Before Everything Began
I never thought I’d ever need this notebook. It’s a beat-up leather-bound thing, the pages yellowed at the edges, bought on a whim at a flea market years ago when I thought I might take up journaling—something I promptly abandoned after three days of writing down nothing but “ate congee for breakfast, sold a fake Qing dynasty snuff bottle to a tourist, ate congee for dinner.” For someone who idles around all day in a dusty antique shop in Jiangnan, whose only regular brush with writing is scrawling my signature on receipts when old ladies haggle over jade pendants, being so busy that my mind can’t keep up with my own life should be the kind of happy chaos I’ve always joked about wanting. But as I sit here, pen in hand, the tip scratching nervously against the paper, I can’t bring myself to smile at all.
I’m writing this down because I need the things I’ve been through to be real—not just the foggy, adrenaline-fueled fragments that play on loop in my head when I close my eyes. They’re so bizarre, so tangled up in lies and ancient secrets and blood, that if I don’t set them down in black and white, I’ll start to think I dreamed the whole thing. I just hope these pages can hold the weight of it all, can restore the story the way it started—slow, mundane, with a golden-toothed old man walking into my shop on a cold February afternoon—before everything spiraled into something I could never have imagined.
Prologue
It all began on February 1st, 2003. The sky was a flat, gray sheet, and a drizzle had been falling since morning, turning the stone streets outside my shop slick and reflective. I was wiping down a glass display case full of chipped porcelain and rusted bronze trinkets, ready to lock up for the day, when the bell above the door jingled. I looked up, and there he was: an old man, short and stout, with a face like weathered leather and a single gold tooth glinting in his mouth when he smiled. His coat was too big for him, frayed at the cuffs, but the silk lining peeking out was a deep, rich red—the kind of fabric that cost more than my entire month’s rent.
He didn’t browse, didn’t glance at the jade carvings or the scrolls on the wall. He just stood in the middle of the shop, his eyes fixed on me, and said, “You’re Xie Yuchen’s grandson, aren’t you?”
My fingers froze on the cloth. Xie Yuchen was my grandfather, dead for nearly seven years, his name a word that hadn’t passed my family’s lips since the day we buried him. We’d swept his affairs under the rug like they were a pile of broken teacups—burned his journals, locked away his old trinkets in a trunk in the attic, never spoke of the trips he’d taken to remote mountains or the strange boxes he’d bring back, sealed with wax. Why would this stranger, this golden-toothed ghost from nowhere, drag his name up now?
I leaned against the display case, keeping my voice casual, too casual. “Never heard of him. You got the wrong shop.”
The old man’s smile didn’t fade. He took a step forward, and I caught a whiff of sandalwood and something sharper—rot, maybe, or old tombs. “Don’t play dumb, boy. I know who you are. Your grandfather owed me a debt, and debts don’t die with the man who owes them.”
I tensed, my hand drifting to the brass letter opener I kept on the counter for just such occasions. In the antique trade, you learn to spot trouble fast, and this man reeked of it—his posture, too relaxed, too confident; his eyes, cold and calculating, like he was sizing me up for a coffin. I told him to get out, and he went, slow and deliberate, pausing at the door to say, “I’ll be back. You can’t run from the past, Xie.”
The bell jingled again as he left, and I let out a breath I didn’t know I’d been holding. My hands were shaking. I locked the door, flipped the sign to “Closed,” and sank into the creaky wooden chair behind the counter. For a long time, I just stared at the rain streaking down the window, wondering what the hell my grandfather had gotten himself into—and what he’d left me holding the bag for.
Later that night, I ran into Boss Qian from the calligraphy shop next door at the noodle stand down the street. He’d seen the old man leave my shop, and when I described him, his face paled. “That’s Jin Wantang,” he said, stirring his beef noodle soup so hard the broth sloshed over the edge. “Golden Tooth Tang. He’s a regular at the Crescent Moon Hotel in Beijing.”
I’d heard of the Crescent Moon Hotel, of course. Everyone in the antique trade had. It wasn’t a hotel, not really—more like a private club for the big fish of the grave-robbing world, the ones who didn’t have to hawk their loot at Panjiayuan Market in the rain, who dealt in artifacts worth more than a dozen houses in the city center. Rumor had it that the doormen at the Crescent Moon checked your credentials before letting you in, and if you weren’t a tomb robber with a reputation, or a collector with a vault full of gold, you didn’t get past the first step. I was a small-time dealer in fake antiques and the occasional genuine trinket dug up by farmers in the hills—nowhere near qualified to even peek through the hotel’s windows.
“Why would a man like that come all the way to Jiangnan to bother me?” I asked Boss Qian, my voice tight.
He shook his head. “Your grandfather was deep in that world, wasn’t he? The Nine Gates, the tombs, the secrets. I always thought so—he had that look, like he’d seen things no man should see. Jin Wantang doesn’t do favors, boy. He’s here for something, and it’s something your grandfather had.”
I didn’t ask more. I finished my noodles in silence and walked back to the shop, the night air cold on my face. The thought of digging into my grandfather’s past nagged at me, but I pushed it away. Running an antique shop is never quiet—you get weirdos in every day, men who claim to have imperial jade buried in their backyard, women who bring in fake scrolls and scream when you tell them they’re worthless. This was just another weirdo, another problem to forget about.
Or so I told myself. That day, though, the weight of my grandfather’s silence felt heavier than usual. To be honest, I was already having a rough time—my shop was barely scraping by, the rent going up every month, my two employees grumbling about their wages. The Louwailou Restaurant across the street had just opened a pastry factory, their head waiter driving a shiny new black car to work every morning, while I counted pennies to buy rice for dinner. I’d even joked to my dad that we should sell the shop and open a dumpling stand—at least then we’d make money.
Of course, it was a joke. The shop had been in the family for three generations, a rickety little thing with a sign that read “Xie’s Antiques” in my grandfather’s scratchy calligraphy. I couldn’t bear to let it go. But as I locked up that night, I had a terrible thought: what if letting it go was the only way at I know now, I would’ve doused the place in gasoline and lit a match without a second thought. But hindsight is 20/20, and fate has a cruel sense of humor. I was drawn in, slow at first, then headfirst, and the deeper I went, the more the past closed in around me, like the walls of a collapsing tomb.
I’m still in the middle of it, even now. The ending isn’t written yet, and I don’t know if I’ll live to see it. But as I sit here with this notebook, I figure I might as well start sorting through the pieces. Maybe writing it down will help me make sense of it. Maybe it’ll help me find the answers I’m looking for. Either way, I’m not stopping. Not until I know the whole truth.
Volume 1: Old Changsha
Family Introduction: The Nine Gates
The stories of my grandfather, my great-grandfather, and even my own tangled fate all trace back to old Changsha—a city of misty rivers, ancient alleys, and secrets buried so deep they’ve seeped into the very soil. The seeds of all this were planted decades ago, by men like Guaiziling, Jude Kao, and the leaders of the Nine Gates, and they finally bloomed in my time, a bitter, poisonous flower. To understand what happened to me, I have to start with them—the Nine Gates, the most powerful grave-robbing families in Changsha’s history, the ones my grandfather called “the kings of the underground.”
I compiled this account from the scraps of my grandfather’s notes that survived the fire, and from the stories he told me when I was a kid, late at night, when he’d had too much rice wine and let his guard down. He never told me the whole truth, never spoke of the blood or the lies, but he painted a picture of Changsha that was equal parts romantic and terrifying—a city where the line between legitimate antique dealing and grave-robbing was so thin it might as well not have existed.
In old Changsha, no one in the underground circles hadn’t heard of the Nine Gates. These nine families controlled every link in the cultural relics smuggling chain, from finding the tombs to digging them up to selling the loot to foreign collectors. Almost every antique that left Changsha in the 1920s and 30s passed through one of their hands—bronze ritual vessels from the Shang Dynasty, jade burial suits from the Han, porcelain from the Ming. They were untouchable, powerful enough to bribe officials, intimidate the police, and even hold their own against warlords.
Why “Nine Gates”? There are a dozen stories, but the one my grandfather swore by was this: ancient Chinese capitals had nine city gates, and travelers and merchants had to pass through one of them to enter or leave. The Nine Gates were the same—if you wanted to do business in Changsha’s underground antique trade, you had to align yourself with one of the nine families. There was no other way. Cross them, and you’d find yourself floating in the Xiang River before sunrise.
My knowledge of these men is patchy, at best. My grandfather didn’t want me to know too much about his past—he said it was a curse, one he’d hoped to spare me from. What they did was celebrated in the underground, where tomb robbers were revered as adventurers and heroes, but condemned by the outside world, where they were seen as thieves and desecrators. The Old Nine Gates, as they’re called now, are nothing like the New Nine Gates that popped up after the war—most of the new ones are self-proclaimed thugs with shovels and a death wish, while the old ones earned their reputations with blood, skill, and sheer force of will. In an era with no phones, no radios, no internet, to be known by every tomb robber from Changsha to Beijing, you had to have done something truly extraordinary.
The Nine Gates were divided into three groups, each with its own role in the trade:
- The Upper Three Gates: Wealthy old families with legitimate public identities—they owned tea houses, silk shops, even banks—who used servants and hired hands to rob tombs. They were the “officials” of the trade, the ones with connections and money.
- The Middle Three Gates: Freelance grave robbers, lone wolves with a handful of apprentices, who wandered the mountains year-round, digging up tombs for profit. They were the “thieves,” the muscle, the ones who got their hands dirty.
- The Lower Three Gates: Antique dealers and middlemen, who never robbed tombs themselves but bought loot from the Middle Three Gates and sold it to collectors at exorbitant prices. They were the “merchants,” the ones who turned dirt-covered relics into gold.
Officials, thieves, merchants—three sides of the same coin, colluding and betraying each other like it was a game. And in Changsha, it was a game. A deadly one.
1. The Upper Three Gates
The Upper Three Gates were the elite, the ones who sat at the top of Changsha’s underground food chain. Calling them “grave robbers” is an insult—their power was closer to that of minor warlords, with private armies of servants, connections to the Kuomintang and later the Communist Party, and vaults full of treasure that would make an emperor jealous. Most of them joined the revolution during the Autumn Harvest Uprising, seeing which way the wind was blowing, and one even became a founding hero of the People’s Republic—my grandfather never said who, just that it was “one of the big ones,” and that the truth was buried in classified files somewhere.
Lord Zhang the Buddha
The first of the Upper Three Gates, and the most powerful, was Lord Zhang the Buddha—Zhang Qishan. His family had been in Changsha for generations, but Zhang Qishan himself was a northerner, born in the Northeast, who’d fled to Changsha during the War of Resistance against Japanese Aggression. He earned his nickname because his family owned a giant stone Buddha statue, carved from white jade, that no one could trace the origin of—some said it was stolen from a Tang Dynasty temple, others that it was a gift from a Tibetan lama. Whatever the truth, the Buddha was his symbol, and in Changsha, seeing the Zhang family’s Buddha emblem was enough to make even the toughest tomb robber back down.
Zhang Qishan was a genius with feng shui, the art of reading the land, and his style was nothing like the Southern grave robbers, who relied on brute force and luck. He could “read three generations of soil,” as the saying went—stand on a mountain, close his eyes, and tell you what it looked like 300 years ago, what it would look like 300 years from now, and where the tombs were buried beneath it. That’s why the Zhang family always found the big ones—the imperial tombs, the ones filled with gold and jade and artifacts that no one else could locate. They’d dig them up, take the best loot, and leave the rest for the smaller gangs, a gesture that kept the peace (and kept the other families indebted to them).
The most famous thing about Zhang Qishan was the bracelet on his wrist: the Two-Ring Chime. It was carved from solid black jade, taken from the wrist of a zombie he’d found in a Liao Dynasty tomb, and when you struck it, it rang twice—once high, once low—like a bell in an empty temple. It was priceless, but Zhang Qishan didn’t care about the money; he was obsessed with finding the other half of the pair, to make a Three-Ring Chime. He spent a fortune, sent men all over China, but never found it. The story became a legend in the circles—Lord Zhang the Buddha, the most powerful man in Changsha, chasing a ghost of a bracelet.
But the real legend of Zhang Qishan is his escape from the Japanese concentration camp, the one that turned him from a scared young man into a leader. My grandfather told me the story once, his voice low, like he was afraid someone was listening:
Before the fall of the three northeastern provinces in 1931, Zhang Qishan was just 19, a kid with a head full of feng shui theories and a temper to match. His father, a seasoned tomb robber, saw the Japanese coming and sent the women of the family to his father-in-law’s home in Changsha, while he and Zhang Qishan packed up the family’s treasure, planning to sail down the Yangtze River to safety. But they were too late. The Japanese attacked the village where they were staying, in Liaoning, and Zhang Qishan’s father was gunned down by machine guns while trying to sneak across the border. Zhang Qishan and four servants were captured and sent to a concentration camp in Heilongjiang, where the Japanese forced prisoners to mine coal in the mountains.
Back then, the camps were death sentences. No one escaped—if you tried, the Japanese guards would set their fierce German shepherds on you, and the dogs would tear you apart. The ones who didn’t get caught by the dogs starved to death in the mountains, or were eaten by wolves. Zhang Qishan watched it all, day after day, and he didn’t panic. He observed. He noticed that the Japanese only chased escapees for two days—after that, they’d call off the search, afraid of the wolves and the bandits in the mountains. He noticed that the dogs tracked prisoners by scent, and that rain washed the scent away. He noticed the patrol routes, the guard changes, the weak spots in the barbed wire fence.
For a month, he planned. He memorized every detail of the camp, every guard’s face, every shift change. He snuck hardtack biscuits from the mess hall, hiding them in a loose brick in his cell. He sharpened a piece of iron from a broken shovel into a knife, using it to cut a tiny gap in the barbed wire, little by little, every night, until it was big enough for a man to squeeze through.
On a rainy night in mid-autumn, when the wind was howling and the guards were huddled under oilcloth canopies, he made his move. He pried out the brick, grabbed the biscuits, and slipped through the gap. The rain masked his scent, the wind drowned out his footsteps, and he ran into the mountains, never looking back. He ran for hours, until his lungs burned and his legs gave out, then hid in a cave, too afraid to light a fire, too hungry to sleep. For two days, he stayed there, drinking rainwater dripping from the cave roof, chewing on hardtack that turned to dust in his mouth, listening to the distant barking of the Japanese dogs. On the third day, when the barking stopped, he ventured out.
He wandered the mountains for half a month, surviving on wild berries and small rabbits he caught with his bare hands. He was skin and bones by the time he stumbled out of the mountains, his clothes in rags, his feet covered in blisters. He begged his way south, doing odd jobs for food and shelter—digging ditches, herding sheep, carrying coal—and it took him a full year to reach Changsha. When he finally found his family’s old residence, he learned that his mother had died of grief a few months y his younger sister, Zhang Qiling, was left, being cared for by his father’s old servants.
That day, Zhang Qishan grew up. He took over the family business, using his feng shui skills to find tombs and his survival instincts to outsmart his rivals. In five years, he’d built the Zhang family into the most powerful force in Changsha’s underground, and earned the title of Lord Zhang the Buddha. He never forgot the Northeast, though, or the family he’d lost. My grandfather said he’d go to the river every year on the anniversary of his father’s death, stand there for hours, and throw a handful of rice into the water for the dead.
Lord Er Yue Hong
The second of the Upper Three Gates was Lord Er Yue Hong, a man of two lives: on the surface, a famous Peking Opera singer, beloved by Changsha’s literati and socialites; in the underground, a master grave robber, feared for his ability to climb sheer cliffs like a gecko. His real name was Chen Yulou (though some say that’s a lie, and his real name is lost to time), but everyone called him Er Yue Hong—“Second Moon Red”—after the lane he lived in (Second Moon Lane) and his signature role as Hong Niang in The West Chamber, a female character he played so beautifully that people forgot he was a man.
Er Yue Hong’s singing voice was clear as a bell, and his performances at Changsha’s opera house were always sold out. Wealthy ladies would throw gold ingots onto the stage for him, and scholars would write poems about his beauty. But behind the makeup and the silk robes was a man with hands calloused from climbing rock faces, a man who could scale a 100-foot stone wall without ropes or tools, using just the strength of his fingers and toes. That skill—“gecko wall-climbing”—made him the king of cliffside tombs, the ones that ancient nobles built on sheer precipices to deter robbers. For Er Yue Hong, those tombs were just easy pickings.
His most famous exploit was robbing the tomb of a Southern Tang prince in the Wuling Mountains. The tomb was hidden behind a thundering waterfall, the entrance in a narrow cave that could only be reached by climbing a vertical rock face covered in moss and slippery with water. Even the most experienced climbers in Changsha said it was impossible, but Er Yue Hong laughed and said, “Impossible is just a word for people who don’t try.” He stripped off his outer robes, tied a hemp rope around his waist (just in case), and started climbing. The water crashed down on him, soaking him to the bone, and the moss made his hands slip, but he kept going, his fingers finding tiny cracks in the rock, his toes pressing into crevices so small they were invisible to the naked eye.
He spent three days on that cliff. He slept in tiny ledges, ate dried meat he’d brought with him, and drank water from the waterfall. On the third day, he reached the cave, pried open the stone door with a crowbar, and went inside. When he emerged three days later, he had a jade seal in his hand, inlaid with seven-color gemstones, the size of a man’s palm. He sold it to a British collector for a sum equal to the annual tax revenue of a small city, and used the money to buy a new opera house in Changsha, one with gold leaf on the ceilings and silk curtains on the walls.
But Er Yue Hong wasn’t just a thief and a singer—he was a romantic. He fell in love with a northern noble lady, a woman named Bai Yu, who’d come to Changsha to escape the war. She was beautiful, educated, and hated the grave-robbing trade, calling it “desecration of the dead.” Er Yue Hong didn’t care; he sang The West Chamber under her window every night for seven days, until she agreed to see him. When her family found out and forbade the marriage, saying he was a “common thief in silk robes,” Er Yue Hong swore an oath: he’d never rob another tomb, never touch another artifact, if it meant he could marry her.
He kept his promise. He closed his tomb-robbing business, fired his apprentices, and devoted himself entirely to opera and his wife. He sang until his voice gave out, and when Bai Yu died in childbirth a few years later, he closed the opera house and became a hermit, living in a small house outside Changsha, growing chrysanthemums and writing poems to his lost love. He never spoke of his past again, and when he died, at the age of 80, he was buried with Bai Yu’s hairpin, not a single tomb-robbing tool in his coffin.
Lord Qi Ling (Huo Xian Gu’s Grandfather)
The third of the Upper Three Gates was Lord Qi Ling, the patriarch of the Huo family, the “brains” of Changsha’s underground antique trade. Unlike Zhang Qishan and Er Yue Hong, the Huo family had never been tomb robbers—they were antique dealers, going back to the Qing Dynasty, with a reputation for knowing more about relics than any scholar in the Forbidden City. Lord Qi Ling’s real name was Huo Changqing, and his greatest talent was his eye: he could glance at a dirty, rusted bronze vessel and tell you its age, its origin, its value, and whether it was real or fake, all in ten seconds flat. In Changsha, his appraisal was the final word—if Lord Qi Ling said it was genuine, it was genuine, no questions asked.
The Huo family acted as middlemen for the other gates, buying loot from the Middle Three Gates at a discount and selling it to foreign collectors and museums at a huge profit. They also provided information—where the tombs were, what traps they had, who was looking to buy—and tools, made by Lu Feng (of the Lower Three Gates), that were the best in Changsha. Lord Qi Ling was a shrewd businessman, too; he’d hoard relics during market slumps, when tomb robbers were desperate for cash, and sell them for triple the price when demand soared. He built a massive warehouse on the outskirts of Changsha, a stone building with iron doors and guards, that was said to hold thousands of treasures: Shang Dynasty bronzes, Han Dynasty jade, Tang Dynasty pottery, Ming Dynasty porcelain. He kept it all in climate-controlled rooms, wrapped in silk, like they were precious children.
But Lord Qi Ling was also a pragmatist. He knew when to lay low, when to make friends, when to give up treasure to save his skin. During the Cultural Revolution, when the Red Guards were smashing antiques and arresting “capitalist roaders,” he donated most of his collection to the state, keeping only a few family heirlooms—a jade pendant, a bronze mirror, a scroll painted by a Song Dynasty artist. The gesture saved the Huo family; while other tomb-robbing families were being persecuted, the Huos were hailed as “patriots” for their donation. Lord Qi Ling lived to be 90, and when he died, he left the Huo family’s antique business to his granddaughter, Huo Xian Gu, who later became a famous archaeologist (though my grandfather said she still dabbled in the underground trade, when the price was right).
2. The Middle Three Gates
The Middle Three Gates were the backbone of Changsha’s grave-robbing community, the ones who did the actual digging, the actual fighting, the actual dying. They were lone wolves, for the most part, with a few apprentices at most, who wandered the mountains and deserts of China year-round, following rumors of tombs, driven by greed and the thrill of the hunt. They had no fixed homes, no legitimate businesses, no connections to the government—just their shovels, their compasses, and their wits. They were young, for the most part, and reckless, and many of them died before they turned 30, crushed by falling rocks, poisoned by tomb gas, or killed by rival gangs. But the ones who survived became legends.
Lord Xie Jiu Si (My Great-Grandfather)
The first of the Middle Three Gates was my great-grandfather, Lord Xie Jiu Si—the man who started the Xie family’s curse, as my grandfather called it. The Xies had been tomb robbers for generations, going back to the Qing Dynasty, and Xie Jiu Si was the best of them, a master of feng shui and trap disarming, with a reputation for being able to get into any tomb, no matter how well-guarded.
His signature skill was “feng shui tomb divination”: he’d take his brass compass, walk a mountain range, and within hours, he could point to the exact spot where a tomb was buried, even if it was 50 feet underground. He knew the signs—the shape of the mountains, the flow of the rivers, the type of trees growing on the soil—and he could read them like a book. He was also a genius with traps; ancient tombs were full of them—poisonous arrows that shot from the walls, stone slabs that fell from the ceiling, gas chambers that filled with toxic fumes—but Xie Jiu Si could spot them instantly, disarm them with a flick of his wrist, and keep going like nothing had happened.
His most famous heist was the Qin Dynasty “Death Trap” tomb, in the Qinling Mountains. The tomb was said to be cursed, with every robber who’d tried to enter it dying a horrible death—one crushed by a boulder, one poisoned by gas, one eaten by snakes. But Xie Jiu Si laughed at the curse, gathered his apprentices, and went in. He disarmed the arrow traps by blocking the mechanisms with stones, neutralized the gas with vinegar-soaked cloths, and killed the snakes with a mixture of sulfur and arsenic he’d made himself. When he emerged three days later, he had a set of bronze chime bells, 12 in total, each carved with dragons and phoenixes, a national treasure. He sold them to a French collector for a fortune, and used the money to buy the antique shop in Jiangnan that I still run today.
But Xie Jiu Si was reckless, too—too confident, too willing to take risks that no one else would. He ignored warnings, laughed at curses, and thought he was invincible. That arrogance killed him. When he was 45, he went to the Kunlun Mountains to rob a Western Han Dynasty tomb, one that was said to hold a jade burial suit made of pure white jade. His apprentices begged him not to go, saying the mountain was cursed, but he wouldn’t listen. He went alone, and never came back. A few months later, a nomad found his compass, crushed under a stone slab, at the entrance to the tomb. His body was never recovered, and the jade burial suit was never found. My grandfather always said that the mountains swallowed him, that the curse finally caught up to him. I used to think it was a story to scare me, but now I’m not so sure.
Lord Chen Pi A Si
The second of the Middle Three Gates was Chen Pi A Si, Er Yue Hong’s apprentice, and the most ruthless tomb robber in Changsha’s history. He was a prodigy, quick with a shovel and even quicker with a knife, and Er Yue Hong loved him like a son—until Chen Pi A Si stole a priceless jade pendant from him, a gift from Bai Yu, and tried to sell it to a foreign collector. Er Yue Hong caught him before he could leave Changsha, and in a fit of rage, cut off his little finger as punishment. From that day on, Chen Pi A Si was a different man—cold, cruel, willing to kill anyone who crossed him, even his own friends.
His signature weapon was a nine-section whip, a leather whip with nine metal sections, tipped with iron spikes. He wielded it like an extension of his arm, fast enough to strangle a man in a second, hard enough to shatter bones with a single strike. He was also a master of tunnel digging; he could dig a tunnel from a mile away to a tomb’s entrance, using just a small shovel and his bare hands, without making a sound, bypassing guards, traps, and even concrete walls. He’d use the tunnels to sneak into tombs at night, steal the loot, and disappear before anyone knew he was there.
His most infamous act was robbing the tomb of a Qing Dynasty eunuch in the Eastern Tombs, outside Beijing. The tomb was guarded by a battalion of Imperial Army soldiers, with machine guns and guard dogs, but Chen Pi A Si didn’t care. He dug a tunnel from a nearby forest to the tomb’s crypt, a process that took him three months, and snuck in one night while the soldiers were sleeping. He killed them all—slit their throats with a knife, crushed their skulls with the butt of his gun, strangled the dogs with his whip—and looted the tomb of everything valuable: a golden crown inlaid with pearls and jade, a set of ivory chopsticks carved with dragons, a silk robe embroidered with phoenixes. He left the bodies for the vultures, and sold the loot to a Japanese collector for enough money to buy a mansion in Shanghai.
Chen Pi A Si’s reign of terror ended during the Cultural Revolution, when he was caught robbing a tomb in Shaanxi by the Red Guards. They publicly humiliated him, parading him through the streets with a sign around his neck that read “Counter-Revolutionary Tomb Robber,” then shot him in the head in front of a crowd. My grandfather said he died laughing, saying that he’d robbed more tombs than any man in Changsha, and that the Red Guards could kill his body, but they couldn’t kill his legend.
Lord Hei Xia Zi (The Black Blind Man)
The third of the Middle Three Gates is the most mysterious: Hei Xia Zi, the Black Blind Man. No one knows his real name, where he’s from, or how old he is—he’s just always been there, a shadow in Changsha’s underground, a man with a black mask covering his face, who never speaks, only communicates with hand gestures or scraps of paper.
Hei Xia Zi’s greatest gift is night vision; he can see in pitch blackness, as clear as day, a hereditary trait from his family, who were said to be descendants of the Qiang people, a minority group from the Southwest with supernatural abilities. Contrary to his nickname, he’s not blind—he wears the mask to hide his face, to avoid being recognized, to keep his past a secret. He’s also a master martial artist, trained in some ancient style that no one recognizes, and can take on ten men at once without breaking a sweat. He’s fast, strong, and ruthless, and if you hire him as a bodyguard, you’re guaranteed to survive—no matter how dangerous the tomb is.
But Hei Xia Zi is a loner, through and through. He never stays in one place for long, never makes friends, never talks about his past. He takes jobs for high pay—protecting tomb robbers, retrieving lost loot, killing rival gangs—and disappears as soon as the job is done, leaving no trace. Some say he’s a ghost, a spirit of the mountains; others say he’s a former soldier, disgraced and on the run; still others say he’s immortal, cursed to wander the earth forever, robbing tombs to pass the time. My grandfather met him once, in a teahouse in Changsha, and said he smelled like jasmine and blood, and that his eyes, visible through the mask’s eyeholes, were gold, like a cat’s.
3. The Lower Three Gates
The Lower Three Gates were the merchants, the ones who turned the dirt and blood of the tomb-robbing trade into cold, hard cash. They didn’t dig the tombs, didn’t fight the traps, didn’t risk their lives—they just sat in their shops, sipped tea, and made deals. They were the link between the tomb robbers and the collectors, the ones who knew who was buying what, how much to charge, and how to smuggle the loot out of the country without getting caught. Some were honest (well, as honest as underground merchants get), some were cheats, but all of them were rich—rich enough to live in mansions, drive fancy cars, and send their kids to school abroad.
Lord Huo Xiu
The first of the Lower Three Gates was Huo Xiu, Lord Qi Ling’s younger brother, and the greediest man in Changsha. He owned a chain of antique shops in the city center, with signs that read “Huo’s Fine Antiques,” and sold everything from fake jade pendants to genuine Tang Dynasty pottery. He’d buy loot from the Middle Three Gates at a fraction of its value, then sell it to foreign collectors for ten times the price, pocketing the difference. He was a cheat, a liar, and a thief—he’d steal relics from tomb robbers who trusted him, forge documents to make fake antiques seem real, and even kill people who tried to get their money back.
His downfall came when he cheated a group of tomb robbers from Sichuan out of a priceless Han Dynasty jade burial suit. The robbers had risked their lives to get the suit, and Huo Xiu had promised them a fortune—then gave them a bag of fake gold instead. They tracked him down to his mansion on the banks of the Xiang River, broke in, and killed him in his sleep. They threw his body into the river, weighted down with stones, and it was never found. His antique shops were seized by the government, and the Huo family disowned him, erasing his name from their family tree like he’d never existed.
Lord Lu Ban (Lu Feng)
The second of the Lower Three Gates was Lu Feng, known as Lord Lu Ban after the legendary Chinese carpenter and inventor. He wasn’t an antique dealer, or a tomb robber—he was a craftsman, the best in Changsha, who made specialized tools for tomb robbers: compasses that could read feng shui, shovels that could cut through rock, explosives that wouldn’t set off tomb traps, gas masks that could filter out toxic fumes. His tools were legendary; they were durable, functional, and so well-made that tomb robbers would pay a year’s wages for a single shovel.
But Lu Feng was a good man, unlike the other Lower Three Gates. He’d give free tools to poor tomb robbers who were just trying to feed their families, and he’d help them out of trouble if the police caught them. He never charged more than he needed to, just enough to keep his small workshop running and to feed his wife and kids. In his later years, he retired from making tomb-robbing tools and opened a wooden toy shop in Changsha’s old town, making little wooden cars and dolls for children. He died at the age of 75, peacefully, in his sleep, and the tomb robbers of Changsha came to his funeral in droves, carrying wreaths made of paper shovels and compasses.
Lord Wang Meng (Wang Tian Bao)
The third of the Lower Three Gates was Wang Tian Bao, known as Lord Wang Meng, the information broker of Changsha’s underground. He knew everything: where the new tombs were, who was digging them up, what the police were planning, who was buying what relics. He’d sell this information to tomb robbers for high prices, and his tips were always accurate—so accurate that people said he had a network of spies all over China, from Beijing to Guangzhou.
Wang Meng was extremely cautious. He never met clients in person; instead, he’d leave notes in hidden locations—under a stone in a park, in a crack in a wall, in a hollow tree—and collect money the same way. He never trusted anyone, never told anyone his real name, never even let his wife know what he did for a living. He lived in a small house on the outskirts of Changsha, with a fake identity and a vault full of gold, and he never drew attention to himself.
One day, he just disappeared. No one knows what happened—some say he retired to a remote village in the mountains, changed his name, and lived out his days as a farmer; others say he was killed by a rival information broker, or by the police, who’d finally tracked him down; still others say he’s living in Hong Kong, sipping tea on a beach, with a fortune in his bank account. My grandfather thought he retired—said that Wang Meng was too smart to get caught, too careful to die young. Whatever the truth, his information network died with him, and Changsha’s underground has never been the same since.
Volume 2: The Mystery of the Bronze Tree
1. The Strange Letter
A week after Jin Wantang left my shop, I tried to go back to normal. I opened the shop every morning at 8, wiped down the display cases, haggled with customers, closed at 6, and went home to eat instant noodles and watch TV. But the golden-toothed old man’s words kept echoing in my head: Your grandfather owed me a debt. Debts don’t die with the man who owes them. I found myself staring at the attic door, wondering what was in the trunk my grandfather had locked away, wondering if I should open it, if I should finally face the past he’d tried to hide from me.
I didn’t, though. I was scared. Scared of what I’d find, scared of what it would mean, scared that opening that trunk would unlock something I couldn’t control. So I ignored it, buried myself in work, and hoped that Jin Wantang would forget about me, that he’d go back to Beijing and leave me alone.
Then the letter came.
It was slipped under my shop door early one morning, before I’d even unlocked it. The envelope was yellowed and brittle, sealed with a blob of red wax that bore the Xie family’s secret symbol: a phoenix wrapped around a bronze tree. Only blood relatives of the Xie family knew that symbol—my grandfather had carved it into the back of my hand when I was a kid, saying it would “protect me from the ghosts.” No one else could have forged it, no one else even knew it existed.
My hands shook as I opened the envelope. Inside was a single sheet of paper, the handwriting messy, like the writer had been in a hurry, or scared:
Go to the Bronze Tree in the West Hunan Mountains. There, you will find the truth about your grandfather. Don’t tell anyone. Come alone. If you don’t, the debt will come for you, and for everyone you love.
No signature, no return address, just those words, scrawled in black ink that looked like it might be blood.
But I had no choice. The letter had threatened the people I loved—my dad, my uncle, my employees—and I couldn’t let them get hurt because of my grandfather’s mistakes. So I made up my mind to go. I packed a backpack with my grandfather’s old compass, a flashlight, a knife, a few cans of food, and a change of clothes. I left a note for my dad, saying I was going on a business trip to Changsha, and I didn’t tell anyone else—not even my uncle Wu San Xing, who’d been like a father to me since my grandfather died. I knew he’d try to stop me, and I wasn’t ready to explain why I had to go.
I locked the shop, flipped the sign to “Closed for Renovations,” and took the train to Changsha that afternoon. As the train pulled out of the station, I stared out the window at the Jiangnan countryside, the rice fields and rivers fading into the distance, and wondered if I’d ever come back.
2. The Journey to West Hunan
Changsha was a chaos of noise and people, a far cry from the quiet streets of Jiangnan. I stayed in a cheap hotel near the train station, a room with a creaky bed and a window that looked out onto a busy street, and spent the next day looking for a guide to take me to the West Hunan Mountains. The Bronze Tree was in a remote part of the mountains, near Fenghuang Ancient Town, and I knew I’d get lost without someone who knew the land.
I found Xiao Hua at a teahouse near the Xiang River, a young man in his early twenties, with a sunburned face, calloused hands, and a knife tucked into his belt. He was a local, a farmer’s son who made extra money guiding tourists and hikers into the mountains, and when I told him I was looking for the Bronze Tree, his face paled.
“The Bronze Tree is a legend,” he said, sipping his tea, his eyes nervous. “Locals say it’s guarded by savages, by ghosts, by things that aren’t human. No one who goes looking for it ever comes back. Last year, a group of college students went up there, and they were found a week later, dead, their faces frozen in terror, no marks on their bodies. The police said it was wild animals, but everyone knows it was the Bronze Tree’s curse.”
I pulled out a stack of cash, twice what he’d asked for, and set it on the table. “I need to go. I’ll pay you double, triple, whatever you want. Just take me to the foot of the mountain.”
Xiao Hua stared at the cash for a long time, then sighed. “You’re crazy, man. But I could use the money. My sister’s sick, needs medicine. Fine. I’ll take you. But I’m not going up the mountain with you. I’ll drop you off at the foot, and that’s it.”
We left the next morning, taking a bus to Fenghuang Ancient Town, a beautiful little town with stone bridges and wooden houses along the Tuojiang River. We spent the night there, in a small inn run by an old woman who served the best spicy tofu I’d ever tasted, then set off into the mountains early the next day, walking along narrow dirt paths that wound through dense forests and over rocky streams.
The journey was brutal. The mountains were steep, the underbrush thick, and the air was thick with humidity, making me sweat through my clothes in minutes. We crossed rivers on rickety bamboo bridges, climbed slopes so steep we had to use our hands, and fought off mosquitoes the size of small birds. Xiao Hua was a good guide, though—he knew where the clean water was, which berries were safe to eat, how to avoid the venomous snakes that slithered through the grass. He told me stories about the mountains as we walked: about tigers that roamed the forests, about villages that had disappeared overnight, about the Bronze Tree, which the locals called “the God Tree,” and which they left offerings of rice and pork for every full moon.
At first, I thought it was a prank—Jin Wantang, playing games to scare me. But the wax seal, the symbol, the mention of the Bronze Tree… my grandfather had written about the Bronze Tree in his notes, the ones I’d found before I burned them. He’d called it a “portal to another world,” a “guardian of ancient secrets,” a “curse that follows the Xie family.” He’d also warned me never to go near it, never to even speak its name.
After three days of hiking, we reached a small village at the foot of the mountain where the Bronze Tree was said to be. The villagers stared at us as we walked through the street, their eyes cold and suspicious, and no one would talk to us—except an old woman, who grabbed my arm as I passed her house and said, “Leave, boy. Go back to where you came from. The God Tree doesn’t want strangers here. It’ll eat you alive.”
I thanked her, pulled away, and turned to Xiao Hua. He handed me a map, drawn on a piece of rice paper, with a red X marking the spot where the Bronze Tree was. “That’s as far as I go,” he said, his voice tight. “The path from here is narrow, full of traps—pitfalls, tripwires, things the locals set to keep people away. Be careful. And if you see anything strange, run. Don’t look back.”
I paid him the rest of the money, shook his hand, and watched him walk back down the mountain, his figure disappearing into the trees. Then I took a deep breath, grabbed my backpack, and set off alone.
3. The Bronze Tree
The path from the village was even worse than Xiao Hua had said. It was narrow, overgrown with vines, and every few feet, I’d spot a pitfall, covered with leaves and branches, or a tripwire, strung between two trees, that would set off a warning bell if I touched it. I moved slowly, carefully, my knife in my hand, my eyes scanning the forest for danger. The air was silent, too silent—no birds singing, no insects buzzing, no wind rustling the leaves. It felt like the forest was holding its breath, watching me.
After two hours of walking, I pushed through a thick wall of vines and emerged into a clearing.
And there it was. The Bronze Tree.
It was more magnificent, more terrifying, than I’d ever imagined. It stood in the center of the clearing, taller than a ten-story building, its trunk as thick as three men standing shoulder to shoulder, carved with ancient characters and patterns that glowed faintly in the sunlight. Its branches stretched out like giant arms, twisting and turning, and its leaves were cast in pure bronze, shiny and bright, that shimmered like gold when the light hit them. At the top of the tree, a huge bronze bird perched, its wings spread wide, its beak open as if screaming, its eyes made of red jade that seemed to follow me as I moved.
I stood there for a long time, staring at it, my mouth dry, my heart pounding. It didn’t feel like a statue, like a relic—it felt alive, pulsing with some kind of energy that made the hair on the back of my neck stand up. The air around it was cold, even in the warm afternoon sun, and I could hear a low hum, like a thousand voices whispering, coming from the trunk.
I took a step forward, then another, until I was standing at the base of the tree. I reached out my hand to touch the trunk, and a jolt of cold shot up my arm, making me gasp. The metal was ice-cold, even though it was in direct sunlight, and the carvings on the trunk seemed to move under my fingers, like they were alive.
Just then, I heard a rustling sound behind me. I spun around, knife raised, but no one was there. The clearing was empty, the forest silent. But I felt it—eyes on me, watching, waiting. I grabbed my grandfather’s compass from my backpack, and it went wild, the needle spinning so fast it was a blur, like it was trying to point in every direction at once.
That’s when I realized: the Bronze Tree wasn’t just a tree. It was a key. A key to something deep underground, something my grandfather had hidden, something Jin Wantang and Jude Kao were willing to kill for.
I looked up at the tree, at its gnarled branches, and saw a narrow path carved into the trunk, winding up into the leaves. I slung my backpack over my shoulder, grabbed the branches for support, and started to climb.
4. The Truth About My Grandfather
The climb was steep, the branches slippery with moss, and I had to use all my strength to pull myself up. The hum got louder as I climbed, the whispers clearer, and I could make out fragments of words—Xie, curse, pearl, tomb—but not enough to understand what they meant. The compass in my hand kept spinning, but it seemed to be pointing upward, toward a small cave carved into the trunk, about halfway up the tree.
I reached the cave after 20 minutes of climbing, my arms burning, my legs shaking. It was a small opening, just big enough for a man to crawl through, and the air coming out of it was cold and damp, with a faint smell of rot. I pulled out my flashlight, turned it on, and crawled inside.
The cave opened up into a small chamber, with walls covered in the same glowing carvings as the tree trunk. In the center of the chamber was a stone tablet, standing on a pedestal, covered in ancient characters that I didn’t recognize. But I had my grandfather’s notes, the ones I’d kept hidden in my backpack, and after flipping through them for a few minutes, I found a page with the same characters, translated into Chinese:
The tree guards the tomb, the tomb hides the truth, the truth buries the past. The Xie family shall guard the pearl, until the end of time. To touch it is to die, to take it is to curse the world.
My heart sank. The pearl—my grandfather had written about the Soul-Eating Pearl in his notes, a artifact that could control the dead, that was buried in a tomb beneath the Bronze Tree. He’d gone to the tomb years ago, he’d written, and he’d seen what the pearl could do—he’d seen it raise the dead, make them walk, make them kill. He’d refused to take it, refused to let it fall into the wrong hands, and he’d hidden the key to the tomb inside the Bronze Tree, hoping that no one would ever find it.
But someone had found it. Someone had sent me the letter, someone who knew about the pearl, someone who knew about the Xie family’s curse.
I looked around the chamber, my flashlight beam sweeping the walls, and noticed a small niche in the back wall, hidden behind a stone slab. I pushed the slab aside, and inside was a wooden box, carved with the Xie family’s phoenix symbol, locked with a brass padlock. I pulled out the small key I’d found on my grandfather’s compass chain—he’d told me it was a “family heirloom,” but I’d never known what it opened—and inserted it into the lock. It clicked open.
Inside the box was a letter, folded into a square, written in my grandfather’s handwriting. I unfolded it, my hands shaking, and read:
*My dear grandson,
If you’re reading this, you’ve found the Bronze Tree, and you’ve learned the truth about our family. I’m sorry I lied to you, sorry I kept this from you, but I thought I was protecting you. I thought that if you didn’t know, you’d be safe. But I was wrong. The past always catches up, and the Xie family’s curse is no exception.
The Bronze Tree is not a portal, as I wrote in my notes—it’s a key to a tomb built by the ancient Ba people, a kingdom that ruled West Hunan thousands of years ago. Inside that tomb is the Soul-Eating Pearl, an artifact that has the power to raise the dead, to control them, to make them do your bidding. It’s a weapon, a terrible one, and there are people who would kill to get their hands on it—people like Jude Kao, a man I once called a friend, who wants to use the pearl to build an army of zombies, to take over the world.
I went to the tomb 10 years ago, with Jude Kao and a group of his men. I thought we were just going to study it, to learn about the Ba people, but I was wrong. Jude Kao wanted the pearl, and he was willing to kill anyone who stood in his way. I watched him shoot one of his own men, a young boy, just because he’d stumbled on a trap. I knew then that I couldn’t let him have the pearl. I stole the key to the tomb, hid it in the Bronze Tree, and ran. I’ve been hiding ever since, moving from place to place, changing my name, hoping that Jude Kao would forget about me. But he never did. He’s been looking for the key, for the pearl, for years, and now he’s found you—my grandson, the last of the Xie family.
You must destroy the key, destroy this letter, and never come back to the Bronze Tree. Don’t let Jude Kao get the pearl. Don’t let him destroy the world. Protect the people you love, and don’t let the curse consume you, like it consumed your great-grandfather, like it almost consumed me.
I’m sorry, my boy. I love you.
Grandpa*
Tears blurred my eyes as I read the letter, and I had to sit down on the stone floor, my chest tight, my throat burning. For years, I’d wondered why my grandfather had left, why he’d been so distant, why he’d never talked about his past. Now I knew—he’d been running, from Jude Kao, from the pearl, from the curse that had haunted our family for generations. He’d been protecting me, in his own way, and I’d been angry at him for it, angry that he’d left me alone.
I folded the letter, put it back in the box, and tucked the box into my backpack. I had to go, had to get away from the Bronze Tree, had to figure out how to stop Jude Kao before it was too late.
But just as I stood up, the cave shook. Rocks fell from the ceiling, dust filled the air, and the Bronze Tree creaked, like it was about to collapse. I heard shouts from outside, the sound of gunfire, and I knew—Jude Kao’s men had found me.
5. The Escape
I didn’t think. I grabbed my backpack, turned on my flashlight, and crawled out of the cave as fast as I could. The tree was shaking so hard I could barely hold on, and branches were breaking off, falling to the ground below. I slid down the trunk, my hands burning from the friction, and landed hard on the dirt, rolling to avoid a falling branch.
I stood up, looked around, and saw them—half a dozen men, dressed in black, with guns, running toward me from the edge of the clearing. They were shouting, yelling for me to stop, but I didn’t listen. I turned and ran into the forest, my backpack bouncing against my back, my legs pumping as fast as they could go.
I ran for hours, following the path Xiao Hua had drawn for me, dodging trees, jumping over streams, my heart pounding in my ears. I could hear the men behind me, their shouts getting closer, their gunfire cracking through the air, bullets whizzing past my head. But I knew the forest now, thanks to Xiao Hua’s lessons, and I used it to my advantage—I ran through the thickest underbrush, where the men couldn’t follow, I crossed rivers to throw them off my scent, I hid in caves and behind boulders when they got too close.
By nightfall, I’d lost them. I collapsed on the bank of a small river, gasping for breath, my clothes torn, my body covered in scratches and bruises. I pulled out the letter from my backpack, stared at it for a long time, then took out a lighter and set it on fire. I watched it burn, the paper turning to ash, the words my grandfather had written disappearing into the night air. I couldn’t keep it, couldn’t let Jude Kao find it, couldn’t let it be used against me.
I sat by the river until dawn, watching the stars fade, listening to the sound of the water flowing. I thought about my grandfather, about the curse, about the pearl. I thought about Jude Kao, and what he’d do if he got his hands on it. I knew I couldn’t run, not anymore. I had to fight, had to stop him, had to honor my grandfather’s wish to protect the world from the pearl’s power.
I stood up at sunrise, brushed the dirt off my clothes, and started walking back to Fenghuang Ancient Town. I had a lot of work to do, a lot of people to find, a lot of secrets to uncover. But for the first time in a long time, I wasn’t scared. I was ready.
