The City of Sand
Page 14
Kai’s eyes glowed, and I could tell he’d already forgotten the promise he’d made just minutes ago. He reached for the nearest object, a wine jug made from luminescent jade.
I hastily snatched his arm back and muttered in his ear, “Did you think I was joking? You said you’d behave.”
He froze. “That was strange! My arm suddenly got a life of its own. It shot out all by itself. I couldn’t control it!”
“No excuses,” I snapped. “And don’t get any ideas.” As I spoke, I turned to see if Julie Yang had noticed. Fortunately, she and Chu Jian were busy helping the old professor down the ladder, and she hadn’t seen a thing.
“Why are you down here?” I asked Chu Jian. “Didn’t we say you’d stay up top to take care of Little Ye?”
“I just wanted to take a look,” he replied. “I’ll go up again in a sec.”
It wasn’t just him. Every single one of the group were bug-eyed, looking all around for any sign of the tomb. Despite all the legends about the many dangers that lay in wait for explorers, there was something compelling about this place—something that made it irresistible.
“Let Jian explore a little,” Professor Chen said, still panting from the exertion of his climb. “This is a rare educational opportunity. After all their studying, it’s good to have my students get some practical experience. No matter how powerful the queen must have been, she’s been dead more than two thousand years, and as soon as she was gone, the slaves revolted and brought down her kingdom. We’re probably safe. We should be fine as long as everyone remembers their archaeological principles: damage nothing, take nothing.”
I thought about it. He had a point—the queen’s demonic powers, even if they existed, would surely have died along with her. As for the earlier explorers, maybe they were so dazzled by the treasure that they weighed themselves down and couldn’t get out, or became confused and couldn’t find the exit. The biggest trap of all was surely these grave goods. But if we kept our heads and didn’t pay too much attention to them, we should be all right.
For all the myths that had arisen around the Jingjue queen’s life, and despite her mighty kingdom, which was once the terror of the Western Regions, she still passed away in the end. Just like a chessboard, the world is constantly reset for new games, and no matter how much you accomplish and how powerful you are, you can’t escape from this law of nature: the board must be cleared, and a new round started.
Now even Little Ye got in on the act, carefully sliding down the ladder with Sa Dipeng’s help. We groped our way forward. All around us were dark stone walls. Could we be directly beneath the Zaklaman Mountains?
In such a large space, it was impossible to make out the contours of the surrounding land. We’d so far resisted using our most powerful source of light, in order to conserve its battery, but now seemed like the perfect time to bring it out.
It was a heavy hand-held floodlight, a xenon high-pressure bulb with nickel and platinum as reflectors. When unobstructed, its beams could travel up to a mile and a half. The only thing was, it ran through power like nobody’s business, so we’d only be able to use it for a very short time.
While I quickly assembled the apparatus, Kai emptied the batteries out of his waist pouch and loaded them in. Sa Dipeng leaned over to peer shortsightedly at the lens, and Julie quickly pulled him away. “Be careful! This is a very powerful light source. It can blind you from a hundred yards away if you look directly at it.”
“Yeah,” Kai chimed in, “your eyes would probably explode.”
The floodlight only took a few minutes to put together. Telling everyone to stand well behind the light, I flicked the switch and watched as pure radiance shot from it, so strong it might as well have been solid. Sweeping it back and forth, I could finally see what lay all around us.
My first guess had been right—we were definitely beneath the Zaklaman Mountains. Above us and to all sides were great slabs of black stone. Beyond the piles of treasure were countless huge-eyed statues. The floor dropped away beneath them into a precipice. Inching cautiously to the edge and looking down, we saw what lay beneath: an enormous, perfectly circular hole.
It was exactly as depicted in the temple passageway murals. A path wound its way around this unfathomably deep opening. The only human-made modification was a spiral of steps around the perimeter of the hole, leading down into the darkness.
When we pointed the floodlight into the pit, we saw the staircase turn a few rounds and then stop. It would seem there was only so much human technology had been able to do, and the deepest reaches were still unplumbed. Even our powerful light couldn’t reach the bottom. I had to pull us back from the edge. I feared that staring down into the murky unknown was liable to leave us so disoriented that we’d find ourselves suddenly taking a step forward, plummeting helplessly into the void.
“This must be the holy ground of the Jingjue,” said Julie. “The ghost-hole, guidong. But where could it lead?”
I’d been feeling chills through my heart ever since I set eyes on this chasm. “Isn’t the legend that it’s a portal directly to hell?” I said. “I can’t look at it anymore. It’s making me dizzy.”
“Surely you don’t believe in those tales?” Professor Chen said, chuckling. “This is nothing more than an unusually large natural formation. Of course, to the ancients, it must have seemed like the handiwork of the gods, but we ought to be beyond such primitive superstitions.”
Kai had been shining the light around the rim, and now he started yelping for us to come see. He’d found a thin stone column, extending from the cliff face into midair, suspended directly over the giant hole.
Our focus, though, was on where the column ended: a large wooden beam, more than six feet long, that on closer inspection was clearly just an entire tree. Not much had been done to it—several branches stretched from it, some with leaves still clinging to them.
A dozen or so thick chains were shackled around the trunk, fixing it firmly in place. Even more peculiar, some sort of shrub was growing out of the wood, each of its flowers about the size of a bucket, bulbous petals bulging out, then pursing into little mouths. These pouchlike blossoms were jade-green, surrounded by blood-red leaves. This bizarre plant seemed to sprout directly from the tree, its vines winding around the trunk just as the chains did.
I gaped. “This—this is the god-tree of the Kunlun!” I shouted. “My grandfather always told me the wood from a tree’s very center was the best thing to make coffins out of. The very finest variety of wood would be from a tree hardly anyone has ever set eyes on, the Kunlun god-tree as described in the ancient books. They say that even removed from soil, water, and sunlight, this tree might stop growing, but will never wither or change its appearance. A corpse in a Kunlun wood coffin won’t decay, not even after ten thousand years.” I paused and swallowed hard. “Could the Jingjue queen’s body be in there?”
“You’re right. This must be her tomb,” Julie said, her voice trembling. “The legends say this tree is as ancient as the Kunlun hills themselves. They say the first emperor, Qin Shihuang, desired to find it and make his grave from it. Yet it was the Jingjue queen who finally succeeded. This is the best burial place any human being will ever have.”
The excitement buzzing among us was palpable. The entire group was about to rush over for a closer look, but the professor hurried to block their way. He looked like he had something urgent to say, but in his agitation he stumbled over a pebble and twisted his ankle.
We helped him up quickly, but he was clearly in pain and couldn’t take another step. Finally, we had to sit him back on the ground. “Whatever you do, don’t touch anything,” he said, grimacing. “Didn’t you see the flowers growing out of the coffin?”
“Do you mean those green things?” asked Kai. “What weird plant is that? Those flowers look like giant yams. And whoever heard of a plant growing out of a coffin? Do you think the queen was really a giant seed, and now that they’ve buried her, she’s sprouted?”
Corpse bloom? The name was enough to send a jolt through us, even though not a single member of the group, Julie included, had heard of such a thing. Desperate to know more, we urged Professor Chen to explain.
“Back in the day, when I was researching the ancient Western Regions civilizations, I saw this flower crop up in the few murals and texts from that period. The corpse bloom seems to have originated during the later Yue era, then sprouted up all along the Silk Road, only to go extinct from the region because it couldn’t adapt to the environment. It’s said that planting these flowers in a tomb can preserve a corpse forever—and even lend it a special fragrance. This is a treasure. The civilizations of the Western Regions had all kinds of mystical beliefs and religions. Myth and historical reality was so closely intermingled that it’s difficult to tell them apart. I hadn’t believed this myself, thinking it must be just another story, yet here it is.”
Gazing at the distant flowers, Julie asked, “If this plant is as good as all that, why did you say it was the most dangerous thing?”
“Well, the other part of the legend is that the corpse bloom contains an evil spirit,” the professor replied. “As soon as it reaches maturity, no living human can come anywhere near it. Rare to find a coffin of Kunlun wood—but that’s the only reason we see a corpse bloom thriving in a place like this.”
I’d heard many strange stories in my life, but the idea of a symbiotic evil flower-and-coffin was a new one to me. “This is truly strange,” I said. “We’re deep beneath the Zaklaman Mountains, with no light at all, and yet we find a plant growing. I guess that’s exactly what we should expect from the Jingjue queen. We can safely say that we’ve left the laws of the natural world behind.”
Even at a distance, we could clearly detect a pungent scent. Could the corpse bloom be toxic? Most poisonous plants and animals tend to be brightly colored, and this green-and-red combo was as eye-catching as anything. As soon as the thought crossed my mind, I quickly ordered the group to put their gas masks on.
“This doesn’t look like a poison plant,” protested Kai. “Poison plants are usually small. But these flowers are bigger than my head! I think this must be a man-eating plant.”
“No way,” said Julie. “There isn’t so much as an ant around here. If this thing really needed flesh to stay alive, it would have died long ago. Something in the Kunlun wood coffin must be supplying all the nutrients it needs.”
“Who cares what it eats?” Kai said. “Tell you what, why don’t I just fire my rifle at it a few times and blow it to pieces. That should get rid of any danger. Then we can go and see what this queen looks like.”
“Absolutely not!” shouted Professor Chen. “I’d rather turn around and go home now than harm one petal on that corpse bloom.”
I rotated the floodlight, shining its beam all around the coffin so everyone could get a good look. Now we saw a dense cloud of words carved into the side of the stone beam. They weren’t Chinese. As I looked at the unfamiliar characters, I realized they must be the Guidong language. Several hundred characters of it. This was another earthshaking discovery. In all the ancient city, even in the temple and underground palace, we’d barely come across any writing. Their preferred form of record keeping seemed to be through wall paintings. True, there’d been a few words on the giant jade eyeball, but unfortunately, I’d accidentally smashed it before we got a closer look. Now, out of nowhere, we’d suddenly come upon a whole swathe of words.
Right away, Professor Chen was delegating his students to record what they saw, assigning each of them to a section of the stone beam. Fortunately, the carvings were large enough that they didn’t need to get any closer to make them out. As they worked away, Julie got out her camera and started snapping pictures.
Only Kai and I had nothing to do. We wandered around for a bit, looking at stone walls, then finally sat down and waited for the eggheads to finish their work.
I was guessing this would be the end of our little expedition. The archaeologists had gotten a lot out of this. The murals in that temple tunnel alone would cause a stir across the world that would take years to die down. We had gotten all this other stuff in addition: the giant bottomless hole, the Kunlun god-tree coffin, the ancient corpse bloom. You could spend your whole life researching any one of those and not get to the bottom of their mysteries. Without any protective equipment, there was no way we could open the coffin—even the Gumo prince’s tomb had been too precious to barge into, so there was definitely no chance the professor would allow us to take the risk here. Something as big as this would need to be reported to the authorities. They’d deal with it, and we probably wouldn’t get so much as a glimpse of the famed Jingjue queen’s beautiful face.
It was a shame Hao Aiguo had died back in the valley. I couldn’t imagine how overjoyed he would have been if he’d lived a bit longer and gotten to see all this. Feeling sorry for him, I started to blame myself—even though I’d done all I could, there was no way to stop myself from thinking that I could have reacted just a bit faster and saved his life. As my head filled with memories of that moment, I found my heart churning once again. It would take me a long time to get over this.
Kai’s voice brought me back to the present. “Tianyi,” he gasped, shaking me by the shoulder. “Look at what those guys are up to.”
I focused on where he was pointing. It was Chu Jian and Sa Dipeng. They were halfway along the stone beam. Hadn’t the professor told us we weren’t to touch the coffin? Yet there they were, crawling precariously toward it. I yelped and looked to him for an explanation.
“It’s fine,” Professor Chen said calmly. “They’re not going all the way across. See how the middle part of the inscription is all dusty? The words are completely obscured in places. I told them to clear it away. Don’t worry, they have their gas masks on. Nothing will go wrong.”
I wanted to call them back and go in their place, but the professor wouldn’t let me. “No need for that. These Guidong words are of enormous historical importance, and after all, you’re not an expert in this. No offense, but if you were to accidentally damage a single character, we’d be in big trouble. Chu Jian and Sa Dipeng know how to carefully get rid of dust and dirt with a tiny brush. They’re trained at this. It won’t take them long, just a couple more minutes.”
This didn’t particularly reassure me. My mind felt uneasy. I was sure something terrible was about to happen. We still didn’t know why those British explorers who’d come before us hadn’t made off with this tremendously valuable coffin. There had only been one survivor, and he’d completely lost his mind by the time they found him. What happened to the rest of his colleagues? This cave might seem peaceful and safe, but would that all change if we got too close to the queen’s coffin? Despite the professor’s protests, I hurried over to the beam, ready to summon them back.
I hadn’t hesitated long, but the delay was enough. Just as I was opening my mouth to call out to them, Sa Dipeng suddenly bent over, picked up a stray rock, and took two quick steps forward, swinging his arm in a smooth motion to bring the rock crashing down on Chu Jian’s head. His friend didn’t have a chance. Without a sound, his body crumpled, and he tumbled off the beam into the black emptiness below.
All this happened too quickly for any of us to have stopped it. Before we were even quite sure what we’d just seen, Sa Dipeng ripped the gas mask off his face. He leered at us, his smile twisted and full of unspeakable evil. Then he turned and ran toward the coffin, bringing the murder weapon up to smash into his own forehead. As blood gushed down over his face, his body shook violently, and he collapsed onto the Jingjue queen’s tomb. His body twitched, then stopped.
We stood frozen. This bloody scene had taken only a few moments, and now everything had changed. What had gotten into Sa Dipeng? H
e’d always been the most soft-spoken, bookish person in the group. For him to abruptly become a bloodthirsty monster, kill his friend, and then commit suicide on the coffin—what on earth could have caused this?
“This is bad,” I said. “The only explanation is that he was possessed by a demon. Kai, quick, get out your black donkey hoof. Maybe he’s still breathing. I don’t think he’s dead yet.”
Professor Chen was still reeling from what happened—one student lost forever in the black void and the other lying bleeding from the head at the end of the stone beam. Unable to cope with the enormity of the situation, he fainted. Little Ye, also terrified, ran over to lift his head off the ground. She sat there, weeping, unable to do anything else.
The most pressing thing was to save Sa Dipeng, if he could still be saved. Even if there was an evil spirit on the stone column, I knew I had no choice. Stiffening my resolve, I shouted at Kai and Julie to see to the professor, picked up my rifle, clamped on my gas mask, and headed to the rescue. I had my black donkey hoof on me—a charm powerful enough for even the most fearsome demon to think twice about getting too close to me. As for the poisonous flowers, hopefully the mask would keep me safe from them.
Before I could think about it too much, I took a step out onto the stone beam. It was roughly nine feet wide, suspended over absolute nothingness. Looking down left me covered in a cold sweat, so I tried to fix my gaze straight ahead.
I was only halfway across when I heard footsteps behind me. Turning around, I saw Kai and Julie approaching. “What are you doing?” I called out. “Didn’t I say stay back and look after Professor Chen?”
“There’s some bad juju on this thing,” said Kai. “I’m not letting you deal with it alone. Anyway, you can’t carry that dude all by yourself. Let’s move him together. No point any more of us getting hurt.”