Mysterious Country 1: Mist-Shrouded Champa,Volume 6: Chapter 8: A Fact That Has Not Yet Happened

Sima Hui followed the expedition team deep into the Savage Mountain, recounting everything they had seen along the way, all of it shrouded in an impenetrable fog. He truly could not fathom why the King of Champa had exhausted his nation’s wealth and the people’s strength to build such a bizarrely shaped Golden Spider City underground, nor why he had arranged layer upon layer of traps around it and destroyed all the outer ruins. What were those python and ancient pagoda totems, the murals depicting the King of Champa meeting the God of Death, and the countless bricks carved with human faces all hinting at? Since the King of Champa had hidden this chamber called the “Corpse Eye” so deeply, there must be some reason behind it. Now, hearing Yu Feiyan say that the stone chamber indeed contained the King of Champa’s secret, Sima Hui found nothing here except densely packed ancient writing and symbols carved on the walls. What exactly was this so-called “secret”? Was it not some specific object?

Yu Feiyan said: “If I have not misinterpreted, this stone chamber itself is the King of Champa’s secret.”

To further confirm her judgment, she went to painstakingly decipher the remaining ancient text on the walls.

Sima Hui found this even more intriguing and wanted to ask for clarification. Seeing Yu Feiyan sometimes furrowing her brows deeply, sometimes closing her eyes in deep thought, A Cui shook her hand at Sima Hui, signaling him not to interfere. Sima Hui had no choice but to keep silent, continuing to hold his torch and examine every corner of the secret chamber, but he never found any other exit.

After looking for quite a while, Yu Feiyan finally told Sima Hui and the others: “The chamber records some extraordinarily strange events that are difficult to comprehend. But if we combine them with the clues we currently have, we should be able to deduce the truth that the King of Champa concealed within the Golden Spider City.”

It turned out that since ancient times, the Kingdom of Champa had venerated the five senses, considering the face most precious and the head most honorable. This was because it was said that different facial features produced vastly different fortunes. King Anu Jaya was deeply versed in this art. He was skilled in raising gu and refining medicines throughout his life, and constantly consumed human brain corpse worms, so his physical appearance was different from ordinary people; even his skin color differed from the local populace. In regions like Burma and Laos, this was called “Face Gu,” an ancient dark art considered taboo, whose methods were not passed down to later generations. In truth, the King of Champa was not born with divine or extraordinary features, nor did he obtain so-called “fortune” from his own appearance. That godlike visage was something acquired through medication and physical transformation, maintained solely to preserve the mystery and terror of his royal authority.

The King of Champa was cruel by nature, bloodthirsty and murderous, and deeply believed in the doctrine of fate. Though he held himself in the highest regard, no matter how closely his appearance resembled a god or Buddha, he was still but one sentient being trapped in the cycle of reincarnation, unable to escape worldly desires and entanglements. In his heart, he could not help but harbor some dread and fear regarding his own afterlife. From then on, he was often disturbed by nightmares, for the sun of one’s life would one day set. Because he felt such terror toward death, whenever he found an excuse to kill someone, he would interrogate the victim about matters of “past and future.”

Later, due to a collapse in the Savage Mountain that formed an unfathomable rift valley, and because the ancient pagoda built on the mountain peak contained the accumulated gold, jewels, and treasures of successive Champa dynasties, he sent people to enter the rift valley through a cave where elephant herds had been buried. Unexpectedly, they found a rock mountain underground. This rock mountain was entirely black, shaped like an eight-legged spider, with countless caves connecting in all directions inside, showing signs of human habitation, like an underground palace. Within the palace’s rock layers, they not only found withered Udumbara flowers, but in another cave, there were remains of some enormous creature. Clearly, this was an existence far more ancient than the Champa dynasty, but later it was submerged by black water, leaving no trace in history. Now the mountain body had cracked, the water veins had dried up, and it was revealed once more.

In Champa legend, the Corpse God dwelling in the Kingdom of the Dead had a body as black as ink, with abyss-like eyes growing inside its body, and possessed four legs and four arms. This was extremely similar to this underground rock mountain. At the time, most Champa people regarded this as an ill omen, believing great disaster would befall them. But what terrified the King of Champa most was that in the lingering mist within the cave, he witnessed with his own eyes the scene of his own death, when he would be utterly annihilated, both body and spirit shattered.

Years ago, the King of Champa had murdered a holy monk. Before his execution, the monk uttered not a word, leaving only a scroll depicting the King of Champa’s gruesome death before the Corpse Eye cave, his head broken and face shattered, and showing three fingers. Now this prophecy was coming true, so the King of Champa had no doubt about it, knowing that one day he would certainly die here. Though he understood that what was destined to happen could not be avoided, he still attempted to change this fact, sparing no effort to build the Golden Spider City according to the form of the gate leading to the Kingdom of the Dead, dedicating all the glory and splendor of his dynasty to the “Corpse God” dwelling in the underworld. Then he killed all the slaves and craftsmen who knew the secret, and made the withered Udumbara remains in the rock layers grow again. Those ancient secrets hidden in the Savage Mountain rift valley thus evaporated into the mists of history.

Actually, regarding fate, the ancient religious text “The Sutra of Past Karma” had already expounded an iron law. If we interpret its archaic meaning with modern concepts, it would roughly be: The fate of all things is a curve composed of countless points. No one knows what will happen at the center of the line, or what one will encounter. But all lines ultimately lead to the same end, and that end is death. There are absolutely no exceptions. Any point that appears on the curve cannot affect the end.

What if someone could see their own end in advance? Then they would probably be “the person closest to heaven,” because they have already understood their own fate. If they then had the ability to erase this end, they would have stepped into heaven. The King of Champa believed that as long as he never entered the Golden Spider City again, he could avoid meeting the God of Death, and there would be no death or fear in his life. From then on, he would neither fall nor perish, neither born nor dead, becoming even more arrogantly and cruelly savage. However, he ultimately still died suddenly. Perhaps the King of Champa never understood until his death that the end he had foreseen was not his own, but the fate of the corpse skin mask peeled from his remains. If every blade of grass and every tree in the universe has its own fate, then what the King of Champa saw beforehand was merely the fate of his “face.”

The slaves and captives who built the Golden Spider City were all massacred upon completion. But after all, no wall in this world is completely airtight. So the King of Champa left a curse here: whoever dared approach the secrets within the Golden Spider City, the God of Death would descend upon their head with terrifying shadow. In the dark and silent underground caverns, such gloomy and cold curses were carved everywhere, like a final spiritual defense line. But from a modern perspective, this seemed rather pale and hollow.

Yu Feiyan told Sima Hui and A Cui that besides curses, these stone tablets also recorded the King of Champa’s ghost engravings communicating with the Kingdom of the Dead. But the contents were not necessarily all accurate and trustworthy, as there was no way to verify them anymore. However, the King of Champa must have witnessed the scene of his own death through some channel; otherwise, he would not have believed so deeply. There existed very special magnetic fields in the Savage Mountain that could produce optical and electromagnetic anomalies similar to mirages, including the ghost transport plane they had seen earlier, which mostly belonged to this category. But they still could not determine whether the source came from the dense mountain fog or the rock layers inside the Golden Spider City itself.

After hearing this, Sima Hui and A Cui both felt a sense of sudden realization. So the corpse skin mask that Green Tomb relied upon was neither luck, nor curse, nor ghost, but fate. It was a “fact” that had not yet happened. Because the King of Champa’s “face” was destined to be destroyed when the Corpse Eye chamber was opened, no power could change this inevitable “fact.” But what was the true face hidden beneath the mask of Green Tomb? Why had he vanished without a trace after falling into the chamber? He knew everything about the Golden Spider City like the back of his hand, seemingly understanding even more secrets than the King of Champa knew in his lifetime, and his arrangements were comprehensive. Naturally, he had not come here to seek his own death. Clearly, all these things were within his plans.

As for the so-called truth that Green Tomb sought, the group found it even more difficult to fathom. It should not be for the treasures offered to the Corpse God within the Golden Spider City. And from what he said, he did not seem particularly superstitious about gods and Buddhas, so naturally he would not pursue the foolish business of immortality. Those who harbored such thoughts were all cowards who clung to life and feared death; they would absolutely never dare to personally venture into the perilous Savage Mountain rift valley.

If they judged based on the information they had currently obtained, the interior of the Golden Spider City was originally a giant rock preserved underground. The Champa people had modified the rock layers and caves, sealing and destroying most of the areas. There must still be many unknown things inside, and Green Tomb had certainly come for these.

Now that Sima Hui and the others had become mortal enemies with Green Tomb, there was no distinction of priority between escaping and unraveling the mystery of his identity. Suddenly, they felt a tremor in the chamber, and black mist poured from the rock crevices. Sima Hui said: “This is bad. This ancient city is continuing to sink into the mud basin underground…”

Fearing another methane explosion, they hurriedly extinguished their torches. Abandoning any thought of further searching, they formed a human ladder, with Luo Da She Tou assisting from above, and returned from the secret chamber to the great hall. By now, the ground inside the Golden Spider City had begun to tilt. The bricks embedded in the walls fell one after another. A massive stone beam flew down from midair, smashing the copper lamp to pieces. The thousand-year fire and eternal furnace overturned, spilling oil and toppling candles, setting the ground ablaze everywhere.

The Savage Mountain was a deeply fissured terrain of dry mountains. The bottom of this ancient city was a dried-up underground lake. As the water veins receded, they left behind massive amounts of mud. The decomposing remains of organisms in the lake slowly broke down and were sealed under high pressure between the mud and rock layers, forming countless relatively independent gas pockets, large and small, scattered like stars. Among them were also several underground springs that had flowed continuously for thousands of years, even connecting to the interior of the Golden Spider City.

The entire mountain surface that had collapsed from the ground a thousand years ago had been supported by methane gas and plant root systems. Once this delicate balance was destroyed, it would completely disintegrate and sink into the vast mud. The plants that had grown within the Golden Spider City had been largely destroyed by seismic bombs earlier, causing drastic changes in the city’s structural stress. This exerted pressure on the gas pockets sealing the methane, finally causing methane to surge into the city. The entire Golden Spider City began to tilt and submerge. The methane seeping through the wall crevices was ignited by the flames in the great hall. This time was different from before; once started, it could not be stopped. Expanding fireballs rapidly shot upward. Sima Hui and the others felt flames exploding across their field of vision, their skin seeming to be torn apart by the heat wave. They immediately threw themselves to the ground, desperately crawling toward the dark spring in the corner of the hall.

The scorching air currents swept away all nearby air, and the firelight dimmed instantly. Tremors continued all around, and their ears were filled with rumbling, muffled sounds. The accumulated methane in various parts of the underground was ignited one by one, causing continuous explosions.

Just as the group approached the limit of suffocation, the city structure split apart from the middle. Sand, mud, and water mist fell from above. Through the massive gap torn open in the hall ceiling, they could see the fire spreading above as well. The Udumbara flowers covering the entire rift valley had also been ignited. In that chaotic darkness of dust, soaring flames cut through the dense gray-black smoke, like an ominous black wall rising into the sky.