Chapter 41

Yin Xiaoxiao and Mo Laoda slithered and slithered. And slithered and slithered. Yin Xiaoxiao got the feeling that the two of them were headed further and further away even though all over the mountains and plains ¹ was trees and grass. This was the case ² even though he and Heitan were walking along the river, it was still all trees and grass. It was reasonable to say that they were still at the base of the mountain, so why did it feel like they were somewhere more remote? Nevertheless, Yin Xiaoxiao felt exactly this kind of feeling

Yin Xiaoxiao raised his head to look at the sky. Even though it couldn’t yet be called normal, normally at this time Yin Xiaoxiao would have already felt the heat. But now, although the intense sun still hung in the sky, he still felt as cool and refreshed as before. That wasn’t right. Calling it cool and refreshing wasn’t very quite right. Then, how to describe it? Yin Xiaoxiao thought for a while but still couldn’t nail it down.

“Heitan, don’t you think the temperature here isn’t quite right?” Although he was hesitant,Yin Xiaoxiao ultimately couldn’t help but ask Mo Laoda.

Mo Laoda answered absentmindedly while searching all around for a suitable cave, “This is very normal. We are now in the forbidden area. Didn’t you know?”

Actually, Mo Laoda was speaking without thinking the matter through; after all which vipers in this mountain didn’t have the inherited memories? Although this was called the forbidden area, it was also the place that they were protecting.

Yin Xiaoxiao was awfully confused. “Forbidden area? What forbidden area?”

Mo Laoda thought to himself, ‘This Little Idiot’s idiocy was really beyond redemption’ and, with no other choice, said, “Look at your inherited memories. Don’t you already know?”

Yin Xiaoxiao hesitated for a moment then in a very small whisper said, “I don’t have the inherited memories.”

Although Yin Xiaoxiao whispered this very softly, Mo Laoda: first was very close to him and, second, had very good hearing. As a result, Mo Laoda could clearly hear what Yin Xiaoxiao said. So clearly had he heard that Mo Laoda suddenly stopped slithering. He turned around to look at Yin Xiaoxiao behind him. “What? You don’t have the inherited memories?”

In Mo Laoda’s eyes, Yin Xiaoxiao only saw amazement and not rejection or wariness. Yin Xiaoxiao felt very cheerful, although he didn’t know why. “Yes, I was born without the inherited memories.”

And, unexpectedly, Mo Laoda had an expression of sudden realization. “Oh, so it was actually like this, huh? No wonder you’re such an idiot!” As he finished speaking, the expression on Mo Laoda’s face was one of immense pride in himself.  An “I’m so smart I actually know why you’re so stupid! Praise me, praise me!” expression.

Yin Xiaoxiao wanted to cry but lacked tears ³ . Was he supposed to thank Heitan for finding the root cause of his stupidity?

Mo Laoda coughed twice. Since the Little Idiot didn’t have the inherited memories, he didn’t know what was normal for this area. Since that was the case, he should tamp down on his temper and explain to Yin Xiaoxiao. “What is called the forbidden area is the place that we protect. We vipers can come here, but, as you’ve experienced, the temperature here is lower than in the other areas of the mountain. If they don’t have business to attend to in the forbidden area, vipers generally won’t approach here.” Mo Laoda also muttered in his mind, ‘Aside from the low temperature, this forbidden area wasn’t different from other places. Still, for snakes to come to the forbidden area was strange.’

Yin Xiaoxiao suddenly realized that Dad and Pop hadn’t let him near…what was surely this forbidden area, right? At this thought, Yin Xiaoxiao was a little nervous. “Heitan, then what are we doing here?”

“Looking for a cave to live in. Didn’t you say that you wanted to look for a place to live with fewer snakes? On this mountain, there’s the fewest snakes here.”

For a split second, Yin Xiaoxiao was suspicious that Heitan was deliberately looking like this in this area as revenge for not being introduced to his Si-ge.

Just as Yin Xiaoxiao was going to respond, he caught a passing glance of a huge dark-colored thing. Yin Xiaoxiao stiffened all over but, at the same time, still didn’t forget to pull on the tail of Mo Laoda, who was ahead of him. Mo Laoda was forced to stop. He turned around and, rather impatiently, asked Yin Xiaoxiao what had happened.

Yin Xiaoxiao swallowed then slithered forward two paces and pressed close against Mo Laoda’s body. Summoning his courage, he turned his gaze to face where the thing had been just a moment ago. At first glance, Yin Xiaoxiao was first frightened but then was embarrassed and at a complete loss.

“What’s happened?” Mo Laoda became visibly delighted because of Yin Xiaoxiao throwing himself at him and, as a result, he asked again.

Yin Xiaoxiao didn’t pay attention to Mo Laoda. Leaving Mo Laoda’s side, he slithered over to the thing, slithered, in fact, to the foot of that thing and looked up. He realized that he’d overestimated his height and he was thus forced to repeatedly retreat several paces before stopping. Then he looked at that thing again. Well, at least this time the whole thing could be clearly seen. Only the more Yin Xiaoxiao looked, the more faint he felt.

Yin Xiaoxiao’s previous incarnation was an orphan. But, unfortunately no one adopted him. As he had grown older, it became even more unlikely that someone would adopt him. It was only fortunate that the orphanage had been located in a flourishing and populous city. Inevitably there had been some very wealthy people who would make donations to the orphanage, ostensibly for charity. Yin Xiaoxiao could still remember that, each time there was this kind of maneuver, a lot of media would gather at the orphanage, and they, these orphans, would stand on stage and show their gratefulness, by expression or action, to those who had made the donations. Surrounded by the flashing of cameras, Yin Xiaoxiao’s eyes hadn’t been able to open. And yet it had also been because of this that the orphanage had had the extra money to be able to send these children, that no one had adopted, to school. After Yin Xiaoxiao had graduated from high school, he’d passed the university entrance exam and had entered a university. But the orphanage hadn’t been able to provide orphans with the opportunity to attend ⁴ university. In addition, graduating from high school marked adulthood and there was no reason for the orphanage to pay for someone who was able to work. It was fortunate that, at that time in society, there had been an upsurge in funding for impoverished students to attend university, and Yin Xiaoxiao was fortunately included among those people. Yin Xiaoxiao had hesitated for a long time before choosing a major. Ultimately he gave up on what interested him the most, history, and chose finance.

At that time he had already known that dreams were not for people like him, at least not at that point in time. But even though he’d chosen finance, there had been nothing that was able to stop Yin Xiaoxiao’s interest in history. Those four years at university were spent either going to class to learn the foundations of his field of study or was spent working a job outside of class time. In the time left over, Yin Xiaoxiao had spent it at the library reading history books. And reading history books. And also, naturally, dipping a little into archeology, but that hadn’t been very often.

And Yin Xiaoxiao was in the presence of what was a bronze statue, about 1.8 meters ⁵ tall, of a bronze imperial bodyguard with a sword. Without conscious thought, Yin Xiaoxiao’s gaze drifted opposite this bronze, sword-wielding Imperial bodyguard and, sure enough, he saw an identical bronze, sword-wielding Imperial bodyguard. The copper ⁶ body had long since ended up covered in corrosion, but it was still as realistic as it had been all those years ago when it had been cast. The copper man’s facial features appeared serene and penetrating. At first sight, it could make people tremble.

“A Shendao ⁷ ?” Yin Xiaoxiao murmured. “Is this actually bronze?”

Used in ancient times, the Shendao was the passage in front of the emperor’s tomb that one would first have to pass through. It had the meaning “The way to God”. Li Xian ⁸ once commented, “Clear the way in front of the tomb, construct stelae to serve as markers, they shall be named Shendao”. According to Yin Xiaoxiao’s memories, the use of Shendao as a path leading to the tomb was used after the Han Dynasty, and the Shendao of Han Dynasty general Huo was the earliest Shendao that had ever been found. Huo Qubing ⁹ ’s tomb was built by Emperor Wu ¹⁰ to honor this beloved general. It was built especially for Huo Qubing ¹¹ to the east of his own luxuriant tomb. On either side of the Shendao were large stone carvings. Above the Shendao was the Shendao tablet ¹² . The scholar Ming Chenji ¹³ said, “The family has status, the tomb has an inscription, the Shendao has a tablet, there are commentaries, there are deaths, there are eulogies, there are praises and there are sacrifices for the tomb. It is as though time ¹⁴ has stopped.”

In fact, the Shendao wasn’t only used by ancient emperors. Emperors would bestow them on nobles, generals, government officials, and sometimes even families who contributed greatly to society. And placed on both sides of the Shendao were many stone men and stone beasts. While most were carved stone, there were sometimes also copper men. And now it appeared that Yin Xiaoxiao was in front of two men clearly made of bronze.

“Heitan, why is there bronze here…eh ¹⁵ this kind of thing?” Yin Xiaoxiao thought that even though he’d said the word bronze, it was sure to be incomprehensible to Heitan. It was better that he direct say what he meant to say

Mo Laoda looked at the thing that had so excited Yin Xiaoxiao. Seeing this thing for the first time was enough to amaze anyone. “I’m not very clear about the specifics but I heard that a very, very long time ago, there were many snakes who would slither along these things here in high spirits.” Mo Laoda’s head pointed in the direction he was referring to, indicating that there were still even more of these things. “But after they didn’t find anything after slithering on the heads, they all gave up. Anyway this sort of thing has nothing to do with us so no snakes care about them anymore.”

Hearing that Mo Laoda had said that there were many more of them, Yin Xiaoxiao became excited. Could it be that this really was, as he’d guessed, a Shendao? Could it be that this here was the base of a tomb? One that had been guarded by the viper clans for many generations? Actually, even if this was the base of an old tomb, Yin Xiaoxiao hadn’t expected to see ancient tombs in his previous life ¹⁶ . And yet, despite turning into a snake, he actually might be able to see one. Not only that, but it seemed as though this tomb had never been excavated. Yin Xiaoxiao’s heart began to race. If this were as he said then, if he were to enter the tomb, there ought to be a lot of gold, silver, money and valuables, right? At this thought, Yin Xiaoxiao began to drool. ‘Wasn’t it said that dragons were very fond of money and valuables and whatnot that shined like the full moon In that case, then we who are called “snakes ¹⁷ ” can’t lag behind! What did you say? Dead people? Calm down, calm down. It’s not like I’d be moving the coffin or anything, I wouldn’t even be going into the main grave room! And besides that, Heitan would be with me!’

Actually, Yin Xiaoxiao, this way of thinking and this sort of undertaking, the Chinese call this grave-robbing. Being arrested for this would result in a prison sentence. But you can’t have the laws of man restrict a snake, and so, this time, Yin Xiaoxiao completely thought of himself as a snake.

“Let us also go and take a look!” Full of joy and expectations, Yin Xiaoxiao briefly tossed this sentence out and immediately led the way. The corner of Mo Laoda’s mouth twitched and, resigned, he followed behind Yin Xiaoxiao. Weren’t they only going to look at those ugly creatures by the road? Mo Laoda indicated that he and Yin Xiaoxiao had plenty of time and that wasting a little time in this way didn’t matter.

While walking, Yin Xiaoxiao counted the number of copper men on both sides. By the end he’d counted 99.

99? Yin Xiaoxiao doubtfully repeated this number to himself. Ancient China respected the number nine. 99 copper men was naturally very good, and this naturally made Yin Xiaoxiao even more certain this was the tomb of an emperor. But to put copper men symmetrically on either side of the Shendao, shouldn’t he have ended up with an even number at the end? Either 100 men or 99 men. How could there be 99?

But very clearly, to a person who had dabbled a little in history and a little in archeology, the Wu Xing ¹⁸ and the Bagua ¹⁹ was a little incomprehensible to Yin Xiaoxiao ²⁰ . And add in Mo Laoda, who hadn’t even seen humans before let alone knew that the viper clans guarded a tomb, and it was impossible to know why there were ultimately only 99 bronze men on both sides of the Shendao.

Even if Yin Xiaoxiao was puzzling over this in his mind, at the moment there wasn’t any free time to wonder about this. In the middle of the Shendao was a mountain wall. The entire length of this mountain wall was bare, even to Mo Laoda and Yin Xiaoxiao’s eyes. And underneath the mountain wall was a rock door.

Yin Xiaoxiao didn’t know how to convert Chinese feet and inches. Yin Xiaoxiao could only guess that the first copper man he saw was approximately 1.8 meters. If you could substitute him with an expert scholar or whatever, then it’d be known that the door was clearly and certainly eight Chinese feet and seven inches. And so he guessed that the stone gate was over three meters tall ²¹ and two meters ²² wide.

What made Yin Xiaoxiao the most speechless was that there was a small hole below the tightly closed stone gate. How small was the small hole? …The kind of small hole that could seemingly admit a slender creature.

“Heitan, let’s go in and take a look.” Yin XIaoxiao said. If this stone gate had been completely closed, and if he hadn’t been able to find any locking mechanism after looking in the surrounding area, then he would have no choice but to forget about it. But now there was actually a small hole underneath the stone gate. How could he not seize this opportunity?!

Mo Laoda listened to Yin Xiaoxiao’s words and was, of course, puzzled. “Ah? Go where?”

Yin Xiaoxiao continued heading forward and didn’t turn around. He walked forward a few more steps, approached the small hole, and was still nervous. He found that he could indeed go in with enough room to spare and then he felt relieved. “Just enter this small hole. Hurry up, hurry up, I’ll go in first!” Then Yin Xiaoxiao impatiently made his way through and went in.  Then he turned around and continued to call out to Mo Laoda, “Heitan, you hurry…a little.” Yin Xiaoxiao was stunned. After he turned around, he found that he absolutely couldn’t see the hole! In front of his eyes was a piece of smooth rock!

And to Mo Laoda’s eyes, the situation was like this: Yin Xiaoxiao, appearing to be having a great time, slithered to this bare mountain wall. Then, when he moved closer to the mountain wall, he spoke a sentence, entered this small hole and wanted him to enter as well. Then Yin Xiaoxiao actually wanted him to make his way through this mountain wall! And then….he wasn’t there.

Mo Laoda was also stunned. He stared blankly for no less than a minute before he came back to his senses and realized what had happened. In short, it could be summed up like this: Yin Xiaoxiao was missing!

T/N: ::brains are falling out of ears:: that…was a lot of research…

Anyway, in-person work is resuming. Hopefully this chapter was just freakishly time and energy consuming, but if it continues like this then I might need to slow updates : /. I’ll try not to, though!

Footnotes

<ol>漫山遍野: idiom meaning everything that the eye can see added for clarity 欲哭无泪: an idiom meaning that he experienced great distress added for clarity about 6 feet the raw switches between bronze and copper distressingly often; copper and bronze look very similar, and that’s mainly because bronze is an alloy of copper and tin! Copper was used first, then humans discovered bronze 道吗: online translation sites and dictionaries want to translate it as ‘Shinto’, but a Shendao is actually a kind of corpse road used in ancient Chinese mausoleums. There’s a few different ways that it can be translated, such as Spirit Way or Sacred Way, but I’m keeping a romanization of the pinyin 李贤: a prince; had a really dramatic life 霍去病: General, strategist and national hero 汉武帝: a powerful emperor remembered for increasing the strength of the emperor, financial reform, increasing the strength of the military and promoting Confucianism and learnin g added for clarity 神道碑: the Shendao tablet is a special stele on which something like an obituary is written 明陈继: Confucian scholar well-known for his poetry 未: I did a lot of research on the origins of this character. At first I thought that this referred to the the direction wei in feng shui, but that didn’t seem to make sense to me. Going back to its etymology, apparently one of the old meanings was time 额: literally means forehead or a specified amount, but is often used on the internet as a form of interjection denoting helplessness or speechlessness just a note about the structure of the Shendao and why YXX meant tombs in the plural: the Shendao could have multiple tombs branching off from it as in the case of General Huo and Emperor Wu 小龙: literally, little dragons 五行: five phrases of Chinese philosophy or the five Chinese elements 八卦: 8 Divinatory trigrams of the Book of Changes The Wu Xing and the Bagua are used in conjunction in feng shui to help build harmonious and auspicious places for different purposes. In this case, having 99 bronze men might be especially auspicious for this particular tomb about 9 ft about 6.5 ft</ol>