All aboard the haunted cave sightseeing tour boat.

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Previously on The Lost Tomb/Dao Mu Bi Ji… pilot pt. 1 & 2 recap

Anna’s Recap

As with all fantasy or sci-fi stories, there’s gotta be a certain suspension of disbelief. But with this drama, you gotta take that suspension to a whole another level because even the characters themselves are treating all the supernatural happenings like it’s no big deal. Honestly, I was really frustrated watching this episode because I want the characters to seem at least mildly surprised by the monsters and ghosts. Instead, all we got was a shrug and indifference. What lies in that mysterious tomb is still waiting to be seen, but the journey getting there is already littered (quite literally) with a bunch of WTFs.

Episode 1

After getting the tomb-raiding crew assembled, Wu Xie’s uncle (heretofore referred to as “Uncle Three”) uses his connections to hook them up with a boat captain to help them sail across the lake and to the tomb. I don’t know who made him the boss, but when others suggest maybe taking the ground route since the boat captain seems unreliable and CREEPY AS HELL, he just shoots ’em down. Apparently, this boat captain is the only dude who’s permitted to enter the cave they must get through to get to the tomb because everyone else just up and dies when they try going themselves.

When Wu Xie notices that the boat captain’s dog stinks, Uncle Three makes the conclusion the dog and the captain must eat human corpses. He knows this because him and Pan Zi once came across another cave that was used as a body dumping ground. Because they were too afraid to enter the cave themselves, they attached a camcorder to a raft to see what was going on in there. The footage came back and showed a corpse with only half a face! Uncle Three tells them that there’s an old practice of consuming corpses in order to pass through such caves. Somehow, no one besides High Shao seems all that concerned by this and still wants to go through this obviously haunted cave.

The boat captain lives up to his creepy appearance when he spends the entire time it takes to reach the cave telling them scary stories about monsters that live in the water. By the time they actually enter the pitch-black cave, they’re immediately greeted by a high-pitched screeching noise. When Uncle Three turns to ask the captain and his buddy about it, they’re gone! Two grown men literally just disappeared without a trace, but no one seems to care. Eyes on the prize, right fellas?

With their boat’s motor also being broken, the guys are floating along until the boat is rattled by something in the water. Xiao Ge casually plucks whatever it was out of the water, and throws it into the boat. The thing he threw just looks like a really big and really gross bug, but Uncle Three gives it a quick sniff and realizes that it’s actually a corpse-eating beetle. Ugh, this cave tour just keeps getting more and more unpleasant.

As they keep being pushed by the water’s current, there’s suddenly a glow and ear-piercing bell sound coming from a corner of the cave. Hearing the noise, Wu Xie enters into some sort of trance and is frozen and/or mesmerized by it. Xiao Ge quickly realizes that something’s not quite right here, and pushes him into the water with everyone following suit. When Wu Xie snaps out of it, he resurfaces and meets face-to-face with the boat captain’s very dead and bloody face. No time to be scared though because monster bugs with teeth(!) are attacking them!

They manage to fight off the monster bugs and get back onto the boat in one piece, but the horror doesn’t end there. The dead boat captain’s torso floats by them, but everyone is literally just like, “Oh, welp.” Are these the bravest people in the world or what? They capture one of the monster bugs onto the boat (WHY?!), and see that the antique bell attached to it was the source of the ringing. Wtf. Listening to Uncle Three’s very shaky and unreliable logic, the group puts the monster bug at the bow of the boat in order for its corpse-eating powers to lead them outta the cave. Okay…

This haunted boat ride from hell continues as they pass by a nice ol’ pile of corpses and skeletons being devoured by the monster bugs. And when High Shao understandably throws up from that disgusting sight, he gets chastised for not manning up! Seriously. Next up are some caskets made out of ice that are just chilling there, but with no bodies in them. That’s nothing though compared to the ghost (straight outta The Ring, it seems) waiting to unleash a bajillion monster bugs on them.

Xiao Ge immediately cuts his finger with his sword and flicks the blood at the ghost, which somehow makes it collapse. Bye, ghost. Paddle, paddle, paddle, and they see the light at the end of the cave. Wu Xie turns around to take one last look at the ghost, and gets whacked in the head by someone! When he wakes up from the blow, he’s left floating in the boat by himself. A drop of blood drips onto his face, but it’s gone when he looks again. Suddenly, he sees the ghost standing atop the pile of bones again, but the image keeps flickering in front of him. Wu Xie thinks he’s imagining things but when he turns around, the ghost is standing on the boat!

Below the Surface:

Xiao Ge has abnormally long index and middle fingers that came as a result of practicing some ancient martial arts.