[Tomb Raiding + Adventure + Mystery] Three months ago, Zhang Tian’s father fell off a cliff. The doctor said that if they waited any longer, his leg would have to be amputated. But the family had already pawned everything they could, even trading his mother’s dowry silver bracelet for three doses of bitter medicine.
“Let’s try our luck again.” Zhang Tian wiped the dust from the porcelain bottle with his sleeve. Suddenly, his fingertip brushed against a raised vine pattern on its surface. The glaze there was darker than elsewhere, like a patina polished by years of handling. With a soft click, a secret compartment sprang open at the bottom of the bottle. Startled, he stumbled back and slammed into the woodpile, sending dry branches clattering across the floor.
Curiously, Zhang Tian leaned toward the compartment. Inside lay a booklet wrapped in yellowed oilpaper, its edges crusted with brown patches that looked like dried blood; a rusty bronze awl, black fragments still lodged in its three-sided blade; and, at the very bottom, a piece of sheepskin parchment crumpled into a ball. It crackled as he unfolded it. Zhang Tian’s gaze fell on the booklet’s title page. The four vermilion characters for “Secret Manual of the Grave-Robbing Masters” had long since bled into a dark red, their distorted edges seeming to writhe with countless tiny insects.
The sheepskin parchment showed the winding outline of a mountain range, with a cross repeatedly scratched into one spot by a fingernail. Zhang Tian leaned in for a closer look and noticed a crooked line of tiny writing beside the intersection: “Enter only after hearing thunder, at the third quarter of the Dog hour.”
Learning Tomb Raiding in a Psychiatric Hospital
The Eerie Shadows of Changbai Mountain's Yin Tombs
The Secret Records of the Mountain Movers
Upholding Heaven’s Justice: I Became Song Jiang and Refused to Surrender
A Tomb Raider's History of Making Money
Clouds Over Taihang: I Pulled a Tomb Out of a Bottle
