The Lost Tomb Vol. 7

Chapter 27: The Largest Grave Robbery in History (III)

Jin Wantang was a cultured man, who had neither courage nor strength to work in the field. He had only half his life left when he entered the mountains, and it was impossible to force him to do any further work, so he could only stay in the camp. Other people started searching everywhere and brought things—mostly silk books and bamboo slips—back at regular intervals, asking him to identify and classify them. He didn't know what the tomb's background was, and he didn't dare ask. He could only infer something from what he was allowed to identify.

First, he was sure that there appeared to be more than one ancient tomb here, because the batches of silk books and bamboo slips that he identified were preserved differently, and the contents inside were all-encompassing. They included letters, ancient books, and silk writings, whose many recipients had different names. He felt that there had to be a huge cluster of ancient tombs here, and this group of people was digging up a large area of them.

Second, he was the only one in the whole team who did classification and identification, and all the stolen things were basically documents and ancient books. It seemed that their ultimate goal was the ancient books that could be found in this cluster of ancient tombs.

Third, the number of people in the team often decreased, and people often fought in the camp. Judging from the contents of the quarrels, accidents often occurred while working and they were accusing each other of shirking their duties.

The restoration and identification of ancient books took a lot of time, but what he didn't expect was that the business he thought could be completed in a month or two lasted for three years. For three years, he had been constantly identifying those ancient texts that were difficult to understand, speculating on dynasties and uses, and trying to translate their meanings. The whole team seemed to be under a great amount of pressure, with almost no communication between them, and everyone doing things desperately in silence. He was so anxious that his teeth began to fall out and his weight changed from 150 kg to 70 kg. If that day didn't come, he might have died there.

On the day of the Dragon Boat Festival in the third year, this huge, depressed, and isolated life was suddenly broken. Suddenly, no ancient books were sent to him. He finally didn't have to squat down in tents every day to do those extremely boring jobs.

This sudden liberation initially made him uncomfortable, but two days later, his anxiety began to slowly ease. He had time to get out of the tent and wander around the camp. At that time, he discovered that he was in a really beautiful place.

They were on a flat piece of land rarely found in mountain areas. If they were near any villages, this flat area would have surely been reclaimed as farmland, but now it was full of towering trees. It showed that they were either far away from human beings, or getting here was very inconvenient. Looking at where the sky met the distant mountains, one could see that there were four huge, lofty snow-capped mountains connected to one another. Yunshan was surrounded by fog and looked holy and flawless. Before the snow-capped mountains, there were other towering mountains that were green and lush. That kind of green wasn't the green of Longjing shallow grass south of the Yangtze River, or the emerald green of Beijing, but the deep green of ink. All the colors in the whole region showed the extremely vigorous vitality of the plants.

The air in the mountains was extremely fresh, and he suddenly felt as if he had been reborn. It was like an epiphany, and the darkness he had been enveloped in for three years was swept away.

After that, his body gradually recovered and he began to take an interest in the things around him. He began to recover a lot of normal sensory thoughts, and found that there were no traces of anything being dug up in the nearby area. He speculated that the ancient tombs didn't exist, but if they did, they weren't on this piece of flat land. The surrounding mountains were very steep, however, and the probability of there being large-scale ancient tombs was very small. It would be like an axe splitting a knife.

Since there was nothing to do, and he was curious, he secretly followed a group of people far into the mountain one day. After climbing up the mountainside, the slope suddenly turned into a vast stretch of bare cliffs. Part of the mountain above seemed to have been cut vertically with a knife. All the radians were cut off, leaving an almost completely uneven vertical rock surface. A strange forest had grown in the stone crevice above, and a small waterfall fell from the top of the cliff. It hit the huge leafy canopy below and splashed everywhere.

This was the kind of cliff that often appeared beside rivers. The famous cliff carvings along the Yangtze River had also been carved on a cliff like this. Since this probably used to be the channel of a big river, there were crags everywhere, but now the river had changed course and dried up. Sure enough, when he looked ahead, he saw that the cliffs continued for more than ten kilometers and stretched completely out of sight.

He saw countless ropes and lasso devices on these cliffs, and much like the legendary cliffs rich in bird nests, they were full of people. At the same time, he also found that many ropes were being dismantled, as if they had completed their historic mission. He immediately understood where the so-called ancient tombs and ancient books had come from.

The Shu people mostly practiced Buddhism, especially in Sichuan, where various religions flourished. It was said that many people sought immortality here, as if they had been called by the heavens. At a certain time, they would climb the cliff without any food and only some water, find a cave or fissure, climb in, and cut off the rope—thereby cutting off their own escape— and conduct the final practice there. If they didn't succeed, they would starve to death.

Many people expressed their determination to become immortal by using such decisive means, especially on the local mountains which were full of popular legends. Most of these people would take some ancient alchemists' books with them, and as the generations passed, the bones of many dynasties would often accumulate in these caves. These people had probably found the ancient books by climbing up the cliffs one by one.

Although some of the ropes had now been removed—indicating that they had found what they wanted—it seemed that they weren't going to leave yet. What else were they doing?

He looked at the part of the rope that hadn't been dismantled, but was reinforced. He felt that other than the ancient books, there had to be another story behind this.

Unfortunately, Jin Wantang couldn't continue being curious when he arrived at this place. He didn't have the skills to climb the cliff to have a look, and he didn't have the courage to ask for specific details. After that, he had a very easy life. It was during this period that he, like some people who suddenly reacted during the reform and opening up period, began to have his own ideas. He suddenly felt very regretful, why didn't he keep a few copies of the broken ancient books? Even if the quality wasn't good, they were still valuable. He was the only one here who had the eye to appreciate the ancient books, and it was easy to hide one or two of the better ones.

He knew that offending the Mystic Nine would have serious consequences, but the yearning and greed for a more comfortable life settled like maggots in his bones, and he regretted it badly.

This was often the case with people. Afterwards, they would constantly think about what they should or shouldn't have done at that time. In fact, if he were to return to that time, he probably still wouldn't have the courage.

But God gave him a second chance this time. In June of that third year, there was a big accident. There was a sudden noise and a large group of people came out of the mountain at noon, hurriedly carrying a dozen stretchers. The people on the stretchers were covered in blood and the camp was thrown into chaos.

Later in the evening, a large roll of silk books practically soaked in blood was delivered to him. Three days later, he saw Granny Huo and the other members of the Mystic Nine for the first time, all looking solemn. The group of people wanted to watch him start the final appraisal.

He only took one look at the large volume and saw that it was a silk book written by Lu Huang in the Warring States Period.