Chapter 6 Chapter 5 Street of Skeletons

What Hawthorne saw was a light! The archaeological team went up from the exit of the sewer. They stood in the cross-shaped tunnel of the underground palace, and there was a lamp in front of them.After a while, first a lamp on the corridor on the left was lit, and then the lamps on the walls of the corridors on all four sides lit up one by one, extending out, creating a spectacular scene. Hawthorne said, "Lamps are always burning in the tomb." Professor Lu Li said: "This kind of lamp violates the law of energy conservation. There is no such thing as a lamp that lasts for a thousand years in ancient tombs. It is recorded in Sima Qian's "Historical Records" that the underground palace of Qin Shihuang's mausoleum "uses mermaid ointment as a candle, and the immortal one lasts for a long time." It's an exaggeration."

Geese pointed to the lamp in front of him and said, "How do you explain this?" Professor Lu Li said: "We use science to explain." Professor Lu Li took out an electronic chemistry and conductivity analyzer. The lamp was a bronze figurine, sitting in a squatting position, holding a fish with both hands. The wick protruded from the fish's mouth. No abnormality was detected on the lamp. The cube computer shows that the wick contains sodium peroxide.Hawthorne suddenly realized, and he told everyone that sodium peroxide is a light yellow powder that will burn when it meets water and carbon dioxide.Professor Lu Li added that the gas exhaled by people contains water and carbon dioxide. Once a person enters the ancient tomb, the wick will spontaneously ignite.Geese said that this is just a small magic trick. The Taoist priests in ancient China who subdued demons and eliminated demons breathed on the talisman paper on the tip of the sword, and the talisman paper would burn. This is also the same reason.

The passageway of the underground palace is cross-shaped, and they are located in the middle of the passageway. Using the compass to identify the direction, the archaeological team chose a passageway to the east.Most of the 917 Qin tombs that have been excavated are facing east, which is a characteristic of Qin Dynasty tombs.Under the light of the mermaid lamp, the archaeological team saw shadows at the end of the long corridor, as if there were several people standing there. The female team doctor whispered to the camera operator, Master Ju, "Is there anyone in front?" Master Ju replied: "I saw it too."

At the end of the corridor of the underground palace, suddenly there is a stone pavilion in the open space, surrounded by some stone frames in the shape of "big". From a distance, it looks like some people are standing on the ground.The archaeological team found that this stone pavilion is quite similar to the "Tinghou" on the Qin Great Wall, and the pavilions on the Great Wall serve as a lookout.There is a platform in this stone pavilion, and there is a hole in the middle of the platform, and you can see that it is filled with sand. Dora asked Guice: "Uncle Guise, what is this pavilion for?"

Geese said, "Let's ask our tour guide. Professor Lu Li is welcome to explain." Professor Lu Li said, "Do you really want to know?" "I'm curious," said Dora. Professor Lu Li said slowly, "The peeling booth!" Professor Lu Li briefly introduced the names of local institutions in the Qin Dynasty. Qin Shihuang divided the country into thirty-six counties, with counties under the counties, and townships, pavilions, and lis under the counties.There are long pavilions, and pavilions are also an institution responsible for public security.The laws of the Qin Dynasty were characterized by severe punishments. If a person commits a crime, even his neighbors will suffer.For slaves and prisoners, there are many tortures, one of which is skinning.

Keith said, "I think the skins were drying in..." Dora looked at the stone frames in the shape of "big" and said, "I see." Everyone's eyes also turned to those stone frames. The stone frames are like a forest, and there are a few shorter ones, which are obviously prepared for children.More than 2,000 years ago, the slaves and prisoners who built the mausoleum walked through the forest of human skin every day. How would they feel, and what would they feel when they saw this skinning pavilion? Was it fear or numbness? Leaving the peeling pavilion, the archaeological team walked up a street.

Hawthorne: "Don't look down." Dora: "What's down there?" Dora stopped, but did not dare to look at the ground. She tentatively took a step forward, and there was a creaking sound under her feet. When she realized that she had stepped on something, she took another step, her feet slipped, and she fell to the ground. Then she couldn't help shouting - she saw that the whole road was paved with skeletons, endless, and there were a few will-o'-the-wisps floating in the distance.As they got closer, several will-o'-the-wisps gathered into a large group of will-o'-the-wisps and followed behind them.Bones contain phosphorus, and will-o'-the-wisps are also phosphorus fires. When the air is still, the phosphorus fire is very light. If there is wind or people pass by to move the air, the phosphorus fire will float with the air, and even follow people.

On both sides of the street, the houses are still there, the tiles with sunflower pattern, pottery volume, stone girdle, seal script twelve-character bricks, everything is still in the original position, all of which are preserved intact for more than two thousand years. The archaeological team cautiously walked into a house, which was the home of an ordinary person in the Qin Dynasty.The room is partitioned with rammed earth, and there is a couch at the entrance.According to Professor Lu Li, people in the Qin Dynasty wore black clothes, took off their shoes when entering the house, and sat on the ground.All the wooden products in the room had been turned into dust, and there were a few half taels scattered on the ground. These Qin coins should have been placed on the table.There are clay pots, pots and other utensils on the stone table beside the wall.The pottery pots and basins are engraved with "middle stable", "large stable", "left stable" and "three stables". Professor Lu Li infers that this is a room for "Yuren".Yu people, that is, horse breeders.

Get out of the house and walk down the street. "If the people in the houses on either side were alive, they'd think we were aliens," Keith said. "I found an alien," Hawthorne said. In front of a tall building, there are two stone statues of Xiezhi. Obviously, this is a government office in the Qin Dynasty.There is a pit next to the yamen, surrounded by stone railings, and there are many skeletons tied to the stone railings. Each skeleton has a thick iron chain more than ten feet long passing through the shoulder blades. What is even more strange is that these skeletons have no hands. and feet.

Hawthorne pointed to a skeleton without hands and feet and said: "Is this the corpse of an alien, or a literati, I know that the Qin Dynasty burned books and pitted Confucian scholars, are these literati who broke the law, and what is this pit for? " Professor Lu Li observed carefully and said, "Human shit!" This may be the cruelest punishment in the world. Professor Lu Li said that in order to exclude different thoughts and opinions, Qin Shihuang killed more than 460 Confucian scholars and alchemists. Although the death penalty is spared, the living crime cannot be escaped. They have their hands and feet chopped off, their noses, ears and tongues cut off, their eyes gouged out, and they are thrown into the pigpen to be fed with the pigs. They are named "human pigs". Chains, until death.

Professor Lu Li said: "This pit is a pigsty, and these skeletons without hands and feet are human pigs." Linfeng patted the stone railing heavily with his hand: "Professor, stop talking." Everyone in the archaeological team felt depressed. They continued to move forward, walked through the street of skeletons, passed through the ghost market, climbed the waist-cut platform, entered the washing building, exited Lingchi Pavilion, crossed the hanged head bridge, and finally arrived outside the underground palace of Qin Shihuang's mausoleum. Xianmen.The journey was horrible. In the grooming building, Dora found a comb with a weird shape. She asked Professor Lu Li if this comb was for female prisoners to dress up. Professor Lu Li's answer made Dora dare not ask any more questions.Grooming is an extremely cruel punishment. It refers to using an iron brush to comb the flesh of the prisoner one by one until the bones are exposed, and finally dies. There are three gates in the underground palace, and they stand in front of the outer Xian gate. The outermost city wall of the underground palace is made of five-color rammed earth.According to historical records, after the city wall was built, the strongest bow and crossbow soldiers of the Qin Dynasty stood a hundred steps away and shot at the wall. If the arrow arrived and did not drop the soil, it was considered to be of good quality. workers will all be killed. The walls of the underground palace are indestructible, and the inspection found that they are three meters thick. The archaeological team had no choice but to break in. Professor Lu Li picked up the steel crowbar, and Geese joked, "I thought you archaeologists only use small brushes." The seven archaeological team members worked together, but the stone gate remained motionless. Captain Hawthorne had to use an impact electric drill, and the team members took turns to drill holes on the stone gate.While drilling the hole, Geese asked Professor Lu Li, "Has anyone robbed this tomb?" Professor Lu Li said: "Xiang Yu came, Huang Chao came, and Shi Le. Hundreds of thousands of troops did not dig up Qin Shihuang's Mausoleum. In a rage, Xiang Yu burned the Afang Palace on the ground. There is a large amount of mercury in the underground palace of Qin Shihuang's Mausoleum. Facts are strong evidence that it has not been robbed. Because once the underground palace is stolen, the mercury will evaporate along the robbery hole." The grave robber Keith said: "These are some seniors." Professor Lu Li said: "Those soldiers who excavated Qin Shihuang's Mausoleum lost their hair while digging, and after they became bald, all their teeth fell out, and eventually died of mercury poisoning, so no one dared to dig." Half an hour later, the stone gate collapsed.Professor Hawthorne released a golden robotic bee to fly by remote control, but no abnormal mercury was detected. It seems that the mercury should be within the Zhongxian Gate.They followed the robot bee into an underground palace square, and while walking and observing, they could faintly see some terracotta warriors and horses. The underground palace square was very large and lifeless. Suddenly, Hawthorne stopped. Hawthorne said in a low voice, "Shhh, at two ten minutes ahead, there are unknown creatures." Professor Lu Li said doubtfully, "There can't be oxygen in the sealed underground palace, let alone living things." Hawthorne said, "Attention everyone, it's moving toward us."