The Lost Tomb Vol. 1

Chapter 31: Double-Layered Tomb Wall

Chen Wen-Jin and Uncle Three had completely different backgrounds. Uncle Three was a rough character who would've definitely been a bandit if he hadn't been born into a grave-robbing family. He always considered profit before anything else and would judge a person's worth based on what kind of benefit they could bring him. Chen Wen-Jin, on the other hand, was completely different. She came back from studying abroad and was very open-minded. Grave robbing was mainly a hobby for her, and one which enabled her to further her studies while doing so. As a result, when Uncle Three said this, her first thought was to consider the archaeological value of this ancient tomb and share the theory with her classmates.

Shipwreck tombs buried below the seabed were very rare—in fact, legend had it that Shen Wansan's son was the only one to use this type of burial method(1)—so Chen Wen-Jin's idea could be considered very conscientious. Uncle Three, however, was a bit embarrassed because he felt uncomfortable at the thought of those things being confiscated by the government as soon as they were fished out of the sea. But it didn't take much for Chen Wen-Jin to convince him otherwise. With just a smile and a kiss, she turned Uncle Three from a true hero of Greenwood(2) into an archaeologist of the Republic, and one who volunteered at that.

That night, Uncle Three lay awake pondering over the problem. He had never robbed an undersea tomb before but had boasted that he had in front of the others. It wouldn't be good if he slipped up and gave it away tomorrow. He thought about it for a while but realized that he wouldn't be able to dig in the sea like he could on land. First, it was impossible to dig up the seabed since it was difficult to find purchase. Second, even if he was able to dig the seabed up, the mud in the sea was completely different from that on land, which rendered his little bit of knowledge totally useless. He thought of the stories in my grandpa's notebook and recalled that my grandpa did actually rob several undersea tombs, but there was no special method to it. The main thing was to look at the terrain.

A shipwreck tomb buried at the bottom of the sea essentially involved building a tomb on a ship, finding a valley or trench in the sea, smashing a hole through the ship's hull so that the tomb would sink, and then sealing the whole thing with a layer of soil on top. The whole process actually wasn't all that different from what was done on land, it was just that the location was in the sea.

Uncle Three estimated that the place where they were currently anchored must have been a small sea valley, which was later filled in. When the ship was sunk, a lot of anchors would have been needed to keep it in place so he could use the focal point at which they were dropped—or a spot near it—to figure out where the burial site was.

The more Uncle Three thought about it, the more reasonable it sounded and he suddenly became more confident. The weather the next day also turned out well so he took everyone into the water, had them connect all the stone anchors with ropes, and then marked the point in the middle. After digging up several places in the surrounding area, they found that there really was wood beneath the seabed to the east of the center marker.

Next, they used the traditional positioning method to determine that the layout of the underground palace was actually in the shape of the Chinese character "土".(3) It consisted of two ear chambers, two rooms that were of identical shape and size, a corridor, and a back hall. The structure covered an area of about one thousand square meters, of which the back hall was the largest. With a length of more than thirty meters and a width of more than ten meters, this back hall seemed to be the place where the coffin would be located.

Uncle Three was completely stunned when he saw this and thought to himself, my God, whose tomb is this? It seems that it's really not that simple. This scale is comparable to an imperial tomb!

That night, everyone was so excited that they couldn't sleep. Instead, they gathered around and ate fish head hotpot while discussing how to get into the tomb. Uncle Three analyzed the structure of the shipwreck tomb and told them that their main concern was the water. At present, they didn't know if the back hall had been flooded with water or not. If it was flooded, then they could just make a hole and enter it that way. They all had diving suits, after all, so it shouldn't be a problem. But if the tomb chamber below was still sealed, then that made things more difficult because once it was breached, the water rushing in may cause catastrophic damage to the things inside. Based on the pieces of wood they had seen when digging up the seabed earlier, there should still be air in the tomb below. The whole tomb was very large so it was easy to create a capillary structure, which meant that there may be a lot of air in several of the rooms inside.