The Underground Palace of Yaochi

Translator Huang Qianshan takes on the task of translating a mysterious foreign manuscript. The manuscript's thesis is that Yu Gong did not move the mountains for convenience of travel but because treasure was hidden in the mountains; the foot of Wangwu Mountain is therefore identified as the site of an ancient Guo state ruin. To verify the manuscript's claims, he enters Wangwu Mountain together with its owner, Lao Yue. Before entering the mountain, the group receives an anonymous threatening letter, and their expedition equipment mysteriously disappears. What awaits them in the mountains are eerie broadcasts, an abandoned weather station, the color-changing waters of Yaochi, a tunnel with no visible end, glowing miasma, and a dark subterranean scene like a starry sky. Thirty years earlier, a strange village had mysteriously appeared and vanished by Yaochi, making everything even more puzzling. Whether the ancient Guo state's queen really existed, why she claimed to be the reincarnation of the Queen Mother of the West, and what tomb-robbing truth lies behind the legend of moving the mountains—all are peeled back layer by layer during the expedition, and the final outcome is linked to a scheme of human manipulation. Author Jin Wanzang weaves together the landscape and geography, folk legends, and archaeological deduction of the Wangwu Mountain area, reconstructing the legendary ancient Guo state ruins between truth and fiction. It is an adventure novel that readers familiar with the allusions of "Yu Gong Moves the Mountains" and "the Queen Mother of the West" will find quite ingenious.