Daomu Biji Novel – Book 9 Summary (Part 2)

Table of Contents | Daomu Biji Universe

Book 9: 大结局
The Grand Finale (Part 2)

It was an incredibly large ball of pure black meat covered in fur, with no eyes, nose or mouth. Wu Xie and Pangzi retreated in the other direction, until they reached a 90-degree turn. Turning over, they faced a mountain cave. 

Pangzi rushed into the cave to find the large mirror that he told Wu Xie about. The mirror was made of brass, about 7 meters in diameter and entirely submerged in a water pool. As they shined their torchlight into the mirror, the image of Zhang Family Mansion appeared, but there was only the lone mansion standing there amid a gloomy dark light while Men You Ping’s team was nowhere to be seen.

Wu Xie and Pangzi climbed to the top of the cave to understand the principles behind the mirror: how did the Zhang Family Mansion appear here? After searching around, they found a complex system of channeling passages and mirrors that was used to direct sunlight into the mansion, which was the reason why the brass mirror under the pool could reflect the image of the mansion.

At this point, a whirlpool was suddenly formed, sucking Wu Xie and Pangzi into the bottom of the pool. It was then that they realised the system of passages and mirrors had dual roles: They also controlled the flow of air into this cave, which was how the whirlpool was created. Reaching the bottom of the pool, Wu Xie and Pangzi were further sucked into the quicksand, but after the sand reached Wu Xie’s neck, he stopped sinking because something was stuck right below him. It turned out that there were loads of animal skeletons buried inside the quicksand. They must have fallen into this pool via the channeling passages.

As Wu Xie and Pangzi crawled out of the quicksand and saw a stone staircase leading up to a bronze door, a giant Mi Luo Tuo appeared from the top of the cave and started attacking them. The two tricked the Mi Luo Tuo into smashing down the door for them, then followed the tunnel behind the door to finally reach their destination – the Zhang Family Mansion.

Entering the first floor, Wu Xie and Pangzi located lots of equipment left behind by Men You Ping’s group. Everything here was covered in alkaline dust that wasn’t so poisonous to kill people on the spot, but if one inhaled it for a prolonged period, it would become lethal. There were four giant columns in the middle of the floor, each engraved with a Kylin similar to that of Men You Ping’s tattoo.

After looking around, Wu Xie and Pangzi found no path to go to the next floor, so they climbed up the columns to try poking through the ceiling, but they ended up activating a mechanism that lowered a staircase down from above.

Breaking into the second floor, they found thousands of iron statues that were used as a form of funerary art to be buried together with the dead. These statues were the same as what they found at the bottom of the lake previously. Wu Xie deduced that the statues were made from the remnants of dead Mi Luo Tuo.

Following Men You Ping’s footprints to enter the third floor, the two found thousands of iron boxes hanging on the ceiling, all of which contained right hands with two unusually long fingers, the most distinguished characteristic of Zhang family members. It seemed that the corpses with no right hands that they picked up from the bottom of the lake earlier were Zhang family members.

The fourth floor had an area of several thousands square meters and was divided into thousands of small rooms, each containing a coffin. Reading the plaques that summarised the life of the person inside the coffin, Wu Xie and Pangzi could tell that they were people with high position or had made great achievements in the Zhang family. For other members, only their right hands were cut off and kept on the third floor.

As they checked out the different plaques, the two concluded that the Zhang family was so large that it was divided into a number of branches. One of the plaques even noted that the person inside lived till the age of 170, so long life was another characteristic of Zhang family members. The Zhang family had made many significant contributions to the ruling dynasties and stood behind major events in history, which might be the reason why the family maintained their existence through such a long period. The family likely had connections with and was protected by all sorts of great powers in the history of China1A bit of explanation here for those who might not know: To maintain a bloodline and carry on one family name through a thousand years (or probably more) like the Zhang family is, in fact, a very challenging task. In the course of history, with constant changes in the ruling families and different families / clans / parties always trying to seize power by killing each other, it was never easy to protect your own people. In addition, it was common for an entire family to change their surname to conceal their identity for fear of being killed. It could thus be deduced that to exist for that long, the Zhang family must be well-protected by other powers.. They also seemed to have great influence in northern China, especially towards the area of Changbai mountains.

While searching around, Wu Xie and Pangzi located a luxuriously decorated room belonging to a man called Zhang Ruitong, where the coffin inside had been recklessly raided many years ago and some burial items in the coffin had been taken away. There was a small “Zhang Qiling” engraved right below the name Zhang Ruitong, and the plaque also mentioned he was selected to be “Zhang Qiling” at the age of 19. This meant that in each generation, someone would emerge as Zhang Qiling and from that moment on, the person would change their real name to Zhang Qiling. It was also noted that Zhang Ruitong died because of memory loss issues.

In the list of Zhang Ruitong’s offspring, Wu Xie pointed out the name “Zhang Qishan”, which was Zhang Da Fo Ye’s real name. This man in the coffin, Zhang Ruitong, was Zhang Da Fo Ye’s grandfather. So his earlier speculation turned out correct: Zhang Da Fo Ye was indeed a member of this Zhang family. As for his alias “Zhang Da Fo Ye”2大佛爷 [Da Fo Ye] lit. means ‘The Great Buddha’, it was said that he buried a giant buddha statue in his backyard, whose origin was unknown. Wu Xie believed that it was Zhang Da Fo Ye who raided this coffin. Judging from the dents left in the coffin, the items taken away included two large-size hoops and a saber – to which Wu Xie and Pangzi both concluded that it must be Men You Ping’s ancient black-metal saber. The saber must have floated around in the black market and somehow ended up in Third Uncle’s shop.

As they were discussing, a corpse fell down through an opening on the ceiling. Pangzi climbed through the opening to discover Men You Ping’s group trapped in a chamber where toxic gas still lingered. Huo Xiangu and more than half of the group had died, while the other half was taking their last breaths. Wu Xie and Pangzi found Men You Ping breathing weakly in a corner of the room; he managed to stay alive till now by reducing his air consumption to the lowest point, hence inhaling less toxic gas than all the others. 

Wu Xie and Pangzi made the difficult decision to only take Men You Ping with them, because it was impossible to bring everyone out and Men You Ping was also the only person who could likely survive. Pangzi helped Wu Xie decapitate Huo Xiangu so he could at least bring her head to Huo Xiuxiu. They decided to go out using the route that Men You Ping’s group went through rather than their original route, because that one was full of deadly Mi Luo Tuo.

Wu Xie carried the barely conscious Men You Ping on his back. When they reached a stone pillar with some mechanism inside, Men You Ping used his two special fingers to trigger an opening, which was enough for one person to go in at a time. This opening functioned similar to a modern lift and brought the three of them back to the lowest floor. 

A coffin carried out by the previous archaeologist team lay on this floor. Wu Xie and Pangzi opened the lid and a mummy covered in a thick layer of hair jumped out to attack them. Defeating the mummy, the three entered a large chamber with two rivers running through it. They discovered several corpses at the bottom of the smaller river, and were shocked to also find Pan Ma’s corpse here! It seemed that Pan Ma had followed Men You Ping’s group around and ended up dead in this place.

They followed the river to arrive at a cave with a dense net of silk. Many hexagonal bronze bells were hung on the silk threads, and the toxic gas also began to emerge. Pangzi carried Men You Ping to safely pass through the net, but Wu Xie was hesitant so he told Pangzi to head out first.

After Pangzi left and when Wu Xie was about to jump over, he heard Pan Zi’s voice. Pan Zi was trapped in a rock crevice and couldn’t be saved anymore. Pan Zi offered to give Wu Xie his last protection: he would shoot at any bronze bells that blocked Wu Xie’s path, so that Wu Xie could pass through the silk net unharmed. After Wu Xie got out, Pan Zi killed himself with the same gun.

A few days later, Wu Xie woke up to find himself and the other two saved by Qiu Dekao. He learnt that Xiao Hua was seriously injured and had been taken to treatment, while Huo Xiuxiu completely collapsed upon receiving her grandmother’s head. It also turned out that the two missing hoops in Zhang Ruitong’s coffin were taken out by Men You Ping and were given to Qiu Dekao, to which Men You Ping simply concluded that “Qiu Dekao has achieved his ultimate purpose.”

Men You Ping quickly recovered and came to bid Wu Xie farewell, insisting that only he could continue this path and both Wu Xie and Pangzi must not tag along anymore. Wu Xie made a big fuss about this sudden farewell but Pangzi convinced Wu Xie that this, after all, had been Men You Ping’s journey alone. He and Wu Xie were just outsiders.

A few days later, when Wu Xie thought that everything was finally over, Yun Cai was found dead in a stream. Pangzi was completely devastated. No one could confirm it, but Wu Xie deduced that both A-Gui and Yun Cai had been secretly providing information to Ghostman, and Yun Cai ended up being silenced by Ghostman since she knew too much.

Wu Xie, still carrying Third Uncle’s mask, returned to Third Uncle’s house to find that Third Uncle had been emailing back and forth with a mysterious person through a Local Area Network. Wu Xie dug up further and discovered the person to be living in a bunker below the house. 

As Wu Xie broke into this mysterious person’s underground bunker, he was caught red-handed. But this person recognised him as Wu Lao Gou’s grandson and spared his life because Wu Lao Gou used to give this person a great favour in the past.

Surviving the ordeal, Wu Xie decided to give his father a call to reminisce about the past. More than 40 years ago, Wu Xie’s grandfather, Wu Lao Gou, made a remarkable fortune for himself in Changsha with his quick wits and special skills regarding tomb robbing. He was known as the first person to be able to train dogs to locate tombs. It was also known that he was romantically involved with Huo Xiangu. Later, when Qiu Dekao betrayed everyone and Wu Lao Gou had to run away from Changsha, he was sheltered by the Xie family and got together with Wu Xie’s grandmother in Hangzhou. Among his three sons, Wu San Xing (Third Uncle) started to venture into tomb robbing at a tender age of 13, Wu Er Bai (Second Uncle) was the most studious and was involved with a number of businesses, while Wu Yi Qiong (Wu Xie’s father) kept himself busy with the redevelopment of Northern China before returning to Hangzhou in the 70s and raising Wu Xie.

Wu Xie called Second Uncle to ask for more clues regarding the mysterious person in the bunker, but Second Uncle seemed to avoid the question. Looking more closely, Wu Xie realised that the underground bunker was in fact connected to the house next to Third Uncle’s. The house owner informed him that this house had been rented out 19 years ago but no one actually stayed in it even though the rental fees were always paid every month. Luckily, he had on hands the renter’s phone number.

Wu Xie tried to give this number a call and was horrified to find that the number in fact belonged to his deceased grandfather!

As Wu Xie was contemplating how much his grandfather and Second Uncle knew about Third Uncle’s fake identity and the mysterious person in the bunker, the mysterious person called to inform Wu Xie that he had left behind a letter to reveal the truth behind everything that had happened till this point.

Wu Xie learnt the following facts from the letter. Firstly, Wu Lao Gou had rented or bought all the houses within this vicinity. The presence of the mysterious person was unknown to everyone, save for Wu Lao Gou and Third Uncle. Wu Lao Gou and the father of this mysterious person once had the common goal of destroying the enemies, but their methods of doing things were different. The mysterious person’s father was the one who sent the fake archaeologist team to replace Chen Wenjin’s and Huo Ling’s original team at Banai.

While the original team wanted to bring a corpse into the Zhang Family Mansion, the fake team stopped that mission and instead brought that corpse back to Hangzhou. Currently, the corpse was hidden somewhere around Third Uncle’s house. For the past 19 years, this mysterious person had been guarding this secret and receiving a lot of help from both Wu Lao Gou and Third Uncle.

At the end of the letter, the mysterious person told Wu Xie to stop everything he was doing and wait until 9:45 AM tomorrow, because the corpse and all related evidence would be destroyed by then. Who was ‘it’? How powerful were they? What did they want? These facts would be forever buried when tomorrow came. Everything would come to an end.

It was also revealed that since young, Wu Xie had been modeled after this missing person named Qi Yu, a key figure whose actual role and purpose remained unrevealed in the letter. Ideally, Wu San Xing should be the one to carry out the mission of taking down the enemies, but he probably couldn’t handle this responsibility anymore and tricked Wu Xie into becoming his replacement. When Wu Xie went on his first expedition to Lu Shang Wang’s tomb, news immediately rippled throughout the tomb-robbing community and things were set in motion. The enemies seemed to believe that Wu Xie was Qi Yu, and his presence was a significant factor in bringing these enemies to their downfall. 

As he finished reading these lines, Wu Xie was so exhausted he fell asleep. When he opened his eyes the next morning, all the houses around him were on fire.

In the end, the Wu family emerged the victor in this clandestine battle.

Wu Xie returned to Hangzhou after taking the mask off. He helped Third Uncle take over his business under the pretense that Third Uncle was caught up in a very faraway place.

As for the others, Huo Xiuxiu took over as the head of the Huo family with the help of Xiao Hua. Due to what happened to Huo Xiangu, it became difficult for Wu Xie and Huo Xiuxiu to look at each other in the face. Qiu Dekao passed on 3 months later and a new generation of leaders fought to take over his immense wealth. Ya Jie, Third Uncle’s supposed lover, got married to another man but it was apparent that she still had lingering feelings for Third Uncle.

Wu Xie organised a small funeral for Pan Zi and buried him next to Da Kui. Pangzi remained in Banai to take care of the rice fields and live a quiet rural life beside his so-called father-in-law, in memories of Yun Cai.

And the last person Wu Xie wanted to talk about was Men You Ping.

1 year later, Men You Ping suddenly turned up at Wu Xie’s antique shop in Hangzhou. He simply said that “My time has come” and was here to say goodbye to Wu Xie before going to Changbai mountains.

Wu Xie stubbornly followed Men You Ping for several days and wanted to go with him till the end, but Men You Ping insisted that he must head back.

Under Wu Xie’s persistence, Men You Ping gave Wu Xie one of the two identical jade seals, one of which was snatched by them from the auction in New Moon Hotel. He told Wu Xie that if Wu Xie still remembered him 10 years later, Wu Xie could come to find him at the Bronze Gate. He revealed that behind the Bronze Gate lay a secret that the Zhang family had been guarding for the last hundreds of years. When the Zhang family finally weakened, Men You Ping, as the last family head of the Zhangs, sought the help of The Old Nine Gates but none of them kept to their promise. Therefore, he would be the one to guard the secret for the next 10 years. If The Old Nine Gates had actually honoured their responsibility, it would have been Wu Xie’s turn to go into the Bronze Gate this time.

Wu Xie was shocked to learn of this, but before he could react, Men You Ping knocked him unconscious. Wu Xie woke up a few hours later to find himself alone amid the snowy mountain. Wu Xie waited for 3 days to no avail before heading back to Hangzhou.

Back home, Wu Xie made further research and finally learnt that the Zhang family originated from Guandong (known nowadays as the North China Plain). Zhang Qiling was in fact a name given to only the head of the family, and this head was elected because the blood he carried was more powerful than any others. The family head would marry a lady also from the Zhang family, who had similarly powerful blood, to ensure the purity of their offspring. However, these intra-family marriages resulted in severe memory losses in the next generations.

During China’s Republican era, a branch consisting of Zhang Da Fo Ye’s father and uncles decided to detach themselves from the Zhang family. Zhang Da Fo Ye moved to Changsha and later on, he was requested by a government official to seek for the secret to immortality. Because of that, he gathered The Old Nine Gates and desperately tried to locate the Zhang Family Mansion, meanwhile looking all over the country for Zhang Qiling. In the 1960s, they finally found him.

Under Zhang Qiling’s lead, ‘the largest tomb robbery in history’ was spearheaded, but it ended up a failure, resulting in severe conflicts between Zhang Qiling’s and Zhang Da Fo Ye’s supporters. On the side of Zhang Qiling, there were mainly Wu Lao Gou, Huo Xiangu and Xie Jiu Ye. They helped protect Zhang Qiling from being assassinated by Zhang Da Fo Ye’s supporters and at the same time tried to take down the organisation formed by Zhang Da Fo Ye’s next generation. This organisation carried forward Zhang Da Fo Ye’s mission of finding the secret to immortality.

At this point, Wu Lao Gou also started his plan of withdrawing the Wu family entirely from this mess. Despite his efforts, his third son Wu San Xing got involved even further into the whole thing and emerged as the official person to take over his father’s unfinished business. 

Zhang Da Fo Ye’s organisation used the second generation of The Nine Gates, including Huo Ling and Chen Wenjin, to dispatch an archaeologist team to Banai to transfer a corpse into the mansion, but the members either perished inside the mansion due to the toxic gas or were murdered by Pan Ma. At this point, Xie Jiu Ye jumped in and planted the fake team.

It was then revealed that the real Chen Wenjin and Huo Ling, who were part of the original team, in fact survived. When Zhang Da Fo Ye’s organisation initiated the trip to Xi Sha’s underwater tomb, they forged a fake order to summon the fake Chen Wenjin and Huo Ling to Heavenly Palace On The Clouds, while they themselves blended into the team at Xi Sha.

The struggle between Wu San Xing and Xie Lianhuan inside the underwater tomb, as told to Wu Xie later, was a lie. What actually happened was that Wu San Xing and Xie Lianhuan decided to join hands to overthrow Zhang Da Fo Ye’s organisation once and for all. After everyone else was knocked unconscious inside the tomb, Xie Lianhuan came back ashore under Wu San Xing’s identity, while Wu San Xing took the other members back to the nursing home in Golmud.

At this point, Wu San Xing and Xie Lianhuan worked closely together to sever any communication between the organisation and the nursing home. At the same time, the team dispatched to Heavenly Palace On The Clouds perished inside the endless loop of the chamber, together with Shun Zi’s father. However, since the corpses had dried up and were no longer recognisable, it remained unknown if the fake Chen Wenjin and Huo Ling actually died together with these people.

Things got complicated as the real Chen Wenjin and Huo Ling escaped from the nursing home by themselves and ventured to Ta Mu Tuo while trying to hide away from both the organisation as well as Wu San Xing and Xie Lianhuan. Xie Lianhuan went on to stay in the bunker below Wu San Xing’s house to guard the secret. Since then, Xie Lianhuan and Wu San Xing also took turns to appear in front of other people as Wu San Xing.

Meanwhile, Men You Ping returned to the Zhang Family Mansion but his memory loss kicked in. When he regained his consciousness, he had been captured and was later rescued by Chen Pi A Si.

When the ancient black-metal saber turned up at Wu San Xing’s antique shop, both Wu San Xing and Xie Lianhuan felt alarmed at how peculiar the situation had turned out. Right at this moment, Qiu Dekao decided that he wanted to get involved directly with the proceedings in China and sent Jin Wantang to bring the first silk script to Wu Xie.

Seeing the silk script, Wu San Xing realised that Qiu Dekao was now a grave danger that needed to be stopped and immediately initiated the trip to Lu Shang Wang’s 7-Star Palace.

And from then on, the cruel wheel of fate had started turning.

[Daomu Biji Main Story – The End]

---

Michelle’s note: That’s finally it, guys. I’ve specially put my sweats and tears into Volume 9 because of how intense and overloaded the amount of information is. I actually read the last few chapters for at least 4 times to make sure I don’t mix up between all those whos and hows and whichs and whats.

Thank you all so much for reading until here. I’ll hopefully see you soon in the next summary of the sequel Tibetan Sea Flower! (｡•̀ᴗ-)✧