Chapter 247: Treasure Vault
Lu Yun and Su Yingxiu leaped onto the ground one after another, only to find themselves in a huge underground palace. Su Yingxiu took out a luminous pearl, and by its hazy glow, she examined the huge stone chamber. Soon, she pulled a waterproof oiled paper bag from her diving suit.
Su Yingxiu opened the oiled paper bag, and inside was tinder for starting a fire. She gently shook the tinder, and a dark red spark appeared in the darkness. Su Yingxiu brought that spark to a palace lantern on the stone chamber’s wall, and in the next moment, the palace lantern suddenly lit up, its warm yellow light illuminating an area two or three zhang square around them.
Even more miraculously, after that palace lantern lit up, Su Yingxiu did nothing more, and the palace lanterns embedded in the walls lit up one after another. After fully three or four dozen palace lanterns had lit up, the entire underground palace was as bright as daylight, and the furnishings and layout of the stone chamber were naturally revealed in every detail before their eyes.
In this stone chamber, broad as three hundred paces, covered in relief carvings, exquisitely solemn and majestic, there were fully one or two hundred tall, sturdy bronze shelves, each divided into upper, middle, and lower layers, with a huge bronze chest placed on each layer. The bronze chests were densely packed and neatly arranged, numbering over a thousand in total!
Without even opening the boxes, just seeing the scene before them, the two were already parched and their blood surging!
Not to mention Lu Yun—even the well-traveled Su Yingxiu had never seen so much bronze and brass. If all these bronze shelves and bronze chests were melted down into copper coins, there would be at least ten million strings!
And this was merely the side hall of the imperial tomb, merely the vessels in the side hall used for holding and storing items. One could imagine the immense value of the things in those boxes, and how astonishing the treasures in the main hall would be?
Both could hear each other’s breathing, which had clearly grown heavier. Lu Yun unconsciously heightened his vigilance, only to hear Su Yingxiu give a bitter smile: “I have to grit my teeth to hold on, just to force myself not to do something foolish.”
“Indeed.” Lu Yun gave a bitter smile upon hearing this: “Treasures move the heart—even these impossibly heavy things stir a strong desire in me to possess them all alone.” He then gave a self-mocking laugh: “But even if I did possess them all, what use would it be? Kou Xianzhi has already told us the answer…”
“Unable to see the light of day again, these things are worth not a penny.” Su Yingxiu nodded with a bitter smile and sighed: “At a time like this, even if all the treasures under heaven were piled before me, they wouldn’t be as tempting as a bowl of steaming hot noodle soup.” She then gave Lu Yun a half-smiling glance and said: “Allow me to ask one more thing—if Husband could see the light of day again, would he want… my life the moment he could?”
“…” Lu Yun was silent for a moment before softly saying: “That remains to be seen.”
“Hateful—you can’t even sweet-talk to make me happy.” Su Yingxiu pouted lightly with a heartbroken expression: “I’d rather be killed by Husband than hurt him myself.”
“I believe you, my foot.” Lu Yun rolled his eyes. He hadn’t even noticed that the eye-rolls he’d done in these few short days exceeded the total of the past dozen years.
“Do I have to rip out my heart for Husband to believe me?” Su Yingxiu clutched her chest with a look of resentment.
“Please don’t.” Afraid that Su Yingxiu would strip in front of him again, Lu Yun hopped to a row of shelves like a rabbit, reached out and lifted the lid off a bronze chest, saying: “Let’s first see what’s inside these?”
“As Husband wishes.” Watching Lu Yun’s reaction of fleeing as if from disaster, Su Yingxiu was not saddened but delighted instead. A sweet smile played on her lips, just like a little wife, as she closely followed behind Lu Yun and looked into the opened chest.
Inside that bronze chest were neatly stacked oiled cloth bags, tightly wrapped, corrosion- and moisture-proof. Lu Yun casually picked up one oiled cloth bag and opened it to find a specially made crossbow without its bowstring. Lu Yun picked up the pristine crossbow and examined it closely. Its wooden arms were about two chi long, the copper mechanism about six cun, with sights on top and a trigger below. There were seal script inscriptions on the copper frame of the mechanism. Lu Yun read them aloud softly: “Yuan Rong Crossbow…”
“What?!” Su Yingxiu jolted at his words, picked up a slightly smaller oiled cloth bag, and unfolded it to reveal over a dozen eight-cun-long iron crossbow bolts. Her eyes lit up as she exclaimed excitedly: “It’s actually a Zhuge repeating crossbow!” She snatched the Yuan Rong Crossbow from Lu Yun’s hands and discovered it weighed fully forty or fifty jin.
Su Yingxiu paid no mind to the weight, studying it lovingly while murmuring: “It’s said that back then, Shu State’s Chancellor Zhuge invented this divine crossbow capable of rapid fire. After Shu fell, this divine crossbow became Jin’s possession. It was always a state treasure, but later during the southward migration of the court, many secret treasures and craftsmen fell into the hands of the Hu people, and we Han could no longer make this divine crossbow.”
As she spoke, Su Yingxiu had already figured out the basic structure of the repeating crossbow. She fitted the bowstring and loaded the bolts one by one into the magazine. Her mouth still going: “Later, several Hu dynasties like Later Zhao, Former Yan, Eastern Qi, and others all claimed to have produced the Zhuge divine crossbow, but it was never seen on battlefields, clearly because they couldn’t make a proper one.”
“I wonder if this Yuan Rong Crossbow stored in Gaozu’s Treasure Vault lives up to the name of divine crossbow?” When Su Yingxiu said “Gaozu’s Treasure Vault,” she aimed the loaded crossbow at Lu Yun and gave him a charming smile.
Lu Yun looked at Su Yingxiu expressionlessly, showing no reaction whatsoever.
Su Yingxiu pursed her lips in boredom, slightly shifted the heavy crossbow, and pulled the trigger.
With a dull ‘thwang,’ ten iron crossbow bolts whistled out. Amid a series of ‘thud thud thud’ sounds, they embedded in a straight line into the ground stone wall, the arrowheads completely buried in the wall, with only the shafts left trembling on the surface!
Both stared wide-eyed at the scene, stunned by the repeating crossbow’s power. On a battlefield, arrayed by the thousands, no army however vast could withstand them!
“Unfortunately, too heavy.” After marveling, Su Yingxiu sighed lightly with some regret: “Moreover, it’s said the Zhuge repeating crossbow can fire single bolts repeatedly, which is far more practical than firing ten at once like this.”
“…” Lu Yun nodded noncommittally, but in his view, these flaws could be overcome, whereas that instant’s power was unmatched by any other crossbow.
Su Yingxiu reluctantly set down the Zhuge divine crossbow and eagerly opened another chest, finding it identical—full of Yuan Rong Crossbows. Looking further, every chest on the entire shelf was packed with identical Yuan Rong Crossbows, totaling over a thousand, enough to equip a divine archer battalion.
Opening a bronze chest on another shelf, Su Yingxiu finally saw something different. Unwrapping the sealed oiled paper bag revealed gleaming long sabers. She grabbed one, examined it closely for a moment, then slashed it against the chest. With a clang, the copper chest was easily split open, yet the blade remained pristine and gleaming!
“Su Tie Saber!” Even Lu Yun recognized it this time, unable to hold back an exclamation: “Qi Wu Huaiwen’s Su Tie Saber!”
“Correct, it’s the Su Tie Saber that made nations tremble in fear back in Eastern Qi.” Su Yingxiu nodded and sighed softly: “My… Master said that when we took Eastern Qi’s capital, the thing we most wanted was the forging secret for the Su Tie Saber, but the craftsmen who made them all vanished overnight. So it was the Huangfu family who got there first.”
The two continued inspecting, finding chest after chest packed with perfectly preserved strong bows and crossbows, sabers and spears, armor—all extraordinary items whose manufacturing methods had been lost!
