The ferret paid exclusive attention to licking the blood pooled on the coffin, its greed so intense that it remained completely oblivious to the approaching party. Not long before, had been at the Ancient Ferret Stele, accompanied by two other Banshan Daoists, where they had dealt with the "Old Lady in the Circle of Light" using the Yuan Guang Shu. In the cold, shadowy terrain near Pingshan, ferrets were rare; to encounter another at the mountain's base suggested this creature was a direct descendant of that cunning old ferret from the Stele, evident in its coloring and utterly malevolent demeanor.

Without needing to move himself,’s younger martial brother, the foreign-looking man with coppery skin and curly hair, surged forward. With hands like iron pincers, he seized the ferret and presented it to his senior brother for judgment.

The ferret seemed jolted awake, black blood still clinging to its muzzle. Being highly intelligent, it sensed the dense killing aura radiating from the Banshan and Xieling bandits, realizing disaster was imminent. It shook uncontrollably, instantly losing bladder and bowel control.

Hong Guniang, who had joined Chang Sheng Shan midway and remained unfamiliar with the dark arts of tomb raiding, watched in bewilderment. Seeing the jumble of coffins in the shadowed woods and this shifty-eyed ferret up to no good, she couldn't help but inquire.

offered no reply. Instead, he waved dismissively to her and the assembled bandits behind him, leading them toward a cluster of mounds at the mountain's foot. This was the area where Pingshan sank into the earth. Unable to stand upright in the confined space, everyone had to crouch, holding their lamps as they squeezed into the narrowest spot, bringing the unsightly, blood-oozing white coffin directly into view.

The bandits immediately recoiled from the overwhelming stench emanating from within, hastily covering their mouths and noses with black gauze, assuming the coffin housed a rotting corpse. However, felt this unvarnished wooden box was no ordinary burial container. All large ancient tombs and grand palaces or temples invariably pulsed with vital energy (sheng qi); yet, this section of the mountain base, cold and damp, held a wooden coffin centuries old that looked brand new. Even with his vast experience, he couldn't fathom the strangeness of it. Being naturally bold and skilled, resolved to uncover the secret of any anomaly he encountered. He rapped his knuckles twice on the lid; the sound was solid. The wood was fine quality, certainly not rare, but the seams were filled with slick, viscous blood that reeked of sun-dried dead fish.

Seeing no clues from the exterior, ordered several Xieling raiders to break open the coffin. These men, acting under the instructions of Chen Xiazi, treated with the deference due a leader of Chang Sheng Shan, readily agreeing. They advanced, hefting their long axes.

The business of grave robbing and entering tombs always hinges on the crucial step of opening the coffin. Mojin Xiaowei typically use the Yin Claw and the Black Folder, focusing on prying and pulling—hence the term "raising the coffin and extracting the materials" (sheng guan fa cai); Xieling raiders, conversely, preferred the Kai Shan Axe, emphasizing smashing and splitting. But the space beneath the mountain base was too tight for splitting. The three raiders swung their axes wildly, and within a few blows, they had pried open a gaping hole in the coffin.

The bandits widened the breach further, completely dismantling the intact coffin. Shining their lamps inside, they saw no body, only a massive pile of rou jun (flesh fungi), constantly weeping dark, viscous fluid that matched the color and smell of a decaying corpse.

Seeing this, understood immediately. He quickly ordered a torch lit to incinerate the fungi. It turned out the white-faced coffin was not for a corpse but a mu lian (wooden casket) used in the Dan Gong (Alchemy Chamber) to store rou jun. The techniques of transforming mercury into silver during the Song Dynasty differed greatly from the Qin and Han eras; it was more refined, focusing on turning base metals into gold using medicinal herbs as catalysts to form the elixir (dan). The initial components for burning the elixir often included rare and precious substances like exquisite Lingzhi, Nine-Dragon Coil, rou jun, and Tai Sui. However, once harvested, these materials could not be preserved for long in normal conditions without drying out and losing efficacy. The only way to maintain them was to store them in mu lian hidden in cold, damp, shaded mountain areas.

Those mound-like earth piles were all graves for these mu lian. Whether the ferret had dug them up or water erosion had exposed the coffin-like vessels was unclear. The rou jun inside continued to grow in the shade, but having been buried for too long, they were no longer fit for medicine, instead merely attracting the ferret to lick the leaking juices.

looked at the ferret held by the old foreigner and cursed, “These beasts, just like those delusional people striving for immortality, seek to ingest elixirs to prolong their lives. The ingredients left behind from the uncompleted elixirs of the ancient Pingshan Immortal Palace have ended up nourishing them. If left unchecked, they will eventually become a menace.”

Hong Guniang, having heard Chen Xiazi speak of the Ancient Ferret Stele, felt a deep concern and asked, “In that case, should we have the brothers kill this ferret now?”

had killed countless men in his life. Any scoundrel, traitor, or wicked person he encountered would never be spared; killing a living person was as common as crushing a louse, let alone a ferret greedy for elixirs and harboring wicked intent.

But he was accustomed to traveling alone. Only because the Banshan Daoist lineage was fading, with fewer clansmen understanding the art, had he kept Hua Ling and the old foreigner close—to teach them real skills, ensuring that should he perish during a raid, the thousand-year-old Banshan Fen Jia Shu (Dividing Mountain Echelon Technique) would not vanish entirely. was reluctant to take a life unnecessarily in front of his junior martial siblings; the world’s moral judgments were too complex, and killing or not killing was merely a thought away from leading them down a path burdened with too much karmic sin.

Hearing Hong Guniang ask if he should kill the ferret immediately, shook his head. “Let this wretch stay for a little while longer; we still have use for it later.”

The bandits, unsure what else intended to do with the ferret, dared not ask further questions. They complied with his orders: first, dig out and destroy all the mu lian and rou jun. Then, once torches were lit, they temporarily extinguished their lanterns and scattered themselves among the crevices at the mountain's base, searching for a spot to excavate the entry tunnel.

According to Chen Xiazi’s specialized technique of listening to the wind and thunder, the ancient tomb within Pingshan was no different from the Taoist Immortal Palace built atop the peak. It merely utilized Pingshan’s internal caverns to construct the palace within the mountain’s belly, rising in tiers, fitting the mountain’s oblique angle, with each hall towering higher than the last—about four or five stories tall, making it enormously grand.

The outer defensive enclosure (Weng Cheng) dug at the mountain’s base entrance must be the main gate to the front hall. What remained uncertain was which hall housed the main burial chamber (Yin Gong) and the accompanying burial artifacts (Ming Qi). According to the Banshan Daoist’s plan, digging in from the mountain base, based on his estimates, should allow the tunnel to reach the great hall behind the Weng Cheng. However, the base was a jumble of earth and stone, and the fissures were deep and winding; finding the precise starting point was impossible.

Before entering, had only intended a preliminary probe, not possessing much certainty. But upon seeing the terrain, he realized his estimation was seven or eight parts correct. Although Pingshan was a massive slab of blue rock, it was not entirely impenetrable. Some areas on the shaded side contained mixed earth and stone. If the sunny side was likened to an impenetrable giant blue shield, like an invincible bell covered in iron robes, repelling all thieves attempting to excavate the tomb by external force, then the shaded side was the vacant aperture, the weakness in the iron robe. The larger something was, the easier it was to find a flaw. This break in the stone-earth mixture on the shaded side was a lapse perhaps even the Yuan Dynasty builders who created the tomb had not anticipated.

Grave robbing techniques are numerous and varied. Digging entry tunnels and breaking coffins, despite different craftsmanship, are fundamentally similar. However, the methods for locating hidden tombs vary vastly, showing extreme differences in proficiency. The first three methods—observing, smelling, and asking—were all skills for locating treasures, with the Mojin Xiaowei being the most skilled. Banshan and Xieling respected this ability. Only accredited Mojin Xiaowei could deploy the secret Feng Shui arts of "Xun Long Jue" (Dragon Seeking Art) and "Fen Jin Ding Xue" (Dividing Gold and Fixing Position).

Mojin Xiaowei scouring mountains and marshes to find ancient tombs could discern the depth of the underground palace by observing the mountain shape and determine the coffin's orientation by gazing at the stars—abilities far beyond other tomb robbers.

But every strength has its weakness. The Banshan Daoists possessed their own unique methods. watched the raiders search for a long time, poking here and there with bamboo sticks. In this consistently damp and seeping environment, the Xieling methods of observing mud traces and recognizing grass colors had become useless.

Among all tomb-raiding techniques, the method of discerning the soil and mud is arguably the most limited; it becomes unreliable in deserts or submerged areas. Seeing this, stopped the raiders, took the ferret from the old foreigner's grasp, and pulled a Centipede Bead from his robe. This item had been acquired earlier by Chen Xiazi and Luo Laowai when they unearthed the Shi Tou Man (Stone Head Savage). They had distributed some to the group upon entering the mountain; it could be used to draw out poison from insect bites but must never be brought near the mouth or nose.

rubbed the Centipede Bead near the ferret’s nose. The creature immediately convulsed, its eyes rolled back, and blood began to drip from its nostrils. held the ferret, moving it back and forth through the mountain fissure, while Hua Ling held a torch to illuminate the path, carefully observing the changes in the blood as it struck the earth and stone.

Finally, when a drop landed on a patch of hard earth, it neither soaked in nor flowed away; instead, it seemed to adhere to the soil layer, swirling briefly before slowly seeping in. It appeared this patch of earth absorbed the mountain's negative energy (yin qi), causing a slight repulsion with the hot blood, but the change was extremely subtle. Only someone with seasoned experience could detect such a nuance. This location was far from the mounds containing the rou jun. confirmed his findings and nodded. "This is the spot. Digging the entry tunnel here will lead directly into the underground palace."

Once certain, he allowed Hua Ling to treat the ferret's bleeding with medicine. The creature, perhaps cursed from a previous life, had the misfortune of falling into the hands of the Banshan Daoists. It had lost a significant amount of blood; had the soil layer been found any later, all its vital fluids would have drained out.

then used a short blade to sever a sinew behind the ferret’s neck, ensuring it could never again practice cultivation or use illusionary arts to harm living beings, condemning it to simply follow the natural cycle of life and death. He tossed it aside carelessly. "Go now, and never fall into the hands of a Banshan Daoist again."

The ferret, as if granted a full pardon, endured the pain of its severed sinew and drained blood, fleeing instantly into the rock crevice without daring to look back. Hong Guniang and her Xieling subordinates watched's extraordinary sequence of actions, utterly dumbfounded. Could digging an entry tunnel through the earth layer where the blood had dripped truly connect to the ancient tomb’s underground palace? To them, this seemed like the almost mythical "divination of the site" from the "Inquiry Formula," as if the Banshan Daoists were using ferret blood for shamanistic divination to locate the entry point.

The bandits, eager and excited, prepared their tools to dig the tunnel. Seeing only a dozen men, and uncertain how deep the tunnel would be—fearing it would take a long time to complete—Hong Guniang considered sending two men back to fetch more reinforcements.

thought that Hong Guniang, emerging from the world of Yueliang Men (Moon Gate), did not fully grasp the intricacies of grave entering. She didn't understand that relying on sheer numbers would negate the very reputation of the Banshan art. He said, "That is unnecessary. All you Xieling heroes can rest and wait; just observe the true methods of Banshan Fen Jia Shu..." With that, he beckoned to the old foreigner and Hua Ling. "Fetch the Fen Shan Jue Zi Jia!"

The bandits froze upon hearing this, realizing they were about to witness the secret technique of Banshan. Everyone involved in tomb raiding had heard of the Banshan Fen Jia Shu, but as Banshan Daoists rarely associated with outsiders, almost no one had seen the Fen Shan Jue Zi Jia firsthand. Being practitioners themselves, how could they not be curious? Immediately, every person focused intently, holding their breath, watching the every move of the three Banshan Daoists.

Hua Ling and the old foreigner unslung their bamboo baskets from their backs. The baskets were covered with waxed cloth and felt heavy, as if packed with numerous objects. Hua Ling crushed medicinal cakes and sprinkled the powder over the baskets. Unsure of the cakes' composition, she gave a casual shake, and suddenly a cloud of dust erupted. A writhing, rustling sound issued from within the baskets, like a great mass of iron armor plates grinding against each other.

The bandits were startled. They had heard the name Fen Shan Jue Zi Jia but never imagined the thing was alive. The term "Jue Zi" was an ancient designation for military engineers. In ancient warfare, when breaching fortified cities proved difficult, siege forces would dig tunnels to infiltrate; defenders would counter by digging deep trenches, filling them with water and stones to prevent being tunneled under. Soldiers executing these tasks were often short, stocky, and robust, burrowing like gophers in the ditches and tunnels; they were called the "Jue Zi Army" or "Jue Zi Camp."

Therefore, the raiders had always assumed the Fen Shan Jue Zi Jia was a set of bronze armor, specialized gear worn by ancient tunneling troops, equipped with iron claws and plates for digging—never expecting it to be a living creature. The noise from the basket grew louder, and suddenly two spherical masses entirely composed of scales rolled out. They tumbled a couple of times before unfurling themselves—they were two monsters entirely covered in armor plating.

The pair resembled crocodilians or carp (① Tuo - a reptile with scales on its back and tail). Their scales were neatly arrayed like ancient armor. Their heads were conical, their tails horned, and their four limbs short and thick, tipped with exceptionally sharp claws. As they swayed their heads and flicked their tails, they appeared vigorous and alive. With the slightest movement, their scales created a sound like grinding iron plating. Each creature wore a bronze ring, engraved with the characters "Xue Ling" (Tomb Excavation).

Most of the Xieling raiders had never seen such creatures and stepped back in astonishment. Only two or three seasoned veterans recognized them as Ling Li Jia (Pangolin Armor), but seeing the rusted bronze rings, they knew these were not ordinary Ling Li Jia. A memory suddenly surfaced, prompting an involuntary cry: "Could these be Chuan Shan Xue Ling Jia (Mountain-Piercing Tomb-Excavating Armor)?"