#the lost tomb: ultimate note

[ashyybees-art]

A pair of professional partners, certainly~ 😏🌸😎

[thatlittlemouse]

Wu Xie Birthday Week Day 1 redux: Friendship > Wu Xie & Xie Yuchen "I wasn't sure why, but even though Xiao Hua didn't deliberately talk to me or anything, I didn't feel as if the atmosphere was strange or awkward. Maybe it was because our backrounds were so similar, but I felt as if he was a reflection of myself." (DMBJ vol.7, ch. 35)

[lunarriviera]

How do i watch dmbj/the lost tomb? In order...they are so many....are they remakes...i know zhu yilong was in one...? I see different actors every time....Pls help if you watched it.

oh ho ho have i watched it. i have watched it alright. not only have i watched it but just yesterday i made my UNDERGRADS watch it (okay just one clip of xiao yuliang, bc i was teaching them about wirework) (bc i also made them watch house of flying daggers, yes it was my favorite day in film class: wuxia day!). NB however that surprisingly little of this is actually wirework—it's just xiao yuliang flipping himself around like a little pancake, bc that's what he DOES.

[yes this guy is huang junjie, not xiao yuliang; but they both play the same character, xiaoge. yes we all know it makes no sense. shhhhh just roll with it, don’t fight it, it’ll be easier if you just accept that your favorite characters will never ever be played by the same actors, except for all the times when they are. why? because of c-ent. go home, c-ent, you’re drunk. also because it’s funnier this way.]

FORTUNATELY you don’t need me to explain bc smarter people than i have already made beautiful guides to watching dmbj. the main thing to remember is that you literally can’t do it wrong bc the entire franchise is, as we say in the american south, a dog’s breakfast. everything is made up and the points don’t matter. you can start with any of the dramas and it still won’t make sense, but that’s okay because that’s what fandom wikis and tumblr and all of us are for.

it’s all because of this guy, 南派三叔 = nanpai sanshu = npss, whose real name is 徐磊, Xu Lei. he never finishes anything he starts unless they force him to, probably by threatening to take away his alcohol. so if you read any of the novels, please don’t expect them to have endings, because half the time they just sort of. stop. (i’m still upset about sha hai. i will always be upset about sha hai. i'm in THERAPY about sha hai.) (and i suppose you could in theory read the novels, in order, first, before watching the dramas? i know exactly one (1) person who did this but they have an exquisitely nerdy doctorate and i really don’t advise it for the faint of heart, you’re gonna suffer through a lot of fart jokes and really super gross insects. sadly i know this because i too have read the novels, because i also have a doctorate and apparently way too much fucking time on my hands. which is why it’s 1 am and i’m answering another ask instead of grading the last half dozen papers on antigone and the popol vuh, okay where were we.) RIGHT, so—definitely read @foxofninetales’s wonderful guide to “possible entry points to dmbj” (or @laireshi’s guide to the novels, if those still interest you.) @laireshi also has an excellent guide to starting with ultimate note, which i think is a fine drama to start with! the cast is great. (just be prepared for a cliffhanger) (which can be resolved, anomalously, by reading the novel). @thelaithlyworm also has a good guide here, and @dramas-vs-novels has a guide to all the major characters. and you will love all of the characters, very quickly, with a degree of intensity that can and probably should alarm you. you will especially love the iron triangle. these idiots. them. yes.

so you can try to be logical about it!…OR you can do what i did, which was, knowing absolutely fucking nothing, just faceplant into reboot (because ofc i was obsessed with zhu yilong, who was my gateway drug, just like 99% of western dmbj rookies who fell in love with guardian), and then stare in horror as dmbj devoured my brain over the next two years and i couldn’t think about anything or anyone but xiaoge. you know. like that. isn’t fandom great.

just think, someday soon you’ll even be able to appreciate this absolutely idiotic in-joke. there are about a squillion more where this one came from, too.

but the main thing is, nonny: whatever you do, have fun! lost tomb is completely unhinged and that’s the best thing about it. it is also, as i repeatedly warn my students, the star wars of china, and you will never ever reach the end of its vast expanses. not least because npss keeps starting and not finishing things.

(but none of them are really…remakes…exactly? they're all mostly maddeningly different and cover different parts of the story, with a few…bizarre, difficult-to-describe…overlaps, and a few parts which don't fit anywhere, e.g. misty creed/conjuring curse.…you'll see.)

[lyselkatz]

Chibi HeiHua 🦝🌸

commission for @ilgaksu, thank you!

🖌Commission

[aamysworld]

@gaywatch With all the chinese dramas you have watched and the ones to come, you will eventually know all the actors from all the Lost Tomb/Ultimate Note adaptations.

Here the ones that you know as of right now from

You know him from "a league of nobleman" and play Zhang Qiling aka Xiaoge in time raiders.

You know him from Guardian, here play Wu Xie in "reunion sound of Providence"

You know him from "Mysterious lotus casebook" play Zhang Qiling aka Xiaoge in "lost tomb 2"

You know him from "mysterious lotus casebook" play Wu Xie in "Ultimate note"

And if you end up watching "Spirealm" in the future you will know one more actor who plays Zhang Qiling aka Xiaoge in "Reunion sound of Providence "

Ps: Wu Xie and Zhang Qiling are one of the many reasons why this series of books/dramas is so loved. Their ship is just incredible in every adaptation.

Have a good day <3

[bitterflames]

who has that kind of money, xiao hua

[taomubiji]

Random DMBJ Trivia Part 2

Wu Xie is 181cm or 5'11''. Hei Yanjing is 185cm or 6'1''.

In the novel, Hei Yanjing has a degree in music and anatomy from Germany. In The Lost Tomb, Wu Xie studied in Germany and in Tomb of the Sea, Huo Daofu also studied in Germany.

He Longlong, who played Huo Daofu, was an actor in an agency NPSS owns. He left the agency before Reunion aired and as a result, wasn't included in any promotional pictures for the show.

Li Cu was born sometime around 1996 in the novels. Based on this, he will be 28 years old in 2024.

Wu Xie has described Zhang Haiyan/Zhang Hailou as an "evil madman" and reminded him of Hei Yanjing.

Hei Yanjing's birthday (January 23) and Xie Yuchen's birthday (October 3) likely originated from official merchandise that was released.

One of the head writers for Ultimate Note, Tian Liangliang, also worked as a screenwriter on The Lost Tomb 2.

Qi Yu's name has been mentioned in Volume 2 and Restart. However, in the animation Buried Tree Devil and the television adaptations The Lost Tomb 2 and Reunion, his name was taken out.

The color of Zhang Qiling's tattoo was initially described as being 青色 (Qīngsè) which can mean blue, green, blue-green, or even black. This is why the color is described as green in Cavern of the Blood Zombies and may be why the tattoo is so blue in The Lost Tomb. In later novels, the tattoo is described as black.

More than six thousand modifications were made to the online version of Sand Sea 2 to meet publishing requirements.

The artist company that worked on the early editions of Wu Xie's Privates Notes, also worked on the Daomu comic.

Part of the Warehouse 11 arc in Reunion: Sound of the Providence was not included in the final product which means the Warehouse 11 arc was intended to be even longer.

In the Restart comic, Boss Jiao feeds an unloyal employee to his pet alligator named Charlie.

The first chapter of DMBJ was posted to Qidian in July 2006. The novels will be 20 years old in 2026.

Zhang Qiling's iconic blue hoody is said to have originated from the first edition of the Daomu comic. However, other fans believe it originated from early official artwork by the same artist company which was subsequently replicated in fan art.

[tunicora]

"My lifetime in exchange for 10 years of your innocence"

[thelaithlyworm]

Daomu Biji Watcher’s Guide, May 2024

A few new entries have been popping up lately, and I’m always hopeful new fans will stumble into the pits and never leave so I thought I’d paste up a rough map.

(Obviously the best watching order, like the best reading order of Discworld or the Aubrey-Maturin books, is ‘whatever first comes to your hand’ but for the people who don’t like that…)

tl;dr:

Daomu Biji is a series about tomb raiding. Think Indiana Jones or Lara Croft but much, much longer. The protagonist Wu Xie is deeply in love with BFF1 Zhang Qiling, a hundred-year-old cryptid, and BFF2 Wang Pangzi, who was stolen in a raid from another book series. It’s comic, tragic, horrific, zany, prone to musings on life, love, desire, attachment, and has many, many piss jokes. (‘Journey to the West but modern’ is maybe the other comparison I’d make.)

Notes:

– This guide is not talking about “quality”. All of the adaptations have their own strengths and weaknesses and tone can vary a great deal, which is to say, if one of them doesn’t suit you it’s likely something else will.

– Wacky endings, and plot threads that disappear unfinished and get picked up a long time later, are as inherent to the franchise as the piss jokes.

– It’s common for the dramas to introduce characters and subplots a lot earlier than the books do. Sometimes we’ll see a character introduced ‘for the first time’ on multiple occasions and strangely familiar scenes. I’ll try to point out the biggest continuity clashes as I go.

The Soft Entry:

There are a few movies that are entertaining as standalones but will introduce various characters and background. I would recommend:

Escape from the Monstrous Snake + Mystery/Grave of the Abyss – two monster movies featuring Hei Xiazi, a supporting character. He’s a pragmatical mercenary who’s going blind in kind of a weird way, and goofy as hell when he isn’t tiptoeing over a vast abyss of existential dread. So many fun action scenes.

Time Raiders (2015) – so there are some textual clues that late in his career Wu Xie wrote this story as a memory-jogger for an amnesiac friend. The plot is a freewheeling wild ride which doesn’t directly match any book plot but introduces some major characters and how they relate to each other. It’s colourful and fast-moving. Enjoy, enjoy.

Conjuring Curse and Misty Creed are… theoretically set late in the series even if the actors look about twelve. Both work as stand-alone adventures, though Misty Creed is maybe a little deep in the lore. Again, colourful and fast-moving.

The Chronological Order

You could honestly start with most of these – they tend to come with a ‘what has gone before’ at the start or a newbie character that things get explained to. The only one I wouldn’t start with is Heavenly Palace in the Clouds, which is lovely but also the second half of a set and things won’t make sense if you haven’t seen Lost Tomb 2 first.

Lost Tomb 1 – a highly digestible 10-12 episode version of the Seven Star Lu Palace arc, ie. Baby’s First Adventure. Introduces A-Ning, Xie Yuchen, and Huo Xiuxiu early and a couple of og characters for Wu Xie to talk to instead of monologuing to himself. The restaurant scene at the end was raided from a later arc and you’ll see it again in Ultimate Note. A book character, Da Kui, was cut which is a small problem because how he died is a minor plot point discussed in Lost Tomb 2. 

Lost Tomb 2 – covers Raging Sea, Hidden Sands (underwater tomb) and Qinling God-Tree (weird bronze tree in the mountains) plus a whole lotta side stories and original content exploring the world and foreshadowing later plots. Mooostly in continuity with Lost Tomb 1 (see Da Kui above) and made as a set with Heavenly Palace in the Clouds – they share resources and a lot of actors, and some threads begun here are finished in Heavenly Palace.

Heavenly Palace in the Clouds – covers the Mt Changbai arc, a journey up a mountain to find a very old, very grand tomb. This was made so close to Lost Tomb 2 that LT2 borrows shots from Heavenly Palace and not the other way around, which is fascinating because it pointedly contradicts the last five episodes of LT2. It also brings forward some plotlines originally from the Tamutuo and Zhang Family Old Pavilion arcs (San-shu’s past in the underwater tomb, and the Huo Family videotapes) dragging some characters on-screen and forcing them to talk about their feelings, which they would clearly rather die than do. Given those plot-tweaks and the early, deliberate continuity clash, I’m tempted to call this a Canon Parallel Universe. Got some interestingly chewy character dynamics and luverly, luverly set design.

Mystic Nine – This is a prequel about Zhang Qishan – Fo-ye – and his peers, but later dramas expect us to know who Fo-ye was so I’m sticking it here. Kinda… picaresque? Lots of action scenes and Republican-era flavour and various factions jostling for power – kinda feels like an old-school wuxia story, only set in the 1930s with all that glorious Republican-era styling. Has some unfortunate cut scenes – the details of how Fo-ye recovered at his family’s house don’t make a lot of sense in the aired version, and there are a couple of missing fights in the penultimate episode. Shrug. Still a lot of fun. Comes with four side movies about supporting characters.

Ultimate Note – Covers the Tamutuo arc (a trip through the jungle) and two-thirds of the Zhang Family Old Pavilion arc (investigating Zhang Qiling’s past is like kicking a hornet’s nest). Very, very flirty and has some zippy-zip action choreography. Politely ignores Lost Tomb 1–Heavenly Palace continuity (Xie Yuchen is, once more, introduced for the first time, now with a romantically coded friendship arc) and brings in a lot of cameos from Mystic Nine and Sand Sea, which it was filmed after. Kinda tiptoes around parts of the book plot, which I suspect would be hard for anyone to film, re: Fo-ye’s actions in the 1960s. Fair warning, this ends on a cliffhanger. This is also where the Xinyue Restaurant scene appears again – two cakes!

Tibetan Sea Flower – If Tibetan Sea Flower ever airs, it will go here.

Sand Sea – Based on the Sand Sea novel. After Tibetan Sea Flower, Wu Xie goes into a bit of a decline and makes that the world’s problem. We the audience, plus Li Cu and Liang Wan, EDIT: a lovely doctor, are pretty much dropped in media res into a number of ancient conspiracies and complicated plots coming to a head in the manner of a boil. It’s weird; it’s messy; it’s mad fun. Like Mystic Nine, has a lot of factions jostling for power and colourful jianghu characters. We will, once more, see the Xinyue Restaurant scene. Also has some side movies.

Time Raiders – The textual hints that suggest Wu Xie wrote this, suggest he wrote it around Sand Sea-era, when his life was a bit complicated. I’m putting it after Sand Sea because I believe it caps a conversation that, ah, doesn’t quite make it into the drama. But notionally this is where it should go. Ah…. at one point, someone tells a story about an ancient ruler, King Mu of Zhou, who sought immortality from the Queen of the West in Tamutuo. The longer book conversation suggests that a) King Mu of Zhou engineered a “trap” for someone like Wu Xie to fall into in the future, and b) that Iron Mask Scholar, a villain from Lost Tomb 1, was an alias that King Mu of Zhou used in the Warring States Era. Which makes some of Iron Mask Scholar’s appearances in Time Raiders… interesting.

Reunion: Sound of Providence – sometimes known as Reboot. Having peaked in badassery in Sand Sea, Wu Xie has to consider what his life is going to be now, and also, he would like to track down a missing family member. So this was tweaked to make it more accessible to new viewers (so some parts of the back-story are not mentioned or conflated for simplicity) and that mostly works but I did find watching this first and then picking up the earlier dramas a bit of a mindscrew. Zhu Yilong is, however, a powerful draw and the rest of the cast sparkles. Probably best to think of Season 1 as two short seasons jammed together, which is to say, once the Warehouse 11 arc starts there are a number of characters who won’t reappear until Season 2. It’s a fun arc even so. Season 2 ends with a badass action scene and then a big party, which I think is a great way to end a story.

Escape from the Monstrous Snake, Mystery/Grave of the Abyss, Conjuring Curse, Misty Creed – these are all theoretically set around or after Reboot-era, though they can certainly be watched as stand-alones.

[bakumiichi]

heihua 🖤🌺

[ashyybees-art]

I love how the first 16 episodes of Ultimate Note are basically Wu Xie's group battling the desert and deadly snake-filled rainforest while Xiao Hua and Hei Xiazi are having the world's most wild and comedic first date (with their emotional support 3rd wheel and bullying victim, Mop)

[thatlittlemouse]

"Can you imagine? One day you suddenly wake up in a cave and look around without knowing anything, but you already have a responsibility that you must shoulder. You have no right to see the scenery along the way, and you can’t enjoy your friends and lovers. The moment you regain consciousness, all the beautiful things in your life have no meaning to you.

Zhang Qiling is carrying his own destiny in silence." (DMBJ Volume 8, Postcript)

[yueli1004]

Set of groans, frustration and arms flailing everywhere!

‿︵‿︵‿︵‿ヽ(°□° )ノ︵‿︵‿︵‿︵

[lilianhuas]

Deep Lurk // The Lost Tomb 2 Parallels

[pangzi]

wang pangzi

rb if u agree

[taomubiji]

The Grave Robbers' Chronicles Fandom Wiki (TV series/live-action wiki) Will Merge into the Daomu Biji Wiki

Based on the recent poll and also the poll from 2021 which overall favors merging, the two dmbj wikis will be merged into one wiki.

The Grave Robbers' Chronicles wiki will be the one moving, and the Daomu Biji wiki will be the surviving wiki. Once the merge is complete, the Grave Robbers' Chronicles wiki will be shut down.

Most of the character & location pages will be separated into TV Series & Novel to highlight the different lore being discussed (see Zhang Rishan's pages below as an example)

However, pages for items/artifacts & creatures will remain on the same page. This is due to many of these pages having lore from the comics & games, so they can't easily be separated out. Information about them in the TV Series and movies will be under the sub-section "Adaptations" (see examples below)

Unfortunately, I don't know how long the merge will take to be completed. But I can't see it taking less than 6 months, so it will be a long while until the Grave Robbers' Chronicles wiki is shut down.

In the meantime, if there is a page on the Grave Robbers' Chronicles wiki that you'd like to work on, please let me know and I can merge it over.