All right, so I've been really excited about posting this chapter! This is where things begin to be "uncharted" in the true sense of the word. I'm having a blast writing this, and hope you all reading it are too!
The next day, as the sun was setting over the city of Xi'an, Cutter rolled the forest-green rental SUV to a stop outside of an unassuming home on the outskirts of town. As the car doors opened and then shut, four treasure hunters and one journalist climbed out onto the sidewalk and all squinted into the sun as they observed the two-story, flat-roofed house with wood siding stained red and bright, inviting gardens planted along the path to the front door. Beyond the geometric silhouette of Ming jie's abode loomed the skyline of downtown, as well as the familiar sight of the Giant Wild Goose Pagoda, of which Sully had sarcastically noted- "Hopefully that doesn't become a job-appropriate name."
The eclectic group meandered down the path to the house, Chloe commenting chipperly on the flowers as she passed them, and Nate rapped confidently on the front door, then took a step back and crossed his arms over his chest. After a short wait the door cracked open just a bit, and a young, round-faced Chinese man with square-rimmed glasses poked his head out hesitantly. Seeing Nate, the man's face went through an odd transformation, with his eyebrows shooting up in surprise at the same time as his countenance darkened.
"Drake?" he asked incredulously.
"The one and only," Nate replied cooly.
Eying the others in the group suspiciously, Ming jie glared at him. "You could have called."
Nate's bravado failed him as he overheard the rumble of comments that this response elicited from Chloe, Cutter, and Sullivan as they each took shots at Nate's seeming inability to plan ahead. Trying to catch himself on the rebound, Nate stammered, "And miss the look of absolute surprise and overwhelming pleasure at seeing my face at your door?" Behind him, Chloe rolled her eyes at his boundless ego. Ming jie's face remained in a scowl, so Nate continued on. "I just need help translating something. Just a small favor, you know. Don't forget you owe me one."
The standoff continued for a brief moment, then Ming jie's face cracked into a toothy smile and he opened the door wide. "Of course, my friend. Come in, come in."
Visibly relieved, Nate walked through the door with a smile, followed by the others, and Ming led them down a hallway. As they walked, Sully leaned over to Nate.
"Close call there, kid. I thought he wasn't gonna let us in the house," he muttered.
"What can I say?" Nate shrugged. "I'm irresistible."
The hall opened into a small dining room with a high ceiling, a plain oak table and warm wood paneling on three walls. The fourth wall was almost entirely windows floor to ceiling, letting in an abundance of natural light to bathe the room and give it a delightful, breezy air. The windows also afforded a pleasant view of an attractively manicured flower garden and a small stretch of grass that led up to an alley behind the house; Chloe and Elena both stepped up to the glass to admire the view.
"Please," Ming spoke, his voice young and nasally, "have a seat." As his guests took their places around the table, the slight young man moved to an electric range and put a chipped porcelain tea kettle on the stove to boil. Returning to the table, he pushed his glasses up on his nose as he sat down. "So, my friend," he clasped his hands and leaned forward expectantly. "What do you have for me?"
Nate reached into his pocket and produced Sir Isaac Newton's journal, opening it on the table in front of him. He leafed through the pages to one of several that had been bookmarked by scraps of torn notebook paper and extracted the ragged piece of parchment, then laid it out flat and carefully smoothed the edges down as he shot a grin at Ming jie. "Take a look at this," he said smugly.
Ming's eyes scanned over the page, studiously studying each character before he looked soberly at Nate. Anticipation hung heavy in the room as the young scholar reached out and gingerly lifted the parchment, fingers barely seeming to touch the brittle paper for fear of it crumbling away to nothing, and held it up in front of his face. Though his eyes were hidden behind the paper, Nate could see his eyebrows lift until they almost touched his hairline, and the wrinkles produced in his forehead shifted subtly as he scanned each line right to left. After a long and suspenseful silence, the parchment was returned to the oak tabletop, revealing a quizzical and somewhat disturbed look on Ming jie's face.
"Where did you get this?" the young man asked simply.
Holding the open journal between his thumb and forefinger, Nate held it up for Ming to see. "Sir Isaac Newton's journal. He was in search of Atlantis, which may have been connected with the legend of Peng Lai."
Ming's face was stony as he replied, "I would say it is more than a possibility."
Charlie leaned forward impatiently. "Do tell," he prodded. "We're all ears."
Ming started to speak, but was interrupted by the shriek of the teapot reaching a boil. His mouth snapped shut again, and he bowed slightly. "First: some tea all around," he said, then stood and went back to the stove. A minute later he came back, setting down a steaming cup of tea in front of each of them.
"Xie xie ni," Chloe said as she received her mug. Charlie shot her a dubious look, to which she simply shrugged. "What?" she asked.
As the bespectacled young man settled back in his chair at the head of the table, Sully swept a hand toward him. "The parchment," he said with thinly-veiled impatience. "You were saying?"
Nate took a swig of his tea, masking his slight grimace behind his cup. He had never been very fond of green tea.
"It is not a complete piece," Ming began, once more eying the yellowing page. "There was obviously more to the original correspondence, but it is a letter." He looked up, meeting Sully's eyes. "I will read you what is here."
Clearing his throat, Ming launched into a dictation of the printed characters, his voice taking on that air of importance that often comes with reading the words of someone lost to history. "Of the 700,000 working on the project, I have, in secret, taken a contingency of 50 men to create a hidden chamber to the northwest of the mausoleum, in which I will conceal the details of my journey. For, as you and I both know, such great power must not fall into the hands of the emperor, lest he grow yet more ruthless in his exertion of tyranny, and the world itself fall at his feet. As for me, I have deceived the great emperor of the Qin into giving me archers, with which I hope to go and take Peng Lai for my own, by following the path of the great Ram of the West. Should you someday take courage to follow me, I have marked the hidden chamber with the symbol we have found on our journey, which we have called the star of Anqi Sheng. Destroy this letter, lest it be discovered and the emperor have you executed for treason. May we meet again, my brother, whether in this life, or in the life beyond."
As Ming finished, Charlie looked over at Nate, excitement plainly visible on his face. "That's too easy. It may as well have given us the answer."
Equally excited, Nate grabbed his seat and nearly pushed himself off of it as he replied eagerly, "Xu Fu! Of course, it's so obvious!"
"Uh- I'm sorry. Who's this delightful new character we're talking about?" Chloe asked, raising an eyebrow.
"Xu Fu? Alchemist and explorer during the time of the Qin dynasty?" Cutter offered, hoping to see if it would stick. "Qin Shi Huang sent him on a search for Peng Lai- twice- in hopes of finding the elixir of life. The Mausoleum it mentioned is clearly Shihuangdi's tomb, just to the northeast of here."
Picking up Charlie's exposition, Nate continued, "After coming back empty-handed from the first voyage, Xu Fu explained to the emperor that he had encountered a huge sea creature and needed archers to defeat it. Qin Shi Huang obliged, and Xu set off on another voyage, never to be seen again." Nate's eyes were alive and shining.
"How much you want to bet that that 'star of Anqi Sheng' is the Argead star?" Chloe said dryly.
Nate turned to her, grinning broadly. "It's not even a contest," he said.
Sully was now smiling equally as much as Nate, and rested his elbows on the table as he spoke. "The mausoleum of the First Emperor... that's not far from here. We should go first thing in the morning," he proposed.
"No," Ming jie's sudden interjection caught everyone off guard. "We go tonight."
Nate looked at him, cocking his head to the side curiously. "Why that, Ming?"
Ming jie's expression was grave. "Because if I know you, Drake, someone is always on your heels, and I would rather you be gone before they show up at my doorstep."
"That's what I'm afraid of," Elena spoke suddenly, having been unusually quiet, echoing the sentiment, tapping her fingers idly on the "I heart Nepal" mug Ming jie had given her.
Glances were exchanged between the four treasure hunters present, then Nate spoke up, voicing everyone's thoughts. "Fair enough. We go tonight."
Night had fully fallen by the time they made it to the mausoleum at the foot of Mount Li. Nate had considered pointing out that the darkness would be a definite drawback in trying to find a cryptic symbol left behind by some random Chinese guys over two millenia ago, but in the end had decided against it, as he knew Ming's evaluation of the situation could not have been closer to the truth. The last thing he needed was to put yet another innocent person in danger.
As it was, six beams of light cast by six discrete flashlights (the five of their original group, plus Ming jie) combed the landscape at the northwest corner of the mausoleum, searching for anything that resembled a star. The night air was beginning to feel thick with moisture as the night cooled and the dew fell, and the aroma of firs and spruce trees hung heavy in the atmosphere. Having unofficially divided up into groups of two, Nate and Elena in one group, Chloe and Charlie in another, and Sully and Ming jie in the last, the conducted their search quietly, only occasionally exchanging hushed whispers between themselves. Nearly an hour later, and they were left with nothing besides shoes that were thoroughly drenched by the soaking wet grass.
"So, they would have wanted to be working somewhere discreet... somewhere they wouldn't be noticed by the people working on the mausoleum," Nate mused, though whether to himself or to her, Elena couldn't really tell. "Somewhere easy to hide..." Nate trailed off and his gaze turned to Mount Li. On an impulse, he scrambled up a short incline, causing a soft clatter as scree tumbled downward in his wake. His flashlight beam bobbed as he moved, then resolved into a narrow patch of light focused on the mountain right in front of him. Elena could hear his continued mutterings as he crawled over the rock face, lost in his own thoughts.
"Uh, Nate?" she called softly.
He stopped and turned to her, inadvertently blinding her with his light. "Yeah, hon?"
Shielding her eyes with one hand, Elena grunted, "Don't you think being up on the side of a mountain would be the least inconspicuous place you could be?"
Nate lowered his flashlight sheepishly. "Yeah, I guess so."
Suddenly, Charlie's unmistakably accented voice cut through the night. "Nate, ol' boy. You might want to come see this."
No objections there. Nate immediately slid down to the ground, and together with Elena he rushed around the corner to see what they had found. Cutter stood facing the mountain and shining his flashlight up at a spot maybe fifteen feet up, with Chloe next to him. Following the flashlight's beam to where it pooled on the rock face, casting eery shadows where it hit crags and outcroppings of jagged stone, Nate could see a symbol carved into the mountain- distorted and made indistinct by time and the elements, and only about the size of a stop sign, but it was there. And it was, unmistakably, in the shape of a many-pointed star.
With his eyes, Nate followed the mountain face down to where it met the ground. Directly beneath the star the grass sloped down into a cleft in the rock, the end of which was very narrow, like a long, vertical slit had been carved into the stone. He noticed that the cleft seemed to end in a pile of small boulders, almost like a rock slide had filled it in at some point.
"Is that a cave-in?" Chloe voiced Nate's thoughts.
"Sure looks that way." Sully, who had just arrived with Ming, placed a cigar into his mouth and pulled out his lighter.
"We've gotta get through that!" Nate's words tumbled out, almost on top of each other, as his excitement piqued. Turning to Chloe, he asked, "What do we have for excavating in the car?"
Chloe's lips parted with a smack, and she looked up and to the side as she considered. "I think I brought some dynamite..." she offered.
"Chloe!" Elena hissed. "We are not using dynamite! This is a-"
"-UNESCO world heritage site, I know," Nate interrupted his wife. "But seriously, Chloe, I know in your mind an explosion is pretty much synonymous with a plan, but that's not exactly the most stealthy way to go about this."
"Or legal," Sully chimed in.
Chloe huffed in annoyance. "Right, would you rather just clear all that out by hand, with no tools and no time to speak of?"
"Maybe."
"Really?" Chloe challenged.
Nate frowned and crossed his arms over his chest as he faced off with her, each of them stubbornly scowling at the other in the shadowy glow of the flashlights. It was a terrible idea. It really was, Nate thought. But then again, most of their ideas were. With a huff of his own, he dropped his arms to his sides and turned to Sully.
"Hey, can you c'mere? I'm gonna need you to-"
"Light it up, Sully!" Nate called.
Sully touched flame to wick and then ran to take cover behind the outcropping of rock that the others were sheltered behind. With fingers in their ears, the gang waited for the inevitable blast. When it came, it ripped the stillness of the night and sent dust and debris flying in a cloud of destruction. It had only been a half stick, but Nate was guessing that it was plenty to attract attention, if anyone was nearby. As they all moved to go see the results of their unorthodox archeology, Ming grabbed Nate's shoulder, holding him back.
"I think you owe me a favor, after this one," the young Chinese scholar said, pointing at himself.
"Touche," Nate said, then followed after the others. He unsurprisingly found Chloe at the head of the group, shining her light straight ahead and staring into the crevice that had been left behind after the explosion. Also unsurprisingly, he found Charlie at the rear of the group, hanging back in dread of the tight squeeze ahead. "You got this, pal," Nate said, slapping his shoulder as he walked by.
One by one, they slipped through the jagged and narrow opening, Chloe first, then Sully, and then Elena, who was followed by Nate. On the other side, they found themselves in a passageway that had been cut into the rock by crude instruments, the rough hewn surfaces bearing the marks of age-old tools, that sloped steeply down and away from them. Nate stared in wonder as he moved his beam of light back and forth between the walls, enthralled by the history they were suddenly immersed in. Ming popped out into the tunnel behind them, and faintly mumbled self-encouragement could be heard from Charlie as he squirmed his way through his worst phobia.
Chloe turned on her heel and walked backwards for a few steps, cupping a hand around her mouth and calling back to him, "C'mon, love! It's solid gold on the other side!"
Charlie finally emerged a bit winded and shook up, but quickly regained his composure and grunted as he looked around. "Solid gold, my arse," he muttered.
"It was metaphorical," Chloe replied breezily.
They all began to move forward together, but were suddenly stopped by a command from Ming jie. "Wait!" he said, holding out a hand. When the others turned to look at him, he explained, "This tunnel was built by the same people who built Shihuangdi's tomb- a place famously booby-trapped and guarded by various devices." He looked at the treasure hunters meaningfully. "We must be cautious."
Nate frowned. "He's right. Let's keep an eye out."
"Right," Cutter agreed. "Last thing we need is to just waltz right into our own doom."
After following the tunnel for about two hundred feet the material of the walls and floor abruptly changed to cleanly formed blocks, causing the group to stop and examine it. As he looked around, Nate noticed that there were narrow troughs about four feet up the wall that ran at least the visible length of the tunnel, and that along the troughs, spaced about every ten feet, were carved stone dragon heads with their mouths gaping open. "Sully!" Nate called, holding up a hand without looking back. "Gimme a light?" When he felt the cold brass of Sully's Zippo press into his palm, he stepped forward and flicked the striker with his thumb, then held the flame to the trough on the left. Whatever was in the bottom flared up, running quickly down the length of the tunnel, and at every one of the dragon heads along the way there was a whoosh and a burst of flame from the open mouths as an apparently concentrated amount of whatever incendiary material was in the troughs caught fire. Repeating the process on the right side of the tunnel, Nate admired his handiwork in the form of a now well lit tunnel stretching before them.
"Quite the flare there, Nate," Chloe commented.
"What can I say? I like a little ambiance in my old creepy tombs," Nate quipped.
"Douse the torches," Cutter ordered, flicking off his flashlight. "We may need the batteries later."
As the rest of the group followed suit, Nate handed Sully's lighter back to him. "When are you gonna be convinced to start carrying one of these yourself?" Sully asked, his voice muffled by the fat cigar still hanging out of his mouth. He had snuffed it on coming into the tunnel- the low oxygen environment of underground crypts weren't exactly the best place to smoke- but still he resolutely chomped it's unlit stub.
Grinning, Nate replied, "What? And rob you of your job security?" he snarked.
Rolling his eyes, Sully muttered around his cigar, "Kids these days..."