Cavern of the Blood Zombies (2011) (3 page)

After some time had passed, just as in other trades, grave robbing also began to acquire its own rules and techniques. By the time my grandfather’s generation took up the job, grave robbers were divided into two groups, the northern and the southern factions. My grandfather belonged to the southern faction, who were experts at excavating soil by using the Luoyang shovel. The most talented of them all could ascertain the depth and the age of the soil above a tomb simply through their sense of smell.

The northern faction would never use the Luoyang shovel, but were still very good at figuring out the exact location and the structure of the tombs, a difficult skill few people could attain.

There was something strange about the northern faction. According to my grandfather, too many of them were sly and deceitful. As if robbing a grave wasn’t enough to do, they had to create different rituals to observe such as kowtowing to the dead, which led to an overwhelming bureaucracy overseeing the trade. In contrast, the southern faction had few regulations and was unconcerned about offending the dead.

The northern faction claimed the southerners were pretentious and conceited, denounced them as a disgrace to their culture, and said that every grave robbed by a southerner was left in a state of complete ruin. They spread rumors that southern grave robbers even dragged out the dead bodies and put the corpses up for sale.

The southern faction called the northerners hypocrites and no more than thieves who posed as honorable men. The conflict escalated to the boiling point, so much so that “a battle for corpses” took place and in the end, the two factions were divided by terminology as much as they were by the Yangtze River. The northern faction called the trade “tomb raiding,” while the southern faction called it “digging up the soil.”

The Luoyang shovel wasn’t invented until after the two factions had completely severed all connections, so the northern grave robbers refused to lower themselves by touching a shovel that had been invented by southerners.

When he was young, my grandfather did not know how to read; he only knew how to rob graves. Later, he took some literacy classes, even though for him learning a new word was as bad as being tortured. But thanks to his education, he was able to record his adventures.

He was the young boy who wounded the blood zombie fifty years ago. He wrote about this and all else that had happened in his journal, in his own words and in his own hand. My grandmother was an intellectual, the daughter of an illustrious and well-respected family. She was deeply attracted to my grandfather’s stories and fell in love with him. My grandfather married her and settled down in Hangzhou, and his journal became a family treasure.

As for how he had survived the Changsha ordeal, or what became of his older brother, their father, or Lao Yantou, my grandfather refused to tell me. He would weep when I asked about this and say, “That is not a story for children.” No matter how sweetly I asked, or how charmingly I begged for details, he would not utter even half a word about it. As I grew up, my childhood curiosity faded, but as far as I can remember, I never saw a great-uncle who had only one eye and one hand.

On the day that I met the old man with the gold tooth, I closed the shop early and sent my salesclerk home. Before I locked up for the night, a text message came in on my cell phone: “9 o’clock, Huangsha Chicken-Eye.”

It was from my father’s third brother, Uncle Three, in a secret code that meant a new shipment had arrived. Another message closely followed: “Spine of a dragon. Come quickly.”

My eyes sparkled. My Uncle Three had an unusually keen intuition. “Spine of a dragon” meant something exceptional had come his way. Anything he deemed exceptional I had to see for myself.

Quickly I drove to my uncle’s place. On one hand, I wanted to have a look at what this good stuff was. On the other hand, I wanted to show him the photos I had just taken and see if he could tell me anything about the figure on the cloth. I hoped he could since he was the only person I knew who had any direct contact with the past generation of grave robbers.

As I drew near the stairway of his building, I heard him shouting from above, “You goddamn kid. Told you to hurry up, and then you take ages. What use is there for you to show up now?”

“Shit,” I yelled back, “are you serious? You had good stuff and you didn’t even wait for me to take a look at it? Why did you have to sell it so fast?”

As I said this, a young man walked out my uncle’s front door, carrying a long object on his back that was wrapped tightly in a piece of cloth. At first glance I could tell it was part of an ancient weapon. Obviously it was very valuable, and no matter what the man had paid my uncle, it could probably be resold for ten times what he given Uncle Three for it.

I pointed to the young man, and Uncle nodded and shrugged. I felt a stab of despair, wondering how much our capital would dwindle with these kinds of business deals and if my shop might go bankrupt this year as a result.

I walked upstairs, made myself a cup of coffee, and told my uncle about the old man with the gold tooth who had come to pry into our family history. I was certain Uncle Three, famous for his quick temper, would share my anger toward the man who had annoyed me so much. Instead my uncle assumed an unfamiliar, benign personality and calmly printed out the photos on my digital camera. As he put them under the light for a closer look, I was able to see the change of expression that washed over his face.

“What’s going on?” I asked. “What’s the matter?”

Frowning, he muttered, “It can’t be…this looks like a map of the ancient tombs!”

I looked at the pictures I’d taken and then back at my uncle’s face. It didn’t look like he was kidding around. Was it possible that Uncle Three had reached the point where he could see a map drawn in a portion of text? It was hard to see any proof of extrasensory perception in this crazy guy who cared for nothing but eating, drinking, gambling, and visiting prostitutes.

Yet I could see he was excited by what he saw in my photos—he shuddered as he said to himself, “How did these people get a hold on such a magnificent piece while I have never been so lucky? This is truly good fortune. It looks like they still haven’t figured out what they have. We can still catch up and go far beyond them before they even begin to dig up the ground.”

I was completely confused, “Uncle, perhaps I’m a bit of an imbecile—but can you really see a map in the midst of such tiny words?”

“You don’t have a clue about what I see here. This is called script mapping—that means the details of the location and the geography of the place are written down and described in words. Other common people probably wouldn’t be able to read this. But thank heaven for me, your uncle, who still has something called experience. On the entire face of the earth, I’m positive that no more than ten individuals—apart from me—could read this.”

My Uncle Three didn’t know a lot but from an early age, he had studied many unusual, eccentric, and unorthodox ancient texts and code words. To summarize, whatever was exotic he learned to analyze. The Five Illustrations of the Wooden Text from Xixia; the earliest Nuzhen Ya characters—it was nothing for him to explain these things clearly and talk about them in knowledgeable detail. That he knew what this arcane script painting was surprised me not one bit.

But he was also the type of guy who liked to refuse to explain what he knew, bragging on and on about his cleverness. If I wanted to find out what he had discovered, I needed to play the part of a humble halfwit. Looking as naïve as possible, I asked, “Oh, so does it say to turn left and then turn right, then at the tree ahead turn right again, and once you see a well then make your way down into it? Is it that sort of thing?”

Uncle sighed. “Who can teach an idiot? Your comprehension skills are so poor. As far as I can see, our family went right downhill after you came into it.”

“What are you saying? My father didn’t teach me any of this stuff and it certainly isn’t anything I was born knowing.”

“Listen carefully,” he gloated, “this type of script mapping is in fact a kind of secret code. It has a strict format, and if you can draw what the text describes according to that format, you then will have a whole and complete map. So don’t badmouth this piece of cloth. Who knows what sort of detailed information it contains—it might even tell the exact number of bricks to be found in a specific area.”

I was intrigued. Never in my life had anyone in my family ever let me accompany them on a grave robbing expedition. But this time Uncle Three had to take me with him so I could enlarge my body of experience, grab a few treasures, and get out of my current economic crisis. As I contemplated this scenario, I asked, “Can you tell from the writing whose grave it refers to? Maybe it’s some historical figure who had power and influence.”

Uncle smiled boastfully. “I can’t completely understand it all right now. But it looks like this grave belonged to one of the nobles from the State of Lu during the Warring States Period. Just from seeing that the location of his grave was recorded on silk with such a complex type of script mapping, I can say that this person’s status was extremely high. What’s more, that his burial ground was so heavily concealed implies that there it holds plenty of riches. It is certainly worth a visit.”

I was amazed to see the glow in his eyes. On an ordinary day, this old guy was too lazy to step out the door of his own house. Could he possibly want to search for this grave himself? If so, I thought, that would be another strange piece of family lore that would echo through the ages. “Uncle,” I asked, “do you really intend to go and dig up this plot of soil?”

Patting me on the shoulder, he looked at me condescendingly and said, “It’s all right. You just don’t know. Let me tell you: the graves of the five dynasties of Tang, Song, Yuan, Ming, and Qing certainly have treasures, but those can only be described as treasures with superb craftsmanship that excel anything found in nature. The Warring States Period was an era containing royal tombs from long-distant centuries. You would never be able to imagine what was put in those graves. The objects in the tombs of this period are things that glorified the powerful rulers of that time and represent the supreme glories of an unknown age. They are things that no longer exist in the living world! How could I not want to have a look for myself?”

“Are you so sure? Perhaps there is nothing inside this grave.”

“That’s impossible. Didn’t you see this pattern?” He pointed to the bizarre foxlike face. “This is from the earliest times of the State of Lu, the mask that a person wore when they were ceremoniously sacrificed in a funeral rite. The person buried in this grave must have enjoyed an exceptional status—maybe even more distinguished than the emperor’s at that time.”

I blurted out, “Oh, bullshit.”

Uncle gave me a reproving look and moved to put away the photos. Pressing my hands down on the pictures before he could pick them up, I smiled at him. “Uncle, don’t rush to put these away. Remember I was the one who took these photos in the first place. You must take me with you to see everything you’ve just described to me—it’s only fair.”

“Impossible!” he shouted. “Digging up this grave is not as simple as you might think. You’ll find no air-conditioning in a tomb, just layer after layer of elaborate traps which could end the whole adventure in a heartbeat. You are your father’s only child. If anything should happen to you, your old dad would without a doubt skin me alive.”

“Then screw it! Pretend that I never came!” I quickly grabbed the photos, turned around and walked away. I knew my Uncle Three well. Once he came across something that interested him, whether it was an antique or a woman, he would abandon every principle he had. I aimed with precision at this personality flaw and sure enough, I had gone only a few steps when he surrendered.

Running up to me, he pulled at the photos in my hand. “Well, all right, fine, okay. You’ve got me. But let’s make one thing clear right now. When we’re down in the grave, you stay above ground. Do you understand?”

Soaring with excitement, I thought, When the time comes, if I insist on going with you, what will you be able to do to stop me? But I nodded enthusiastically. “You have my word! When we’re off on this adventure, I will obey you to the end. I will do whatever you say!”

Uncle had no choice. He sighed and said, “We can’t do this with just the two of us. I’ll arrange for a few experienced men to come over tomorrow and I’ll spend the next few days deciphering this script mapping. Your job is to go and buy some things for me.” He rapidly wrote a list, handed it to me, and said, “Be sure not to buy anything of poor quality and don’t forget to buy any item on this list. If we don’t have everything we need for our trip we could be sunk before we even reach the gravesite.”

The things that Uncle Three wanted weren’t easy to find. It seemed as though he was deliberately trying to make this a difficult task for me, because none of the things on his list were commonly stocked in most stores. He wanted waterproof miner’s lamps that could be taken apart for easy transport, soil-testing shovels, Swiss Army knives, folding shovels, short-handled hammers, bandages, nylon ropes, and much more. After buying only half of the supplies on his list, I had already spent a small fortune that came out of my own pocket. Mourning my shrinking bank account, I cursed my uncle for using my money when he had plenty of his own—the miserly old bastard.

Three days later, five of us—Uncle Three; Panzi and Big Kui, who were two of his old grave-robbing partners; the young man whom I had seen leaving my uncle’s house with the purchased antique the night I came over with the photos; and I—arrived at the location shown on the script mapping, about a hundred kilometers west of the Temple of Seeds in Shandong.

How can I describe this place? The best I can say about it is there was nothing there. To reach it, first we traveled in a long-distance motor coach, then in a much less comfortable long-distance bus, then on long-distance motorcycles, and then in wagons pulled by cattle.