Chapter 136: The Zhang Family Secret Passage

The surroundings here were completely made of rock, bare and smooth, with certain spots bearing obvious marks of having been smashed. These must have been the traces of their final struggles before death. I began to regret coming here. I said to Cha Wenbin, "We will end up just like them, leaving behind nothing more than exposed white bones that anyone can stumble upon and trample at will. However, I have a favor to ask of you. If things truly look hopeless, put a bullet in my head. I don't want to wait around here just to die a slow death."

Leaning against the wall with an ethereal expression, Cha Wenbin said, "I have never once thought that I would die here. Listen to how enchanting this bell ringing is."

"You hear it again?" I suspected that Cha Wenbin had fallen under some spell. What nonsense about bell ringing—he kept bringing it up. I even began to wonder if he had been deliberately lured here by someone, in which case I was truly done for!

"Wenbin," I crept over to him quietly and said, "lend me your fire-striker."

He was startled for a moment, but still handed it to me. The very second he withdrew his hand, I suddenly lunged forward, grabbed the top of his head, and yanked hard, pulling out several strands of his hair. Stung by the pain, he immediately clutched his head and glared at me with fury, demanding, "What are you doing?!"

Without answering him, I pressed those strands of hair directly against the fire-striker. A scorching smell arose, accompanied by a hissing flicker of flame.

I waved the burning hair in front of his face, imitating the tone of an old superstitious priest, and shouted, "Come back, Wenbin! Return, Cha Wenbin!"

He slapped my hand away and snapped, "What on earth are you doing? Are you trying to perform a soul-recalling ritual on me?"

"That's right! Haven't you already lost your mind? Hearing bell ringing day and night—I reckon you've been possessed by a ghost. It's an illusion, an illusion, don't you understand?!" I stubbornly added, "My grandfather taught me this method, Wenbin. I'm trying to save you! Snap out of it, the two of us are going to be trapped to death down here!"

Cha Wenbin shot me an irritated look. The expression in his eyes made me feel as though he thought I was an absolute idiot. As he stared at me, he even began to chuckle. Seeing him laugh under such circumstances, I figured we were truly done for this time. Unexpectedly, however, he said, "Don't worry, I will definitely get you out of here."

I looked up and used the fire-striker to gauge the height. The ceiling was roughly five meters above us. I thought to myself that if this method actually worked, those people long ago would have climbed up using human ladders instead of perishing down here. What gave Cha Wenbin such blind confidence?

"You must be wondering why I'm so sure," he said. "Just think about why you're still alive. We fell into this mass grave, and with so many corpses decaying here for so long, the oxygen should have been completely consumed ages ago, leaving behind nothing but poisonous miasma. The fact that we are still breathing means only one thing: the air here is circulating, and where there is circulation, there must be an exit. As far as I know, tombs of this scale take decades to build. Day in and day out, year after year, these artisans labored here. Did they really not know that the completion of the project would mark the moment of their execution?"

Cha Wenbin turned around and continued, "Therefore, experienced veteran artisans would always leave an escape secret passage for themselves inside the tomb. Throughout history, without a single exception, this has been an unwritten rule. Didn't you and Fatty spend a few days grave-robbing? You should know how few imperial tombs in China have never been visited by outsiders. In the old days, it was simply impossible to breach massive tombs built with the resources of an entire nation using sheer external force. Nearly eight out of ten raided tombs were entered because people managed to locate the artisans' escape tunnels."

I replied, "That doesn't mean there's one here, otherwise they wouldn't all have died in this place."

"You're wrong. There is one here, and they were very clever. So many people trying to run together couldn't possibly make it out; it was destined that only a small fraction could escape. But when they rounded up the laborers back then, they probably didn't expect to accidentally sweep in people who shouldn't have been caught."

Seeing how seriously he spoke, I remained deeply suspicious. "Who?"

"The ancestors of the Zhang family!" Cha Wenbin pointed at the wall behind him and asked me, "What do you think this is?"

He took my fire-striker and illuminated that stretch of wall. Faintly, I could make out a carving. It was a very strange diagram depicting a pentagonal circle, somewhat resembling the shape of a screw nut. Cha Wenbin said, "Do you remember when you and Fatty went to Shaanxi? Was there a man with the surname Ding?"

"Yes, I heard Fatty call him Ding Shengwu. He's the supreme boss of the underground syndicate in Shaanxi. How do you know about this?"

"The Ding family of Shaanxi is a renowned tomb-robbing clan, best known for their mastery of locating dragon veins and spots of auspicious energy. It is said that the Ding family possesses a manual of tombs, marking the distribution locations of virtually every royal-level tomb of any significance in China from the Shang and Zhou dynasties down to the late Ming. Then there is the Zhang family in Hunan. Of all the families, I know the least about them; I only know they are the finest architects. Ever since the Qin and Han dynasties, the Zhang family had been responsible for constructing imperial mausoleums right up until the Tang dynasty. Legend has it that when the Qianling Mausoleum was completed, the head of the Zhang family from that generation was forced to stay and be buried alive with the sovereign. From then on, the Zhang family no longer built tombs for emperors, but within the Luo Sect, a position was still reserved for them. The Zhang family's emblem within the Luo Sect is this pentagonal bronze ring, and every single tomb they constructed was left with a back door."

When Cha Wenbin finished this speech, I was utterly stunned. Was this still the same Cha Wenbin I knew? Every single word he uttered sounded completely unbelievable to me. In my memories, he was merely that country Taoist priest who had been dragged back from school by his master at the age of seven just to chant scriptures and seek the Dao day in and day out.

"How do you know this?"

His face twitched slightly, and I caught a flash of painful expression. Touching the pattern on the wall, he said, "During the years I spent over there, I laid eyes on this pattern more than once." Having said that, he paused again, then grabbed my shoulders and said, "In short, you must trust me. As long as this pattern is here, there will definitely be a back door."

From that fleeting look in his eyes, the message I read was pain and unease. Once upon those times, I had also wanted to know what on earth had happened to him during those years, but he was like dumplings boiled in a teapot—he simply couldn't pour out what was inside him.

"Over here, come," Cha Wenbin called out to me. Treading on the cracking human bones, I walked toward his direction. On another section of wall barely two meters away, a second pentagonal ring pattern appeared. Cha Wenbin took a Chinese ink marker box out of his bag, dismantled the box, and pulled out the inked string. He threaded a ancient copper coin through one end of the string, and then aligned both ends. Holding the copper coin, I retreated backward until the string between the coin and his hand pulled taut.

Next, he marked the exact spot where the copper coin came to rest using a small red thread, and then instructed me, "Press this string with your finger right against the upper-left corner of the pattern. Don't deviate; only that exact position belongs to the Zhang family."

After confirming the position and doing as he said, Cha Wenbin held the line and began walking toward the opposite wall. Reaching the middle, he lit a candle on the ground, placed a bronze mirror right behind the candle, and then walked all the way back to the first pattern we had discovered, shouting to me, "Pull it straight! Make it taut!"

At that moment, a truly magical scene unfolded: the burning candle on the ground happened to be situated directly behind the copper coin suspended on the ink line. At the same time, on the empty wall to my right, the candlelight cast the shadow of the copper coin onto the bronze mirror, and the mirror projected that light onto the wall directly opposite itself.

I do not know if any of you performed a scientific experiment in school called "pinhole imaging," but the hole of the copper coin projected onto the wall was magnified into a square point of light. Cha Wenbin called out with a hint of excitement, "That's it! Do you remember? That right there is the secret passage left behind by the artisans!"

I had never imagined that the wisdom of the ancients could reach such a realm, and I admired even more how broad the knowledge and how profound the learning of this peer of mine truly were. He simply stepped onto my shoulders, gently pushed against that section of the wall with his hand, and with a soft "whoosh," the stone wall, which previously appeared seamless, slightly indented inward. Following a crisp "click," a basin-sized stone dropped downward, revealing a dark opening.

He climbed up first, squeezed inside, and after a short moment poked his head back out, holding out a hand and saying, "Up!"

With a helping hand and a burst of strength, both of us squeezed into the secret passage. I had to admire the designer of this secret passage once again. He had crafted a tiny mechanism right at the entrance. The edge of the low entrance had been carved with a groove; when external force pushed the stone, if too much force was applied, it would jam against the inner frame and naturally refuse to open. The cutting of the gaps around this stone could be described as nothing short of miraculous, with every single edge and thread fitting together with absolute precision. Furthermore, the friction between the sealing stone and the groove was sufficient to keep the stone suspended above the groove for five full seconds. In other words, you had to push the sealing stone inward with just the right amount of force—about the thickness of an exercise notebook—and hold it for over five seconds before the sealing stone would drop into place by itself. What I found even more wondrous was that a person inside could lift the sealing stone and reset it. Such design could only be described as the work of ghosts and gods.

Lying in this secret passage, I let out a long breath and checked the time: exactly 5:00 AM. At this time of year, it would begin to grow faintly bright in at most forty minutes. Looking at me with complete composure, Cha Wenbin remarked, "I'm afraid we won't have a chance today. Who knows where this secret passage leads? If it leads directly outside, we'll just have to wait until nightfall to return."

Watching this fellow's utter calmness, I taunted, "So you've finally decided to take a break?"

"No, I'm afraid that dog outside has already reached its limit. If you don't send it back for treatment soon, it'll be too late."

Note:
The second watch has arrived, the night watchman is here!