Chapter 60

Unlike the outer tomb’s passage, the floor of this pass was rammed with soil. There were two stone-made branches of dead wood, inexplicably carrying the killing atmosphere of the Northern border.

If you looked up, the roof of the chamber was built with long bricks. One layer with horizontal bricks, and one layer with vertical bricks. There were several murals in this pass: The East and West murals of the first pass depicted four manservants leopard tamers wearing black hats ¹ , yellow robes, and long boots; two of them held a leopard in their left hands, and carried a leopard-taming instrument on their waist. The Palace was painted on both South sides of the walls. The East mural of the second pass had four manservants, two of whom were eagle tamers. The East and West murals of the third pass had seven Inner Attendants ² wearing black hats and round-necked robes ³ ; each holding a ceremonial tablet ⁴ , and wearing purple, red, green and yellow gowns with long boots respectively. There were also two maids holding a circular fan, with their hair styled in a half tied knot, wearing a short red garment on top, a long red skirt at the bottom, and green scarfs on their shoulders. The East and West murals of the sixth pass had two Palace maids ⁵ carrying each a charcoal basin in their hands. ⁶

Apart from these general patterns, the murals were densely carved with words, and countless dried bodies were hanging mid-air, showing a horrifying sight.

“Shit! What’s this? This isn’t the right method for the accompanying burial ⁷ …..”

The scene in front of them was extremely frightening. Even though Qin Cheng has seen a lot of accompanying burial pits, he has never seen these kinds of mummified corpses that were covered in wax in order to avoid decomposition….

People in ancient times paid more attention to death than the current generation. In an era where it was a common belief that people would be reincarnated, it wasn’t allowed for the body to be buried directly in the earth, even more so that the body wouldn’t decompose throughout eternity….

How much hatred was there to commit such a thing?

Looking at the equally dumbfounded Wu Hai, Qin Cheng asked: “What do you think?”

“What else can I think of….?” Wu Hai sighed. “I can only think that this tomb is constantly renewing my knowledge. If I hadn’t come here….”

Qin Cheng understood what Wu Hai was trying to say. The setting of this tomb was beyond their knowledge. From the mechanisms of the tomb passage still working after thousands of years, to such a horrible space built inside an Imperial Mausoleum….

As they looked at the mummified corpses hanging in front of them, and even though they saw a variety of people buried alive in burial pits, Qin Cheng and Wu Hai couldn’t help but feel a chill running through their bodies.

“Only good things should be brought to the death underground…. But, what’s the purpose of hanging so many corpses in this place? No matter how you look at it, the sight is horrible and extremely gloomy. Even if the tomb owner had a special hobby, it’d be impossible to do something like this.”

“Who knows….” Qin Cheng pulled up his mouth and said: “Perhaps, the person who built this tomb became insane later.”

Speaking of which, Qin Cheng looked at the passage, thought about it, and said: “We’d better follow the tomb passage, but we must not touch the walls.”

“Alright. At this point, I can only listen to you.” After looking at the walls of the passage, Wu Hai said: “These walls have too many words written on them, but I’m afraid that we won’t be able to finish reading them for now. The power of the flashlight is limited after all. You should go take a look ahead before the electricity runs out. I’ll take some pictures of the words in this part of the tomb first…… If we still have a chance to get out, then we can read what’s written.”

Qin Cheng agreed to what Wu Hai had said. After all, it was true that the power of their flashlights was limited. If they don’t move forward quickly, then they’ll be surrounded by the darkness of a tomb filled with dangerous traps.

“Does your camera have a flash?

After seeing Wu Hai nod, Qin Cheng continued: “Then, I’ll come back here in a while. You’re responsible for taking the pictures.”

“Alright.”

“Then, you should be careful.”

After dividing the work, Qin Cheng put the flashlight on the ground and began to measure the place.

But before he could calculate the distance, Wu Hai, who was taking pictures of the wall, suddenly shouted at Qin Cheng.

“Qin Cheng! Come here, take a look at these words!”

“What?” As he stood up, Qin Cheng asked: “What have you found?”

“Look at the words on the wall.” Wu Hai said as he shaked the flashlight over the wall.

“In the 14th year of Detian, Emperor Yangzhuang Wen Ling Li killed the Northern barbarians as a sacrifice to General Ning…..” When Qin Cheng read these words out loud, his heart was even more concerned.

General Ning….. If it wasn’t because Qin Cheng found a weapon with this character engraved on it when they excavated the ‘armory’ in Su Jingmo’s tomb, he might not know about this ‘General Ning’. At that time, since he couldn’t read the character clearly, he brought it to the tomb and asked Su Jingmo to decipher it for him.

The General Ning described here, and the one whose name was engraved in a weapon from Su Jingmo’s tomb’s armory, was most likely the same person…

At this thought, Qin Cheng frowned. Su Jingmo said that he didn’t know this ‘General Ning’, but if he had to think about it, then he should be the third son of the Ning family, who was close to his fifth brother, Su Jingyan. However, according to Su Jingmo’s words, this man wasn’t impressive. So, how come that immediately after Su Jingmo’s death, he became a General who could get his surname engraved into weapons?

The ‘14th year of Detian’ should be the year after Su Jingyan became the Emperor, and this ‘Yang Zhuang Wen Ling Li’ should be the Emperor’s posthumous title given after his death. There were various kinds of posthumous titles, one of them being the ‘praising’ type of posthumous title. For example: ‘Wen’ was used to represent having the ability to “endure both heaven and earth” or having the virtue of being “moral and generous”, “hardworking and knowledgeable”; ‘Kang’ was used to represent “bringing peace and happiness to the people”; ‘Ping’ represented “regulation of the government’s law”, etc.

Another posthumous title was the “criticism” type. For example: ‘Yang’ represented “good at distancing himself within etiquette”; ‘Li’ represented “tyrannical and unfriendly”, as well as “killing innocent people”; ‘Huang’ represented “lazy and careless in government”, as well as “chaos from the inside and the outside”; ‘You’ represented “blocked and obstructed”; ‘Ling’ represented “a confused state of mind without casualties”; etc.

As for the ‘evil’ type of posthumous title, King Li of the Zhou Dynasty was a greedy Monarch, so when the ‘countrymen’ started a riot, he fled to Zhi ⁸ and died there. The ‘Li’ was given to him as an “evil posthumous title” to reprimand him.

If, according to this, ‘Yang’ represents “good at distancing himself within etiquette”; ‘Wen’ represents to have the ability to “endure both heaven and earth” or having the virtue of being “moral and generous”, “hardworking and knowledgeable”; and ‘Li’ represents “tyrannical and unfriendly”, as well as “killing innocent people”. Then, most of the posthumous titles of “Emperor Yangzhuang Wen Ling Li”, were negative titles. Meaning that this Emperor, most likely, used to be a tyrant.

Since the posthumous title can only be added after the death of the Emperor, does that mean that this tomb…. was Su Jingyan’s Imperial Mausoleum?

But, why did he build his tomb here? This tomb was originally owned by Su Jingmo, so why did he choose this half-built tomb as his own?

And what does “killed the Northern barbarians as a sacrifice to General Ning” mean? Does it mean that General Ning died, and the Emperor killed the Northern barbarians just to pay a tribute to him?

When he thought of this, Qin Cheng shook his head, and continued to read. However, the next words were almost all about General Ning….

“Ning-qing ⁹ , courtesy name Wufei, was the third son of the Ning family, as well as a good General of Xu…. In the second year of Detian, he was appointed as a sub 8th rank Yuru ¹⁰ Deputy Officer. In the seventh year of Detian, he was appointed as a sub 6th rank Zenwei ¹¹ Deputy Officer. In the tenth year of Detian, he was promoted to an upper 5th rank as Ningyuan General…. In the winter of the twelfth year of Detian, worshiped as the upper 5th rank Dingyuan General, he fought the Northern barbarians. He went beyond the upper valley…. to repel the northern barbarians, but died in battle, and the barbarian King let the vultures eat his corpse…..”

“This tomb isn’t the tomb of the Emperor, right? But, the system of this place is indeed using the construction method for an Imperial Mausoleum. So, why is the text engraved here telling the life story of Ning-qing?”

Qin Cheng was equally puzzled. As he frowned, he said: “If we look at the structure of the tomb, it looks exactly like an Imperial Mausoleum. But if we just look at the engraved words on the wall, this tomb should belong to General Ning.”

“No, how could a General’s tomb be built like an Imperial Mausoleum? Besides, before his death, this General was only a Dingyuan General of the upper 5th rank. No matter what, he wasn’t qualified to be buried like this.”

“Yes. Also, if you read this part “died in battle, the barbarian King let the vultures eat his corpse”, no matter how you look at it, it clearly says that General Ning died in battle, and the Northern barbarian’s King let his corpse be swallowed by the vultures. So, without a corpse, how can you still build a tomb like this one?” Qin Cheng sighed slightly, and continued: “Besides, it could be said that the Emperor used General Ning’s death as an excuse to exterminate the Northern barbarians…. or…..”

“It should’ve been due to political reasons…. As you know, these Royal Families play too many political games on the dead, which is, of course, still nothing more than an excuse.”

After nodding his head, Qin Cheng said: “We better not worry about this for now. If we want to know who’s buried here, we can only go forward to understand….” As soon as he said this, Qin Cheng had an idea.

‘ Perhaps, two people were buried here as the owners of the Mausoleum…. ‘

So… many… footnotes…….. _:(´ཀ`」 ∠):_ …

asdfghjfghjk This was quite the educational chapter, but am I the only one who smells something fruity between that General and SJM’s brother!

.

(♪ᐤˊฅ꒳ˋᐤ)ฅ♡ ♡

Footnotes

<ol><b>幞头</b> <b>fú tóu</b> ; It’s a kind of soft linen cloth wrapped around the head, which started in the Han Dynasty [206 BC-220 AD]. It looks like <b>THIS</b> . 内侍 nèi shì ; It refers to the Court Eunuchs that would serve at the Court of the Emperor and were at his disposal. It was also an Official Position. In the Sui Dynasty, the Ministry of Internal Affairs was set up, which was responsible for all internal affairs of the Imperial Palace. Although some scholars were also used, those positions were still mainly reserved for Eunuchs. 圆领袍 yuán lǐng páo ; It’s one of the most common traditional styles of clothing in East Asia. It looks like THIS . 笏板 hù bǎn ; It was a tool used by Officials in ancient times when they went to the Court to face the Monarch. They would hold the tablets with both hands to record the Monarch’s orders or decrees, and they could also write down their words to be presented to the Monarch to prevent forgetting them. It looks like THIS . 宫女 gōng nǚ ; Palace maids, also commonly known as Imperial Concubines, can be broadly divided into two categories according to their duties and status: One managed the daily activities of the Monarch in the Palace, and those with higher status got granted Official positions, known as Lady Officials. The other one served in the Palace as servant girls, handmaidens, etc. The Palace maids, in general, referred to all the women in the Monarch’s harem, including concubines. Actually, these murals descriptions exist in real life, and they belong to the tomb of Crown Prince Yi De, located in the Southeast corner of Qianling County, Shanxi Province, and is the burial tomb accompanying Qianling ( 乾陵 qián líng ; Burial site of the third Tang Emperor Li Zhi( 李治 lǐ zhì ) [628-683]). <b>陪葬</b> <b>péi zàng</b> ; Refers to the burial of the deceased in a grave with objects, livestock, or people and servants to ensure the well-being of the departed soul. In ancient times, the coffin of a wife or Concubine was buried next to the tomb of an Emperor or husband. Usually, the wife or Concubine would be buried alive. Present day Northeast side of Huo County, Shanxi Province. <b>卿 qīng;</b> High ranking official / Term of endearment between spouses / Honorific. <b>从八品</b> <b>cóng bā pǐn</b> ; The sub 8th rank is a level of ancient Official position in China, which was second only to the upper 8th rank ( <b>正八品</b> <b>zhèng</b> <b>bā pǐn</b> ), and higher than the upper 9th rank ( <b>正九品</b> <b>zhèng jiǔ pǐn</b> ). In most Dynasties, they were subordinates of County Officials, and below the upper 7th grade ( <b>正七品</b> <b>zhèng</b> <b>qī pǐn</b> ), they would usually be called ‘Junior Officer’. The <b>御辱副尉</b> ( <b>yù rǔ fù wèi</b> ) Is an ancient Military Official title from the sub 8th rank. <b>振威副尉</b> <b>zhèn wēi fù wèi</b> ; A title for the Military ‘Casual Official’ of the sub 6th rank ( <b>从六品</b> <b>cóng liù pǐn</b> ). The ‘Casual Official’ ( <b>散官</b> <b>sǎn guān</b> ) was an Official who wasn’t a member/didn’t hold a fixed position in the Government, but was still an Official with a salary; usually a servant of the important Officials of the Court.</ol>