Daomu Biji Novel – Book 8 Summary

Table of Contents | Daomu Biji Universe

Book 8: 邛笼石影
Deadly Mansion, Mystic Cave

Wu Xie figured that there must be at least some official records of the archaeological trip to Banai kept somewhere. After asking around, he went to the archives room at a major university in Hangzhou and discovered a section being mysteriously sealed off with a simple notice “Research Lab of XX University hereby seals this place, 6th July 1990”. Wu Xie was shaken to find out one thing: The notice was written in his own handwriting!

Digging up further, Wu Xie found a file recording in detail the survey of the lake in Banai, Guangxi. The survey’s findings noted that the Zhang Family Mansion was constructed in the style of Yang Shi Lei¹. There were eight floors in total, with each floor’s structure spread out on separate drawings. From the archives room, Wu Xie managed to find only one out of the eight drawings.

¹ 样式雷 [Yang Shi Lei], lit. translated as “Style of Lei” or “Architecture of Lei”, refers to a collection of architectural designs created by the real-life Lei family. The Leis are a well-known family of architects who came up with the designs of many significant buildings in China during the Qing Dynasty, such as the Forbidden Palace and the Temple of Heaven.

Wu Xie reached out to his grandfather’s old friends to inquire about the remaining drawings of the mansion. One of them introduced him to Huo Xiangu, the head lady of the wealthy, influential Huo family in Beijing. She agreed to meet Wu Xie at the New Moon Hotel. Wu Xie headed to Beijing and grouped again with Pangzi and Men You Ping. They then decided that Pangzi and Men You Ping should act as Wu Xie’s bodyguards to give off the feeling that Wu Xie was a powerful young master of the Wu family who came to meet Huo Xiangu regarding ‘serious business’.

Going to New Moon Hotel, Wu Xie met a young, handsome man clad in a pink shirt and thought that he looked really familiar. The man was Xie Yuchen who used to play with Wu Xie when they were younger. Wu Xie remembered him to be a very pretty child and even thought that he was a girl, hence giving him the nickname “Xiao Hua” (Little Flower).

Entering the designated room, Wu Xie was introduced to Huo Xiangu and her granddaughter Huo Xiuxiu. Huo Xiangu wanted to buy the Zhang Family Mansion drawing that Wu Xie had on hand, but Wu xie needed to obtain more information from her so they started negotiating. Huo Xiangu told Wu Xie that if he could sit in the chair next to her until 4:30pm, she would reveal what she knew to him.

It turned out that an auction was going to happen in the hotel. The item to be auctioned was a jade seal identical to the seal that Men You Ping used to enter the bronze gate. The chair that Wu Xie sat on was in fact the Sky Lantern Lighter’s seat. Being the Sky Lantern Lighter meant that whatever was the highest bid price, he would outbid it. Wu Xie froze as he figured that he got tricked by Huo Xiangu, for even the entire fortune of the Wu family would not be enough to cover the price of the item. Halfway through the auction, Men You Ping jumped down to rob the seal, causing a huge commotion inside the New Moon Hotel. Huo Xiangu’s guards tried to drag Wu Xie out of the chair, but Pangzi and Men You Ping made sure Wu Xie was protected.

As the clock hit 4:30, the three fled from the hotel with the jade seal and were furiously chased after by other guests of the auction. Unexpectedly, they were saved by Huo Xiuxiu and brought back to the Huo family place.

Huo Xiangu allowed only Wu Xie to come into her room to talk, while the other two had to wait outside. The lady told Wu Xie that she had all the other seven drawings and the missing one was the one that Wu Xie was holding. She wanted to buy the drawing from Wu Xie because this had something to do with her daughter, one of the people who went on the archaeological trip to Banai and whose personality changed upon returning. She went missing later and had never been found ever since.

Hearing that, Wu Xie asked if her daughter was Huo Ling. Completely puzzled by Wu Xie’s knowledge, Huo Xiangu nodded. Wu Xie told Huo Xiangu that he knew a lot of things about Huo Ling, and he would only continue talking if she allowed Men You Ping and Pangzi to join in with him.

Wu Xie then recounted everything he knew to Huo Xiangu. It seemed that the Huo Ling who came back from the Banai trip was dead and had been replaced by an imposter. It was possible that even Chen Wenjin herself was not the real Chen Wenjin. 

Huo Xiangu calmly listened to Wu Xie and asked who among them was the one with the kylin tatoo. Knowing it was Men You Ping, she knelt down before him; even Huo Xiuxiu also followed immediately. Huo Xiangu then asked Men You Ping if he wanted to hear the story of the past, at which point Men You Ping refused to listen and demanded Wu Xie to take him home instead.

Huo Xiuxiu ran after them, saying that others must be hunting them down at the moment after the fuss they caused at New Moon Hotel, so they had to stay hidden. She brought them to a deserted house owned by the Huo family, promising to come by later at night to give them mattresses and blankets. She also wanted to exchange information with Wu Xie, hinting she knew something that Wu Xie definitely did not know.

When nighttime came, Huo Xiuxiu came back. She behaved mischievously and demanded that Wu Xie tell her the information he had on hand first before she told him. At her turn, Huo Xiuxiu said that when she was young, she found that her grandmother often talked in her sleep, usually repeating the same phrase “There is not much time left”. This made her incredibly curious. Later, when aunt Huo Ling went missing, she began to investigate on her own. She discovered that at the age of 18, aunt Huo Ling was 168 cm tall, yet after three years, her height was reduced to 161 cm. Huo Xiuxiu concluded that the Huo Ling that came back after the trip to Banai was definitely not the real person. 

The person who posted the line “The fish is at my place” in the article that looked for the missing Third Uncle was also her. In addition, Huo Xiuxiu secretly sent letters to the people that her grandmother used to work with and got a response from Jin Wantang, the mysterious man with a golden tooth that brought the Warring States Period silk script to Wu Xie’s shop. She immediately located the man and disturbed him to no ends, finally obtaining some information from him.

Between 1962 and 1963, Jin Wantang took part in what was believed to be ‘the largest tomb robbery in history’. His  job was to classify the documents that were taken from the tomb. The process lasted for three years until 1966, when he successfully deciphered the Lu Huang silk script, one the rarest and most difficult-to-decipher scripts of ancient China. He secretly made a copy of the script and wanted to bring it out, yet he unfortunately got caught. Luckily for him, Huo Xiangu saved his neck and he narrowly avoided death.

‘The largest tomb robbery in history’ had the The Old Nine Gates come together and join hands to excavate a tomb in Sichuan. From the tomb, a lot of bamboo cards and silk scripts were dug up. It was also during that robbery that a tragic accident happened, causing a massive number of casualties and weakening the power of The Old Nine Gates to a large extent. People who used to be part of the robbery no longer wanted to talk about it. It was only known that the leader who controlled The Old Nine Gates during the robbery was a very young man with two unusually long fingers.

When Huo Xiuxiu finished her story, she immediately fled from the house via the rooftop. Suddenly, she turned up again at the front gate, this time attempting to snatch the jade seal from Wu Xie. A small conflict ensured, following which Huo Xiangu and the real Huo Xiuxiu appeared. It turned out that the one that tried to take the seal was Xiao Hua, who was very adept at face transformation technique. This whole setup was to test the competency of Wu Xie, Men You Ming and Pangzi. Xiao Hua and Huo Xiangu now offered to work with Wu Xie to uncover the secret of the Zhang Family Mansion and revealed to him the Zhang Family Mansion was in fact a burial ground of the Zhang family members. Huo Xiangu also ambiguously mentioned that there lay a secret in Sichuan that would help with their exploration of the mansion down the lake. Thus, they divided into two teams: Men You Ping, Pangzi and Huo Xiangu would head to Banai, while Wu Xie and Xiao Huo would go to the tomb in Sichuan that The Old Nine Gates attempted to rob back in 1966.

At Sichuan, Wu Xie and Xiao Hua climbed up Si Gu Niang mountain and entered a cave. On the cave wall, there was a strange relief plaque with some parts protruding outwards while some other parts retreating inwards. In the middle of the cave was an ancient rotatable table made of iron. A few photos of an uneven wall filled with strange patterns were sent by the team in Banai, asking for Wu Xie and Xiao Hua’s input to help them pass the wall. The teamwork needed between the two teams was like this: to enter the mansion at Banai, Men You Ping’s team needed to pass three layers of walls, each of which could be unlocked by tapping on the wall with a correct sequence; the sequence would only be found out if Wu Xia and Xiao Hua decoded the puzzle of the iron table and the relief plaque in the cave at Sichuan.

Wu Xie and Xiao Hua discussed the different methods to uncover the secrets of the iron table. Xiao Hua deduced that they had only one try at turning the table in the right direction, which would be impossible to do without any further clue, so the two decided to plug the table up and go down the well below the table instead. Inside the well, they discovered a narrow tunnel lined up entirely with pots containing human heads. Wu Xie could instantly tell that these heads were full of corpse-eating bugs – just like the ones found in the shipwreck near Ta Mu Tuo. Wu Xie had a preliminary guess that back in 1966, the table was turned in the wrong direction, activating the trap and releasing the bugs, hence killing the people involved in the excavation.

Xiao Hua, confident with his body flexibility after many years of training, decided to take an extreme risk and crawled through all the pots without actually breaking them. Wu Xie stayed behind and was attacked by a mummy covered in thick layers of hair. As he defeated the mummy, a crimson chicken crest snake appeared out of nowhere and bit him on the face. Thinking that he would die like A-Ning, a thought crossed Wu Xie’s mind: he needed to leave a last message behind.

Wu Xie woke up two hours later to find himself alive, rescued in the nick of time by Xiao Hua. On the floor, a seemingly meaningless number “1896528 02200059” was scribbled, and Wu Xie had no idea why he wrote it.

Xiao Hua, having passed successfully to the other end of the narrow tunnel, stretched a rope for Wu Xie to crawl over. At the other side, they found a mysterious beehive-like structure that was made entirely of bronze and connected to many iron chains. Xiao Hua figured that the Zhang Family Mansion might not be the only burial ground to ever exist for the Zhang family members; the location probably had been moved around many times before ultimately ending up in Banai.

By experimenting on the iron chains, Wu Xie and Xiao Hua successfully cracked the puzzle of the iron table. Hearing a loud sound of something moving in the cave above, they hurriedly went up and saw that the relief plagued had changed! This newly-formed relief plaque was the correct sequence to tap on the wall in the mansion. They immediately sent the pictures of the plaque to Men You Ping’s team.

Five days later, the reply came back, saying that the team had successfully passed the first wall. Using a similar procedure, Wu Xie and Xiao Hua found out also the sequences for the two remaining walls. While waiting for Men You Ping’s team to reply, Xiao Hua told Wu Xie the story of Zhang Da Fo Ye and his theories so far on what actually happened in 1966. Zhang Da Fo Ye had connections with an unknown leader who requested for the secret to immortality. Under this request, Zhang Da Fo Ye called upon The Old Nine Gates and spearheaded ‘the largest tomb robbery in history’. However, the robbery proved to be a failure as many people were killed. The said leader passed away, but it was likely that his next generation, wanting to follow with the leader’s wish, formed another team to investigate the Zhang Family Mansion. This was the team consisting of Huo Ling and Chen Wenjin that went to the lake in Banai and got killed by Pan Ma. Let’s call this side the “A” organisation. Now, unbeknownst to A, there existed another “B” organisation that had been closely following their steps and completely replaced the team at Banai. No one knew for certain who B were, where they were hiding or what exactly their motives were.

Shockingly, Wu Xie and Xiao Hua realised they had made a grave mistake with the third sequence. By this time, the team in Banai had passed the third wall for 3 days and now they could not be contacted anymore. Knowing that they must be in danger, Wu Xie wanted to immediately head for Banai.

However, he would not be able to go down the lake just by himself, so Wu Xie turned to Pan Zi, who now stationed in Changsha, for help. Since Third Uncle was missing, the situation in Changsha had gone sour and Third Uncle’s underlings did not want to listen to Wu Xie. Wu Xie was stuck as he could not recruit anyone for the team to go to Banai.

At this point, Xiao Hua suggested that Wu Xie had to take up Third Uncle’s identity if he wanted to gain back the control over Changsha.

[End of Book 8]