The colossal Bronze Gate

In the world of The Grave Robbers' Chronicles, the Wang Family, "It," the Zhang Family, the Queen Mother of the West, King Mu of Zhou, Iron-Faced Sheng, Jude Kao-every last one of them dreamed of immortality, of living forever in this world.

As for how many people had to die for their goals, not one of them cared.

Joining this chess game, untangling its causes and consequences and every hidden detail, then turning their strength against them to cleverly break the deadlock-Cao Ya found that approach too much trouble.

Steamrolling everything with brute force was far more satisfying.

It certainly wasn't because he was especially compassionate. After all, he wasn't his counterpart from Global Martial Arts. He simply couldn't stand "It," the Wang Family, or the Zhang Family.

Cao Ya intended to destroy every crucial object and every crucial location.

He was rather looking forward to seeing their faces.

"Stop thinking about Wang Canghai. A half-dead bastard isn't worth your attention," Cao Ya called out. Having finished his canned food, he got up and headed deeper inside.

The others exchanged glances. They thought Cao Ya must have gotten something wrong. A man from the early Ming dynasty would have been dead for ages, his bones long cold. How could he possibly be half-dead?

Still, Cao Ya's performance in other respects had earned their trust.

Wu Xie put away the Snake-Browed Bronze Fish. Even if the information inside was unimportant, the object itself was worth quite a bit.

Wu Xie was in the antiques business, after all. He had at least that much of an eye.

They continued downward, occasionally passing murals. Wu Xie wanted to stop and examine them, but Cao Ya showed no intention of pausing, so he could only follow helplessly.

I can always look on the way back, he thought, consoling himself. After a day, the group finally reached a rift.

They followed the rift farther inward, and within a few hours, they reached the heart of the Cloud Palace.

They were still inside the rift. Its floor was covered in extremely uneven blocks of black volcanic rock, along with skeletal remains that had fallen from above. Countless layers of bones and black droppings lay piled upon one another, almost burying the rocks.

Everyone was a little startled. Where had all these bones come from?

Cao Ya stood straight, narrowing his eyes as he stared at the gate in the darkness a short distance away.

Beside him, Poker-Face's expression kept shifting as well. He seemed to have remembered something else.

"Holy shit, what's that?" Fatty suddenly exclaimed. He aimed his flashlight over, revealing a colossal double-leaf bronze gate set into the cliff on one side of the rift's floor.

It was difficult to describe the grandeur of this colossal gate. It stood about thirty meters high and nearly sixty meters wide, and its entire surface looked as though it had been cast in a single piece. This was absolutely not a bronze artifact that ancient people could have cast, nor was it intended for human use. A gate like this weighed tens of thousands of tons. Resting on the rock, who could possibly open it?

Exquisitely detailed patterns decorated the gate. Because it was so enormous, the sheer complexity of those patterns made their scalps prickle, and a suffocating sensation washed over them. There was a seam between the two leaves, yet they met flawlessly. Human skins drenched in frozen blood had been plastered over it, freezing the entire seam shut. The skins had turned bluish gray and were almost petrified. It seemed that no one had opened the bronze gate in all the countless years since it had been sealed.

"Is this... the underground gate that King Wannu of Eastern Xia crawled out of?" Wu Xie held his breath.

Such a bronze artifact, a bronze gate at the bottom of a rift, who knew how far beneath the surface-it was actually a monumental undertaking accomplished by ancient people. Who knew how many craftsmen had died for it?

Wu Xie's heart suddenly grew heavy. Then he muttered a curse at the wicked old society.

Fatty murmured, "Whether King Wannu crawled out of there or not, there's absolutely no way we're getting in."

Pan Zi and Shunzi stared in stupefaction as well. Just who had cast such an enormous gate here?

Poker-Face gazed blankly at it, completely oblivious to the others' conversation.

Hearing Fatty's words, Cao Ya smiled and said:

"Who says we can't get in?"

The others whipped their heads around,

staring fixedly at Cao Ya, their eyes full of disbelief. You can push even this open?

Don't joke around. Even a hundred people couldn't push it open!

Unless we find the mechanism for this colossal bronze gate!

If King Wannu of Eastern Xia really had crawled out of here, there had to be some way for him to open this colossal bronze gate.

Otherwise, forcing it open through brute strength... if King Wannu had possessed that kind of power, the Mongols would never have destroyed his kingdom.

He might even have wiped out Mongolia instead.

Poker-Face tossed out a flare. In that utterly pitch-black space, it shone like a miniature sun, illuminating the entire rift.

By the flare's light, everyone could see that this was actually a vast fissure in the mountain. Sheer cliffs faced each other across the gap, and galleries and terraces had even been built along one side.

But that was not what surprised them. After all, the Bronze Gate was already here. If King Wannu had crawled out of it and commanded the resources of an entire kingdom, however small, he would hardly have allowed this place to fall into ruin.

What truly stunned them all was the sight within the rift.

In the pitch-black rift, the flare illuminated vast stretches of space. Countless bronze chains as thick as the mouth of a bowl spanned the gap, linking its two sides.

Who knew how many such chains stretched across the murky depths of the rift? There was scarcely a sparse patch to be seen. Farther down, countless objects hung densely from the chains, looking like bells, but they were too far away to make out clearly.

Cao Ya could see them clearly. He even saw what lay in the middle of the rift.

After the flare went out, their flashlights could not reach very far, and everything they had just seen sank back into darkness. They suddenly sensed a deadly stillness, as though terrifying monsters lurked in that gloom.

The group decided to go forward and take a look. Carefully stepping over the bones beneath their feet, they reached the colossal bronze gate and were immediately overcome by a profound sense of insignificance. Before such a miracle, what did a single person amount to?

Only Cao Ya felt nothing of the sort.

If he unleashed his full strength, he could tear open this entire mountain, let alone a mere bronze gate.

"It's so fucking huge!" Fatty tilted his head back and aimed his flashlight upward. The beam scattered before it could even reveal the top of the Bronze Gate.

"People of our era are used to skyscrapers, trains, planes, ships-all sorts of enormous things-and even we feel this way here. It's really hard to imagine how stunned the people of Eastern Xia, or Wang Canghai, must have been when they came here back then. No wonder Wang Canghai could never forget his experience here, to the point that he risked his life to record everything and pass it down to future generations." Wu Xie slowly exhaled. Suddenly, he could feel Wang Canghai's anguish: the terror of believing he already understood the laws of the universe, only to abruptly discover that he understood nothing at all.

Cao Ya pointed to the side and said:

"Look over there."