Chapter Sixty-Eight: Bygone Days (1)

This time, I chose not to press for answers, for I knew that by now, Father would surely tell me something. So, we all sat in the darkness, listening to each other’s breathing, maintaining our silence.

I don’t know how much time had passed before Father finally spoke again, his voice slow and measured: “Yuanzi, your father never imagined things would turn out like this. Ah... when those men—Tudogou’s lot—came to me and said they were coming here, I’d already decided not to leave. Apart from your grandfather, I never told anyone about this. Before setting out, I arranged everything for myself, prepared for the end, just waiting to perish here alongside those men.”

“So that’s why you didn’t bring Er Lengzi or Qin Feng with you?” Hearing my father say he’d prepared for his own death, a wave of sadness swept over me.

“Mm… I intended to die here, so of course I wouldn’t drag anyone else down with me. Cough, cough…” As he spoke, Father began to cough once more.

Fatty spoke up then, “Master Yuan, this is your family business, and I, Fatty, shouldn’t interfere, but from what you’re saying, everything we encountered in the main burial chamber—was that all arranged by you?”

Fatty’s words were tactful, yet I could tell he was already angry. If Father had planned from the start to bring everyone to their deaths with him, that’s something no one could accept.

Father caught his breath and continued, “You’re only half right. What we faced in the main chamber had nothing to do with me, but I did know how to avoid those things. Cao family’s Jin, you can only blame yourself for being a tomb raider. If you’d kept to yourself, avoided getting involved, nothing would’ve happened to you. Still, you’re truly lucky—ha ha ha—to have survived.”

After Father finished, I heard Fatty breathing heavily, clearly infuriated. My heart raced with anxiety; Father was still on Fatty’s back, and if Fatty lost his temper now, things could get ugly.

“Fatty, this isn’t the time to argue. Let’s sort things out once we’re out of here,” I said hurriedly.

Fatty took a long while before finally swallowing his anger. He snorted, “I’m not unreasonable, Master Yuan. Since you have your difficulties, now’s the time to tell us everything, so my troubles aren’t for nothing.”

I sighed in relief, but realized that with Fatty’s firmness and my gentle urging, Father would have to reveal the cause of all this.

“Heh, heh, heh,” Father chuckled. “First, let me down.”

After Father spoke, we sat down beneath the stone wall, forming a small circle. Peanut placed Qin Feng where he could reach him easily. It was then I noticed my eyes had adjusted to the darkness; though there was no light, it was no longer pitch black, and I could just make out the silhouettes of the others.

Father took a sip of water, then turned to us and asked, “Did you notice anything strange about this Han-style chamber as you came through?”

Fatty rattled off a jumble of observations, mostly what he’d already told me. After thinking it over, I said, “Aside from the stretch we just passed, the earlier parts didn’t feel like an ancient tomb. Hard to say why—just felt odd.”

“Exactly,” Father suddenly smiled at me in our dialect. “Heh, the passage you came up with the black lacquered iron door, the section we just walked, and the main chamber opposite—all these are tombs. But those towers, secret rooms, plazas… hmph, those are all things that grew.”

“Grew?” Fatty asked, puzzled.

I was baffled as well. “Father, what do you mean ‘grew’? What are you saying?”

Peanut spoke calmly then, “He means that everything we saw outside wasn’t there originally—it grew out from beneath us, like creeping vines.”

Grew out? My mind went blank for a moment, taking nearly half a minute to confirm I hadn’t misheard.

“That’s too incredible,” I said, unable to keep the tremor from my voice. Such tall towers, such vast plazas, those pillars… If my old teachers weren’t mad, I remembered these were lifeless, inorganic things. You could talk about erosion, but discussing their growth and development as if they were alive—that would take a certain courage, indeed.

“Though the Ancient Kingdom of Ye Lang was mysterious, it was just a small state at the time. When turmoil struck, no matter how capable the Ye Lang king was, he couldn’t carry all his treasures away. Besides, they were fleeing for their lives; building such vast structures would have been impossible. Even the tomb passages, chambers, and main burial chamber behind and beneath us would have been extremely difficult for the Ye Lang king to construct. There might have been other forces at work here.”

I rather enjoyed hearing such stories—when I was young, I’d often cling to my grandfather, asking him to tell me tales. But Fatty was growing impatient.

“Master Yuan, please get to the point. I can’t stand these tales passed down through generations,” he grumbled.

Father ignored him and continued, “The first group to enter the Ye Lang king’s main burial chamber was your grandfather’s crew. That was over thirty years ago, a chaotic era when most people in the underworld met tragic ends—especially men like your grandfather, digging up graves. If caught, it meant certain death. Our family couldn’t even afford a proper meal, and people came daily to arrest your grandfather. He had no choice but to take his men and hide. Eventually, they found this mountain.”

They chose this mountain for its remoteness, hoping to avoid detection. But after hiding for more than half a month, they discovered the ancient tomb. Though they were fugitives, the sight of a tomb was irresistible to any tomb raider, so your grandfather led them into the main burial chamber. At first, all was well, but when your grandfather picked up the ‘Blue Blood Dragon Pattern,’ disaster struck...

Father paused, seeming weary. Several minutes passed before he spoke again: “Most of them died; when it was all over, only three remained—including your grandfather. Trapped in the main chamber, they thought escape was impossible, so they simply sat and waited for death. Yet when your grandfather awoke, he discovered that where once was a bare cliff outside the chamber, a stone-paved road had appeared, leading to a cave on the opposite cliff. The three, overjoyed, rushed across and into the cave. Two days later, they crawled out, barely alive.”

After that ordeal, your grandfather intended never to return, but when things improved slightly, he couldn’t resist recalling the burial goods in the main chamber. It was just the start of the reform era, and everyone was thinking about how to make money, so your grandfather brought his men back here.

This time, however, they were scared half to death. The cave that once saved them was gone, replaced by a stone-paved passageway. Furthermore, murals and reliefs appeared on the stone walls. Normally, such things would be assumed to have been constructed after their escape, but as tomb raiders, they could instantly tell old from new. The murals and reliefs in the passage were unmistakably from the Western Han period—no imitation could match them.

Though frightened, they entered the main chamber and took some burial goods. It was then your grandfather discerned some clues in the chamber, so nothing else happened. However, no one dared touch the ‘Blue Blood Dragon Pattern’ again.

In the years that followed, your grandfather returned several times, always for the burial goods. Yet every time they descended, they found new stone structures outside, and no one knew why. Once, your grandfather even stayed there for a while, but still found no anomaly. So the only explanation was that the tomb itself was growing.

I asked, “Then why did grandfather install an iron door in the tomb below?”

“Er… I don’t know. Cough, cough… He never told me the details.”

From Father’s tone, I knew he wasn’t telling the truth. But I couldn’t be sure if it was because he didn’t want Peanut to know certain things, so I didn’t press further. Instead, I asked, “What does all this have to do with me? What does it mean that ‘only I can traverse freely’?”

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