I saw Fatty hook the neck of the ancient corpse with the "Corpse-Binding Rope," then swing his arm wildly, delivering five loud slaps to the corpse. I quickly stopped him, and hearing his bizarre words, I pressed on, "Are you stuffed from eating too much, beating a dead person for no reason?" But then I immediately recalled that Fatty had previously been afflicted by the "Tongue Curse" (She Jiang); perhaps it hadn't been entirely purged, leaving some residue. Could it be that the owner of that set of "Witch Robes" (Wu Yi), also killed by King Xian, had turned into a vengeful spirit, possessing Fatty just to infiltrate the Nether Palace and emulate Wu Zixu’s act of whipping a corpse to vent her hatred?

Thinking this, I instantly yanked off Fatty’s gas mask. Looking into his eyes, there was nothing unusual. Just then, Fatty spoke up, "The dampness here is suffocating; why did you take off my mask?" He snatched it back, placed it on his face again, and continued, "I say, Commander Hu, Chief of Staff Yang, didn't you notice? Look at this..."

Fatty pointed to the skull of the corpse in the coffin. Halfway through his sentence, the eyeless head of the ancient corpse suddenly swayed three times and shook three times on the body. With a distinct clunk, it fell right off, landing precisely on the edge of the "Stone Spirit Ghost Coffin" (Shi Jing Gui Guan). The stone spirit surface was slick as ice; after pausing momentarily, it rolled off onto the floor of the wooden outer coffin (Mugou).

All three of us were startled. This ghost coffin made of stone spirit was sealed extremely tight, and it was no ordinary casket. Although the "stone spirit," saturated with intense yin energy, was considered an ominous object, its inherent cool properties preserved the body’s original appearance remarkably well. When we opened the coffin, we saw the ancient corpse with its beard and eyebrows intact; the muscles hadn't withered or collapsed, and most of the body's moisture was locked inside, showing absolutely no signs of rot or desiccation. How could this head be so fragile that Fatty’s few hard slaps could possibly knock it clean off?

Fatty himself found it odd and immediately picked up the severed head from the ground. I observed that the skin of the head was already beginning to darken rapidly. This was likely due to the sharp oxidation caused by the humid air inside the wooden outer coffin acting upon a corpse that had been sealed for so long.

Fatty muttered, "How could it be so fragile? Even if I pulled down, it shouldn't have come off!"

Shirley Yang took the ancient corpse’s head from Fatty’s hands. "Let me see." She then asked Fatty, "What were you about to say just now? What didn't we notice?"

Fatty turned to Shirley Yang. "Oh, well... I was saying, didn't you realize what I was doing? According to that fortune-teller, back when they were tomb raiding, if they encountered a fresh corpse, they had to wrap it with a corpse-binding rope and administer several hard slaps. If they didn't do that, they couldn't retrieve the burial garments or the funerary objects in the coffin. You all heard him say this while we were eating together. I intended to show you that this Zongzi’s head looked just like a living person's, so it deserved a beating first. Who knew it would be like it was made of paper, falling off with just a gentle touch?"

I nodded. "So that's what you meant. The fortune-teller did say that, but those were their methods—they did it to bolster their courage and subdue the corpse. As for not slapping the dead man’s face, it’s not that the burial clothes or artifacts couldn't be taken out otherwise; it’s just a local custom to scare themselves and assert dominance over the deceased. I never imagined the head would detach so easily with just a few slaps!"

Fatty was about to argue, but Shirley Yang held up the corpse's head, saying, "Stop arguing. Come look at this head..." She placed it on the coffin lid for us to observe.

I stepped closer and took a look. In that short time, the ancient corpse's head had darkened further than before, appearing terrifyingly black. Especially with the eye sockets deep-set, it looked like a pitch-black skull. Around the edges of the eye sockets, there were concentric, spiral patterns of deep red bloodstains. Since the head was rapidly turning black and drying out, those marks vanished after just one glance.

I hadn't seen many corpses in ancient tombs—at most, the Golden Man Tomb at Black Wind Pass and the jade coffin in the jungle at the entrance to Bug Valley, which contained a body submerged in blood. Looking at this ancient corpse's head, aside from the missing eyes, I couldn't discern anything particularly special. I asked Shirley Yang, "I'm no expert at examining ancient corpses. Do you think this might be the head of King Xian?"

Shirley Yang replied, "Whether it's King Xian is hard to determine. You saw just now that the eye sockets bear marks of the 'Black Cauldron Punishment' (Hei Wan Xing). In ancient times, there was a torture device shaped like a wine cup, with rotating blades inside. Placed over a person's eyes and twisted, it could surgically gouge out the eyeball while the victim was still alive."

Fatty and I nodded simultaneously. A couple of years ago in Beijing, we saw an exhibition on ancient Tibetan customs that included a bowl used for gouging out living eyes. However, those artifacts were from Tibet. It turns out mainland China also had similar torture instruments in ancient times. But why were this ancient corpse's eyes gouged out when it was alive? And why was it interred in a "Ghost Coffin" heavy with yin energy? A king's tomb would never bury anyone outside the royal lineage. So, who exactly was this ancient corpse?

Furthermore, I noticed faint cut marks beneath the ancient corpse's skull, but they didn't look like they were from beheading; rather, they appeared to have been cut after death. This confirmed that Fatty hadn't been too rough, snapping the neck; the head had been attached to the body post-mortem. For what reason would anyone do this? Did the ancient Dian Kingdom have a custom of severing the head after death and reattaching it?

A possibility suddenly struck me, though I couldn't confirm it yet without examining the body inside the "Ghost Coffin." We gathered around the coffin again. I asked Fatty to hold the flashlight steady while Shirley Yang and I used our paratrooper knives to cut through the layers of white brocade wrapped around the body. During the Han Dynasty, kings had the custom of using jade clothing (Yuyi, also called Yuxia) to preserve the body with cool, moist jade. But this ancient corpse was meticulously wrapped in white brocade, yet the head was left exposed—this seemed utterly baffling.

The white brocade was also suffering from the damp, moldy air; the deeper we went, the harder it was to peel away. Sweat beaded on my forehead in the stifling gas mask, but with Shirley Yang's assistance, we finally stripped away all the tightly layered burial cloths.

As I peeled back the multiple layers of white brocade, I noticed an anomaly in the texture. But when I saw the contents inside, the beam of the flashlight flashed into the coffin, reflecting countless points of golden light off the smooth stone spirit surface—a dazzling, soul-captivating gleam. My surprise grew: how could this be?

Inside the white burial shroud was a dazzling, golden skeleton. Apart from a few remaining human bones near the spine and pelvis, the rest of the structure was meticulously patched with gold. There wasn't a shred of flesh or skin remaining. This half-bone, half-gold frame appeared to be the result of severe decay, where the original bones had almost entirely disintegrated into soil and air, requiring someone to manually reassemble and construct a golden skeleton.

This shimmering golden skeleton stood in stark contrast to the head Fatty had knocked off. How could the body that had almost completely rotted away, necessitating golden reconstruction, have a head so perfectly preserved? It made no sense that the head would vanish instantly into the air due to rapid shijie (body dissolution) caused by our opening the brocade wrap.

Shirley Yang pointed to the neck joint of the yellowed skeleton. "Old Hu, look here. There's a jade collar (Yu Gu) at the neck of this yellowed skeleton, used to connect the head. Fatty’s flurry of slaps knocked that jade collar off, which is why the head fell."

Fatty immediately chimed in, "Chief of Staff Yang is the astute one. If this commander hadn't gauged his strength just right, we wouldn't have discovered this ancient corpse's secret so easily. Ordinary people can't bear this much golden bone; I say this is that old scoundrel King Xian."

Shirley Yang neither agreed nor disagreed, simply pointing to the gleaming golden frame. "Several ribs on the left side are missing; they don't seem to have been replaced..."

Seeing this, I finally grasped the thread. I said to Shirley Yang, "This is clear now. This preserves the appearance of the body after being subjected to the Heart-Gouging torture (Tao Xin Ji Xing). It seems the ancient corpse in the Ghost Coffin is a composite body assembled from the occupants of the three coffins in the chamber. We had already deduced this: the three non-standard coffins from different periods contained three high-ranking nobles subjected to extreme torture. Although they were executed, they were still granted burial rites befitting their former status. They are all considered incarnations of King Xian, symbolizing that he endured 'Three Prisons' (San Yu); these are his 'Shadow Bones' (Ying Gu) left in the netherworld before his ascension."

Since antiquity, "Confucius possessed benevolence (Ren), and Laozi possessed the Way (Dao)." Taoism focuses on alchemy and cultivating qi to achieve enlightenment and escape the suffering of mortal birth, aging, sickness, and death. But achieving immortality is not easy; transformation requires far more than just shedding a layer of skin; it demands surviving several major tribulations. These tribulations cannot be forced; thus, some within the Taoist schools use the skeletons of their previous three lives as substitutes, burying them in a nether-site as 'Shadow Bones' to demonstrate to Heaven and Earth that they have already passed through the Three Prisons, making them ready for transformation. This greatly improves their chances of becoming an immortal in this life.

It seems King Xian did exactly this. The "wooden outer coffin" beneath the Nether Palace chamber represents the underworld, where parts of the three tortured skeletons are assembled into a complete substitute body. Since those three mutilated remains are considered King Xian’s previous three lives, they are effectively indistinguishable from him and were placed in the main tomb chamber.

Shirley Yang shared a similar view. She said to me, "Perhaps each level of the tomb chamber symbolizes something different. The middle layer represents the human world, and the wooden outer coffin below represents the ethereal void. There should be another chamber above this one, representing the Immortal Mountain, and King Xian’s true remains must lie on the Immortal Mountain."

I told Shirley Yang and Fatty, "What we've discussed is only a hypothesis; we need further confirmation. A royal tomb built for achieving immortality like this is rarely seen; there seem to be mysteries everywhere. Let's first search the coffin for any other items that might yield information. We’ve examined the head and the body now. The stone spirit can preserve a body for a thousand years, so the state of the bones should reflect their original appearance in their respective coffins. The head was perfectly preserved, so it must have come from that supreme, eight-inch plank, the Yinzi Coffin. This middle section, with bones almost completely rotted and needing gold filling, is likely the remains from the stone coffin, and the cinnabar lacquer outside the stone coffin was applied later."

Fatty remarked, "We haven't checked the leg section of this composite substitute body yet. Maybe it contains some valuable trade goods."

I thought that unlikely. The legs would come from the massive bronze outer coffin. The first two prisons were "Eye-Gouging" and "Heart-Gouging"; therefore, the third prison must have been the most terrifying one: "Soul-Snatching" (Duo Hun). That explains why the occupant of the bronze coffin must have been so fierce. As I peeled away the white brocade wrapped around the leg bones, I asked Shirley Yang and Fatty, "Do you know what Soul-Snatching is?"

Shirley Yang replied, "It seems during the Shang Tang era, there was a form of shamanistic torture that could extract a living person's soul, leaving behind a body that was neither alive nor dead—a walking shell. But the exact method remains unrecorded in history; it's still a mystery. Is that mysterious shamanistic ritual what they call Soul-Snatching?"

As I continued stripping the white brocade, I briefly recounted to Shirley Yang an event that happened not long ago. The shamanistic torture of "Soul-Snatching" only vanished by the Warring States period. Once, at the Panjiayuan antique market, several items suddenly appeared. They were brought by an old farmer from Anyang, Henan. He had over a hundred bizarrely shaped bone artifacts he wanted to sell. These items resembled 'bone needles' but were thicker and longer, hollowed out in the center, and were all contained within an ancient stoneware jar covered in archaic characters.