The Dragon Ridge Tombs
Page 23
Suddenly, he removed his dark glasses. Our hearts thudded at the sight of his face: where his eyes ought to have been were cavernous sockets, with thick crimson veins like withered vines trailing from the empty holes. Even the eyelids were gone.
He sighed as he put his glasses back on. “Even after these many years, I can still remember every second of that trip, my last reverse dip. If anything could be called terrifying, it would be that!”
I knew that the fortune-teller made his living spinning lies, but something about the way he told this story made me think every word of it was true. Yet what was it about that place that made it so special? I’d never heard of a feng shui spot so secret no one could find it without a map. How powerful was King Xian’s tomb in Insect Valley?
Then I remembered Professor Qiu’s warning: that King Xian was devoted to the dark arts and hadn’t been an ordinary mortal. He fed his subjects to fish so that he could live longer, a practice that had apparently survived thousands of years. It was hard for a regular person to imagine such depths of evil.
Trying to find out more, Julie explained about the drowning tank and how the professor had said it was probably a relic from Yunnan. The blind man snorted, tugging at his beard. “Who is this Professor Qiu?” he said. “ ‘Professor’ sounds so grand. What does he profess? What does he know? He’s afraid to admit he doesn’t know, so he makes something up and misleads you.”
“What are you saying?” I asked. “You think Professor Qiu is wrong?”
“As far as I know, King Xian’s magic powers come from down south, from the region that is Myanmar today. He practiced a form of ancient Teng magic that’s still in use, though in a very diluted form.”
“Back in the day, I went with six others deep into the Yunnan hills. Before setting out, we asked around the nearby villages, trying to understand what we were in for. There is a strange tank that is part of Teng magic: it only works if you drown someone in it. The inscriptions on the outside are a spell that imprisons the soul in the body even after death. There’s no greater cruelty. When the fish swim in through the holes and feast on the flesh, they also eat the soul of the departed. The body is reduced to bare bones in no time at all, and the fish grow to a length of three feet in a couple of weeks. Soup made from these fish is incomparably delicious. There’s no greater taste.”
I had to put down my chopsticks. “The way you’re talking about it, I’m guessing you’ve tasted this soup yourself?”
“No way. If I had, I wouldn’t be alive now. After the fish in the tank are grown, they’re no longer fish, but creatures known as Teng. These Teng contain the vengeful spirits of the dead, which are a form of lethal poison that kills without leaving symptoms—the victims die with smiles on their faces as they recall the delicious flavor of the soup.”
Julie wrinkled her brow. “So that was the coffin maker’s secret. Whenever business was bad, he used Teng magic to kill people and increase demand for his coffins. I guess King Xian can’t have been a good person either.”
“The coffin maker knew a little Teng magic, but only a very little—you can’t compare him to King Xian.”
“Can you tell us more?” Julie pressed him. “What happened to you in King Xian’s grave? If you can give us useful information, I’ll consider getting Tianyi to let you have one of his antiques.”
“I don’t want your antiques!” snapped the fortune-teller. “But you asked nicely, so I’ll tell you. This is a painful memory, though….”
Back in Suzhou, the fortune-teller told us, he got the human-skin map restored, then deciphered the location of King Xian’s tomb. He was overjoyed—his reverse dips so far had not been successful, but this was certain to be a real coup. He assembled a number of old hands at the trade, from all the different schools—gold hunters and mountain movers among them. After looking at the map and discussing the matter, they decided that the best way to take on this job would be to dig their way into the tomb.
The most experienced among them thought King Xian’s tomb wouldn’t be too large, because his empire hadn’t been too powerful. The map showed it was in a valley and followed the natural contours of the land. In that period, the Dian nation kings were buried with bronze carriages and horses, terra-cotta warriors, all sorts of treasures. As the saying goes, the starving camel is still bigger than the horse, so they thought King Xian’s grave would still contain its share of good things.”
Even from that blurry map, they could see that the tomb was located on a tributary of the Lancang River called Snake Creek, which wound its way through a snowy peak called Dragon Mountain, though the locals had nicknamed it Sorrow Mound. It was 3,300 meters above sea level.
The creek meandered down into a river valley, which was filled with mist year round. There were a lot of bugs there, so it acquired the name Insect Valley. Hardly anyone lived around there. The landscape was lovely, and the air often filled with vibrantly colored butterflies. The white fog that descended could be deadly, though, so few people dared venture in. It was said that this was a “Teng cloud,” summoned by the late King Xian to keep his tomb safe. Only when a storm cleared the air was it safe to enter—otherwise the demon mist might engulf you.
Beyond this valley was a vast waterfall, referred to in feng shui terms as a water dragon. The human-skin map said this place was chosen by the king’s witch doctors, and the mist was called the “water dragon’s sickness.” Under its spell, your vision would blur, you’d start to feel faint, and bit by bit your body would shut down.
The great thing about this spot, apart from its excellent feng shui, was that this place was so dangerous, hardly anyone dared to go in.
The fortune-teller and his colleagues knew this wouldn’t be an easy job, but they were determined to give it a go, their judgment clouded by the thought of all the treasure they might find. After crossing the snow-covered mountain, they waited more than ten days above Insect Valley until finally dark clouds formed and the rains came. The mist was torn apart by harsh winds, and they were able to rush through the storm into the deadly valley. They were halfway down when, abruptly, the wind and rain stopped, and the sun beamed down again. White fog rose all around them.
Scattering in all directions, they tried frantically to find a path to safety. The mist would have stopped their hearts if they’d taken a single breath.
The fortune-teller made use of his training to hold his breath as he sprinted for his life. He managed to get out, but the poisonous air destroyed his eyes. Luckily, he stumbled upon their local guide, who’d been waiting for them at the entrance to the valley. The fortune-teller had to gouge out his own eyes to prevent the poison from entering his bloodstream, and that was how he managed to survive.
Julie and I listened closely to this story, and we both felt that the reason the expedition had failed was simple lack of preparation. It wouldn’t have been hard to take precautions against this deadly mist, but they’d simply blundered in.
“It’s rare to see such dense clouds of poison,” Julie said. “Maybe it’s something to do with the location and native plants that give off toxins. In any case, a gas mask or antidote should be able to prevent the poison from affecting us. I don’t see why this would have anything to do with Teng magic.”
“Not so,” said the blind man. “If it’s that simple, why has no living person ever made it into King Xian’s tomb? As for what the fog is made of, you can read about it on the back of the map.”
Julie turned over the scrap of human parchment, and we saw clusters of words and pictures. It seemed from this that there were four other burial sites surrounding the main tomb, and also various ministers buried nearby. Quite a stately setting, for a second-rate king.
There was also a record of the king’s own description of his grave: “When I die, bury me in dragon king mist. My soul will be immortal, and the dragon sickness will protect me. Unless the sky crashes down, no
outsider will find me.”
“So if the sky doesn’t fall down, we’ll never get into his grave?” I muttered. “But what does that mean? In ancient times, didn’t they believe that shooting stars were a sign that the sky was about to collapse? Could it be referring to that? Maybe we need to wait for a particular time in order to break into the tomb?”
The blind man shook his head. “Can’t be. I’ve been studying this riddle for years, and I still don’t have any idea what it could refer to. This king must have trampled on many lives during his reign, and surely his enemies would have tried to break into his tomb afterward. There must be something about the place that made it impossible—more than the danger of the valley, the tomb itself must be full of deadly traps. I’m warning you now, stay away from King Xian’s grave.”
We’d made up our minds, though, and nothing would dissuade us from going to Yunnan. We had to see the place for ourselves, before deciding whether or not to venture in. Julie bought the map from the blind man, and then we went to pack our things. Soon we’d be back in Beijing, and after reuniting with Kai, we’d make our way to Yunnan, where we’d hopefully find the answers we were looking for, in the heart of dragon sickness, in the ancient tomb of King Xian.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Born in Tianjin in 1978, the year China’s reforms began, Tianxia Bachang (the pen name of Zhang Muye) is a child of the new China. His careers have been many and varied, a winding path of self-discovery that would never have been open to his parents’ generation. An avid gamer, he has chosen his online avatar as his pen name, and his stories have been bestsellers within the gaming community. The Dragon Ridge Tombs is Tianxia Bachang’s second book to be translated into English; the first was The City of Sand.
ABOUT THE TRANSLATOR
Jeremy Tiang has translated more than ten books from Chinese, including novels by Zhang Yueran, Wang Jinkang, Yeng Pway Ngon, and Chan Ho-Kei, and has been awarded a PEN/Heim Grant, an NEA Literary Translation Fellowship, and a Henry Luce Foundation Fellowship. He also writes and translates plays. Jeremy Tiang lives in Brooklyn, New York.
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