The Mummy Tomb of the Dragon Emperor Read Online Free

scroll. “It is done.”
    Eyes glittering, fists raised, the Emperor breathed in deep. “Your words were a mystery to me, but I feel their strength coursing through my veins. It is working. I can feel it.”
    “Eternal life is yours, my lord. You have received a great gift. And you have bestowed a great gift upon me. I am grateful.”
    He gestured to the wizard’s daughter. “Come. Come to the window.”
    Er Shi Huangdi walked her to the window and revealed to her a sight that filled Zi Yuan with horror. Down in the courtyard, Ming Guo was tethered between four teams of horses. The eyes of the lovers met in desperation.
    The Emperor gestured down to his general, and the horses who threatened to tear him apart. He spoke loud enough for all to hear: “Become my queen and I will forgive this traitor. I will let him live!”
    The Emperor’s voice had not stopped echoing across the courtyard when Ming Guo shouted, “Don’t believe him!”
    Defiant, she turned to the Emperor. “He is right. You will never keep your word.”
    “You are wise,” Er Shi Huangdi admitted, and with a smirk he gave the signal.
    The teams of horses took off in four directions and the Emperor watched with pleasure as his former general was torn asunder, ripped into pieces that trailed the steeds, limbs bouncing along grotesquely, leaving streaks of blood in the dust.
    Zi Yuan, who had turned away from the atrocity, not wanting its sight in her memory, now found herself in the foul embrace of the man who had just ordered her lover’s gruesome demise.
    “Now join Ming Guo in hell,” Er Shi Huangdi said.
    She felt the blade pierce her side and she staggered back a step and looked down with wide eyes at the dagger plunged to its dragon hilt, just under ribs and above the hipbone. He withdrew the blade and flung it to the floor, his upper lip curling in contempt.
    But as the wizard’s child fell to her knees, the Emperor felt within him a terrible, strange shifting. This was a pain the likes of which he’d never experienced. He had been wounded in battle and healed; he had suffered sickness and survived. But this was a molten churning that filled his very veins, coursed through his every organ, with fiery agony. Tears slipped from his eyes, and he wiped them away only to see that they were brown—like liquid clay!
    He stared in shock at the kneeling, bleeding woman. “What have you done to me, witch? What spell did you cast in that ancient tongue?”
    She smiled up at him, and now her upper lip peeled back in disgust, and triumph. “I have cursed you! You, and all those who spill blood in your name.”
    From his temples and his forehead, a brown slurry cascaded like thick, ugly perspiration, streaming down his face. Screaming, he tried to wipe it off, but still it came, gushing now. He tore at his robe only to find the muddy substance now oozing from his armpits. And from under his topknot, a fountain of gooey mud erupted like lava, flowing down his body, soaking his robes and his boots.
    Zi Yuan got to her feet and moved away, not dying, but her wound serious indeed. Li Zhou and the imperial guards, spears in hand, rushed in, only to back away in horror. Neither the guards nor the head minister even noticed as the wizard’s daughter slipped away in the shadows.
    And yet the process of Zi Yuan’s terra-cotta curse had only begun: now came the fire.
    Five hundred times hotter than the flames that had consumed so many cities during Er Shi Huangdi’s reign of conquest, a white heat ignited, its aura glowing as the flames consumed the Emperor and baked the man alive. For a time he screamed, his howls those of a man suffering as no man ever had before, his eyeballs cooking white as the clay fired, his shrill dismay echoing . . .
    The screams summoned the Emperor’s army, but as they formed up in rows to secure the palace, they began to weep their own muddy tears. Soon they too were emitting bloodcurdling wails, as the stunned soldiers looked at