Chapter 1 - Zhuge Demonic Shrine

Proofreader: Zhu Yuan

The ancients said that tomb robbers would damage their own morality and eventually made their descendants face bad luck.

Looking around, we found a huge dragon range, a favorable location for a tomb according to geomantic omen, stretching down from the Gaomiaozi Mountain to the flat ground, in the middle of which rose 12 mountains known as The Twelve Connected Mountains Range. The rolling mountains swept down for more than ten kilometers from the Dangkousi Isolated Mountain located at the east of The Twelve Connected Mountains Range to the west, which was very imposing like a dragon playing with a pearl. A stele carved “Dingjun Mountain” (T/N: Dingjun in Chinese means to stabilize the morale of the troops)

stood in a solemn form at the top of the highest mountain of the Twelve Connected Mountains Range with the clouds and mist drifting through.

This place was of vital military importance in the Chinese Three Kingdoms Period. It was said that Xiahou Yuan, the general of the Kingdom Wei in the Three Kingdoms Period, was slain here. Over the centuries, no one knew how many wronged souls were lost and how many ghosts were haunting there.

Four sneaky people clustered around a naturally-formed low land lying at the foot of Dingjun Mountain. Their voice sunk to a conspiratorial whisper about something.

Zhang Shaohong fixed his eyes on a map held tightly in his hand. After quite a while, he said softly, with his knit brows relaxed, “Based on our master’s map, the tomb chamber is buried underground three hundred meters ahead. But with seasons changing fast, the crust has already moved. Old Four (the fourth eldest one among all the brothers), you test the water and find out what kind of tomb it is, a fire tomb or a water tomb. (Fire tomb is a jargon of tomb robbery which means that the tomb has not been robbed yet. Its name is derived from the fact that the well-preserved tomb will spout flames. The water-tomb means a tomb that has already been robbed.)

“Ok!” Old Four quickly took out an extremely sharp Luoyang Shovel, an iron tool used to search underground accumulations. His Luoyang Shovel, with its tampered and narrower end, was specially designed to dig the soil.

Soon, a small robbery hole was completed.

This robbery hole was nearly 10 meters deep. Old Four licked the soil and sniffed at it. Suddenly, his eyes burst with gleams and acclaimed, “Big Brother! It is a fire tomb in the Three Kingdoms Period! We wouldn’t make a fruitless trip this time!”

This was called the Judging Skill in our school and apart from that we also have Sniffing Skill. Those tomb robbers of the North School excelled in these skills. They could judge the basic condition of a tomb only through the sound and feel when the Luoyang shovel touched the tomb.

In most cases, they shoveled the topsoil of the tomb before robbing it, and then took a bit of the soil as a sample. After sniffing the sample for several times, they could recognize whether there was metal in the soil, whether the tomb had been robbed or not and even which dynasty this tomb belonged to.

Old Four had already attained perfection in these two skills. His judgment about a tomb in most occasions was quite near to the truth.

“Fine. Go on digging and see whether this hole can lead to the tomb directly!”

The excitement was written on the face of Zhang Shaohong, because those four brothers paid too much effort and price to finding that ancient tomb. When success was just around the corner, he felt nervous instead.

Old Four had always been an expert in digging the robbery hole. With extremely fast speed, he industriously engaged in digging the hole except for the occasional rest. Sometimes, Old Four would let others give him a hand when he felt tired. Soon, a bottomless robbery hole was presented before them.

“Be careful! It would be a layer of combustible gas. We shall release the gas first. Old Three, bring me the sulphuric acid!” Zhang Shaohong shouted. He immediately took out a glass bottle, and dripped the liquid inside onto the soil with a dense column of smock curling out.

The yellow smoke emitted for ten minutes or so and showed no sign of stopping, which seemed to know no bounds. The sky above the low land was dyed yellow accordingly.

Fortunately, it was windy here. The wind cleared much of the smoke.

When the smoke drifted away completely, Zhang Shaohong returned to the robbery hole. He lighted up a miner’s lamp, and crawled into the hole easily with the other three following close at his heels.

The size of the small robbery hole was only half meter in diameter, where arms cannot be fully stretched out. But it was not a problem for Zhang Shaohong. He crawled down to the bottom of the robbery hole in a very fast speed. Then a dark place came into view. Zhang Shaohong took several light sticks from his pocket, and threw them down into the tomb. Suddenly, these light sticks flared, momentarily illuminating almost half of the tomb chamber.

With the flickering of a light stick, he saw a flash of something like horrible eyes on a pale face staring at him. But when he looked carefully at it, nothing was there.

“Damn it! Things get weird!”

“Old Two and Old Three, take out your knives! Old Four, black donkey’s hoof! (It is said that the black donkey’s hoof can subdue ghost and demons.) There would be ghosts here!” Zhang said, laying his hand on the handle of his knife. Then he threw some light sticks again into the tomb in order to make sure that there was no trap. After that, he swung down to the tomb and curled himself up like a kitty the moment he landed on the ground with an imperceptible snap. The other three followed suit.

They kept alert for a while and nothing strange happened. Then they gazed round the tomb nervously. The tomb chamber which seemed dim and gloomy brightened suddenly when Zhang Shaohong lighted candles in the corner.

It was a hundred-meter-diameter tomb chamber with polished stony floor. The chamber was empty with an isolated huge shrine displayed in the center.

“Rustle…”

Suddenly, a scuffling noise came into their ears. The noise was an excellent likeness of the sound of hundreds of ghosts whispering and thousands of venomous snakes sticking out their tongues.

Strangely, the sound was so harsh and noisy as if it did not travel through the air. The sound seemed to be stuffed into their ears by an invisible hand. However hard they tried to avoid it, nothing seemed to work!

The sound went up and down. After a while, it died away abruptly.

The four brothers in the tomb chamber got soaked to the skin. To tell the truth, Zhang Shaohong was very worried and frightened at that moment for this bizarre situation, which was new for an experienced person like him. In this dim world, he always had the feeling that something followed him with a disturbing rustle noise coming out of nowhere.

Many wired relief sculptures of supernatural beings etched into the wall of the tomb chamber were so vivid as if you were glared at by those demons and monsters wherever you stood.

“Old Two, come here. Can you figure out what these relief sculptures want to express?” asked Zhang Shaohong.

Old Two was a fellow of the green woods and travelled through everywhere, which gave him tremendous breadth of experience.

“I’ve got some ideas about that, but…the facial close-ups of supernatural beings became popular after the Warring States Period. Supernatural beings at that time were widely accepted as messagers from the Heaven. Their images could only be carved on the most precious bronze tripods. That is to say, ordinarily, their images couldn’t be depicted so horrible! ”

“Could it be the truth that the tomb owner once lived in the dynasty that we don’t know?” Old Two said thoughtfully.

“Wait… Wait!” All of a sudden, his pupils contracted sharply and his eyes opened wider and wider. His finger pointed to the wall and shouted, “Big brother! These relief sculptures… are alive!”

Old Two saw clearly that the relief sculpture right in front of him turned from a fierce King Kong with glaring eyes, for a split second, to a gloating one.

“What?” Zhang Shaohong lit a light stick immediately to check what happened, but nothing strange was found there.

“Clatter!”

Suddenly, a burst of rapid footsteps broke the silence from the back of the four brothers. A pale face flashed by and disappeared in the darkness soon.

“Big Brother!”

“Calm down!” He forced himself to be calm and said, “Zhuge Liang is well-known for his tricks. ‘Cut the facial skin when the person is still alive, preserve the skin into the rough salt of western Sichuan and fix it onto the relief sculpture.’ Keep calm, don’t panic, or we will be trapped here!”

Then, he sent up several flares to give more light to the tomb chamber. Everyone felt a little bit relieved.

Old Two was still pale, because he was the nearest to the relief sculptures and he saw it clearly that the sculpture made a human-like expression, which meant that it could think like us!

However, he couldn’t breathe a word to anyone. Otherwise, everyone would be frightened to death.

Old Three unwrapped the package in an unhurried way, and freed a goose from it. The four brothers followed the goose step by step, approaching the shrine in the center.

Under the light of flares, Zhang Shaohong found that the shrine, about two meters high, was copper casting, and it had long since been covered with dark-green copper rust, which blurred the duration of the shrine.

Like the wall, the shrine was carved with many gloomy faces of various expressions, like crying face, smiling face, angry face and sad face. Every face carved on the shrine was extremely lifelike and even the hair on the face was discernible. It seemed that these faces were brought to life. They were depicted so vividly that a casual observer might believe that many faces grew from the bronze shrine!

“Shall we lift it up? I guess funeral objects are right there!” Old Four said haltingly. The Temple of Marquis Wu was said to be the tomb of Zhuge Liang officially, however, his bones were likely to be buried right here in this tomb. If there wasn’t the Master’s map, it was impossible for them to find this tomb. Although nobody believed that Zhuge Liang, a symbol of resourcefulness and wisdom in Chinese folklore, did not set the deadliest trap in his own tomb, Old Four was still unwilling to give up.

“Wait…Let me tell the fortune.”

Old Two squinted at the shrine, and then he tossed six Chinese ancient copper coins and all the coins came down tails, a rare ill omen.

“Big Brother, we’d better give up! We can’t afford to offend the evil thing in the tomb!”

“Come on, Old Two. Are you done with this fortune-telling bullshit? I don’t believe there’s anything intimidating in the shrine!” cursed Old Three.

“We must do that! Old Two, you stand there and cover for us, if you’re afraid. As for the dead thing or ghost, shoot them to the nether world!” Zhang muttered softly, thinking how they could return empty-handed.

After saying that, these three brothers rolled up their sleeves and lifted one side of the shrine with the hope of overturning it.

“Bang!”

A sudden loud noise made them jump out of their skin. The shrine which had been slightly lifted returned to its original condition. Zhang Shaohong looked back and saw Old Two holding a smoking gun with his body shivering and face turning pale. Obviously, he even didn’t know when the gun went off.

“You idiot! Just stand there and keep watch! Why you shot?” zhang Shaohong kicked Old Two angrily.

“I…I…I saw a shadow creeping from the crack of the shrine…It must be a ghost! … It’s a demonic shrine!” His teeth were chattering with fear, and sweat stood in beads on his forehead.

“Was it the skin relief sculpture?” Zhang Shaohong asked, holding back his anger. He just had a feeling that there was something wrong. Old Two was very prudent and he himself was a fortuneteller. How could a fortuneteller possibly be so scared of a skin relief sculpture?

“I…I saw Old Four…That shadow was just the same as Old Four…”

With this said, they knew everything. All of the brothers looked pale and Old Four felt that his blood froze when other three brothers stared at him.

“Or…We give up right now?”

“No! This is the real tomb of Zhuge Liang! The shrine looks weird, and it certainly hides some deep dark secrets! And we have already lifted the shrine slightly. We can feel the danger if it really exists. Damned faces are everywhere! The thing that Old Three saw just now may be a little bit like Old Four. That’s normal to make a mistake in the dim light.”

Zhang Shaohong was lost in thought for a long time and decided to open that shrine finally. They would make fortune if rare treasure was really found there.

The four brothers looked at each other and lifted the shrine again. Greedy and gluttonous, they didn’t notice that the flame of candles had become dark green. Old Four began to wear a horrible expression. His face contorted with the mouth and eyes twisted, all of which made his face hideously diabolic. But no one noticed that. At that moment when the shrine was fully open, the thing that sat quietly in the shrine made everyone’s hair stand on end.

“Hah-hah…”

Old Four, under the flickering green candle light, broke into a ghastly smile, which scared the other three.

Zhang Shaohong was about to pick up the shovel when he was suddenly caught and fell into the shrine! At that moment, Old Four staggered to Old Three, grabbed his neck and bit down…