the mood, I said, “But, Kai, don’t forget that you’re one of the common people. Don’t start getting all high and mighty sitting up there.”
“Ha!” Kai chuckled. “I’m just getting a feel for this throne. It might be worth a million dollars. Shame the top bit is so big; we’ll probably have to break it apart to transport it.”
“Let’s not worry about moving it,” I hastily broke in. “You won’t believe me, but I’m telling you, this jade throne is where the Jingjue queen once sat, and for all we know, her spirit may still be roaming around this palace, all lonely after thousands of years on her own. She might even catch a sight of you and think, ‘Mmm, what a nice companion that chubby boy would make.’ Before you know it, you’ll be going steady with an undead queen. She always gets her way, you know.”
This little speech was enough to give Kai a fright. Unfortunately, the others heard it too. Little Ye had recovered enough to take small steps, but hearing that the dead queen’s vengeful spirit might still be on the premises, her eyeballs rolled back and she fainted dead away again.
Julie flew into a spitting rage. “Could the two of you stop talking nonsense? It’s hardly the time. Now look what you’ve done—aren’t you going to come help?”
Seeing that we’d blundered again, Kai and I didn’t dare argue but hurried over to lift Little Ye off the floor and onto Kai’s back. It would have been great if he’d kept quiet at this point, but of course he had to have the last word. “Going steady with the undead queen, huh? I’ve never met anyone as uncultured as you. Queens don’t go steady. They have—what do you call them?—imperial consorts.”
“I think you mean eunuchs,” Julie said acidly.
I stifled a laugh. The mood was still somber after Hao Aiguo’s death, and it really wouldn’t have been appropriate—though who knew Julie Yang had a sense of humor too? I split the group up into teams of two, and we walked through the large hall, searching for any signs that might point us toward a water source.
The Jingjue Kingdom’s underground palace wasn’t as large as I’d imagined. The throne room was certainly impressive, but the antechambers on either side were cramped. The main entrance and stairs were completely buried under sand, but an area of the black stone roof near the door had been blown up, indicating that at least one set of explorers had already made their way in here. Probably several decades ago. Maybe the man in the black-and-white photograph? In any case, the gap had long since been filled by the desert.
Examining the two side rooms and finding nothing, I turned to the rear quarters. This was where the royal family would have lived, and scattered around the space were a number of fountains surrounded by jade railings. Unfortunately, the fountains had all dried out a long time ago. We walked along single file, keeping a sharp eye out, until Julie suddenly called, “Listen, do you hear running water?”
I pricked up my ears, and sure enough, there was a liquid burbling not too far away. It was coming from the direction of the bedchambers. We started walking faster, following the sound, and ended up in a cave that opened out behind the palace.
The ground began sloping downward here, leading us farther underground. We finally found ourselves in a natural cavern about the size of a soccer field. It might not have been man-made, but man had definitely altered it—all the surfaces were smooth, and there was an artificial lake in its center, not too large, with a little bump of land in the middle, an island no more than thirty-five feet square. The water was so calm it could have been a mirror, and a path ran all around it.
For more than a week, we’d had nothing to drink but our foul-tasting water. The small ration would have left us thirsty in our regular lives, let alone in the middle of the desert. Seeing this crystalline lake, it was all we could do not to run over and plunge our heads right into it, but Julie stopped us.
“The water source might have gotten cut off,” she explained, “and stagnant water becomes poisonous. Underground rivers change their course all the time,
and the water here might be different from two thousand years ago. The soil in the Western Regions contains lots of chemicals, like nitrites and sulfates. For all we know, there might be all kinds of dissolved toxins here. Let’s be careful.”
Drawing closer, I saw some movement. It was hundreds of tiny fish, their tails glittering as they moved. I smiled. “No need to worry,” I said. “The water must be fine—otherwise these little guys would be floating belly up.”
As soon as the words were out, the rest of the group charged forward and began taking huge swigs of water, not stopping until their stomachs were bulging out. Even then, they still felt they hadn’t drunk enough, and some didn’t stop till they were literally dribbling from the mouth.
Little Ye had to go easy, so Julie salted some water in a bottle and fed it to her drop by drop. The rest of us slumped by the lakeside, too full to even think about moving.
I’d never imagined water could taste so delicious. Now I sprawled on the ground, my limbs outstretched, my eyes shut. In the underground silence, I thought I heard water flowing somewhere. But that made sense: this placid lake couldn’t have produced the burbling sound we’d heard earlier. It was coming from farther off, from a much larger body of water, maybe the hidden Zidu River, which was said to wind around the Zaklaman Mountains.
Just as my thoughts were wandering even further, Julie nudged my shoulder and pointed at the outcropping in the center of the lake. I turned to look. The others had been roused too, and we gaped together at an unimaginable sight.
Without us noticing, tiny insects had swarmed onto the island, covering it in a bright green carpet. There must have been more than ten thousand of the critters. As we watched, their bodies faded to ashy gray, and one by one they wriggled from their outer shells. Their new bodies glimmered with luminescence, like stars gathered from the night sky. Soon they would be strong enough to spread their folded wings and soar skyward.
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