Volume 5 Chapter 4 The Kunlun fetus

The sun was setting, and only a little bit of it was still peeking out from behind the clouds. The entire ice layer had gradually turned black, and the huge shadow inside was blurry.

The shape of the shadow was very strange, neither fish nor fowl, very strange, like the fetus of some animal that froze to death, with a huge head and long spines all over its body.

Ye Cheng opened his mouth wide and asked me, “Damn it, you didn’t pray to the Buddha when you came out, and you always bump into evil spirits. What the hell is this thing?”

The fat man and I shook our heads. We had never seen it before. Judging by its size, it was the size of a five-story building. It was frozen deep in the glacier. If it was buried with the dead, how did it get in? Or could it be a creature from ancient times?

Legend has it that the Changbai Mountain area was once an ocean hundreds of thousands of years ago. It was only raised from the sea by the eruption of the main volcanic body. Could such a large object be the corpse of a giant marine creature at the time?

It doesn’t seem right. When the ancient glacier formed, the mountain was already there, and if there was a corpse, it would have become a fossil long ago.

Although we had experienced a thrilling avalanche, to be honest, it was actually just a snow avalanche, not a thunderous avalanche. It was fast and went by quickly. Although a few of us were still a bit scared, we had recovered by now. Seeing the shadows in the ice, our curiosity was piqued.

We used ice picks to make footholds on the glacier, put on ropes, put on ice skates, and went down to the surface of the glacier to carefully look at the strange black shadows frozen inside the glacier, but none of us could see the way.

At this time, Chen Pi A Si also regained consciousness, and Hua and Ye Cheng helped him come down from above. We carefully helped him to the front.

Chen Pi A Si was still not very responsive. He rubbed his eyes, squatted down, and stared at the shadow in the ice for a long time. Suddenly, he said, “This shadow… could it be a ‘Kunlun fetus’?” Then he shook his head again.

“What is a ‘Kunlun fetus’?” None of us had ever heard of it. Seeing him so excited, we were completely baffled.

“A ‘Kunlun fetus’ is a strange natural phenomenon. It refers to the source of the dragon vein, which is commonly known as the place where the essence of heaven and earth gathers. Often within rocks, glaciers, and trees, strange baby-like things will be born. These ancient texts call them “earth-born fetuses.” Legend has it that after thousands of years of evolution, some “earth-born fetuses” will become spirits, such as the Monkey King in Journey to the West.”

Hu explained to us, ”I remember reading about this in a Tang Dynasty notebook. At the end of the Western Han Dynasty, it was said that under the giant ice dome in Kunlun Mountain, the local Tibetan people found a giant ice fetus, as big as a mountain, with five facial features already formed, and it was still a baby girl, lifelike. Feng Shui masters believe that the Kunlun fetus is a treasure spot determined by heaven, and is different from the Feng Shui points that are inferred by humans. It is impossible to find a place in a dragon vein where a Kunlun fetus might be formed. Only when the Kunlun fetus begins to form, is it discovered by chance, and then the fetus is dug out and a tomb is built in it. Such a treasure pit is something that can be encountered but not sought. Legend has it that only people with supernatural powers are qualified. The only person in history who is recorded as being buried in the Kunlun fetus is the Yellow Emperor.

“Is there really such a strange thing?” The fat man squatted down and looked at the shadow. “However, this ‘Kunlun fetus’ doesn’t look like a human fetus.“

Chen Pi Ashi also seemed unsure, nodding: ‘I’m also guessing that the ’Kunlun fetus‘ is a divine fetus, a divine object born of the earth. If this is the ’Kunlun fetus,‘ then the tomb must be built in the ’Kunlun fetus’ position, but in that case…” He looked at the Three Saints Snow Mountain in the distance, and extreme confusion appeared in his eyes.

I know his concerns, and I continued, “This is a natural treasure cave, the Kunlun fetus. But this is just a burial mound. So, how good does the Feng Shui have to be at the Three Saints Mountain, where the main mausoleum of the Heavenly Palace is located, before it is considered complete? It can’t be worse than the Kunlun fetus.”

“Yes, there is no better Feng Shui than the Kunlun fetus. The Kunlun fetus is where the earth’s spiritual energy converges. If it is to be better than here, there is only one possibility.” Chen Pi A Si was very puzzled and sighed, “The Heavenly Palace is really built in the sky!”

Chen Pi A Si said this with a very sincere expression. I could tell that he wasn’t joking, and I was shivering when I told him. The fat man said, “How could that be!”

“It’s impossible, so there must be something wrong with the appearance of the ‘Kunlun fetus’ here. Could it be that the trend of the mountains and rivers has changed, and Wang Zanghai has even reached such a level of supernatural power?” Chen Pi A Si looked around again to see the surrounding mountains.

“No, you shouldn’t think like that,” I suddenly had an idea and asked. ‘Could it be that the shadow of this fetus shape is fake? Man-made? A symbolic technique, very common in the design of ancient tombs. Like the shape of Wu Zetian’s city, like a woman’s breast, maybe this shadow is just the shadow of the tomb.’

I naturally have such thoughts because we do antiques, and our usual work is to fight against fake things. When we are purchasing, everything we see is first thought to be fake, so when I heard Chen Pi A Si say something so amazing, my first impression was: could it be fake? This is also a kind of occupational disease.

Moreover, freezing the entrance of the tomb in the soil and shaping it into the shape of a baby is indeed in line with Wang Zanghai’s character of not stopping until he dies.

Chen Pi A Si’s attention was focused on the surrounding mountains, and he didn’t listen to me at all. I turned to look at Mian Youping, who was also staring at the shadow with a puzzled expression on his face, but he didn’t say anything. However, Hua Monk agreed with me (it seems that he should also be a member of the procurement front line, and like me, he has an occupational disease). He said, “What you said is possible. Looking at the ‘fetal shadow’, there are also light and dark shades, which obviously is not a simple thing. It seems to have a height, and there are thorns around it. I can’t explain what it is. It may really be a building.”

I felt a strange feeling in my heart. Wang Zanghai had built the tomb in the shape of a fetus. Could it be that he wanted the tomb to become a spirit like the Kunlun fetus?

If this were true, it would be too incredible to believe.

The fat man said, “Let’s not guess. If we don’t dig it up, it doesn’t matter how we guess. If we have the time, we might as well think of a way to go down.”

“If we dig down, we won’t see a tomb, but a real giant ice…” Ye Cheng was a little scared. His teeth were knotted: ‘What should we do then?’

The fat man patted him on the back: ‘Then you stay up here. We’ll go down and confirm it, and then call you down.’

I also said: ”If it really is an ice fetus, it’s a miracle of nature. It’s worth seeing it just once.”

Huashan monk patted Ye Cheng and said, “You are the one with the least courage. Learn from these brothers… The question now is not whether to go, but how to get down?” He looked at the thickness of the ice. He said, “If we use picks to dig, it may take half a month to get there.”

We are not ice experts. Working on ice is completely different from working on the ground. There are many factors to consider, and even if you are good at it, you may not be able to do it.

The fat man stared at the huge shadow of the glacier beneath his feet and waved to us, saying, “What’s so difficult about this? Leave it to me, the fat man.”

I saw that he seemed to have a plan, and I was curious. The fat man had always been the vanguard of the team, rarely offering opinions on technical matters, but once he did, the things he proposed were very critical, indicating that this person’s mind was actually quite delicate. I had already deeply felt this at the bottom of the sea, and this was probably one of the qualities that allowed him to repeatedly turn danger into safety despite his greed. But you need to be careful when talking to Fat Man. He is the type of person who won’t be swayed by either threats or flattery. So I said to him, “What can you do?”

He was a bit upset, and said to me, “What do you mean? You college students think you know everything? I’ve been to Kunlun Mountain. There’s a lot of ice there, much thicker than this glacier. I have more experience than you.”

I laughed and said, “Then tell us what you know.”

The fat man then told us about his guide and the many stories about ice that he had told him. The altitude of Kunlun Mountain is much higher than here, and it is a true alpine glacier. Large ice crevasses there frequently crack due to temperature and mountain movement, and sometimes the remains of ancient ancestors are found in the cracks.

He asked why these ancient relics could not be preserved in such a cold environment, and the guide told him that it was impossible to freeze a building intact in the ice, especially a wooden structure. When it encountered an icefall or an avalanche, it would definitely collapse first.

Now the buildings in the glacier under our feet must have been built on the cliff. The black shadows in them look so complete, and the outlines are very similar to those of a baby, which means that there are no signs of collapse below. Otherwise, the kind of buildings that are built on stilts would be completely unrecognizable if they collapsed. Therefore, unless the tombs in the glacier are not made of stone, but of stone, then the tombs frozen in the ice must not have been caused by an avalanche, but by humans.

Fatso’s reasoning was very convincing, and I nodded in agreement with him. However, the others did not understand the significance of Fatso’s hypothesis. Pan Zi asked him, “So what?”

The fat man waved his hand and said, “If it wasn’t an avalanche, then the mausoleum was built more than 900 years ago. According to reason, the snow and ice accumulated over 900 years could never be so thick. So the ice must be man-made. We must be standing on a very thick wall of artificial ice. This ice wall could not be directly pressed against the building, so there must be a curve, forming a natural ice dome, pressing against the slope and protecting the building below. It’s similar to an ice-made mound. The ice isn’t as thick as we think. Look, the ice here is very transparent, which is also evidence.

When the fat man said this, everyone was shocked, and they all looked at him in awe. At the same time, they suddenly felt that their feet were much less stable.

The fat man also remembered that I had underestimated him earlier, and knowing that I studied architecture, he asked me if what he said was possible.

I nodded and said that it was theoretically possible and feasible. Using ice to frame houses has been around for a long time. During the Three Kingdoms period, Cao Cao’s overnight city was built with ice and straw. The Eskimos have also long used ice to build their own houses. Recently, it seems that modern ice buildings have appeared in Denmark, indicating that the hardness of ice is absolutely no problem in architecture.

However, Cao Cao’s overnight city was on the plains. Can such a magnificent ice dome really be built on a cliff? I have some reservations. After all, it was more than 1,000 years ago. Even if Wang Zanghai could surpass their era, he shouldn’t be so awesome.

The fat guy immediately became smug when he heard me agree with him, shook his hair, and said, “Look, I’m a talent.”

Ye Cheng asked me, “Young Master Wu, can you calculate the possible thickness of this ice dome based on architecture?”

I gave most of what I learned in college back to my teacher. But I still know the weight of ice per unit volume. I mentally calculated and applied a few formulas to get a number, and said to him, “If, as the fat man said, we assume that a wooden support structure is used, then the thickness of the ice layer under our feet will not exceed ten meters, otherwise the weight will be too heavy and it will collapse on itself, and nothing will hold it up.”

“Ten meters.” Several people looked at each other, and Pan Zi said, “Fuck, that’s enough. The ice here is different from that in other places. It is much harder, and we don’t have any professional equipment. Just now, Lang Feng and I used a shovel to pound on the ice with all our might, but after a few blows, our hands went numb, and we only managed to make a few white marks. It would probably take a week to break through ten meters.

Gravity ice is different from the ice in other riverbeds. The raw material for riverbed ice is river water, which contains impurities and a large number of air bubbles. The temperature of the riverbed is not too low, but the gravity ice is made by pressing layers of millennial snow together. Not only is it free of impurities, but the temperature of the ice beneath the snow layer may be more than 50 degrees below zero. At this temperature and purity, the hardness and density of the ice is terrifying.

Fatso said, “Don’t we have explosives? Why don’t we climb up on the rocks and drill a hole?”

Hua and I immediately shook our heads. I thought about how we almost died in the snow and said to him in a bad mood, “You really don’t learn. You haven’t had enough of the taste yet? Moreover, if the glacier is hollow, even a small explosion may blow the entire ice dome apart. If your assumption is correct, you can’t consider methods that are too destructive to drill holes. If you dig to the key place, you may not even be able to use an ice shovel. If you don’t do it right, it will be a chain reaction.”

The fat guy was very disgusted with theoretical science and said, “You’re a bookworm. If you can’t even use an ice shovel, what are you going to do? Are you going to use a spoon to dig? Don’t you think you’re a college student and you’re just trying to scare us and make things difficult for us?”

I said that I was more anxious than you, but the truth is the truth. If anyone doesn’t believe it, they can try it out.

One problem was solved and another one came up. Suddenly the atmosphere became dull again. Everyone stopped talking and started thinking of solutions. Just as we were hesitating, suddenly, Mufeng took the smokeless stove with the Shunzi tea set and walked over to us. He placed it on the side, and the hot stove immediately reacted with the cold ice surface, making a crackling sound. He asked me, “Does this work?”

I looked at it and thought to myself, “Oh, yeah, he’s freezing his ass off. I didn’t think of this method. Just use fire.

The hardness of ice is directly related to its temperature. As the temperature rises, the hardness of the ice decreases, and the surface of the ice wall becomes brittle, weakening the chain reaction caused by the ice shovel. We can take it step by step. First, we can soften the ice on the surface, then knock it down in one piece to expose the solid core of the ice that is frozen deeper inside, and then continue to bake it in the smokeless stove, repeating until it is smashed through.

Practice is the only criterion for testing truth. We immediately conducted an experiment. We took out our smokeless stove, lit it and placed it on the ice. A minute later, we used a shovel to chip away at the ice. Sure enough, what the book said was true: the brittle, high-temperature ice would crack in one piece.

However, because the ambient temperature was too low, the process was very slow. We took turns trying it until almost three hours later, when it was almost completely dark, and the wall had given us a depression one and a half meters wide and seven or eight meters deep. The color of the ice layer underneath had obviously changed, and the purity of the ice was much clearer. We could already be sure that Fat Boy was half right, and that it was definitely not naturally formed ice.

The fat man tied a rope around his waist and propped his feet on either side of the ice well. He finally used a smokeless stove to roast the ice at the bottom of the well, then smashed it with a short-handled hammer, trying to break off another piece. Unexpectedly, “pop,” the ice dome cracked open, and suddenly we felt the outside air rushing into the hole, blowing up a gust of wind, and the temperature suddenly became much cooler.

The fat man smashed the ice again, and the ice below shattered and fell. Sure enough, a hole appeared, and it was empty!

Everyone breathed a sigh of relief. Even the fat man himself was surprised and exclaimed, “I really guessed it right.”

We pulled him up, and everyone gathered around the hole, scrambling to shine their flashlights inside.

Inside the ice well, there was a huge gray space. The entire ice dome was like a transparent bowl clamped onto a cliff. Countless wooden beams covered with ice ridges stood up from the cliff rock, crisscrossing together to form a structure similar to scaffolding, supporting the outer “ice bowl.” These were the thorns on the fetus’s body. Below the cliff, there was a bottomless, pitch-black abyss.

And on the mountainside of the cliff, which is about 100 meters high, we saw the real body of the black fetus. It was a huge cave in the shape of a fetus. We didn’t know if it was artificially built or naturally formed. The entrance was as big as a standard swimming pool. At first glance, it looked like a huge black baby.

We were stunned and several of us could hardly speak. The fat man had a sharp eye and grabbed my flashlight and moved in one direction. “Look here!”

Under his guidance, we squinted and looked carefully, and only then did we see that in the cave there was actually a huge palace with a horizontal eave and flying beams. Some of the buildings protruded from the cave, supported by wooden galleries on the cliff, like a floating palace in the air, while most of the buildings were built in the cave, and the whole picture could not be seen.

Because it is in a low temperature all year round, ice crystals are everywhere, and the part of the building that is exposed looks gray and gloomy, not obvious, so it is not easy to find at first glance.

This is the spirit palace of the burial mausoleum, which is also the dragon palace mentioned by the tomb raiders. The “ling” part of the tomb, where the tomb of the tomb owner is buried, should be at the bottom of this spirit palace, inside the mountain.

I couldn’t help but sigh, thinking that there would be at most a hidden entrance to the underground palace, but I never expected that the burial mausoleum of the King of the Ten Thousand would be so grand, with such a huge spirit palace. If the Genting Heavenly Palace had not been covered by snow, what a spectacular sight it would have been! I really couldn’t imagine it, and the wisdom of the ancients was truly awe-inspiring.

The fat man was the first to react, laughing, and then everyone else laughed. We all patted each other on the back to celebrate, and I bumped the fat man’s butt, almost slipping off the ice.

Hua monk hurriedly stopped us. He pointed to the snow cliff above our heads, meaning to be careful of another collapse. We were all on the ice cliff, and none of us could escape.

We then suppressed our excitement and calmed down, but the faces of several people were full of uncontrollable joy.

Now, when I think about it, even if you are a grave robber, how many people can dig up a tomb of this caliber? If you can enter the tomb once and come out safely, you won’t care about what treasures are inside. You’ll be a big shot, and you won’t be able to brag about it for many years. Your mentality will definitely be different. This kind of attraction is irresistible to anyone. Even I, who had not yet decided to be a grave robber, had an extreme urge to go down and take a look.

Hua Monk patted his face to relax himself, then turned to ask Chen Pi A Si, “Are we going down now or tomorrow?”

Chen Pi A Si looked at us slyly and asked, “Can you bear it if we go down tomorrow?”