Chapter 8 Section VIII

Chu Haiyang leaned over and said, "It's just an anti-theft spell, a deterrent to grave robbers. Hey, don't believe it, what Teacher Qian said last time..." "Anyone who dares to send my grave will have no family," Xia Mingruo said, "Whoever digs my grave will have no descendants." "Everyone is very strict," Chu Haiyang turned his head and smiled at the uncle, "I don't think someone with a moral character like uncle should be afraid." "He's afraid of a ghost." Xia Mingruo also laughed, "The lid of the coffin is too heavy to be opened by one person."

"Cough..." Uncle touched his nose, "Actually, our business has strict rules and a lot of taboos. It is said that if you walk too much at night, you are afraid of ghosts knocking on the door, and elegant thieves like me..." "Uncle, don't explain." Chu Haiyang waved his hand, turned his head to look at the inscription, "It's strange, it's obviously a tomb of a minority, and the ancient Dian Kingdom also did this? Could it be some kind of empress of the Han Dynasty?" The three were silent for a while, and the tomb was even more gloomy in the flickering candlelight.

"Ah!" Xia Mingruo made a big discovery, and wiped off the mud on the coffin lid, "Look!" There are also engravings on the lid of the coffin, all of which are filled with cinnabar after being carved. Although it has been thousands of years, the color is still unabated. Chu Haiyang took the candle from the uncle, held it close and said silently: Living people go up to Yang, dead people go down to Yin; The living go up to the high platform, and the dead hide themselves deep. The sky is blue, the earth is vast, The dead return to Yin, the living return to Yang, The living have a li, the dead have a town,

Birth belongs to Chang'an, death belongs to Mount Tai, Life and death are in different places and should not interfere with each other. Like a law! "The town tomb inscriptions of the Han Dynasty are from the early and middle Western Han Dynasty," Chu Haiyang said. "Similar ones have been unearthed in Shaanxi, and the calligraphy style is also very similar." He wiped it as he read it, and when he read it, he burst out laughing and said, "No wonder, the masterpiece of the county magistrate. Yizhou Mu, called... Guo Xie." During the reign of Emperor Wu of the Han Dynasty, Yizhou County was established in Yunnan.

"Open the coffin?" Chu Haiyang asked the uncle. The uncle said: "Nonsense, I am looking for you to help, of course I have to drive." Xia Mingruo put on airs and said with a smirk: "No way, if we open it, we will make mistakes. The report hasn't been filed yet, and we have to wait for the first approval." The uncle said: "Here! Look at how enlightened you are! The tomb robbers are right in front of you and you are shirking your responsibility. Don't run away and scold us in the newspaper." Chu Haiyang laughed. It would be a lie to say that he was not curious. He fixed the candle on the ground and called the other two to try to push the coffin lid.

"One, two! Very heavy," he rolled up his sleeves and continued, "Uncle, do you know the meaning of those tomb-suppressing inscriptions and tomb-suppressing beasts just now?" The uncle is gritting his teeth and using force: "Customs." "Yes, the customs of the Han Dynasty," Chu Haiyang said, "but it explains one thing from the side, this empress..." The uncle stopped pushing all of a sudden, but made a hissing gesture, listened carefully, and then sat down on the ground listlessly: "The ghost is still there!" Chu Haiyang and Xia Mingruo looked at each other, shrugged and sat down.

Footsteps sounded on the tomb passage, and the roar of the leopard was close to my ears: "Old Bandit Li!" The uncle replied lazily: "Hey——" Xia Mingruo squatted beside him and asked, "Aren't we going to find a place to hide?" "Where are you hiding?" the uncle spat fiercely at the grave. "It's unlucky to be arrested three times in one day! The old man must change his career when he goes back!" Xia Mingruo comforted, "It's not that we are incompetent, it's that the bandits are too cunning." The leopard ran in "thump, thump, thump," and kicked the uncle, scaring him and Xia Mingruo to run around the tomb. (At this time, Lao Huang was also chasing a big gray mouse all over the place.)

"Damn it!" Leopard pulled the breech, "I'll kill you old fox!" "If you kill him, you won't be able to get out." Chu Haiyang was jumping on the coffin lid, holding a candle and saying coldly. Leopard was stunned and looked at him, the two confronted each other quietly, finally Leopard was defeated and turned his head to look around the tomb. "So small?" He yelled very dissatisfied, "Where's the baby?" Uncle and Xia Mingruo whispered: "You see, he is a typical non-professional..." The gloomy thin man squinted dead fish eyes at them, and the two stared back unceremoniously. The thin man raised the gun, and the two immediately put their hands behind their heads.

"Open the coffin!" Leopard said to Chu Haiyang. Chu Haiyang shrugged: "Where are the tools? I need picks, iron awls, hammers, and levers." The leopard poked its neck and said, "Where do I have it?" Chu Haiyang was also angry: "What kind of tomb are you robbing without you?!" The thin man smoothed things over and said, "I have a field knife, I'll use it first." Leopard said: "Don't give it to him!" Chu Haiyang said viciously: "Don't believe me, come to help! You all stand by my side, I call one or two, and push the coffin lid hard together! Try first and then talk!"

The uncle and the thin man complied, and Leopard felt that he had been contradicted and was about to get angry on the spot. Chu Haiyang pointed to his nose and said, "Don't talk nonsense to me, just go if you don't understand." Xia Mingruo chuckled and said, "Old Comrade Bao, let me popularize some scientific knowledge for you. The lid of the coffin is made of stone, and the body of the coffin is also made of stone. For thousands of years, stone molecules have been constantly moving and freely diffusing, so the relationship between the two The seams have probably grown together. Get it? Molecules."

Leopard said: "You lied!" Xia Biexin said: "Why am I lying to you? You people just don't understand science. For example, giving birth to a child. Such a simple thing is so complicated. In fact, as long as two people lie on the same side and jump around, they can give birth. For example , Look at the members of Chu Haiyang..." Chu Haiyang shouted, "Don't believe Xia!" Xia Mingruo shrank his neck and stood aside. The leopard swallowed heavily and joined the team pushing the lid of the coffin, but no matter how hard he pushed it, he remained motionless. "There is a problem with the method," the uncle asked, "You two should take out the knife." Chu Haiyang said: "Sharp objects with a relatively hard texture are also acceptable." The leopard and the thin man searched themselves from the top of their heads to the soles of their feet, and reluctantly threw out several large and small knives. The uncle held the knife, aimed the pointed end at the seam of the sarcophagus, and signaled the thin man to hit it with the butt of his gun.The thin man smashed it a few times as he said, causing stone chips to fly, and one-third of the blade was finally inserted into the sarcophagus.The two followed suit in several other places. Xia Mingruo took the time to look at the leopard with a smile. The leopard roared, "What are you looking at?" Xia Mingruo said: "I have something to tell you, but I'm too lazy to tell laymen." He pointed to a white mark on the stone wall and asked, "Do you know what that is?" The leopard buzzed and asked, "What?" "Calcium carbonate precipitation is the budding state of stalactites," Xia Mingruo said. "It takes at least three thousand years for calcium carbonate to deposit to this state, but the tomb-guarding beasts on the wall and the tomb-guarding inscriptions on the coffin lid are all remains of the Western Han Dynasty. The Han Dynasty is far away from us. Only two thousand years." Leopard said, "So what?" Xia Mingruo smiled softly, and suddenly put his pale face under the candlelight close to the leopard: "This shows that after our lady was buried for a thousand years, she still provoked the people at that time—the border officials— Drastic measures had to be taken to restrain her." The leopard took half a step back: "Why... what's wrong?" "She is causing trouble," Xia Mingruo said slowly, pointing to the words "whoever opens the coffin will die", "This sentence is not a curse, but a reminder. Once the coffin is opened, you will die." After observing Leopard's expression, Xia Mingruo said to Chu Haiyang, "Report to the commander in chief, this guy is strong on the outside but capable on the inside." Commander-in-Chief's instruction: "Continue popularizing science." The leopard became angry: "You lied to me?!" "He didn't lie to you," Chu Haiyang said with a half-smile. The leopard's face was blue and white, Chu Haiyang said: "Come on, open the coffin, all the wedges have been driven in." Leopard paused, gritted his teeth, and stepped forward to push the coffin lid. The uncle said: "Where do you push it? Push it vertically! There may be a tenon in the horizontal direction, and you will not be able to push it open for the rest of your life. Really, there is not even an iron braze." Xia Mingruo also stepped forward to help, and while pushing, he murmured: "I made a mistake and violated discipline." The uncle was quite understanding, and whispered: "Nephew, it's important to save your life." The upper and lower parts of the sarcophagus are hewn from huge stones, weighing several tons. Fortunately, the lid part is relatively light. With the strength of nine bulls and two tigers, it was finally pushed more than ten centimeters, and the coffin can be seen through a small crack. Inside. Chu Haiyang and the uncle stopped pushing suddenly, and unanimously took off their wet clothes and wrapped them around their nose and mouth, while Xia Mingruo covered his handkerchief.The thin man reacted quickly and followed suit, but the leopard stood still with a bewildered expression. Chu Haiyang looked at him unhappily. In the end, Xia Mingruo was kind enough to remind him: "Gas will be produced during the process of decay and expansion of the corpse, and it has been stuffed inside for thousands of years. Even if it is stolen, it will not completely dissipate..." The leopard was so frightened that he took off his clothes in a hurry. "Ready? One, two, three!" The five people exerted their strength at the same time. After a muffled rumble, the coffin lid was finally pushed open, exposing one-third of the coffin chamber to the air. The uncle gestured: Everyone go out, Let it breathe. Xia Mingruo and Chu Haiyang were about to take a step, but the thin man turned his gun and aimed at them. They had no choice but to stand still and make eye contact: Is this going to be silenced? Ok…… Holding the gun in one hand, the thin man slowly retreated to the sarcophagus, looked inside with a flashlight, and shouted in disbelief: "Empty?" "What?" Leopard opened his eyes and jumped over, "...he...fuck it!" He raised his gun and slapped a load of bullets on the stone wall, because they were all cultural relics, which made Chu Haiyang and Xia Mingruo heartbroken to death. "Why is it empty?" he yelled at the uncle. The uncle said strangely: "Huh? I don't know! If you care about the rule of 'thieves don't go empty', just pick up a few stones and go back." The leopard turned around and yelled at Chu Haiyang again, Chu Haiyang yelled back impatiently: "Slow down, I can hear it, it can't be empty, the bones must be inside." The leopard roared with all its strength, shaking the stone wall: "Do I want these broken bones? I want gold! I want treasure!" The uncle shook his head: "Tsk." Xia Mingruo also shook his head: "Tsk..." The thin man suddenly punched the uncle on the stomach, the uncle grunted, bent over and squatted for a long time, then raised his head and wiped the saliva from his mouth, and smiled at Xia Mingruo: "I said they are dangerous." Just as the thin man was about to speak, Chu Haiyang kicked him flying. He hit the wall and bounced back to the ground. He curled up and twitched. Leopard went to pull him, only to find that he had passed out. Archaeologists like Chu Haiyang, out of the need to study ancient residents, know some human anatomy, and of course they know which parts of the human body are weak points.