Tomb Raiding: The Hidden Key in the Ancient Tomb

In 1970, undercurrents stirred in the black market of Weixian County, Lu Province.

A note scrawled on a cigarette carton read “Wohuling, Yelü's Companion Tomb, pine-stone key.” It brought together Lu Chenzhou, who carried his family's ancestral compass; Old Zheng, an expert in Liao tomb mechanisms; Shen Wenjing, who held a fragment of an ancient tomb record; and five companions, each with their own specialty, to form a makeshift expedition team.

They hid explosives in baskets of vegetables, wrapped copper wire in gauze, and risked their lives slipping past militia checkpoints, all to steal a gilt belt buckle set with seven turquoise stones. It was not only the money Shen Wenjing needed to save her younger brother, but also the only key to a map revealing the location of the Liao king's tomb.

But beneath Wohuling's red earth lay more than the tamped-earth barriers and deadly traps of a thousand-year-old Liao tomb. There were also covert sentries among their fellow adventurers, and Khitan secrets that had lain dormant for nearly a thousand years.

When the seven stones were brought together and the stone chest opened, would they find riches, or an abyss leading to hell?

A decade-long obsession, an adventure that trades lives for treasure, all wrapped in the mysterious legends hidden deep within the Liao tomb.