Daomu Biji: The Mystic Nine
Chapter 29: Face on the Mural at the Empty Grave

"Old Ba." Zhang Qishan called softly.

Qi Tiezui immediately nodded, raised his torch, and went up to the murals. He could see that each brick on the tunnel had a special diamond pattern that was placed at a diagonal. He said, "The bricks are inlaid with molded patterns. It’s the burial practice of the Southern Dynasty. If my guess is correct, there’s a sacrificial hall in front of the tomb, with a tomb gate in front of it. There are three doors in this gate that are juxtaposed (1). They connect the left and right walls to the tomb. The characteristics here are similar to the coffin we found on the train."

"Is it normal for Southern Dynasty tomb passages to have such large murals?" Zhang Qishan asked. "I remember all the tomb murals I've seen before, and they were painted on a few bricks. But this mural is so big it covers the whole wall…"

Qi Tiezui also shook his head and looked at the two-faced ancient figures one by one. The paint was peeling off so badly that most of them couldn’t be identified, so he couldn’t make out what the contents were. He had actually conducted a lot of research on murals and often copied them, so he could always figure it out as long as they were traditional patterns. But the mural on this wall was really illegible. Only one thing was for certain—this was really a brick wall from the Southern Dynasty, but the murals definitely weren’t from that period.

"Sure enough, this is an empty grave. Let's move forward. Maybe there will be more clues." He said. "The mines here are excavated all year round, so this ancient tomb may have been discovered by them a long time ago. These murals could have been created by miners in later dynasties."

"This mural is so vivid. Miners wouldn’t have such good craftsmanship." Lieutenant argued.

Qi Tiezui gave him a blank look and ignored him as the group continued walking along the railway. The soldiers were armed and made sure to stand in positions where they could observe and communicate with each other. Zhang Qishan kept looking at the murals, and when he saw that all the figures had two faces, he couldn't help thinking of a Qing Dynasty novel he had read before.

Legend had it that Tang Ao was a scholar during Empress Wu Zetian’s (2) reign who went to Beijing to take the imperial exam. He passed the exam and even came in third place (3). When Xu Jingye raised an army to rebel against Empress Wu Zetian, someone framed Tang Ao by saying that he and Xu Jingye were very close friends. As a result, the high scholarly rank he had achieved was revoked. The frustrated Tang Ao went out to sea and arrived at a place called “Two-Faced Country”, where the inhabitants had two faces: one was kind and easy-going; the other was fierce and sinister. While there, he met an old friend name Xu Chengzhi, who was trapped in the country and couldn't leave. In order to help Xu Chengzhi return home, Tang Ao hid him in a coffin and pretended to hold a funeral. But Xu Chengzhi refused to leave at the last minute, because after staying in Two-Faced Country for a long time, his back slowly began to grow a second face. He told Tang Ao to leave quickly, or else he would turn out like him. (4)

This mural was very complicated, but it looked like a scene straight out of Two-Faced Country. The Southern Dynasty predated the Qing Dynasty, however, so there was no reason to believe that someone would be interested in painting “Flowers in the Mirror” here.

Qi Tiezui had also been staring at the murals, and suddenly stopped when he got to one part in particular. He looked back at Zhang Qishan, "Fo Ye."

"What's the matter?" Zhang Qishan asked.

"Look here." Qi Tiezui replied. He pointed to an extremely small figure on a section of the mural that was only about as tall as a person’s hand. The figure was completely different from all the previous figures because it only had one face.

Qi Tiezui brought the torch in for a closer look and found that not only did this person have one face, but there was something else different about them compared to all the other figures. This person wasn’t looking at some place in the mural, but looking out of the mural instead. In other words, the figure was looking right at Qi Tiezui. Qi Tiezui followed the figure’s line of sight and slowly turned around, looking back at the other side of the tunnel.

"If this official is the protagonist of the whole mural, why is he only so big? Whatever the reason, he’s looking at the opposite wall." The group immediately rushed to the wall on the opposite side and found that it had the same mural on it. But instead of there being a figure in that place, there was a line of words.

The official with only one face had been looking at this line of words.

The handwriting was illegible, and they could only make out eight of the words, which said: descend from the sky, beat the heavenly drums.

"According to my family’s interpretation of the five phases (5), descending from the sky and beating the heavenly drums means that a meteorite fell here and caused a huge disaster." Qi Tiezui said. He suddenly thought of something and looked above his head, "Look. Look at the murals up top."

Once the torches were raised, everyone could see that the murals extended upwards. But even though there were a lot of murals above the tomb passage, the images weren’t clear. All they could make out were mountains and rivers, but it seemed like the key lay within.

***

TN Notes:

(1) I believe it looks something like this, but imagine it indoors since they’re in a tomb lol:

(2) She was basically a strong, independent woman lol. Empress Wu Zetian (624–705) lived and ruled during the Tang dynasty. She took the throne from her own son, Emperor Zhongzong of Tang. Here’s more info

(3) The imperial exam had rankings based on how well you did. The highest and final degree was called “Jinshi” and throughout the Tang Dynasty, every year around 1 to 2% of test takers would obtain a jinshi title out of a total of 1 to 2 thousand test takers. There were subtypes to “Jinshi” which are broken down here, but our boi Tang Ao was basically #3 out of allllllll the test takers (he got the title “Tanhua”, so he was ranked first class in the court exam, and third overall)

(4) It’s an early 19^th-century Chinese novel “Flowers in the Mirror” by Li Ruzhen (1763–1830?). More info here. It actually seems kind of interesting lol. I found it in English here on Amazon if anyone cares

(5) Pinyin is “wuxing”. He’s talking about the 5 phases of Chinese philosophy: wood 木, fire 火, earth 土, metal 金, water 水