Daomu Biji Novel – Book 5 Summary (Part 1)

Table of Contents | Daomu Biji Universe

Book 5: 蛇沼鬼城
Ghost Kingdom Of The Snakes (Part 1)

After rescuing Third Uncle from Heavenly Palace On The Clouds, Wu Xie was determined to not let him go missing again. However, at a slip of a moment, Third Uncle tricked Wu Xie and ran away. Fortunately, Second Uncle arrived just in time to stop Third Uncle’s escape. Under Wu Xie’s pressure, Third Uncle started telling his version of the story.

A year before the trip down to the tomb of Xi Sha, Third Uncle secretly went to a tomb at Biao Zi mountain in Changsha. Upon his arrival, he found a group of foreigners setting up tents in front of the tomb entrance. Third Uncle quietly waited for the night to come, then successfully broke into the tomb without anyone knowing. Inside, he chanced upon the skeletons of his grandfather and great-grandfather who perished about 50 years prior. A blood mummy attacked him, so Third Uncle chopped its head off and burnt the corpse entirely. That was when he discovered that the blood mummy was in fact the elder brother of his father Wu Lao Gou. Entering the deepest part of the tomb, Third Uncle discovered a relief plaque of a deity who had a human’s face with four eyes and a bird’s body. Third Uncle then obtained two pills attached to the eyes of the deity. One pill however fell to the ground and a corpse-eating queen bug flew out from inside. Luckily, Third Uncle managed to run away and bring out the remaining pill.

As Third Uncle was preparing for the trip to Xi Sha with Chen Wenjin’s archaeologist team, Xie Lianhuan came to ask for a favour: To allow him to join in the team. Xie Lianhuan and Third Uncle were in fact cousins, as Wu Lao Gou’s wife was from the Xie family. Third Uncle, though agreeing to help, held some suspicion and actually had his men watch over Xie Lianhuan, ultimately learning that Xie Lianhuan was working for an American named Qiu Dekao. In the past, Qiu Dekao snatched the Warring States Period silk script from Wu Lao Gou, then double-crossed the entire tomb-robbing community at Xi Sha by reporting them to the police. Because of that, the tomb-robbing community fell apart, the majority of which were criminalised and perished under the hands of the government. Wu Lao Gou narrowly avoided being caught by hiding himself inside a tomb. Thereafter, he exiled to Hangzhou, where he built everything again from scratch and established the Wu family.

The silk script’s content was an incomprehensible drawing of six curves and one circle. Qiu Dekao then went through a strenuous journey in China to decode the secret hidden in the silk script. At one point, he went down to the underwater tomb, and later had Xie Lianhuan go down again, to look for clues. Qiu Dekao’s findings led him to believe that the drawing was an astrological map, but apart from that, he could not gather any other meaning.

Back to what actually happened inside the underwater tomb 20 years ago, before Chen Wenjin and everyone else in the team went down, Third Uncle and Xie Lianhuan together sneaked into the tomb. They used a different route to enter the main chamber, in which they bypassed both the elevator trap and the Qimen Dunjia. Inside the chamber, they found a coffin holding a dry corpse whose skull was full of tiny, peculiar eggs. Skipping forward, Third Uncle escaped alone from the tomb, leaving an unconscious Xie Lianhuan behind. The next day, Xie Lianhuan was discovered dead by the whole team, his corpse trapped in a coral reef. Upon listening, Wu Xie was convinced that Third Uncle was not telling him the full story or just simply lied about certain details.

At this point, Wu Xie received two videotapes that were apparently sent by Men You Ping. The ‘From’ address noted Golmud, a city located near Tibet. In one tape, Wu Xie saw Huo Ling – one of the eight missing members of the archaeologist team – combing her hair in front of a mirror. The other tape was plain black. Out of the blue, A-Ning came to see Wu Xie and showed him two similar videotapes also sent from the same place, but the sender’s name was, mysteriously enough, Wu Xie himself. In the two tapes brought by A-Ning, a person whose face looked scarily like Wu Xie was seen crawling back and forth in a grand hall. Wu Xie then discovered an address and a key inside the tapes. He immediately headed to Golmud to find the truth.

As he approached the address hidden in the tapes, Wu Xie learnt that the place used to be an army’s nursing home and had been abandoned since 60 years ago. Breaking into the building, Wu Xie found a secret passage leading into the lower floor. An ancient black coffin lay prominently in the hall. Thereafter, Wu Xie found Chen Wenjin’s diary hidden inside a table drawer. The first page of the diary contained a message summarised as follows:

“To whom that is reading this,

I don’t know who you are among those three persons. But if you are reading this, you must have gotten caught up in this ordeal.

The videotapes are the last resort set up by us. If they have been sent out, it means either the person inside the tapes could not contact me anymore or I have been discovered by “it” and could no longer stay around.

Whatever the case is, it is likely that I will soon disappear from this world. This diary is my 10 years’ worth of research – its content is the clue to an enormous secret. No one knows if this secret will bring you the biggest fortune or the worst precadiment. You have to take care.

Chen Wenjin, September 1995”

The next page of the diary resembled what Qiu Dekao managed to decipher from the silk script: six curves and one circle. This was when Wu Xie learnt of the actual secret hidden in the script. Qiu Dekao was wrong to think that it was an astrological map. The six curves in fact represented the mountains that ran through the dragon vein¹ discovered by Wang Zang Hai. Taking a closer look, Wu Xie found that the curves formed a dragon – each curve coincided with the dragon’s head, tail and each of the four legs. Contrasting against the map of China, the curves and the circle lay on top of seven locations:

• Guazi Temple – Lu Shang Wang’s tomb
• Shatou Reef at Xi Sha – the underwater tomb
• Changbai mountains – Heavenly Palace On The Clouds
• Reclining Buddha Hill – Jing Er Palace
• Qaidam Basin – Ta Mu Tuo
• Unknown
• Unknown

Specially, Ta Mu Tuo – a location that Wu Xie himself had never heard of – was marked right inside the circle, noting that this was probably the most important location. The remaining two locations couldn’t be identified.

¹ 龙脉 [long mai], lit. translated as “dragon vessel” or “dragon vein”, is a feng shui term referring to a special geographical form, usually mountains. In general, dragon veins are used to roughly reflect the direction and the altitude of a mountain range, from which it could be determined whether the mountain is auspicious enough for a certain site, such as a tomb, to be built atop of it.

Based on the content of Chen Wenjin’s diary, Wu Xie laid out the following events:

April 2, 1990: From the narrative found on the porcelain vases and the murals, it was learnt that Wang Zang Hai was the one leading the construction of Heavenly Palace On The Clouds.

April 6, 1990: There was no absolutely no record of how Wang Zang Hai spent the last years of his life. It was unknown where he moved to or what he did.

December 6, 1990: It was discovered that Wang Zang Hai, after his last construction, accompanied the Emperor to an offering ceremony on Changbai mountains. That was the last known detail about Wang Zang Hai’s life.

December 7, 1990: A record was found, mentioning that in the year 1396, an official was sent to “Ta Mu Tuo” for a diplomatic mission. It was likely that the official was Wang Zang Hai.

February 11, 1991: “Ta Mu Tuo” was discovered to be a kingdom in the Western Regions. The diplomatic mission carried gifts from the Emperor to that kingdom, which mostly consisted of animals used for transportation such as horses and donkeys.

March 6, 1991: Research progress became stagnant.

January 19, 1993: It was speculated that Wang Zang Hai going to Ta Mu Tuo had something to do with the Emperor conducting the offering ceremony on Changbai mountains. The team had a preliminary guess that he went to Heavenly Palace On The Clouds before heading to Ta Mu Tuo.

April 18, 1993: The archaeologist team started the journey to Changbai mountains.

May 30, 1993: The team entered the mountains. 

June 15, 1993: Chen Wenjin lost contact with all other teammates. She and another team member continued on with the journey.

June 17, 1993: Chen Wenjin and the teammate entered the Bronze Gate inside Heavenly Palace On The Clouds.

June 18, 1993: Chen Wenjin saw “The Ultimate²”.

² 终极 [Zhong Ji], lit. translated as “The Ultimate” or “The Final Goal”, refers to the secret lying behind the Bronze Gate and also the biggest mystery of Daomu Biji series. As of 2020, 15 years after the beginning of the novel, readers have yet to know what exactly is “The Ultimate”.

February 8, 1995: Chen Wenjin decided to find a way to Ta Mu Tuo, an oasis in a desert full of danger. Chen Wenjin was terrified that her research of the underwater tomb opened up a grand-scale, appalling puzzle. She managed to reach Ta Mu Tuo but a conflict arose between her and a teammate, so the trip was unfortunately cut short.

After reading Chen Wenjin’s diary, Wu Xie turned around to see an eerie-looking human combing her hair in front of the mirror. Wu Xie wondered if that was Huo Ling – the lady that was seen combing her hair in the first videotape. Wu Xie then realised that human looked exactly like the Forbidden Lady found in the underwater tomb. He tried to escape and was rescued in a split of a second by – unexpectedly – Men You Ping! Here, he also met with a man clad in black clothes and a pair of sunglasses, who introduced himself as Hei Xiazi. The man took an item from the black coffin inside the nursing home. Afterwards, Wu Xie followed Men You Ping and Hei Xiazi to get out of the place and saw A-Ning’s car waiting outside. It turned out that Men You Ping had agreed to work with A-Ning in the next tomb-robbing expedition.

The item that Hei Xiazi took from the place was a broken porcelain plate that seemed of little value as an antique. A-Ning tracked down Ding Zhu Zhuo Ma, an old Tibetan lady who led Chen Wenjin into the desert in 1995, and presented the broken plate to her. Upon recognising that it was the same plate that Chen Wenqin showed her back then, Ding Zhu Zhuo Ma agreed to help bring A-Ning’s team to the place where she last made contact with Chen Wenjin. As the journey begun, Wu Xie made friends with the members of A-Ning’s team to dig up more clues, subsequently figuring out that the purpose of the trip was to locate Ta Mu Tuo, which was believed to be the burial ground of Queen Mother of The West, the leader of the mysterious Xi Wang Mu kingdom. A-Ning’s team also knew that Ta Mu Tuo was likely the last known location of Wang Zang Hai, and that the mysterious number “02200059” was taken from the silk script.

Later, Wu Xie confronted Men You Ping to ask about what happened behind the Bronze Gate but Men You Ping refused to tell him. Men You Ping only vaguely mentioned that he had seen “The Ultimate” – which he dubbed as “the end of everything”. At this point, Men You Ping, for the first time, showed a rather impassioned side of him and talked about how he felt that he had no connection to this world and that he was unsure if he ‘really existed’.

On the night of the first day of the trip, Ding Zhu Zhuo Ma secretly summoned Wu Xie and Men You Ping into her tent to deliver a message from Chen Wenjin: She would wait for the two of them at Ta Mu Tuo; if she did not see them after 10 days, she would go in by herself. At the same time, Chen Wenjin also warned Wu Xie and Men You Ping of “it”. In her ambiguous words, Chen Wenjin described “it” as a mysterious force that would always linger by their side and tried to manipulate everything that happened around them. Ding Zhu Zhuo Ma also revealed that it was she who sent the videotapes to Wu Xie. 

Heading into the desert, the group met with a strong sandstorm, so they retreated into a depleted river bed. Four people went missing during the chaos and everyone proceeded to look for them. Finally at night, one person was found. He described that before he lost consciousness, he saw his teammates enter the ghost town in the middle of the desert. A-Ning and Wu Xie decided to go into that town to look for the other three and had Zhuo Xi, Ding Zhu Zhuo Ma’s son, lead the way. 

Entering the ghost town, they found a shipwreck docked atop of a mound. The three missing people were found inside this wreck. Two of them had perished and the remaining one was almost holding onto his last breath. All three’s bodies were scattered with small, reddish holes. 

After that, A-Ning had everyone move into the ghost town to rest and to study the unusual shipwreck. Their initial finding was that it was likely a cargo ship coming from Xi Wang Mu kingdom. Some porcelain pots were taken out of the ship and were found to contain human heads. Tragedy struck as they pulled the heads out. Thousands of corpse-eating queen bugs flew out from the heads, killing most of the team members. It was then they learnt that these bugs laid eggs inside human brains, and the pots were created specifically as a breeding nest for them. 

As Wu Xie and A-Ning ran away from the bugs, they got lost in the ghost town. They figured that this town was in fact a Qimen Dunjia formation, and there would be no way to exit unless they could figure out the right door. Wu Xie and A-Ning walked around until the exhaustion and body dehydration took over. Suddenly, the sky turned grey and a heavy rain came rushing down, saving their lives at the most pivotal moment. They passed out but woke up to find themselves rescued by Hei Xiazi, Men You Ping, Pangzi and Pan Zi.  It turned out that Third Uncle had set up this group to follow Wu Xie closely, and that Hei Xiazi and Men You Ping were sent to infiltrate A-Ning’s team. After getting out of the ghost town, Hei Xiazi stationed there to wait for Third Uncle’s team, while Wu Xie, Pangzi, Pan Zi and Men You Ping entered Ta Mu Tuo.

[End of Book 5 – Part 1]