The Dragon Ridge Tombs

by Tianxia Bachang

  Nothing had changed. The eerie stone sarcophagus was still in its corner. We all got our flashlights out and shined them across the floor, looking for our tunnel.

  Apart from the six empty plinths and the coffin, there was nothing at all in this room. It was an impossible situation, a Western Zhou sarcophagus in a Tang tomb.

  Kai pointed at the hole we’d just come through. “That’s the only opening. Wasn’t that the original tunnel?”

  I pointed my flashlight at it. Yes, that was definitely the hole we’d first entered by. So why did it now lead to a passageway, rather than our tunnel? As I tried to figure it out, Gold Tooth exclaimed, “Tianyi, Kai, look at the side of the coffin. There’s a…staircase.”

  We went over, and sure enough, a wide staircase was suddenly visible, each step consisting of a single strip of stone. I pointed my flashlight up to see where it led, but the stairs continued into the darkness, more than ten meters up the wall.

  “It feels like this place really is haunted,” I said. “Tunnels turning into passageways, Tang graves sprouting Western Zhou coffins, staircases appearing out of nowhere. I say we’ve got little to lose by climbing the stairs and seeing where they go. If this is a Western Zhou tomb, they’ll lead to the top level. Maybe then we’ll be able to get out through the extraction tunnel.”

  “Okay, I’ll go first. You two follow my lead!” Kai said with renewed spirit. He bounded up a few steps, then stopped. “Tianyi, what tunnel were you talking about? What does it do?”

  “The extraction tunnel?” As I came up the stairs behind him, helping Gold Tooth, I explained, “These old tombs are carved out of mountains. So first you have to hollow out the rock—the extraction tunnel was how all the debris was brought up to the surface. It got sealed after the interment, and the slaves and craftsmen were usually buried alive inside. If we’re lucky, the workers will have been clever enough to leave themselves a secret escape route, and maybe we can use that to get out of this godforsaken place too.”

  We’d been walking about five minutes now, and I was starting to feel something was wrong. Then I saw it. When we’d started climbing, I’d noticed the second step had a crescent-shaped notch in it, probably gouged out by mistake during construction. Twenty or thirty steps later, I’d noticed another one and thought nothing of it, but after that I started counting. And now it was clear—the crescent-shaped flaw appeared every twenty-three steps.

  This was no coincidence; we were climbing in circles. I yelled at the other two to stop—there was no point; we’d never reach the top.

  We beat a hasty retreat, but it seemed there was no downward way out either. Descending was easier, and we went a lot faster, but even after we’d been going back for longer than we’d spent coming up, there was still no sign of the ground. We’d lost our way back to the burial chamber.

  We were all breathing hard by now, especially Gold Tooth, who sounded like a broken accordion. I called a halt, and Kai plonked himself down, mopping at the beads of sweat on his forehead. “Tianyi, a few more hours of this and we’ll probably starve to death down here,” he said.

  Our backpacks had been full of food when we’d set out, but because we’d needed to make space for our equipment, not to mention the treasure we expected to bring back, we’d left all our rations at the temple. We had a bottle of water each, and that was it. Now that Kai reminded us, all our stomachs started rumbling violently.

  This was more dangerous than ever. By blundering onto these stairs, we’d allowed ourselves to get caught by a ghost-wall and were now doomed to go in circles until we managed to break free. I cursed myself for being so impetuous.

  “Don’t blame yourself, Tianyi,” said Kai. “If we weren’t trapped here, we’d be trapped in the room downstairs. Let’s just think how to get out of here.”

  “The stair with the crescent-shaped notch comes up every twenty-three steps, whether we’re going up or down. So there’s no way out in either direction.”

  “That’s it, then.” Kai flopped onto his back. “We’re done for. We’ll just lie here and die, and the next group of reverse dippers can find our bones.”

  A couple of tears trickled down Gold Tooth’s face. “My poor eighty-year-old mother, and my little eighteen-year-old niece. I’ll probably never see them again. If I make it out alive, I swear I’ll leave this profession.”

  I remembered with a pang that I’d meant to call my parents earlier but never got around to it. We hadn’t spoken in a while, and I wondered if they were worried about me.

  Kai, meanwhile, took affront at Gold Tooth’s words. “What are you whining about? At least die like a man. If you don’t stop it, I’ll rip out your gold tooth.”

  Gold Tooth valued his gold tooth more than anything else, so this threat made him clap his hands over his mouth. He protested in a muffled voice, “Kai, we’re all dead men here. Kindly leave my corpse intact. No waiting till I’m weak with hunger to pounce on my tooth.”

  “Enough out of you two,” I snapped. “No one’s starving to death. If we have to die, let’s at least go out in a blaze of glory.”

  “Easy for you to say,” Kai retorted. “Where would you find glory in this place?”

  “We could fling ourselves down the stairs. If they really are endless, we’ll fall forever.”

  “I think what Tianyi means to say is that we’re not doomed just yet, so we shouldn’t give up hope.” Gold Tooth peered anxiously at me. “Right, Tianyi? That’s what you’re driving at?”

  “Be quiet and let me think,” I said, exasperated. “Ever since we came in here, it’s like we’ve hit ghost-wall after ghost-wall. No matter where we turn, something’s blocking our path. Gold Tooth, do you know anything about ghost-walls?”

  Gold Tooth shrugged. “Not much. There were a few cases around Di’anmen Road some years back. People got so worked up they didn’t dare go outside after midnight. Otherwise you might get caught and have to wander up and down the same street until sunrise. And I’ve heard stories from other towns too. But is this really a ghost-wall? Normally they just make you walk in circles. I’ve never heard of anything this powerful. Besides, we’re carrying so many charms and amulets, spirits shouldn’t be able to affect us.”

  “Have you forgotten, Tianyi?” Kai butted in. “You always say places with good feng shui won’t accumulate negative energy. So how could this be a ghost-wall?”

  I shook my head. “I don’t think it is one. I just wanted to rule it out as a possibility. In that case, I think I know what’s going on. Just don’t be frightened at what I’m about to tell you.”

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  “If the ghost-wall didn’t scare us, I don’t know what will,” Kai said. “Come on, out with it. Even if we’re going to die, I want to explain to people in the afterlife how it happened.”

  “I’m just worried this won’t make sense to you. But I’ll tell you what I think, and you can tell me if it sounds plausible.”

  They turned their full attention on me, but I was in no hurry to explain my theory. First, I had a question for Gold Tooth. “In the village near Coiled Snake Hill, you saw a damaged stone tablet. Then there were pictures of court ladies in the first room we came to, and a magnificent burial chamber. All those were in the Tang dynasty style, right?”

  “Yes, I’m absolutely certain those were Tang. The craftsmanship, the design, the clothes in the painting—there’s no way I’m mistaken.”

  “And yet in the middle of a Tang dynasty tomb we saw a Western Zhou sarcophagus. And we saw a passageway with Western Zhou murals. And back in the tunnel, the wall that came out of nowhere was Western Zhou too.”

  “That’s right!” Gold Tooth exclaimed. “So that must mean ghosts are at work.”

  “I’d say a rather particular ghost.”

  “A particular ghost? Do you mean the ghost of whoever’s buried in this tomb?” Gold Tooth asked
. “But would that be a Tang or Western Zhou person?”

  I waved that away. “Maybe I didn’t express myself clearly—I shouldn’t have used the word ‘ghost.’ Not something supernatural, but something that can be explained with physics. Plenty of scholars are researching this phenomenon, though there isn’t a particular term for it yet. Let’s just call them ‘spirits’ for now.”

  “What’s the difference between ghosts and spirits?” Kai looked puzzled. “Tianyi, whose spirit are you talking about?”

  “Not whose spirit. I’m talking about the spirit of the Western Zhou tomb, not the sort that gets left behind after a person dies. The Western Zhou tomb is itself a spirit. What we’re faced with is a Western Zhou spirit grave in an abandoned Tang structure.”

  Gold Tooth was starting to understand and nodded vigorously. “There are stories about ghost houses and ghost ships, not to mention ghost towers and ghost cars. So it’s possible that what we’ve encountered here is a ghost grave.”

  Kai looked bewildered. “Can either of you make sense?”

  “Look, I’ve been in the antiques business for many years,” said Gold Tooth, “and there’s something I’ve come to believe deeply. Every exquisite artifact gathers the blood and sweat of countless artisans, and as time goes on, it starts to acquire a soul, or you could say a spirit. If it gets destroyed, and is no longer in the world, that spirit remains. That’s why so many ships, long after they’ve been wrecked and sunk to the bottom of the sea, will still be visible on the surface, steaming along their old routes.”

  “Oh,” said Kai. “When we saw the stone tablet, didn’t I say it was the ghost of itself? It seems I had the answer all along, and you two idiots didn’t pick up on it.”

  “This reminds me of something,” said Gold Tooth. “A relative of mine came to Beijing on business. He checked into his hotel and was given the keys to room 303. He got back that night after twelve, so exhausted he could barely keep his eyes open. He stumbled up three flights of stairs. The door to 303 was ajar. He didn’t think anything of it, just went in. There was a cup of warm water on the table, so he took a big sip, then crashed onto the bed. The next morning, the porter shook him awake. He’d been asleep on the third-floor landing.”

  “You think he saw a ghost building?” said Kai.

  “Yes. At first he thought he’d been sleepwalking, but then they went to room 303, and the door was locked, nothing had been touched, and the bed hadn’t been slept in at all. He left without understanding what on earth had happened. On his next visit, he ended up at the same hotel. Chatting with the receptionist, he learned that the hotel had burned down some years ago and been rebuilt unchanged, only a little larger. Everything else was exactly the same, down to the room numbers. Ever since, a few times every year, some guests go into their rooms at night, only to wake up in the corridor. No one really paid attention—it was just a bit weird. When my relative told me this story over dinner, I chalked it up to another funny story. And look at us now. In a ghost grave.”

  Gold Tooth turned to me. “That was impressive,” I told him. “I would never have put two and two together like that.”

  “What else could explain one tomb being stacked on top of another?”

  Two tombs, from different eras, jostling for space on the same desirable spot. That happened, of course. Really good feng shui locations are hard to come by.

  This was the key point, and it explained everything else. Maybe the Western Zhou period was when this bit of the valley was first recognized for its importance. Feng shui wasn’t as developed as it would be during the Tang dynasty, but humanity has always sought to better itself, and the very best minds of any era would definitely have discovered this place.

  So some Western Zhou king died and was buried here, in a stone coffin carved with faces. The tomb was roughly as we’d seen it—tall external walls, three stories within. The lowest level was used for storing grave goods (probably a lot of livestock and pottery, going by other tombs of the period); the middle one would have held the stone coffin and nothing else (even if the deceased had precious personal items, they’d simply have gone into the coffin with him); and the topmost level would be connected to the extraction tunnel. And right now, we were stuck between the top and middle floors.

  The owner of the stone coffin would have rested peacefully here for a thousand years, but then sometime before the Tang dynasty, for reasons we might never know—war, grave robbers, political intrigue—this tomb had been utterly destroyed.

  Then the Tang dynasty came along, and the emperor’s feng shui master identified this part of Dragon Ridge as a prime burial place, and so it was excavated to build a mausoleum for an important female member of his household.

  Halfway through construction, the remnants of the first tomb were discovered. Abandoning a partly built royal tomb is extremely inauspicious, quite apart from the money, labor, and materials already expended. Then again, having two tombs in the same spot was also unlucky, even if one of them had been all but eradicated. In this situation, not even a feng shui master could resolve the impasse. More likely, the workers and feng shui expert worked together to fabricate some version of events that could fool the emperor, so he’d come up with more money to shift the tomb to another site.

  The sarcophagus that had suddenly appeared and the stone wall blocking the tunnel—those things were the older tomb reasserting itself. The candle hadn’t actually vanished—a wall had appeared on top of it.

  Gold Tooth agreed, then creased his forehead. “There’s one thing I still don’t understand. So there’s the spirit of a Western Zhou tomb—how come the Tang dynasty builders discovered this only when they were almost done? As soon as we stepped into the tunnel, that wall appeared out of nowhere. That’s a bit of a coincidence.”

  He was right; that was something I couldn’t explain. Surely this was more than bad luck—had the ghost grave somehow chosen us to appear to? Strictly speaking, although it could be seen and touched, this wasn’t a physical object, only the spirit of the tomb stuck here on earth. It didn’t exist in a permanent state, but appeared one portion at a time. Would the whole tomb eventually reveal itself, or would it only ever be partially present? We still had no idea.

  “This is the head of the dragon meridian, a source of clear energy,” I said to Gold Tooth. “The tomb would have soaked up all that energy, and even after it was destroyed, it would have remained within the meridian. There’s nothing odd about that—the only peculiar thing is why the ghost grave appeared at this time. In other words, did we activate its appearance, or was there some other cause?”

  “As far as we’ve seen,” said Gold Tooth, “at least three groups of people have come in here since the original tomb was destroyed. Two of those groups—including us—were from the order of gold hunters, several decades apart, and both encountered this ghost grave, getting trapped inside in the process. The third group was the one that built this Tang dynasty tomb. The group must have been fairly large, since Tang tombs were huge projects. And it must have taken them a long time to finish. Yet they discovered the Western Zhou grave only toward the end of the process. Why?”

  “That’s right,” I said, “so it must be a particular action that makes the Western Zhou tomb appear, rather than a question of time. But we weren’t even halfway down the tunnel when that stone wall materialized and blocked our way back.”

  “I guess the original tomb was completely eliminated,” mused Gold Tooth. “Not one brick was left—that’s why the Tang dynasty crew thought they’d been lucky enough to find a large natural cavern at a good feng shui point. Then later, the ghost grave showed up. They, we, and this first gold hunter must have all done the same thing. But what?”

  “At least we know what happened now,” I said. “We also know that whatever it was, there must be a way to undo it. The people who came before us must have thought of this too, and they managed to
get out. Now we just need to do whatever they did.”

  “Well, it has to be something ancient people could have done,” Kai said.

  “You’re actually making sense, Kai. For once.”

  Kai grinned. “Hunger helps me think.”

  “We can narrow it further,” said Gold Tooth. “It’s something that happened only toward the end of the Tang construction, but it’s also something we did almost right away when we entered.”

  “Which is?” Kai asked. “You two are supposed to be the smart ones. Let me give you another clue. What do we have in our supplies that the ancients would have had?” He looked from me to Gold Tooth. “Candles.”

  “Candles?” The thought had crossed my mind, but then I’d dismissed it. Surely the construction hadn’t taken place in darkness—they must have worked by candlelight right from the start. Of course, we had no way of knowing the details of what people did back then—perhaps they really did have some weird superstition about not using candles at the start of a project. That seemed unlikely, though. And surely someone would have recorded that in a book somewhere.

  As my mind whirred, the geese started squawking and fighting. “Be quiet!” Kai shouted at them. “Or I’ll roast the two of you feathered idiots.” The birds ignored him and kept gabbling at each other. “What a commotion!”

  A lightbulb went off in my head. “Kai! Geese! The geese!” I yelled.

  “Do you know what Tang dynasty workers did just before they finished building a tomb? They had an animal sacrifice—three types of livestock, three types of fowl. It was meant to appease all the lingering spirits so they’d leave the incoming dead person in peace.”

  “Ah!” yelled Gold Tooth. “So you’re saying it was the geese that made the ancient tomb appear?”

  “Yes! Why didn’t I think of this before? The gold hunter who came before us would have brought ducks or chickens along to test the air quality—that’s standard gold-hunting practice. That’s why he got trapped in here too.”