It had taken years of paperwork, soil core samples, ground-penetrating radar, and arguing before the tomb of China’s first emperor came close to being uncovered.

Dmitri Alexei was determined to be the first to step inside it, to discern if the legends were really true. They said that the tomb was a huge underground chamber with a ceiling of bronze and gems. And possibly most astonishing, supposedly surrounding the emperor’s sepulcher was a huge scale map of all of his conquered China – with rivers and lakes of liquid mercury.

“Are you sure this is worth it?” said Lei Pao, their guide who was also the only one who had consented to desecrating the tomb. “These ideas are madness!”

“You see here, Pao?” asked Alexei, motioning with his hand of the screen of his laptop. “Concentrations of mercury trails – exactly in the spots where China’s seas and wetlands were. The legend fits.”

The two, along with the band of other archaeologists, looked up at the hill of earth slowly being chipped away at.