The Lost Tomb Vol. 1

Chapter 63: Chain

Zhang Qiling had never seen such a thing before nor did he expect to see it again in the future. Granted, he had seen zombies that could run and jump, but he had never seen one that could smile. He tensed up, hurriedly took a step back, and prepared himself to deal with the corpse's next move. But what he didn't expect was that the mummy's hand, which was originally pointing towards the sky, suddenly moved and turned to point horizontally towards the east. At the same time, the whole room suddenly went dark as the luminous night pearls on the ceiling mysteriously went out.

The group had turned off their flashlights when they first came into the room in order to save the batteries, so when the room suddenly became dark, several of the students screamed in fright. But Zhang Qiling found that although the room was dark now, it wasn't to the point where he couldn't see anything in front of him. He looked up and found that the four night pearls closest to the four walls hadn't gone out. Like dim street lights on a dark road, they only lit up a small area around them. At this time, Li Sidi's trembling voice came from the side, "On the wall...there's a...face!"

Zhang Qiling shuddered and quickly turned his head to look. On the eastern side, a huge pale face formed from light and shadow had appeared on the yellow brick wall that was illuminated by the night pearl.

Zhang Qiling knew for sure that this was another trick. Already feeling a little annoyed with it all, he jumped off the stone platform and walked to the brick wall on the eastern side, finding that it was actually a shadow painting on the wall. Such paintings were formed by carving deep grooves onto the wall and then directing a light source towards them at a fixed angle. If the angle was just right, the shadows from the grooves would form a pattern. If the angle was wrong, however, the painting wouldn't appear at all. Since these shadowy lines looked very strange, it was easy to imagine that they looked like a terrifying face in high-stress situations.

He looked at the painting very carefully and couldn't help but feel surprised. The picture in front of him seemed to be a narrative painting depicting the moment when the Heavenly Palace on the Clouds was just completed. He saw that the so-called heavenly palace was actually built on a very steep mountain range. The top of the mountain was covered in clouds and mist, which enveloped the whole palace and gave people a feeling that it was floating on the clouds. Zhang Qiling looked at the mountain peak and found that it seemed to be covered in snow. This meant that it was at a very high altitude, but he didn't know which mountain it was.

He turned his head and found that there were more shadow paintings on the other three walls. He hurriedly turned to the brick wall to the south and started examining it, finding that this picture depicted a lot of caves on the cliff below the heavenly palace that were connected together by plank bridges. A group of workers were using a "well sweep"(1) (essentially a hoist) to pull a huge coffin up the cliff cave by cave. The funeral procession was lined up behind it, climbing up the plank road with difficulty.

Ah, is this heavenly palace actually a tomb, Zhang Qiling wondered. But who's in the coffin?

He moved on and found that the picture on the west wall was even more strange—the plank road on the cliff was now covered in raging flames. The soldiers guarding the tomb must have burned down the only entrance to the heavenly palace after the funeral ceremony was completed in order to ensure the safety of the tomb. In this way, they could basically prevent all small-scale grave-robbing attempts. It didn't matter whether you were from the southern or northern school of grave robbing, no one would have the ability to go to a place with such a high altitude. Climbing a hundred-meter-high cliff just to rob a tomb was not only impossible but unnecessary.

Zhang Qiling had never encountered such a tomb as far as he could remember so he couldn't help feeling surprised. He hurriedly ran to the last painting and froze in shock when he saw it. This painting turned out to be surprisingly simple: the heavenly palace on top of the mountain had suddenly disappeared, leaving only a field of white snow in its place. Not only that, but even the cliff was covered in white. Although it wasn't a very vivid picture, Zhang Qiling already knew that this must have been an avalanche.