Over 2000 years ago, China’s first emperor, Qin Shi Huang, embarked on an ambitious burial plan unlike anything the world had seen. After uniting its territories into a single realm, he commenced construction of a vast underground tomb complex to accompany his remains.

Intended to protect the emperor in his passage to the afterlife, it would contain replicas of his imperial domains crafted from hardy baked earth—an army of terracotta soldiers awaiting their master. However, this mysterious necropolis vanished from living memory for over two millennia, its location and grand scale lost to the revolving ages.

All was changed in 1974. Laboring farmers digging a new well among the fields outside Xi’an stumbled upon fragmentary archaeological artifacts not seen since antiquity. Word spread of these uncanny terracotta figures emerging from the soil, propelling local academic Yuan Zhongyi to survey the area. His exploration uncovered nothing short of sensational—the...