The next mural continued the story. Wan San saw the first of the eight steeds, Juedi, and its rider, a fallen commander lying in a pool of blood. Beside the lifeless commander stood the loyal horse Juedi, kneeling on its forelegs and nuzzling its fallen master, its eyes brimming with tears and its mouth open in a sorrowful whinny.
Not far from Juedi, King Mu’s own chestnut warhorse lay dead on the battlefield. Yet King Mu himself had not stayed beside his steed.
Taking a few more steps forward, the mural revealed the figure of the young general from earlier—the Crown Prince Ji Mu of the Zhou dynasty. His tall, slender frame stood alone in the depths of the blood-red desert sunset. His helmet and mask, stained with blood, lay discarded on the ground. The golden armor he wore was marred with deep crimson scratches, as though it had been slashed repeatedly in battle.
Wan San gazed at this scene, his heart heavy with sorrow at the tragedy of war. Yet alongside this sadness, a powerful and inexplicable feeling stirred deep within him. The earlier murals had not shown King Mu’s face, but now, his pale and gaunt visage—tinged with streaks of blood—appeared in full view, striking with overwhelming intensity.
There was an almost otherworldly, enchanting allure to this face—beautiful in its eerie and unnerving way. Wan San felt as though he were staring into a pristine, crystal-clear lake suddenly disrupted by a drop of blood-red cinnabar. The ripples it created spread outward, deeply affecting the viewer’s emotions, leaving them unable to regain composure. The beauty was breathtakingly exquisite, but it also carried an insidious charm that evoked dark and destructive desires.
Dark desires… Wan San thought to himself. Why does seeing King Mu’s face make me want to destroy him?
The man in the mural, though gravely injured, exuded no air of defeat or despair. His expression was filled with raw, feral anger, like a leopard poised to leap and kill at any moment. Yet behind this rage, his eyes held a faint glimmer of amusement—not the kind of amusement a human should feel, but the mocking disdain of a predator that has just torn its prey apart, sneering at the vanquished.
This man was both mesmerizing and terrifying, commanding admiration and stirring resistance in equal measure.
How can one person embody such contradictions? Wan San wondered. Then his thoughts shifted. But isn’t there someone just like this right in front of me? Wang Cang Hai—so complex yet so childlike, so loved yet so feared.
Perhaps it was because this was the tomb of a heartbroken woman. Perhaps the owner of the tomb, consumed by three millennia of unresolved love and hatred for King Mu, had infused the murals with her turbulent emotions. The artist, moved by the intensity of these feelings, had painted with such fervor and passion that the resulting imagery radiated the raw power of unrelenting love and bitter despair, capturing both beauty and tragedy with an unforgettable intensity.
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