The Dragon Ridge Tombs Read online

  ALSO BY TIANXIA BACHANG

  The City of Sand

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Translation copyright © 2018 by Jeremy Tiang

  Text copyright © 2006 by Shanghai Xuanting Entertainment Information Technology Co., Ltd.

  Cover art copyright © 2018 by Michael-Paul Terranova

  All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Delacorte Press, an imprint of Random House Children’s Books, a division of Penguin Random House LLC, New York. Originally published in Chinese and in paperback by Anhui Arts Publishing House, Hefei City, Anhui Province, China, in 2006.

  Delacorte Press is a registered trademark and the colophon is a trademark of Penguin Random House LLC.

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  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Names: Tianxia Bachang, author. | Tiang, Jeremy, translator.

  Title: The Dragon Ridge tombs / Tianxia Bachang; translated from the Chinese by Jeremy Tiang.

  Other titles: Gui chui deng zhi long ling mi ku. English

  Description: Trade hardcover edition, first American edition. | New York : Delacorte Press, [2018] | Companion to: City of sand. | Originally published: Hefei City, China : Anhui Arts Publishing House, 2006. | Summary: Teenaged best friends Tianyi and Kai journey deep below a mountain range, where ancient tombs are certain to contain riches but are rumored to be guarded by merciless supernatural forces.

  Identifiers: LCCN 2017052668 (print) | LCCN 2018000177 (ebook) | ISBN 978-0-553-52415-4 (ebook) | ISBN 978-0-553-52414-7 (trade hardcover) | ISBN 978-0-553-52417-8 (library binding)

  Subjects: | CYAC: Adventure and adventurers—Fiction. | Best friends—Fiction. | Friendship—Fiction. | Supernatural—Fiction. | Grave robbing—Fiction. | Feng shui—Fiction. | China—Fiction.

  Classification: LCC PZ7.1B265 (ebook) | LCC PZ7.1.B265 Dr 2018 (print) | DDC [Fic]—dc23

  Ebook ISBN 9780553524154

  Random House Children’s Books supports the First Amendment and celebrates the right to read.

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  Contents

  Cover

  Also by Tianxia Bachang

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-one

  Chapter Twenty-two

  Chapter Twenty-three

  Chapter Twenty-four

  Chapter Twenty-five

  Chapter Twenty-six

  Chapter Twenty-seven

  Chapter Twenty-eight

  Chapter Twenty-nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-one

  Chapter Thirty-two

  Chapter Thirty-three

  Chapter Thirty-four

  Chapter Thirty-five

  Chapter Thirty-six

  About the Author

  About the Translator

  CHAPTER ONE

  After our last adventure in China’s Taklimakan Desert, I didn’t see Julie Yang for a while. She was busy arranging medical treatment for Professor Chen and dealing with the police about the members of our expedition who hadn’t made it back—sadly, our mission had ended with the professor’s assistant and three of his students falling victim to the curse of the Jingjue queen; they would now lie forever beneath the shifting desert sands. When the authorities questioned us, I was worried they’d find out my best friend, Kai, and I were gold hunters, so I said as little as possible. Archaeological expeditions are always risky, but four deaths and a professor who’d lost his mind raised serious suspicions.

  Kai and I had rented a tiny apartment in Beijing and were trying to decide whether we could make a living from gold-hunting work. We were seventeen, neither of us headed to college. One night, as I lay in bed, there was a sharp knock on the door. Kai was out on the town, but I’d decided to stay home—I’d had bad dreams the night before, and my head was throbbing. I called out that I was coming, hoping it wasn’t another surprise visit from the cops.

  I opened the door. It wasn’t anyone in uniform. It was Julie. I told her to come in quick and asked how she’d found me. She said Gold Tooth, an antiques dealer who had a stall at Pan Market, had given her our address.

  “You know Gold Tooth?” I was startled.

  “Not very well. My father used to collect artifacts and did some business with him. But Gold Tooth is friends with Professor Chen. I went to see him to track you and Kai down—I still owe you money. I’m leaving the country with the professor in a couple of days to get him medical help in America, so I probably won’t see you for a while.”

  Finally, Kai and I were getting paid! I thought it might be politer to refuse, though. “You’re going home? Is the professor any better?” I asked. “I’d just been thinking of visiting him. Don’t worry about the money for now. We didn’t do that much, after all.”

  Julie plonked the cash on the table. “I’m paying you. That was our arrangement. But there’s something I hope you’ll agree to.

  “Our ancestors were in the same line of work. My grandfather washed his hands of gold hunting because it brings terrible karma, and no matter how good your destiny is to start with, sooner or later you come to a bad end. I hope you’ll find something else to do. If there’s a way I could get you guys to the States, I could help arrange—”

  “Thanks for the offer, but you only know half the story,” I interrupted, losing my temper. “There are two sides to every issue. Good things can turn bad, and bad things can turn good. That’s called dialectical materialism. You already know I’m a reverse dipper, so I might as well tell you the rest. I have principles. I’d never touch an ancient tomb that’s already been discovered and preserved. But deep in the forests and mountains are other graves no one knows about, all of them stuffed with valuables. These graves are impossible to find, except by people like me who know the secrets of feng shui. I’m gifted at reading the earth and the sky. If I didn’t look for these graves, they’d probably stay hidden underground forever. Don’t forget, I’m the one who found the lost city of Jingjue in the desert for you. But I would never damage any of these places, and it offends me when you imply that I don’t show the proper respect.”

  Seeing that I was prepared to go on for quite a while, Julie held up a hand. “All right. I was just trying to give you some good advice, but you’re clearly not going to listen to what I say. I don’t think anyone in the world would defend reverse dipping the way you just did. Forget I said anything. I guess you won’t
be wanting this money either.”

  I hastily snatched the money she’d placed on the table. “A deal is a deal. Thanks for this. But let’s call it a loan. I’ll pay you back with interest, how about that?” She nodded curtly and stormed out, and I wondered if I’d gone too far. What would Kai make of this?

  Later that evening, I sat watching as Kai counted the cash. Or rather, he tried to count it a few times but couldn’t reach a total. I didn’t blame him. It was a staggering amount, more than we’d ever seen.

  Finally, Kai tossed the bundle of bills onto the table. “Tianyi, I thought you were the clever one,” he grumbled. “Why did you have to go and say this was a loan? Tell you what, let’s just spend it all, and then we’ll go stay with my relatives down south. Julie will never be able to find us there.”

  “You’re useless,” I snorted. “Who cares about the money? Once we go reverse dipping, the treasures we find will be more than enough to pay Julie back. Plus, we can buy all the equipment we need, not to mention stop worrying about where our next meal is coming from. Starting now, we’re on a mission. Let’s get ready for a big haul.”

  We began planning right away. The remote tombs I had in mind wouldn’t be easy to find—who knew how long it would take us? This was a good sum of money, but it would run out eventually.

  Kai was more pragmatic. He reckoned Gold Tooth was doing well with his antiques business—especially since a lot of his clients were foreigners. The tourists were better informed and harder to cheat these days, but as long as you had high-quality stuff, they were definitely willing to empty their wallets.

  “How about if we opened our own shop?” said Kai. “Get some old things to sell, and if it goes well we won’t need to do any reverse dipping. Breaking into tombs might be quick money, but it’s a lot of hard work.”

  I nodded. “Not a bad idea, Kai. Turns out your brain does work sometimes. We’ve got the capital, after all. Let’s start small, and we can learn the antiques trade as we go.”

  The next day, we went off to find a shop to rent, but we couldn’t find anything suitable. Then we realized we might have aimed too high and decided a stall in Pan Market would do just as well.

  Pan Market was famous for the sheer variety of goods on offer. Extremely valuable antiques weren’t common, however; they tended to sell in private deals, rather than being displayed in the street for everyone to gawk at.

  Following Gold Tooth’s advice, we went out into the suburbs in search of early Qing dynasty pots and bowls, old coins, snuffboxes, pocket watches, and other small items to sell. Unluckily, I kept seizing on things that turned out to be worthless, and when I did find something special, I let it go for far too low a price. We ended our days with a loss.

  At least we hadn’t spent too much money collecting the knickknacks, so we didn’t put much of a dent in our capital. The main thing was to train ourselves to see the true value of things. People spent years acquiring this knowledge, which I was starting to realize might be more complex than feng shui. We certainly weren’t going to get there overnight, but Gold Tooth said I was a natural.

  A few weeks went by, which we spent mostly helping out at Gold Tooth’s stall. He finally suggested that we close our stall and join him in his. We were thrilled to accept. One slow morning, when hardly any customers had shown up, Kai, Gold Tooth, and I sat on the ground playing cards.

  Halfway through a round, someone started pacing in front of our stall. Kai thought the man was a customer and called out to him, “Sir, can I help you? Is there something you’d like to see?”

  “No—no, nothing, but do you take old things?” the man stammered.

  I looked up. The man had purplish-red skin from long hours in the sun. Probably a farmer of some sort. His clothes definitely pegged him as someone from outside the city, and he had a hillbilly Shaanxi accent. He was clutching a tattered leather bag.

  Wondering what sort of antiques this guy could have, I glanced at Gold Tooth. He didn’t hesitate. “Join us,” he told the farmer. “Sit. You must be tired from your trip. Allow me to offer you some tea.”

  The farmer clearly hadn’t seen much of the world and didn’t quite know how to make conversation. Perching on the folding stool I’d brought out, he clutched his bag tightly and kept his mouth shut.

  I stared at the bag and suddenly wondered if he might be a reverse dipper too. Probably not, but he did seem guilty of something. Maybe he really did have a precious item in there. I made my voice as friendly as possible and said, “Yes, please enjoy your tea, sir. It’s the very best. May I ask your name?”

  “I’m called Li Chunlai,” said the farmer. Unable to get comfortable on the stool, he shoved it aside and squatted on the ground, suddenly looking more relaxed.

  Gold Tooth and Kai pretended to continue the card game. In our line of business, it’s important not to crowd the customer. The ones who turn up with items to sell are usually jumpy, worried someone will snatch their treasure from them.

  I kept a smile plastered on my face. “Mr. Li, you were saying something earlier about old things. Do you have antiquities we can take off your hands?”

  “Anti-what?”

  So he was a real bumpkin. I broke it down for him. “Antiques—you know, valuable things from the past. Could you let me take a look?”

  Li Chunlai looked around to make sure no one was eavesdropping. “I only have one shoe,” he whispered. “How much can you give me for it?”

  I bit back a snide comment. All that trouble for an old shoe? But maybe there was something more to the story. “What kind of shoe?” I probed.

  Apparently finding me approachable, Li Chunlai grew bolder. Unzipping his bag, he let me peer inside. His tattered satchel contained a finely embroidered satin shoe, no more than three inches long. It was exquisite and could have fit only onto a lady’s bound foot. I recalled that this was known as lotus feet.

  Before I could get a proper look, he’d zipped the bag shut again, as if afraid the shoe would fly out of his possession.

  “Wait!” I said hastily. “I wasn’t done looking. Where in the world did you get that?”

  Li Chunlai shook his head. “All you have to do is name a price. I don’t care about the rest.”

  “Mr. Li,” I said, “you have to let me have another look. How else do you expect me to give you a price?” Lowering my voice, I added, “Are there too many prying eyes around here, is that it? Tell you what, let me treat you to a snack. There’s a restaurant nearby that has excellent mutton dumplings. It’s clean and quiet, and we can talk business there. If your shoe is as valuable as I suspect, we’ll need to discuss fair compensation. What do you say?”

  The farmer was drooling at the thought of mutton dumplings. “That’s a great idea. Better than sitting beneath the hot sun. Nothing like a good meal before getting down to business.”

  Nodding to Kai and Gold Tooth, I escorted Mr. Li down the block to the restaurant. The place was starting to get a bit of a reputation—the couple who ran it were excellent cooks. Their dumplings were delicious and generously stuffed, and the restaurant was always spick-and-span.

  It was almost lunchtime, and already the place was starting to fill with customers. I was becoming a regular here, and the couple knew me well. They called out a greeting, and when I raised an eyebrow to indicate we’d appreciate some privacy, the wife bustled over to set up a table in their storeroom at the back. She got us bowls and chopsticks, then hurried out to fill more orders.

  The storeroom was where I usually brought people when we needed to talk. Only the sacks of flour could overhear us. And I always told the owners to keep the change from lunch—a fee for use of the room.

  “I hope this is all right,” I said to Mr. Li. “We’re alone now, so you can show me the shoe.”

  Li Chunlai looked bewitched by the enticing aroma of dumplings. He didn’t react to my words, prob
ably thinking only of the meal to come.

  There was nothing I could do but force a smile and nudge him playfully. “Don’t worry, they’ll bring the food in as soon as it’s ready. If I can offer you a good price for that shoe, you’ll be able to eat mutton dumplings every day of your life.”

  This seemed to bring him to his senses, and he started hastily shaking his head. “No way, no way. When I sell this shoe, I’m using the cash to find a wife.”

  I laughed. “For sure! What lady could resist you, with some money in your pocket?”

  Li Chunlai loosened up. “That’s right, maybe someone from Mizhi. They say Mizhi girls are the prettiest.”

  As he chatted away, the wife came back in with a steaming plate of dumplings. Mr. Li immediately stopped talking and began shoveling them into his mouth.

  Seeing the rate at which he was going, I quickly ordered another large bowl, then put a saucer of vinegar in front of him. “Mr. Li, we don’t serve dumplings in sour soup the way you like it in Shaanxi, but try dipping them in this.”

  Mr. Li got through a dozen dumplings without pausing for breath, head lowered over his plate. I waited patiently till he was done, then mentioned the shoe again.

  I seemed to have earned his trust. He brought the shoe out of his satchel without hesitation.

  Studying the shoe from all angles, I noted its tip pointed like a bamboo shoot, its green satin insole, the peonies embroidered in gold, blue, and red silk thread, and the sandalwood sole with a slot where fragrance could be inserted.