The fat man explained, "Actually… at that time… at that time I only concealed one thing. No, no, it's not that I wanted to conceal it, it's just that I didn't have time to talk about it, and I took into account that our recent expenses are quite large, and it's not a big deal to have only expenses and no income… Well, I'll pick out the useful ones. I climbed over the beams to burn the clothes hanging in the corner. At first I was scared by the human skin hood that looked like a head, but when I thought of heroes like Dong Cunrui and Huang Jiguang, I no longer had myself in my head. I tore off the hood and wanted to use it as a fire source. I lit it first and then threw it over to burn the clothes below. Unexpectedly, a stone fell out of the dead skin. I picked it up and saw that it was black and slippery, like a It’s jade. I learned it from the grandson of Big Gold Teeth. I sniffed it out of habit and licked it with my tongue. It tasted so bitter that it might not be jade. I thought it was just a stinky stone from the toilet. But there are many people who buy fakes in Panjiayuan. I thought this black stone could be passed off as black jade and sold for a good price, so I stuffed it into my treasure bag. Later, I forgot about it. When I got off the plank road, I suddenly felt an itch on my tongue. When I entered the tomb passage, I couldn’t speak. I had to cover my mouth, otherwise it would laugh by itself, which scared me a lot. I also wanted to eat human flesh very much, and I couldn’t control myself…”
Shirley Yang heard this and interrupted, "I think our speculation is completely correct. He was indeed hit by some evil spell from southern Yunnan, such as tongue magic or tongue poison. The clothes hanging on the ceiling of the hall are definitely the owners of the many corpses in the six-legged fire cauldron. They are all leaders among the Yi people, and it is really sad that they ended up like this. The ground and underground of the tomb of King Xian are full of weirdness and strangeness. Before his death, King Xian must have been preparing a huge ceremony, but he died before it was completed."
I said to Shirley Yang and the fat man, "Although these witchcrafts are strange, there are traces of them. I see too many unusual things in the king's tomb. The bronze beasts and bronze men in the heavenly palace are puzzling. I always feel like I have seen them somewhere, but I can't remember what I have seen. Also, take a look at the bronze chariots and horses in the underground palace, and the hundreds of mummies that have been tortured by the mound at the end. Even if they were all slaves buried alive, they should not have been killed so cruelly. This doesn't look like a king's tomb at all. It's clearly a place of execution."
After resting for a while, we couldn't help but stand up together to check the mummies and the bronze chariot and horses on the stone platform. Since the mummies were wrapped in wax, the fat man licked them with his tongue for a long time but couldn't lick through the hard wax. This was okay, at least thinking about it made us feel a little better, otherwise no one would want to eat with him.
At this time, I looked carefully and found many mummies with horrible death. There were old and young, strong and young, and they seemed to be slaves. I don't know why they were subjected to such severe punishment, but one thing is certain, in ancient times, living people were buried alive. It would never be like this. Pour hot wax on the head, cut off the ears and gouged out the eyes. If they were not slaves, they must have been prisoners who committed heinous crimes.
Looking at those bronze men and horses again, there was indeed something missing. First of all, the men did not hold weapons and the horses did not hold whips. Secondly, the number was not right. Ancient people attached great importance to the numbers two, three, six, seven, and nine, especially six. According to the rules, when kings and nobles traveled, there were at least thirty-six riders leading the way, and the next level was sixteen riders. However, the number of this team of bronze men and horses was less than thirty.
The most important thing is that except for the bronze horses, these bronze men are in very bad decay, and some parts have even softened and peeled off. I have read some information that bronze burial objects have been unearthed in many Han tombs. Although they have been corroded by air and water and have copper spots, they are not as severely corroded as these bronze men and horses.
Although the tomb passage was invaded by pond water, the absolute humidity here is not very high. This phenomenon is very difficult to understand and I was at a loss for a moment.
Shirley Yang's mind worked quickly. After a little thought, she said to me, "If we change our perspective, it's not difficult to understand. We have always thought that this is the underground palace where the coffin of King Xian is placed, but we may have been wrong from the beginning. This is not an underground palace at all, but a processing plant for casting bronze figures and carving stone animals for the king's tomb. These bronze figures are so severely decayed. I think this may be related to the imbalance of the copper-tin alloy. The scale of this king's tomb is quite large. It must be difficult to build it with the power of Dian alone. A large number of slaves captured from neighboring countries must have been used in the project, and some of them must have been from Some technical jobs were trained in the workshop, but this group of craftsmen selected from the captives got the proportions of the ingredients wrong, which resulted in a lot of waste of time and raw materials. Since ancient times, there has been a saying that copper and tin have six proportions, and gold has six proportions. Six parts of gold and one part of tin is called the proportion of bells and tripods, five parts of gold and one part of tin is called the proportion of axes and spears, and so on… Although they are all bronze artifacts, the proportions are different, and the performance of the manufactured items is completely different. If the standard of the six proportions is lost, the cast items will be waste, so these slaves who made mistakes were brutally executed as a warning to others, and then the workshop was closed.
I slapped my mountaineering helmet and said, "Yeah, I was just about to think of it when you said it. No wonder this place doesn't look like the Xuan Palace of the ancient tomb. But if this is not the place, then where is the tomb passage of the king's tomb?"
Shirley Yang said to me: "There is no one in the world who knows the secret art of dividing gold and locating tombs better than you… Of course, this is what you boast about, so I have to ask you this. We don't have much time, we must find the entrance to the tomb as soon as possible."
The so-called "dividing gold to determine the location of the coffin" is a secret technique that only a few tomb raiders have mastered. It can determine the precise location of the coffin in the ancient tomb by distinguishing the Feng Shui elements such as "situation, qi, dragon, sand, cave and water" with a compass needle. The error is no more than the diameter of a gold needle, hence the name "dividing gold to determine the location of the coffin".
But the current situation is really embarrassing for me. If I could use the method of dividing gold to locate the tomb chamber of the king, I would have done it long ago. The problem is that the compass stops working as soon as it enters the "Insect Valley", and this kind of "water dragon dizziness" only exists in legends. My "Sixteen-Character Yin-Yang Feng Shui Secret Technique" only mentions it briefly, and the book only analyzes the situation and layout from one side from the perspective of later generations, without discussing it in detail.
After years of study, I have determined that this fragment of the scroll passed down in my family is from the late Qing Dynasty, and its theory is mainly based on the Feng Shui star position theory of the Tang Dynasty. However, the "Water Dragon Halo" deep in the Insect Valley belongs to the fairy cave mentioned in ancient Feng Shui. Most Feng Shui masters in later generations believe that such fairy caves do not exist in the world, so the fragment of "The Sixteen-Character Yin-Yang Feng Shui Secret Technique" that I have always relied on is no longer of much use here.
If you want to rob a tomb, you must first find it. However, some imperial tombs are just there and have never been robbed. There are mainly two reasons for this. First, since ancient times, the robbing of imperial tombs and other large ancient tombs was mostly done by groups such as warlords and peasant armies. Think about those imperial tombs, which were built by digging through mountains and ridges, deep underground, and hundreds of thousands of people spent decades to build. They are so solid and deep that they cannot be excavated without a large army, because it is not as simple as digging the soil. The amount of work is almost the same as digging a tunnel out of the mountains. And this is under the premise that the tomb passage can be dug out. If the tomb passage cannot be found, even if half of the mountain is dug away, it is not certain where the tomb door is. People who have seen real mountains should know how big the difference is between mountains and earth slopes.
Secondly, no matter how solid the imperial tomb is, it cannot resist tomb robbers. No matter how solid or hidden it is, it has no legs and cannot run away. It can only hide in one place forever. Even if there is no large team to excavate it, if this group of people cannot dig it up, there will be the next group of people who will dig for ten or twenty years, and sooner or later it will be stolen. However, those who can divide gold and determine the location of the tomb know that the earth veins are crisscrossed, and the important branches of the ancestral veins affect the pattern and balance of nature. Therefore, they will never easily touch the imperial tombs built on important dragon veins, so as not to destroy the feng shui and cause major disasters in the world.
In this "Tomb of King Xian", we could not directly confirm the location of the coffin, so we had to use the most crude method, that is, the means used by warlords or peasant armies, to find the "tomb passage". The thousand-jin stone doors one after another in the tomb passage of the imperial mausoleum were used to deal with this crude method, because as long as the tomb passage was found, we could follow the clues to find the tomb door and tomb chamber. But when I started, the gap in the mountain that was caused by the plane crash was not the tomb passage. So where is this tomb passage hidden?
Although we knew it must be in the deepest part of the valley, no more than a mile below the Lingyun Palace, it was a big green funnel with cliffs on all sides, and it would take the three of us ten years to find it.
I suddenly had an idea and thought of a place. I immediately said to Shirley Yang, "The water eye, that big black vortex, I think that's most likely where the remains of King Xian are placed. It's the place that's most likely to be overlooked. The underground palace must be in the mountain, but the entrance is a water eye that looks like a ghost cave."
Shirley Yang asked curiously, "Are you saying there is a coffin under the water? You'd better tell me clearly how sure you are of this judgment? The undercurrents and undercurrents there are very dangerous. Is it necessary for us to take this risk?"
I said to Shirley Yang, "Even if King Xian is not in the water eye, that should be the entrance to the tomb passage. I am at least 70% sure. It is worth a gamble this time. Although the three of us are all good at swimming, I have experienced the power of the water eye. Even if I am willing to take a 100% risk, it is not easy to go down."
Shirley Yang looked at the bronze men around and said, "I have a way to increase the safety factor. We still have three of the thickest reinforced ropes, each of which can bear the weight of the three of us. To ensure safety, we can fix them in three places. Even if one is broken, there are still two. We can drag a heavy bronze horse to the bottom of the pond, and we won't be easily swept away by the undercurrent. In this way, it is not impossible to go down to the water eye and then withdraw after finishing the work."
I said to Fatty and Shirley Yang, "Then let's follow the plan and let Fatty redeem himself by being the first to plug the water hole.
The coffin of King Xian is most likely in the "water eye" at the bottom of the pond. I remember seeing a huge stone beam at the bottom of the pond. At that time, I thought it was the stone that fell when the king's tomb was built. Now I think it might be the stone top of the tomb passage.
We worked separately and fixed the three thickest ropes to the wreckage of the heavy bomber underwater. There was no more suitable fixing bolt than the remains of this "flying fortress", as it not only had a very high deadweight, but also had a huge body that far exceeded the diameter and suction of the "water eye".
Then we started to move the bronze horse. The bronze horse was extremely heavy, but fortunately the terrain here was a slope. The three of us used all our strength and finally pushed the bronze horse into the water. Then we fixed the inflatable airbag on the diving bag to the bronze horse's abdomen. We did this so that when we come back from the "water eye", we can use the buoyancy of the airbag to offset the huge suction in the vortex.
When I came out of the breach, there were still dark clouds outside, and the stars and moon were dim. The mysterious and splendid atmosphere during the day with ancient trees growing on the pond wall, vines entwined, huge waterfalls with flying pearls and pounding jade, silver foam surging and jade hanging on the green peaks was no longer visible. The huge sound of the waterfalls was like a roaring monster hiding in the darkness, which was thrilling to hear.
The three of us floated in the water. I said to Fatty and Shinley Yang, "Our success or failure depends on this one move. We must be careful not to let the bronze horse sink to the bottom of the water, otherwise we will never be able to get out again."
Shinley Yang said: "The nature of water is unpredictable, and things under the water are the most unpredictable. If it is difficult to enter the tomb passage from the whirlpool, you must not force it. You can retreat first and then make plans from the usual way.
I said to Shinley Yang, "As long as the mountains remain, there will be no shortage of firewood. However, once the time is up, I am afraid there will be no chance to enter the king's tomb again. We must try our best today. If we still cannot succeed, it is God's will." After saying that, I knocked on my mountaineering helmet with my hand to light up the tactical spotlight. I put down my diving goggles, put on my oxygen mask, made a diving gesture, and sank to the bottom of the pool first.
Shinley Yang and Fatty also dived into the water. The three of them found the bronze horse and the rope tied to it. They tied the safety lock on the neck to it and locked it together. With the triple insurance, I raised the "Poseidon's Dazzle" underwater searchlight and swept the surroundings with a strong beam. I found that at the edge of the pool, I couldn't see the black vortex in the center at all. It was pitch black up and down.
But I am already very familiar with the terrain of the bottom of the tan. I first looked at the body of the bomber. The huge dark green fuselage was now a large road sign. The direction the tail was facing was the ten mysterious "water eyes". There was also a lapis lazuli connecting the tail and the "water eyes". Following these markings on the bottom of the tan, even if the visibility was poor, I could find the correct direction.
We couldn't talk underwater, so we had to communicate in sign language. The sign language we used was called "seal", not the German sign language used worldwide. This was mainly because the US Navy's sign language was simpler and easier to understand, and it was quick to learn. I pointed to the wreckage of the heavy bomber to Shinley, Yang, and Fatty, and made a gesture to cut in in that direction.
The fat man nodded at me with a string of white bubbles of oxygen coming out of his mouth. Shinley Yang also understood and immediately untied the air bag buoy on the bronze horse and raised it to the surface of the water. In this way, if we ran out of oxygen or there was a problem with the gas cylinder, we could still use the air pipe connected to the buoy to temporarily breathe.
About a minute later, the air nozzle of the buoy had inflated the air bag with about one-third of air, reducing some of the weight of the bronze horse. We pushed the bronze horse on the bottom of the water, continuously moving towards the vortex at the bottom of the pool.
As we passed by, mud algae and mayflies on the bottom of the pool floated up and danced in the water in a disorderly manner. The visibility in the already dark water bottom was even lower. I felt that the mud algae under my feet was not very thick, and the bottom was very solid, as if it was all flat rocks. It seems that the tomb of "King Xian" is indeed hidden at the bottom of the pool. I feel more confident now.
At this time, Shinley Yang, who was slightly forward, stopped, clenched his fists, and pressed his elbows downward. This was the "stop" signal. Fatty and I stopped in a hurry and stopped pushing the bronze horse.
Shinley Yang turned around and ignored her gestures. I had already noticed that there was an undercurrent under the water. It seemed that we had reached the edge of the "water eye". According to the pre-arranged plan, I gestured to the fat man, stretched out two fingers, pointed at my eyes, and then pointed at the fat man, "You are in front, we will cover you."
The fat man circled his thumb and index finger and stretched out the other three fingers: "Got it." Then he moved to the front of the bronze horse. Since he was the strongest among us, he had to be in the front to ensure that the bronze horse would not be sucked into the depths of the vortex.
With the heavy bronze horse, the three of us formed a group and would not be carried away by the force of the water flow caused by the vortex, but we still felt the suction of the undercurrent getting stronger and stronger. When the dark vortex was in front of us, we could no longer control our bodies. The bronze horse was not a whole piece, but was made of multiple parts cast and spliced together. I wonder if it will be crushed by the water flow if it continues like this.
I quickly raised one arm, spread my five fingers, made a circle, clenched my fist, and made a "come together quickly" gesture to Shinley Yang and the fat man.
The combined weight of three people, a heavy backpack, and the bronze horse was nearly a thousand pounds. Only then did I stabilize my center of gravity a little. I slowly opened the safety lock and let out the long rope gradually, centimeter by centimeter.
The fat man pulled out two cold fireworks and hit them on his mountaineering helmet. Immediately, non-combustible smoke and cold sparks came out in the water. He let the two cold fireworks burn in his hands for five seconds, and then he withdrew his hands. The two balls of light were immediately sucked into the depths of the vortex.
I was behind the bronze horse, Yuan Fa saw the light of cold fireworks, what it looked like in the vortex Yin Yang Ghost Art , I saw the fat man turned his head, stretched out his right hand flat, covered his brow bone, pointed to the vortex below, and finally raised his thumb: "I see it, it's below."
I held my body steady, pointed at Shinley Yang and the fat man, and patted my mountaineering helmet: "Be careful." Then the three of us held the bronze horse tightly and slowly sank down with the suction of the whirlpool. Thanks to the weight of the bronze horse, otherwise, once we went down, we would inevitably be dizzy by the current.
As soon as the pool sank, Shinley Yang immediately pulled the inflatable rope to fill the air bag to prevent the downward suction from being too strong and being directly sucked into the depths by the undercurrent. If the bottom of the pool was like the bottom of a big pot, then the "water eye" in the middle was a big hole in the bottom of the pot. Even the advanced underwater lighting equipment "Poseidon's Dazzle" seemed to have become a small match in the water eye, and the visibility dropped sharply. At this time, it was like being in a horrible ghost cave, being dragged into the endless darkness by evil spirits.
Fortunately, while holding the bronze horse, he felt a steady weight, and his heartbeat gradually calmed down. The entrance to the tomb that the fat man saw first was not at the beginning of the whirlpool, but almost close to the bottom of the pool. However, there was a stone blocking it, and it could not be seen at all unless one entered the "water eye".
Seeing that we had discovered the tomb passage, I hurriedly worked together with Fatty and Shinley Yang to get our group out of the center of the vortex and struggled to swim into the tomb passage.
There is no stone door in the tomb passage, and it is filled with dark and cold water. However, once you enter the tomb passage, you can no longer feel the suction force of the undercurrent. The large stones at the entrance of this bluestone tomb passage are arranged in an anti-slope and are not affected by the "water eye" force field one meter away from it. Even so, we still did not dare to delay and swam more than twenty meters into the depths of the tomb passage before stopping.
I was struggling with all my might in the "water eye" just now and had no time to be afraid. Now thinking back, if I had made a slight mistake in one link, I would have become a resentful soul at the bottom of the pool. However, I finally found the tomb passage. It was worth taking such a big risk.
We untied the ropes on our bodies and continued to swim deeper into the flooded tomb. We took a quick look at the surrounding environment and saw that the tomb passage was quite wide and flat. The two walls and the ground were all made of large stone bricks . Only the top of the head was made of large bluestone. There were no murals or engraved inscriptions, and there were not even statues to guard the tomb. The strangest thing was that there was no stone door. It seemed that the explosives we prepared would be useless.
But I figured it out immediately. This place can definitely lead to the "Xuan Palace" of the king's tomb. Because King Xian was obsessed with cultivating immortality, he believed that he could ascend to heaven after his death. He was confident that no outsiders would enter the tomb, so there was no stone door blocking the tomb passage. For tomb robbers, stone doors are indeed the dumbest things. The difference between having a stone door and not having one is just a matter of wasting more effort and time.
The tomb passage was thin and long. We swam in for a long time and were always underwater. I gestured to Fatty and Shinley Yang to keep moving forward. Judging from the scale of the terrain here, the "Xuan Palace" where the coffins and funerary objects were placed should not be far away.
Sure enough, after walking forward for dozens of meters, a stone slope appeared under the water ahead. The tomb passage became several times wider than before. Following the stone slope upward, they soon exceeded the horizontal surface of the pond water. As the three people's heads emerged from the water, they immediately saw a blue-gray stone gate weighing thousands of pounds standing at the end of the stone slope of the tomb passage.
I wiped the water off my face, feeling both pleasantly surprised and happy: "Finally we've arrived." I wanted to break into the door right away. The fat man pointed at the big stone door in the water and said, "Hey, Lao Hu, look at that…why is there a small door on top?"
The small door that the fat man mentioned is a copper gatehouse at the highest point. It is all black and has an extremely delicate structure. The door opening is just big enough for one person to pass through. There is a drip on the gatehouse, and clouds and flying birds are cast around it, which seems to symbolize that it is high above the sky.
I said to the fat man, "That place is called Tianmen. It is for the tomb owner to ascend to heaven after his corpse is transformed into an immortal. It is only found in the tombs of Taoists. However, those mummies can forget about the wonderful thing of becoming an immortal and ascending to heaven. This Tianmen is just right for our group of tomb raiders to use as a ready-made robbing hole."
After going through numerous trials and tribulations, we finally found the door to the "Xuan Palace" of the king's tomb. We were very excited, but Shinley Yang was still worried that there was no "Zhuchen Pearl" inside, so he suddenly asked me, "Were there really gods in ancient China?"