Chapter Thirty: The Legend of the Archaeological Team (Please Subscribe, Please Vote)

The fat man immediately bristled. “Damn it, so after all that, you just want me here to do the hard labor? I—”

“Hey, hey, hey.” I hurriedly stopped him. “That’s not really any different from your current job.”

The fat man thought about it and found he could not argue, but he still glared at Professor Chen with great displeasure.

I quickly asked Professor Chen again, “Then what exactly is a ghost marquis?”

Professor Chen thought for a moment. After quite a while, he said, “If I had to put it into words, a ghost marquis is really a kind of ghost.”

“A ghost?” I lowered my voice without thinking.

Professor Chen looked extremely complicated, as though he did not quite know how to explain it to me.

“Well, saying it’s a ghost is not entirely right either, because a ghost marquis actually does not exist. Yet among the archaeological teams all over the country, there are countless legends about it.”

I was baffled. It felt as if Professor Chen were trying to fool me. Does not exist? Something that does not exist means you can make up anything you like.

“It all goes back to the years of reform and opening up,” Professor Chen said, recalling it as he spoke. “Back then, major projects were being launched in every field, and archaeology was no different. Many great tombs were discovered in those years. Looking back, we really were busy from dawn till night every single day. To be fair, in those days our archaeological teams were short on both funds and technology, so in practical work we even borrowed some methods from grave robbers for surveying and excavation. That made the excavation of ancient tombs very fast, but the clearing work afterward was much more complicated.”

After archaeologists discover an ancient tomb, the usual procedure is to excavate it, then erect a shelter over it, and have the clearing crew use all kinds of small tools to remove the funerary objects from the tomb bit by bit.

If the burial chamber was well preserved, that was manageable. But if the tomb had collapsed, the clearing work would become extraordinarily tedious.

“That was probably when the ghost marquis first appeared. The earliest report, so they say, came from a noble mass burial tomb in Shaanxi. The tomb complex discovered that time was very large; the tents alone stretched six or seven hundred meters, and the initial clearing took half a year. By the time the workers began clearing the largest burial chamber, strange things started happening.

“Whenever they worked overtime at night, the cleaners would hear extra footsteps around them, and sometimes they would even hear people talking. It happened night after night. That group was terrified. If the organization had not been pressing so hard, they certainly would never have gone in at night.

“But after a while, they gradually got used to it. When they heard footsteps or voices, they pretended not to hear anything and kept working with their heads down. Yet on the very last night of the clearing work, the cleaners who were in the ancient tomb that night somehow vanished without a trace. The others searched for days and still could not find them. Just when everyone was losing heart, some people were shocked to discover that in the last main burial chamber, there was still a breathtaking antique hidden away there, an item whose value far exceeded all the relics cleared before.

“Originally, that was all there was to it. Anyone working in archaeology is bound to encounter strange things now and then. But in that same year, similar incidents occurred at archaeological sites all over the country. Some involved disappearances, others deaths. Most bizarre of all, wherever such things happened, some extraordinary relic would inevitably be found. We people on the archaeological teams seemed to be under a curse. If everything went smoothly, there was sure to be little reward. But as soon as such a strange incident occurred, by the end of the clearing work, a national treasure would turn up.

“Ah, that feeling is impossible to describe. In the years that followed, these incidents only became more and more frequent. After reviewing them, we found that those things seemed to share many similarities. For example, they would all appear in the main burial chamber. At first, they would let the archaeologists discover them. Most strangely of all, they always appeared near the most valuable relics, almost without exception.

“So we archaeologists gave that thing a name: ghost marquis. It means a ghost that lurks around precious funerary objects.”

With that, Professor Chen sighed. “But in the end, what the ghost marquis actually looks like, or whether it truly exists at all, none of us knows. Yet those things really did happen. So later on, whenever anything bizarre occurred in an ancient tomb, we would all think it was the ghost marquis at work.”

The fat man suddenly cut in. “A thing buried underground for a long time will naturally develop some kind of spirit. If its luck is good, that spirit only causes a few strange phenomena. If it’s bad, killing people is nothing unusual. Professor Chen, I understand what you’re saying, but why was Zhang Yadong so certain that the ghost marquis was among us?”

Professor Chen once again put on a troubled expression. “That’s entirely because of some things that happened the last time we entered the main burial chamber. I can’t really explain it to you right now. Even if I said it, you might not believe it... Well, only after we reach the main burial chamber and you see the conditions there will you understand why.”

The fat man and I exchanged a glance. Neither of us spoke at once. I knew Professor Chen was really urging us to keep moving deeper in. But with so many questions still unresolved, I truly could not feel at ease going farther in.

The fat man, however, said, “So you really dug a tunnel into that main burial chamber?”

“That’s right. Whatever we do now, the first thing is to find that chamber,” Professor Chen said with a nod.

“Hey, Professor Chen, since you already dug the tunnel, why didn’t you just lead us through it when you came back this time?” I asked.

I had expected him to be stumped, but he answered at once.

“It is indeed possible to reach the main burial chamber through the tunnel, but there is nothing there except a set of coffins and some relics. There is no snow crane feather fan, and we also can’t find my three students. The structure of that main chamber is extremely strange.”

I could roughly understand what Professor Chen meant, but I was still skeptical. “You mean that chamber doesn’t lead to the tomb passage or the underground palace, or rather, that the route has some restrictions, right?”

“Yes, exactly.” Professor Chen nodded at me.

The fat man laughed. “So even if we get there and, by some miracle, find those three people and Zhuge Liang’s fan, how are we supposed to get out through that tunnel in the main burial chamber?”

Although we did not know the exact structure of the main chamber, according to Professor Chen, its entrance had to be something that could neither be entered nor exited. What concerned the fat man and me most at the moment was actually the way out. If we could not even get into the main burial chamber, then whether Professor Chen and Zhuge Xuan had dug a tunnel would not matter, true or false. From that standpoint, whether we should continue taking Professor Chen and Zhuge Xuan with us was something the fat man and I had to reconsider.