Liu Xin carefully sets down his pack and feels down the edge to where his lantern is tied. His fingers deftly untie the simple knot and he holds it aloft.

"Here, someone light this, there are matches tied to it."

After handing the lantern off, he quickly puts his boots on and slides a dagger in the right boot and the bird statue in his left. When he stands back up, he whispers to the priest:

"What tags?"

After unsuccessfully trying to slide the statue into his left boot, Liu Xin grimaces to himself and puts it back into his inner pocket.

Hon Yin staggers through the darkened passage, trying his hardest to ignore the shouting drifting down to them from above. Glancing around in the murk he calls out in little more than a whisper. "Don't light anything. Light a torch now and we might as well tell them where we are. Just keep pushing forwards. Where are you Sai? I need your eyes. Make sure we're not staggering into trap down here."

Sai leans against the wall and pulls on his boots. He navigates donning his robes with the same speed that he used to escape awkward meetings during his days as a squatter. Dressed in his dark over clothes, he is once again ready to go.

He sees the glow of the lantern behind him and starts to curse, but the he remembers that the night is less kind to their human eyes.

The strangled cry of pain from beyond the door calls him back to the fact that the mission could be over before it's begun. His hands cry for his blades, but reason forces him to recognize that he would more likely become a corpse than a savior.

Wishing that it was the statue in his hands than the coin, Sai continues to scout their escape.

When he hears his name, he calls back, as quiet as possible, "There are stone and steps ahead. Stick to the wall and hurry."

Liu Xin snarls, "I am not going through a crypt blind, if they are hunting down secret passageways and crypts, then they know we are here already."

Liu Xin strikes one of his matches and carefully lights the lamp himself, blinking shortly at the flare. He then quickly lowers the hood, so the lamp only casts a very dim ring on the floor.

"There is a time for stealth and a time for prudence, and luckily, sometimes you can do both. Now lets move."

Liu Xin grabs his lantern in hand and his pack in the other and heads to the stairway. shining the lamp down to get a better view.

As the mercenaries finish putting their footwear on, Liu Xin moves forward to shine the hooded lantern's light down the stairway. It reveals stone steps spiraling downward. Along the wall are recesses with unlit candle stubs.

Liu Xin creeps forward into the antechamber, and crosses towards where the other set of stairs leading upwards, bringing his lantern low to the ground in order to minimize the light, and listening as hard as he could. If there was a less hidden way into the tombs, pursuit could not be long in the making.



After this, he quickly crosses to the statues and peers down the staircase.

"The priest said to go through the tombs, it must be this way."

As Liu Xin approaches the other end of the hall, it becomes clear that the standing figures are corpses, apparently unsupported except by rigor. As he peers down the steps past the bodies, he sees that the stairs curve away to the right though not as sharply nor as steeply as the steps the mercenaries went down.

Sai stands before the silent guardians for long enough that he inadvertently gives his fellows time to catch up.

He says, "I am going to try to stay about thirty paces ahead and keep scouting our exit.

"Would one of you take the coin box?

" When I go down the stairs, count to 15 and then follow. If you hear me make a noise like a cat, stay back until I come get you."

Hon Yin makes his way over to Sai and relieves him of the burden of carrying the chest. "Don't go rushing too far ahead. Hmm. And don't disturb our friends down there." He nods towards the standing corpses to emphasize his point. "No need to go poking around with things that don't concern us."

Sai says, "Wouldn't dream of it."

He then draws his kukris and proceeds.

"I think we did plenty of that already, just by coming here." Sensing a fight nearby, Chen Wu draws his pistol and unzips one of the inner pockets of his trench coat, where he stores the bullets.

Liu Xin mutters under his breath, "...Thirteen, Fourteen, Fifteen. Ok guys, lets go. I don't know how much time the priests can buy us."

Liu Xin carefully edges past the desiccated remains and down the stairs, holding his lamp in front of him to best discern what lies ahead.

Sai Yun creeps ahead down the steps. He follows the curve of the stairs, the stone walls again with niches for candles. The cold becomes increasingly pronounced as they descend, the air becomes staler. Fortunately Sai Yun could easily see the corpse standing right at the bottom of the steps and steps around it. He enters another wide hall, again with tablets all along both sides of a center aisle that leads into another opening leading downward and away. Among the tablets are a few more standing corpses, joss paper hanging from their foreheads. One of the incense holders in front of the tablets has tipped over, sand spilling out around the offering bowl next to it.

Liu Xin leads the others down the steps after the half-elf paladin. His lamp illuminates the back of another corpse standing at the bottom of the steps for the three humans, before he stops to see how Sai Yun acts.

".. mew... "