The Partridge remembered that Father Thomas was still there, and while he didn’t seem like a bad person, it didn’t seem safe to leave a foreigner alone while he and the monk were inside. If the American did turn out to have ill intentions, it might spell trouble. Better to bring him along and hope he was good at following instructions. If not, well, he could be fodder for the traps.
With this in mind, the Partridge beckoned the priest over and tried to feed him a heart-stilling pill, but Father Thomas refused to open his mouth, convinced this was some sort of Chinese poison. Rather than trying to explain, the Partridge prodded him sharply in the ribs, and when the priest gasped, he popped the pill right down the man’s throat. The American could only look up at the sky and proclaim, “Merciful father, forgive these men. They know not what they do.”
The Partridge nudged the American to the hole in the roof and got his flying-tiger claws, preparing to let him down first. Father Thomas was shocked—wasn’t it enough that these barbaric Easterners had poisoned him? What was happening now? Was he going to be buried alive?
World’s End said soothingly, “Mr. Foreign Priest, please don’t worry. You and I have both taken orders, and my Buddha is all-encompassing and compassionate, so a monk like me will be kind too. I would never step on an ant, and I shield my candle flames so they won’t kill moths. Of course I wouldn’t hurt you either. It’s just that what we’re doing has to remain secret, so we’re inviting you to journey with us, and as soon as the trip is over, you’ll be free to go.”
Reassured, Father Thomas calmed down. No matter what, this Chinese monk was also a spiritual worker, and such a man would surely never participate in a murder. He allowed the Partridge to lower him through the roof on the flying-tiger claws.
World’s End and the Partridge followed behind him, and when they were all in the great-man hall, they shined the lantern around for a closer look. Sure enough, this was a truly astounding chamber. Every inch of the Buddha glittered with precious gemstones, and even the lotus throne was made of precious metals. The temple was a sturdy construction held up by thirty-six vast pillars.
Seeing the Buddha, World’s End immediately knelt and began kowtowing, chanting his scriptures. Having been a fake priest, now back in civilian clothing, the Partridge saw no problem with kneeling down too, asking the Buddha for help with ridding his tribe of their misery. He was completely sincere in his prayers.
When they were done with their devotions, the two men continued looking around. The outer chamber was completely collapsed—there was definitely no way in. The side rooms were full of arhat statues, all exquisitely made and carved with consummate skill. Any one of them would have been priceless, which went to show how influential Buddhism had been during the Western Xia years.
Yet there was something about these figurines that seemed somehow different from the ones they’d seen elsewhere. They couldn’t have said what exactly; there was just something odd about them.
Then World’s End realized what it was. He said to the Partridge, “The Western Xia dynasty was led by the Tangut people, who arose from the Tibetan lands and helped the Tang emperor open up his kingdom. For their service, they were bestowed the surname Li. As a minority, they were much more influenced by Indian Buddhism than the Buddhism practiced in the interior, so these statues are dressed in Tang robes, but their features are much closer to the people of Buddhism’s source, unlike in the temples of the interior, which are more dominated by Han culture.”
They’d worked out that the treasure trove was probably not far from the great-man hall, or perhaps in the chamber itself, because this tomb would have been constructed according to feng shui principles, and with such a narrow meridian, there weren’t many places where it could be.
Father Thomas wandered around with them, finding this stranger and stranger. Why had they chosen to go digging in such a random spot, finding a giant temple right away? And now that they were in here, he thought this all looked familiar, particularly the beautiful statues. Surely this was the hole he’d fallen into all those years ago. That had been an accident, and he’d never have been able to find his way back here. So how could this old monk have done it, just by looking at the stars? This Eastern mysticism was so hard to understand, so full of secrets. The American priest looked at the two men with more respect now and bit his tongue when he felt like complaining.
The trio made three rounds of the chamber, examining virtually every brick and tile, but there was no sign of a hidden room.
Finally, the Partridge said to World’s End, “If there’s nothing here, then perhaps we should check in the back room.”
The monk nodded. “Since we’re here, there’s no rush. We can take our time to examine the whole place. There’s probably a reclining Buddha in the rear—let’s see what we can find.”
The passageway to the back of the temple was decorated in the Song dynasty style, with pictures of lotus blossoms. It gave them a sense of peace to look at images of these flowers, which rose from the mud to bloom gloriously, leaving behind the earth they’d risen from.
After spending so much time with World’s End, the Partridge had heard quite a bit about Buddhist thought, and his inner rage had subsided a fair bit. At this moment, in this underground sacred place, he suddenly felt a great weariness descend over him, and all his plans of reverse dipping seemed unspeakably exhausting. He wanted only to find the eye of the divine, finish his life’s work, and spend the rest of his days in seclusion, devoting himself to reflection.
This thought flashed through his mind swiftly, but he knew he couldn’t afford the slightest sluggishness at this time. He needed to concentrate on the business at hand, which was to uncover the hiding place of this treasure.
They soon got through to the rear chamber, which, as World’s End had expected, was a stately room occupied by a vast stone Buddha lying horizontally, decorated with seven types of jewels. He must have been fifty meters from head to toe, asleep on his lotus dais, his large earlobes dangling.
Ceramic urns stood at either end of the room, once filled with hardened dragon oil, a sort of solid fuel that could burn for a hundred years without going out. The long-burning crystal lamps used for ancestral worship are usually filled with this substance. Now, though, enough time had passed that the urns were empty and the flames extinguished.
Stone tablets were dotted around the room, inscribed with the impossibly complicated Western Xia language—probably something to do with Buddhist teachings. The Partridge roamed around the room a few times, before finally stopping and staring at the giant Buddha. “There’s something wrong with his posture,” he said to World’s End. “It looks weird to me.”
World’s End had a closer look and realized he was right. “Ah yes, that’s correct. Good observation, no doubt due to your mountain-moving skills. This Buddha’s head has a mechanism in it—the entrance is probably somewhere inside there. But I can’t tell how exactly it works, and I’m afraid if we start fiddling with it, it might prove dangerous.”
The Partridge clasped his hands and bowed deeply to the sleeping Buddha, then leaped up onto the dais. The Buddha’s lips were very slightly parted and looked like they might be able to open wider. Only an expert reverse dipper would have noticed such a detail. Could the tunnel be inside his mouth? But those lips could also be concealing flying daggers or poisoned arrows, all manner of traps just waiting for someone to activate them. The Partridge studied the statue’s face carefully and saw that the mechanism was fairly straightforward. There were no traps here, just a simple lever that would open a tunnel. Summoning Father Thomas to help, he got to work pressing down on a particular petal on one of the lotus blossoms.
With a loud grinding sound, the giant lips moved apart. Inside the mouth was a tunnel leading straight down, with a ladder fixed along its wall. Father Thomas exclaimed at the sight, and without even waiting to be asked, started clamoring
to go first so he could see what was down there.
The Partridge knew this had been built as a tomb before being converted to a treasure store, which meant the Western Xia rulers would surely have put in some sort of safeguards to prevent theft. Sending the American down first would mean his certain death, and he seemed like a decent fellow, so the Partridge said he should go in the middle, with World’s End bringing up the rear.
No grave robbers had disturbed this ancient tomb before. It was anyone’s guess what unusual features lay within. All they knew was that the Han civilization had barely influenced this kingdom, so it would be unlike anything they’d seen in the rest of China, and they’d just have to proceed one step at a time. With a mountain-moving expert like the Partridge leading the way, they were definitely in safe hands.
To check on how the air was circulating below, the Partridge handed the lantern up to World’s End, while fitting a phosphorous cylinder to the end of his steel umbrella—an implement used by all gold hunters, constructed entirely of metal and therefore impenetrable to attack. The phosphorous cylinder could test air quality while providing illumination—in modern scientific language, we’d say it consisted of a biological glow, like a firefly or luminous sea creature, and it was fueled by ground-up bones of the dead mixed with red wormwood, which produced a cold blue glow that could last up to an hour.
With the cylinder lighting their way, the Partridge allowed the steel umbrella to dangle below him on the flying-tiger claws as a shield. Inching down the ladder, he soon felt a tightness in his chest. There was no air circulation to the lower level, and if they hadn’t taken precautions, they’d probably have lost consciousness by this point and plummeted to their deaths.
He glanced up to see how the monk and American priest were doing, and yelled that they could take a break before going on, but they said they were fine, it was still endurable. They were more than halfway down and might as well go the rest of the way.
Sure enough, they were at the bottom in about a cup of tea. (In gold-hunting slang, a cigarette is three to five minutes, a cup of tea ten to fifteen, and a bowl of rice twenty to thirty.)
At the bottom of the shaft were four icy-cold stone walls. The air was very dry. The Partridge spun the cylinder around, trying to see what else was down there. Without warning, a warrior in golden armor loomed out of the darkness, frowning and silent, clutching an enormous ax in both hands, which he was now bringing down toward the Partridge’s head.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
Reacting quickly, the Partridge jumped backward with a shout, pressing himself against the stone wall and opening his steel umbrella as a shield. In the same movement, he pulled the Mauser from his belt and rested it on the rim of the umbrella, ready to fire at the warrior.
Why had he shouted? It has to do with the practice of martial arts—when making a vigorous movement, involuntary sounds come from your mouth, just as naturally as breathing, to avoid internal injuries. He definitely wasn’t screaming out of fear.
There was an unexpected consequence, though—Father Thomas, still several feet from the ground, had been startled into losing his footing on the ladder, and he tumbled right down.
Hearing the whoosh of air above him, the Partridge knew something was about to land on him, and he quickly raised the umbrella so the American landed on its dome—fortunately from not too high up—and slid off onto the ground. Although the impact jarred Father Thomas’s limbs and left him aching, he didn’t suffer any great harm.
At the same time, the Partridge lifted his glowing blue light to take a closer look at this ax-wielding warrior. As it turned out, there was no need to be scared—he was just a painting on the wall, so realistically done, in such vivid colors, that he’d seemed exactly like the real thing, life-size and glowering in his majestic suit of gold armor. It was truly a great work of art—energy pulsed through every inch of his muscle, and even now that the Partridge knew what this was, he wouldn’t have been surprised if it had leaped right out of the wall.
World’s End had now reached the bottom too, and he stared at the painted warrior. Together, they decided that this gold-armored man had to be a great general named Weng Zhong, from the Qin Kingdom, whom it was said even ghosts were afraid of. By the start of the Tang dynasty, every highborn person’s tomb came decorated with Weng Zhong’s portrait, so that he could guard the doors and keep the place safe.
Most such images of him were slowly eaten away by exposure to the air, and besides, grave robbers tended to tunnel their way in or blast through a side wall, so they never actually confronted this legendary general. This was the first time either of them was meeting him, and they wanted to take a closer look.
The Partridge said, “Master, the Western Xia people were certainly influenced by the culture of the Central Plains—look, they even invited in this Qin general. And if he’s standing guard here, that means we must be near the location of the tomb.”
World’s End held up the lantern and stared at the stone wall Weng Zhong was on. He nodded. “There are nails hammered into this; it’s definitely the entrance.” Before he’d finished speaking, Weng Zhong shimmered and vanished.
Father Thomas, already in a nervous state from the eerie surroundings and flickering lamplight, was so stunned he went pale and hastily made the sign of the cross.
World’s End turned to him. “Don’t be scared, Foreign Priest. As fresh air starts to flow through here, the ancient pigments crumble to dust. That’s all. Nothing ghostly happening.”
The American calmed down, though he still thought the place was spooky. Perhaps not even the all-seeing Lord knew what lay in the world beyond this door. Just his bad luck that these two Chinese men had dragged him here. What if this underground place belonged to Satan? Or there could be werewolves, vampires, or zombies lurking down here. Thomas might have been a priest, and strong in his faith, but he’d never stopped being afraid of the dark. He often blamed himself for this, feeling it showed a lack of faith. This encounter was a test sent by God, and he had to find a way to conquer his terror in order to pass. Yet how could he overcome it so quickly?
The Partridge didn’t have time to deal with the foreign priest’s complicated emotional state. He was examining the wall and saw that it was a sand barrier. This was a fiendish design that, after the deceased was buried and the door closed behind the mourners, would cause a huge quantity of sand to fill the passageway, wedging the entrance shut so it was impossible to open from the outside.
Luckily, World’s End noticed that there was a tiny crack at the bottom of the door to accommodate the tracks it glided on, and not one grain of sand was falling from that opening. This suggested the mechanism had never been activated, probably because no one was actually buried here, and when hiding their treasures, the Western Xia court would have left the place unsealed, to make sure they could come back to retrieve them.
That saved a lot of time. They needed to break through the side wall, but could simply open this stone door. And so the three men put their shoulders to it and heaved.
The door wasn’t latched, just heavy. Still, it was only a few hundred pounds, and the trio was able to get it open a crack without too much effort—just wide enough for one person to enter.
The Partridge walked through, still holding his umbrella. He shot a flare, which shone long enough for him to get a clear view of the entire tunnel. The two tanks on either side of the door weren’t even filled with sand, but stood empty. The floor was level, neatly paved—and he knew that the more orderly it looked, the more likely it was to conceal a trap of some kind.
Behind him, World’s End was urging him to be cautious. The door hadn’t been sealed, which might have been because the men who hid the treasure were fleeing for their lives, but that might also be intended to lure him in and catch him off guard. As the saying goes, “If the door’s open wide, what’s inside might finish you off.” Some doors were thic
k and sturdy, with sand piles or giant stone balls behind them, but that was a crude defense and could be overcome with brute force. The real tests came in the passageway and grave chamber, two places a would-be thief would definitely have to pass by.
The Partridge was naturally very careful—after all, he’d never been into a Western Xia tomb before and didn’t know what to expect. Holding his breath, he walked about seventy yards down the corridor, at the end of which was another big door.
This was a more normal-looking one, tall and wide, with a round arch like a city gate. It took up the entire width of the passageway, beautifully carved from white jade, but not with pictures, just words—all in the Western Xia language. They didn’t know what it meant, but again guessed it was Buddhist scriptures. A metal bar lay across the door, held in place by a giant lock, no key in sight. The treasure must be on the other side.
The strange thing was, on either side of the jade door were two deep round holes. Neither the Partridge nor World’s End had seen anything like this, but they were clearly man-made, exactly the same size and symmetrically arranged. The whole mausoleum was solidly constructed, the stone walls as smooth as mirrors, three or four yards high. It had taken a long time to build, and every feature of it must surely be there by design.
World’s End thought this must be some kind of mechanism and wanted to talk about what it might be. The Partridge interrupted, “That lock on the door—I’m good at picking locks. Only, what if damaging the lock sets off some sort of trap?”
The monk waved the thought away. “You won’t get this open. Why put a metal bar over the door? That seems unnecessary. Anyone who could make their way in here isn’t going to be deterred by a puny thing like that. But examine the lock—in the Song dynasty, they were attaching them to doors as protection, and if you tugged at it, poison gas or something like that would surely seep out.”
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