The Lost Tomb Vol. 7

Chapter 49: Hints

When I mentioned this, Xiao Hua asked if I could tell what dynasty everything here had been made in.

"It's hard to say since this isn't a typical historic site," I told him. "If it's the site of an ancient tomb or temple, then it's easy to tell what dynasty it belonged to because the carved buildings contain a lot of cultural details. But if you find a blacksmith's shop, then it would be very difficult to date, because there would be too few places in the shop that carried cultural information. It might be easier if the blacksmith was part of a large ancient city, though."

All the various things here—including the patterns and lines on the stone carvings on the walls and iron plate— lacked the characteristics peculiar to a certain dynasty. It was almost impossible to judge which era they had been built in. I didn't think too much about it either, because I had subconsciously linked them to the Yangshi Lei.

There were iron tools here, which had officially appeared for the first time in the Spring and Autumn Period. But due to the existence of meteorite iron, it was difficult to determine the age of everything here solely based on these iron tools. Since the Yangshi Lei was involved, however, it must have been used during the Qing Dynasty, even if it hadn't been established then.

I had always believed that I, an undergraduate student of the People's Republic of China, would never fail to do what Yangshi Lei did. "Do you think you can see anything from any of the dynasties here?" I asked.

"China's tomb culture was constantly developing, so all kinds of exquisite mechanisms have very clear characteristics of the times. The more developed the dynasties, the more technological leaps would appear. For example, cliff coffins in the Han Dynasty developed into hanging coffins in the Tang Dynasty. And because the Liao people are located in a cold place in the north, the ancient tombs and graves there have many toxins and are lined with stones. In the Qing Dynasty, the introduction of foreign technology enriched the development of exotic techniques and even made mechanisms that could restore themselves without making a sound. If we knew when this place was built, we could probably eliminate several possibilities." Xiao Hua said. "To give an extreme example, this definitely isn't a modern tomb, so there won't be lasers to worry about."

Indeed, I had also heard grandpa say something like this. But I thought it was too risky to use this tactic here. Since I had experienced many things before, I understood that when it came to thousand-year-old mysteries, the only thing I could be sure of was that the ancients couldn't be underestimated.

My grandfather had also given me another example. When he was in a Northern Zhou Dynasty tomb one time, he saw a very strange piece of pottery. It was a long jar that had finger-shaped holes at the top and looked more like a musical instrument. He thought he had found a vessel used for "filtering", but when he picked it up, he found that it was very heavy. As soon as he turned it upside down to see what was inside, a lot of small stone hands stuck out from the holes in an arc. The hands on one side were spread to the left, while the hands on the other side were spread to the right.

They looked like a peacock spreading its wings to form a fan.

With such a display, his eyes naturally focused on the middle of the fan. He saw a black Buddha statue in the center row of holes, and together with the hands spread out on both sides, it looked like a thousand-handed Guanyin [1] embedded in the bottle.

He was transfixed because all the openings in the jar sprouted "things" at the same time, and immediately became such a sight. The process was so shocking that he thought the bottle was a living creature.

When he ended up having to flee later, he lost it and never saw it again. But he liked and missed it so much that he wanted a modern craftsman to duplicate it. None of them could do it, however, because they couldn't set the mechanism inside the pottery that had already been fired in the kiln. Even if it was forced in, it still wouldn't work.

There shouldn't have been such exquisite craftsmanship in the Northern Zhou Dynasty. Grandpa said that this showed that there were always some people in each dynasty who were completely ahead of their time. The more unpredictable the tomb was, the more unconventional the place was, and you would be more likely to see such things.

But since we couldn't determine what dynasty was here, I didn't bother saying so much to Xiao Hua. We had to continue thinking and trying to understand the odd things in the photo.

But what did these figures mean? Because they were so random, it was much more difficult than simply finding graphic information from these photos. If the people in the Zhang family knew something, it would be almost impossible for us to guess.

In addition, there was hardly any information on the mysterious family, so we were basically facing a dead end.

When I thought of this, I immediately began to admire the designers of this mechanism. If this was a grave robbery prevention measure, it was truly successful.

I remembered that my grandfather had said there were several levels of anti-theft measures, and all large tombs often had such characteristics.

The first was that it couldn't be found, the second was that it couldn't be opened, and the third was that it couldn't be taken away. This Zhang Jialou had reached the extreme at almost every point. It was no wonder everyone had been at a loss for so many years.

But if we thought like this, there was nothing else we could do but leave here and try to collect as much information about the Zhang Jialou as possible. With their degree of secrecy, even if there was some information, I was afraid it would take more than half a year. And there was no telling whether the information would be useful or not.

This thought made me very depressed. I was the kind of person who would be full of energy as long as there was a little hope, but once my consciousness determined that the matter was impossible, I would immediately collapse. Xiao Hua also fell silent after hearing me out.

We had lost a lot of time since the Guangxi information had been sent to us, but there really weren't any clues. I was feeling a little desperate, as if even if we tried in vain for a few more days, we could only send a letter back and tell the old woman, "Sorry, we can't do it. Why don't we go back to Beijing and take a bath and see if there's another way?"

I didn't mind, but I kept feeling like I'd lose face for the Wu family by doing so (although the Wu family had no face left). Moreover, I knew Xiao Hua wouldn't give up so easily.

After a moment's silence, he said to the Sichuan man, "Please send a letter for me and tell them that the photo can't be decrypted. We'll take our own measures, so they'll have to wait for a while."

The man nodded, but his face changed a little bit, "Boss, do you want to do it yourself? Do you want to call Mister?"

Xiao Hua shook his head: "No, I can handle it."

The man nodded and went out. I pulled the rope to send him out and asked Xiao Hua, "What are our own measures? What else can we do now?"

"Change your way of thinking. All the tricks are fantastic and skillful, so if you can't solve them directly, you can use a more barbaric method."

I still didn't understand. He took a sip of wine and said, "If you can't restore a Rubik's Cube, what's the simplest way?" He made a snapping gesture, "Cut all the colors off the Rubik's cube and reassemble it according to your own way."

"Eh, you mean you want to—"

"I want to unlock it from the inside." He said, "I'll enter behind these cave walls and see what the structure of this mechanism is."

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Note:

[1] Guanyin is the Buddhist bodhisattva associated with compassion.