The First Inquiring at the Grave

  Yunnan Antique Street was as bustling as ever, I carried two boxes of meals and walked to a store, just entering the shop and heard Liu Shu's shouting.

  "Sir, this jade is authentic good jade, take a look..." Liu Shu's words were interrupted by another person before he could finish.

  He was a man of about forty years old, dressed in a stylish and elegant manner, obviously from a wealthy family. However, at this moment, his eyebrows were slightly furrowed, clearly dissatisfied with the price. He shook his head and said to Uncle Liu: "I know this jade has a story behind it, but your price is too outrageous. To be honest, I really like this jade, as long as you give me a reasonable price, even if it's expensive, I don't mind."

  Normally, when encountering such a customer, Uncle Liu would definitely lower the price and make a deal. But once I took a closer look at that piece of jade, I knew this man was probably going to leave empty-handed.

  As expected, Liu Shu sighed and shook his head, saying: "Alas! If the guest is not satisfied, then take a look at something else. To be honest with you, I also have my own difficulties..."

  The man did not expect Liu Shu to voluntarily give up the transaction negotiations, looked at him strangely for a moment, shook his head and walked out of the store in big strides.

  Liu Shu saw the man leave, then spotted me standing at the door and immediately scolded: "You little brat, why did it take you so long to buy food? Come over quickly, I'm starving!"

  I smiled wryly and handed him the lunchbox, saying: "Uncle Liu, I think you'd better not wear this jade pendant again. Take it off and keep it safe, or else it'll affect your business all day long."

  Liu Shu pushed away his rice bowl and said: "It's still that good-for-nothing son of yours who's to blame! I just don't get it, what's so mysterious about this netherworldly artifact?"

  I was also baffled when I heard it. When my father brought this thing out of the ancient tomb, he was already seriously injured and handed the jade to Uncle Liu before his death, telling him that he must sell the jade at an unacceptably high price before I turn 30, otherwise I will suffer a great disaster. This is my father's last will, and it concerns my safety, so as my father's sworn brother, Uncle Liu also dare not disobey.

  But once the jade is sold, Liu's family business will be difficult to do. This jade is very attractive, so many wealthy customers will take a liking to it, but when they hear the price quoted by Uncle Liu, they all give up on buying the jade. Those who are more generous with their spending might say something like the man earlier, saying that they can pay a bit more if the price is reasonable, but ordinary people don't have such good intentions and will simply exclaim "Daylight robbery!" before leaving.

  I'm already twenty-five years old, Uncle Liu is really anxious, originally thought about finding someone to fool around with, this jade would be sold out, but the price is too outrageous, how can it be so easy to fool people?

  I knew he was uncomfortable in his heart, so I changed the subject and asked him: "Uncle Liu, how do you think this ancient jade should be identified? Just like this piece."

  Liu Shu said, "There are many paths in here, if you explain it carefully, you will definitely not understand, so let's just simply say it. Generally, ancient jade buried in the soil for a long time will be eroded and leave marks, which is called '沁色' (color penetration) in the industry. There are many types of 沁色, and there is a common saying: 'Jade with five colors of 沁 is worth more than 100,000 gold.' The five colors of 沁 mentioned here refer to white 'water 沁', yellow 'earth 沁', red 'blood沁', green 'copper沁', and black 'mercury沁'. These five types of 沁色 are the most common, but white 'water沁' is a harmful沁, which can damage the jade bone and easily cause ancient jade to be eaten away by insects."

  I nodded and said: "Oh, then this piece of jade left by my father is green, that should belong to Tongqu, right?"

  Liu Shu gave me a glance: "Who told you this was qin? This green is the color tone of this ancient jade, called 'bear's gall green'."

  "What is this ancient jade?"

  Liu Shu said, "The jade your father dug up is very unusual. The 'inner jade' appears only when illuminated with a phosphorescent light. This kind of situation is extremely rare. It must have been buried in the earth since prehistoric times and never unearthed until the Yuan Dynasty or before, which is how this 'inner jade' was formed."

  "I exclaimed: 'Prehistoric things? Then this jade is really old enough. Uncle Liu, you must have seen the pattern inside, what is it?'"

  Liu Shu held the jade in his hand and played with it for a moment, saying: "This is blood jade, real blood jade."

  He said "real" and I wasn't sure if it was my misunderstanding, so I asked tentatively: "So, is there fake blood wine?"

  Mr. Liu nodded and said, "Nowadays, most of the ancient jade with blood jade are dyed by later generations. They use the juice of rainbow grass, add half a coin of oil soil, then ignite bamboo branches, put the jade on to roast, and it will be dyed red. This method is called 'old Ti oil', which is a relatively old secret recipe. There is another method, that is, using red wood shavings to simmer for three days and three nights, can also dye out red jade. These ancient methods are useful, but the color of the jade is not ancient, although it looks beautiful, it's very common."

  "I asked: 'Then what is true Blood Qi...'"

  Liu Shu said, "The real blood jade is not simple. It's cultivated from living people! In ancient times, people would sew jade into the flesh and blood of slaves, then use the remaining high-temperature dan oil from alchemy to pour directly into the slave's mouth. Finally, they would bury the slave alive as a sacrifice. The slave would suffocate underground, and their corpse blood would not coagulate for a long time due to the dan oil. This corpse blood would stain the jade, causing it to seep out a blood-red color."

  I couldn't help but get goosebumps all over my body, and cursed: "These people are really fucking annoying, who would torture others like this?"

  Liu Shu shook his head and said, "This is still light, some slaves die and can leave a complete corpse is not bad."

  I saw Uncle Liu say this, and it seemed that he still wanted to introduce me to the slaves' ways of death one by one. I quickly stopped him: "Stop, don't say any more, I'm eating here!"

  Liu Shu smiled and stuffed two mouthfuls of rice into his mouth.

  After finishing dinner, I said goodbye to Uncle Liu and was about to leave when he hastily said: "You little scamp is going where again? There are many guests today, you have to stay and help out!"

  "I turned back and said: 'Uncle Liu, today is not for going out to play, I have something important to do, need to go out for a few days. By the way, lend me the car.'"

  Liu Shu tilted his head and looked at me for a while, picked up the car key from the table and threw it over to me. Suddenly he smiled and asked: "What's going on? Got a girlfriend?"

  I shook my head and said: "No, no, anyway it's true that something is going on. I won't tell you, I'm leaving first."

  After I finished speaking, I ran out of the shop and vaguely heard Liu Shu muttering in the house "stinky little boy". I didn't care about him anymore and went to the wholesale market to buy things.

  I want to do this thing, if I tell Uncle Liu, he will definitely disagree, and may even lock me in the house and not let me out. So of course, I can't tell him openly. In fact, this matter cannot be casually told to others, because it is a shady deal. Uncle Liu's business has been getting worse and worse recently, and I couldn't bear to watch him go bankrupt, so I had to think of a way to secretly help him get some valuable goods.

  In the past, my father was in the business of "Dao Dou", so when I was young, I also learned some skills from him. "Dao Dou" is another name for grave robbing, it's a slang created by people in this line to avoid being known by others. Besides this, there are also "Mo Jin", "Chai Jia", "Tao Sha" and so on, which my father had mentioned before.

  Our family's acrobatic skills have been passed down from our ancestors, and although we don't necessarily need to learn them in order to do them, this skill can't be lost, otherwise it would be unfilial to our ancestors. In the past, during times of war and chaos, if our ancestors hadn't relied on these skills to survive, there wouldn't be us descendants today.

  But I went to the deep mountains and old forests a while ago, relying on my father's "Wind Dragon Technique" to find a place with good feng shui that might have a large tomb. This place contains the number of "heavenly changes", if there is an ancient tomb underneath, it must be a royal one, this kind of tomb should have a lot of wealth, it's a "fat land".

  Many ancient tombs are far away in years, and there is no clear sign on the ground. The soil mound has long been buried deep underground. To find such an ancient tomb, one can only rely on special means. It is said that many predecessors in ancient times mostly relied on Feng Shui secrets to find ancient tombs. In the past, some Feng Shui masters were actually just artisans who had mastered this skill.

  Generally, this kind of relatively difficult to find and large-scale ancient tomb is called "Dragon's Den" or "Dragon's Treasure Hall", which is the ultimate goal for those who want to get rich. Of course, it's not easy to get one's hands on such a large tomb, usually the owner of the tomb will set up many traps and hidden weapons inside the tomb to prevent theft, so ordinary people who enter will be in great danger, either being shot by multiple crossbows or buried alive by quicksand.

  The day before yesterday, I took the guys there again. Using a special grave-digging "Kunlun hook", we inserted it into the ground about 5-6 meters deep and indeed hooked out brick fragments with a fishy smell.

  This time it can be said that nine out of ten are stable, although this is my first inverted fight. I have been practicing martial arts since childhood, and I don't need to mention long-distance travel. Even digging a thief's hole doesn't require much effort. Moreover, there are the secret techniques and equipment passed down by my father. If you encounter mechanisms and hidden weapons, you should be able to cope with them. As long as you enter the underground palace, light some candles, and take out the Ming device, that's it.

  With a happy heart, I strolled around for half a day and bought all the equipment. Then, carrying big bags and small bags, I drove Liu Shu's pickup truck onto the national highway.

  At the beginning of the road, I met a police officer who was checking for drugs. I felt a bit uneasy at first, but then I thought to myself that I wasn't a drug trafficker and there were no contraband goods in my car. So I just acted like an ordinary traveler, and I'm sure everything would be fine.

  Then I passed two checkpoints, and after driving for a few hours, I arrived at the hotel closest to the ancient tomb. By this time, it was already pitch black outside. I settled into my room, locked up my equipment in the car, and fell asleep as soon as I lay down on the bed.

  The next day, I shouldered a large travel bag and entered the mountain disguised as an angler.

  The mountain road was relatively flat in the first half, but it became rugged and difficult to walk as I went deeper. The dense forest was extremely dense, with some areas that could only be described as "blocking out the sky and covering the sun", and today was a cloudy day. As I walked through the mountains, I felt like the surroundings were gloomy and eerie, and couldn't help but quicken my pace.

  Before long, it suddenly started raining lightly in the sky. I didn't care, but some of my equipment couldn't get wet, so I quickly turned my backpack over and hugged it, then according to the route map drawn a few days ago, I ran towards a small village in the mountains. The original plan was also like this, we had to go to the village to have lunch first, and then we would have the energy to continue climbing the mountain.

  I've been to this village before, so it's not very unfamiliar. There is a hostel in the village that provides accommodation for passing tourists.

  It's called a reception room, but it's actually just a small wooden building with only four or five small rooms. When eating, we eat together with the boss and his family, and when sleeping, we go back to our own rooms to sleep.

  When I walked into the hostel, I saw the boss and his family eating. I had been here before, so they knew me too. Seeing me walk in, they called me over to eat together. I didn't hesitate, handed him two days' room fee, and sat down with them for lunch.

  The boss called his daughter to go and cook two more dishes, then asked me if I wanted wine. I shook my head and said no need, a full meal was enough.

  At this moment, my mind is filled with that ancient tomb, wondering if there will be zombies inside. In the past, I often heard my father talk about some secrets of zombies. Some people don't want to rot after death, so they go find a "nourishing land for corpses". Any corpse buried in the nourishing land won't rot even after thousands of years have passed. However, these non-rotting corpses are prone to zombie transformation. If a living person touches the corpse, a layer of fluffy stuff will grow on the corpse's skin. Then, the ancient corpse will suddenly sit up from the coffin, following the scent of the living person, pull them into the coffin and suck out their brain marrow.

  This kind of fluffy zombie is called "Xiong" in folklore, the one with white fur is called "White Xiong", and the one with black fur is called "Black Xiong". In the underworld, it's also known as "Big Zongzi".

  Thinking of these things, I couldn't help but think of us tomb raiders. It's said that among the techniques of grave robbing, there's a "questioning" method, also known as "treading on a plate", which means using excellent eloquence to quietly extract information about ancient tombs from local people without arousing suspicion. Since I've already decided to take up this profession, I might as well use all these skills to do it perfectly.

  When I had almost finished eating, I asked the boss in dialect: "Are there any legends about this place? I'm very interested in local culture."

  The boss is also a person who likes to talk, after listening to me ask, he thought for a moment and said: "If you want to say the most famous one, it should be the legend of San Yan Shen."