Chapter 19: The Palace of Heaven on Clouds

We organized our equipment, extinguished and put away the smokeless stove, folded up all the pickaxes and shovels, and everyone seemed to have a tacit understanding. We worked very quickly and quickly to pack up and gather around the breach we had dug.

This is a typical behavior of people who have a common goal. In fact, it is very naive to say. No matter how fast you pack up, it has nothing to do with whether you can go down earlier, because no one has touched the imperial tomb before, and no matter what, you have to go through a familiarization process. But at that time, I felt that I couldn't let others get ahead.

So a funny scene appeared: after surrounding the breach, everyone suddenly didn't know what to do, just like a group of people who had been discussing where to go for fun for a long time, and after deciding, they found that no one knew the way. Several people looked at each other in bewilderment.

I looked inside the cave and analyzed it a little in my mind. Everything else was fine, but there was one fatal problem. Our location was right above the abyss, with a drop of more than one hundred meters and a horizontal distance of more than twenty meters from the cave where the spiritual palace was located. Although we had enough ropes, we could not cross the twenty meters horizontally - we could not swing over it.

Chenpi A Si, who was behind us, saw us like this and sneered, "What a bunch of losers." Then he stood up and asked us to make way.

I laughed secretly in my heart. Chenpi A Si's old man mentality was still unavoidable. We have always followed his lead. After the fat man showed off his skills just now, he couldn't help feeling uncomfortable. Seeing us like this, he couldn't help but say bad words to save his status. This is a common mentality of many old people.

We made way for him. Monk Hua laughed at himself and said, "Old man, we are all so happy. We have never seen such a big battle. How do you think we should end this fight?"

Chenpi Ah Si helped Ye Cheng squat down, looked inside the hole, and said, "No matter how things change, they still remain essentially the same. It's better to be cautious. Let's first find someone to climb up the wooden pillars supporting the ice dome, climb up to the top of the cave, and then use a rope to go down to the roof of the building outside."

We looked at the wooden columns covered with ice. Each column was more than 100 meters long. They were definitely not made from a single tree. There must be wooden wedges connecting several pieces of wood. Such a structure could withstand pressure, but I don't know if it could withstand tension. If not, it would be a disaster. When a wooden column collapsed, it would inevitably hit other columns during the fall. At that time, the entire ice dome might collapse. This method was still very risky.

But at that time, everyone was in a hurry to get on and didn't think too much about these things. Besides, there seemed to be no better way.

The only one who is suitable to step on the mines here is Pan Zi. The others are not up to the standard in terms of their skills and weight, so Pan Zi has to take on this responsibility.

We tied a rope with a butterfly buckle around his waist. He only had some light equipment on him. Pan Zi looked a little excited. Chen Pi Ah Si passed him a sip of wine to calm him down and said, "Don't get too excited. This is not our goal. Go down and light up the sight for me."

Pan Zi nodded, took a deep breath, and carefully climbed into the ice well. Then he used the Flying Tiger Claw to go around the wooden corridor on one side, swung over like a special forces soldier swinging on a rope, and climbed onto the wooden corridor pillar in one go.

As soon as we stepped on it, the wooden pillars made a series of very uncomfortable ice-cracking sounds. We all held our breath immediately. Pan Zi's face turned pale and he didn't move, for fear that the pillars would disintegrate and break.

Fortunately, after waiting for more than ten minutes, the popping sound of the columns stopped, the surroundings returned to calm, and the force was balanced again.

I thought so too. Perhaps I was worrying too much. The ice dome above was so heavy, and the pressure between the wooden corridors was very great. We were like ants, so it shouldn't be a big problem.

Several people breathed a sigh of relief. After this scare, we all sobered up a little, and the inexplicable excitement subsided to a certain extent.

Pan Zi continued to move forward, walking more carefully, almost like he was dancing at an extremely slow rhythm. Our hearts followed his steps. After much difficulty, we finally reached the cliff at the end of the corridor. More than a hundred meters below was the cave.

The light from the flashlight we shone on him was too diffuse, so Pan Zi picked up five or six fluorescent sticks and threw them down one by one.

In the darkness, several beams of light fell straight down. Some disappeared at the end of the abyss like meteors. Some fell more than ten meters before hitting the roof and bouncing a few times before stopping. At the same time, the chemical substances in the fluorescent sticks reacted due to the violent vibrations, and the light became brighter and brighter, dimly illuminating the situation inside the ice dome.

Then Pan Zi dropped the rope, one of which hung down to the roof and then slid down quickly.

We felt relieved when we saw Pan Zi land steadily on the roof. Pan Zi made a few gestures to us, probably to indicate that this process was safe.

We started to get excited again. The second one to come was Monk Hua. We followed his example carefully one after another, and one group after another safely got down to the roof.

A 100-meter balance beam and a 100-meter rope climb are no joke. I could barely stand when I got to the bottom, and needed Pan Zi to hold me up so I could stand on the glazed tiles. The feeling of standing on the icy wooden columns made my legs involuntarily go weak.

Seven flashlights were used to shine around, and we found that the slopes and cliffs in this ice dome were about 30 degrees vertical, the caves were very deep, and the palace went straight into the mountain. We couldn't see the innermost part. The top of the mountain and the top of the palace were almost connected. The tile roof we stood on was the roof of the outermost layer of the "hall". The eaves were all flying with phoenix dragon heads, and on both sides of the ridge were gargoyles to protect the house. The yellow tiles and red beams were very royal. We stood on it crookedly, feeling like Stephen Chow's version of the battle on the top of the Forbidden City.

The fat man wanted to lift a tile to see what was going on, but he found that the tiles and the beams were frozen and could not be broken off, so he had to give up. We carefully grabbed the dragon head of the eaves one by one and used the rope to go down to the porch outside the main gate of the Ling Palace.

The porch is similar to a sacrificial altar. The elevated and flat ground is made of stone slabs. Years of cold have made the stones brittle. When you step on them, they make a creaking sound and may break at any time. This should be the end of the plank road that was built to enter the mountain. Now the plank road has been demolished. On one side is a dark abyss, and on the left and right are a row of copper tripods covered with ice chips, which are full of black unknown ancient ashes.

The style of the bronze ware and the appearance of the palace both have very obvious Han style. It seems that when Wang Canghai went there to contract the project, he was still unable to go beyond the limitations of his own nation and time in terms of design. Or, it is possible that with the national strength of Dongxia at that time, it could only make do by plundering things from the Han people on the border.

On the other side is the gate of the spirit hall. In front of the gate stands a stone tablet with no words on it. Behind the stone tablet is the white jade gate of the palace. The gate is very large, almost three people tall and two people wide. There are many human-faced strange birds dancing in the clouds carved on the stone gate, whose names cannot be told. The brass door scroll above the door is a tiger head. The door seam and door hinges have all been soaked with water, and now the door panels on both sides are frozen as if they were a whole.

Standing here and looking at the ice dome above, with the faint light filtering through from above, my eyes seem to be covered with a layer of fog, and everything I see seems much older. This feeling is hard to express in words.

Monk Hua wanted to take some photos here first, so we took the opportunity to take a breath and look around. Ye Cheng walked around and saw the cliff below. He sighed: "I really don't understand why Emperor Wannu had to build his mausoleum in such a remote place. Wouldn't it be better to build it on flat ground? Isn't this a hassle?"

I said, "The idea of being an emperor is different from that of ordinary people. Maybe it has something special to do with their religion. You see, there are many temples in Tibet. All of them are built in places that people can't reach. The purpose is to get closer to the gods. This is something that ordinary people like us can't understand."

The fat man shook his head to express his disagreement: "I feel that the reason for building it here is very simple, that is, they don't want others to come up. There must be some good things in this imperial mausoleum. The old guy Emperor Wannu kept it as a treasure and would not give it to anyone even after his death. We must teach him a lesson this time." As he said that, he and Lang Feng took out the crowbar to pry the door of the palace.

I found it funny. The fat guy is a very honest person. If he were an emperor, I wonder where he would build his own mausoleum.

There was no stone behind the jade door, so we used a crowbar to push hard, and the ice on both sides of the door axis burst. We used a chisel to break the ice in the door gap, and the door could barely be pushed open. A black gas surged out, and we quickly dodged it. Monk Hua said it was okay, it was the moisture-proof paint stuck on the back of the door, and now it was frozen into powder.

The door of the temple opened a crack, but could not be moved anymore, as if the hinges were rusted. I shone a flashlight inside, but I could not see anything in the empty temple. The darkness inside seemed to absorb the light.

Ye Cheng couldn't wait to go in, but was stopped by Fatty. He turned around and asked Men Youping: "Brother, take a look first, is there any clever trap here?"

Menyouping touched the door, then looked at the relief on the door. After a long while, he shook his head to indicate that he was not sure: "Follow me and don't talk."

We all agreed that we had to stop what this person said. The fat man and I nodded vigorously, and several of us took out our self-defense gear.

Menyouping dodged, stepped over the knee-high threshold, and walked in first. We followed closely, crossed the threshold, and walked into the darkness inside with trepidation. Suddenly, I felt an extremely strange feeling coming towards me.

It suddenly occurred to me that we might be the first people to step into this palace in nearly a thousand years. What had happened in this huge palace that no one was watching during this thousand years?