Chapter 2: The Wordless Secret Manual

  Leng Jiangbo hurried back to the Jiangyue Mountain Villa, ordering people to quickly close the villa gate tightly, fearing that the ghost would find his way to the villa. To say that he was still half-believing and half-doubting before, but this time, he really believed that he had seen a ghost. He came to his own room, scared stiff, not daring to lie down or sit down to rest, pacing back and forth in the room, sometimes mistaking the black shadow cast by the candlelight on the wall for a ghost...

  The recent failures have made him both fearful and annoyed. If this continues, the livelihood of so many people will be at stake, not to mention getting rich. And his own leather goods business was originally just for show, making money is like an old lady with bound feet walking - too slow! It's hopeless.

  He suddenly thought of one of his books and couldn't help but take it out again, carefully pondering...

  This is a wordless book, more than ten years ago, he stole it from his master. His master's name was Zhou Renshan, a well-known grave robber. He had two apprentices, one was his son Zhou Shiming, and the other was him - Leng Jiangbo. The old man wrote a book with his lifelong experience of robbing graves, called "Ancient Tomb Secrets". The contents of the book include methods for identifying various ancient tombs, ways to crack them, etc., and also gathered drawings of the main royal family tombs throughout history. And until his death, the old man never went to excavate these precious tombs.

  I remember that year, the master's body was getting weaker and weaker, and it seemed that he would not be able to hold on for much longer. In order to prevent the book that the master had spent his entire life writing from falling into the hands of his fellow disciples or others, he decided to take matters into his own hands. After a long period of observation, he found out where the master had hidden the book and stole it, taking possession of it for himself. However, upon getting the book, he discovered that it was a blank book. He knew that there must be secrets hidden within the book, but the master had made the contents invisible. For many years since then, he tried various methods to decipher the secrets of the book, but no matter what he did, he could not make the contents appear.

  He put water, kerosene, candle oil, wine and various soup on the paper of ancient books, but nothing ever appeared on the paper. In order not to damage the ancient books, he didn't dare to make any drastic actions. Like this, more than a decade passed, and he still didn't know what was in the book.

  He opened a page of paper and held it up to the light. How could the contents of the book be made visible? This was really frustrating him. If this continued, wouldn't it become a dead book? What would be the point of that? He couldn't help but sigh deeply, and accidentally, the candle burned a small hole in the book. He hastily blew on it with his mouth, afraid of burning the book. Fortunately, only a small hole was burned, he comforted himself. At this moment, he suddenly discovered that around the small burnt hole, words were faintly visible. He was overjoyed, finally, there were words appearing! Was this the way to make the book show its text? He lightly heated each page of paper in the lamp light. Indeed, after a while, all the text on the page appeared. The problem that had troubled him for many years finally surfaced.

  Everyone knows that there are many ways to write invisible characters. I believe many people have seen or played with so-called "invisible ink" since childhood. At that time, you must have felt quite curious, and even if you were told the reason, you couldn't really understand it. However, after we learned natural sciences, physics, chemistry, etc., we can suddenly realize the principle of invisible ink. In fact, the principle of invisible ink at that time is very simple, it just uses the color change of acid-base indicators in acidic or alkaline solutions. Apart from applying the acid-base neutralization principle in chemical changes, other chemical reactions such as precipitation reaction, oxidation-reduction reaction, complex ion formation and catalytic reaction can also be used to prepare invisible ink.

  Many times when writing invisible ink, various reagents are needed and finding materials is very troublesome. In fact, there are also many simple methods, and the materials are easy to find.

  Lemon Juice Method

  Materials: Fresh lemon juice, pen, paper.

  Mix the lemon juice with water and fill it into a pen, write on the paper, dry in the air, then put under a desk lamp to reveal.

  Materials: dilute starch solution, iodine, paper, pen. Write with a pen dipped in the dilute starch solution, let it dry, then lightly brush with iodine, and the characters will appear.

  Materials: pure milk, pen, paper, water. Write with a pen dipped in pure milk, and when you look at it, put the paper in water to see the words.

  Materials: a piece of glass or mirror, a soft pen, water, two sheets of not too thick paper. Put one sheet of paper into the water to soak it thoroughly and lay it flat on the glass, then put another dry sheet of paper on top. Use a soft pen to write on the dry paper, then lift off the dry paper. After the soaked paper is air-dried and placed in the water, the words will appear.

  Leng Jiangbo's master, Zhou Renshan, used the "lemon juice method". However, in ancient times, there were too few people who knew about this aspect, so Leng Jiangbo spent over a decade studying it painstakingly before inadvertently cracking the "secret".

  Leng Jiangbo jumped up from his chair excitedly and shouted loudly: "It's showing, it's showing..."

  He picked up the book and read it carefully by the light of the lamp, forgetting all his fatigue and the fright he had just experienced.

  The rooster outside the window crowed, he knew a new day had begun. This new day might be the turning point of his fate. He shouted loudly towards the door: "Someone, someone, where have you all gone?" A subordinate heard the shout and rushed in through the broken door.

  "What instructions does the master have?"

  "Go and gather everyone together, I want to give a lecture upstairs."

  "Yes! But..."

  "But what?"

  "Big boss, isn't it still early? I was busy all night and I'm still sleeping?"

  "You didn't hear what I said, go quickly..."

  "Yes!" His subordinate replied and withdrew.

  The people under him had no idea what was going on, some closed their eyes and walked away, some yawned, others muttered to themselves... In short, they were all extremely unhappy about being disturbed from their good dreams.

  Leng Jiangbo sat slanted on the tiger skin chair, his eyebrows dancing with excitement. "Brothers, it's so early, I've called everyone up for something good. While the sky hasn't fully brightened, let's split up and do one more task. This time, success is guaranteed."

  He hadn't finished speaking when the two little ones who had followed him last night started shouting, "Master of the house, we haven't even put our gallbladders back in our bellies yet!"

  "Hahaha... Alright you two little rascals, then you can stay behind and sleep well. First put that thing back in your dog belly, hahaha..."

  Everyone burst out laughing too.

  He decided to start by verifying a few Song Dynasty tombs. He personally led a group of people to dig up the most recent Song Dynasty tomb, with two masters responsible for the other two tombs. So everyone set off in different directions...

  He led more than a dozen people, and in one breath, they rushed for over thirty miles to a place called Wulitun. According to the secret book, he measured the direction, found the entrance of the tomb, and ordered them to start digging. The Luoyang shovels danced in the air, but all that came out was undisturbed soil.

  "It doesn't seem like there's an ancient tomb underneath, sir." The subordinate reported.

  "Try around." He ordered a deeper probe around.

  It was still virgin soil. He grew impatient and ordered the formal excavation to begin. But after digging for a while, the two men had not yet reached the expected depth, let alone the entrance to the tomb.

  "Could it be that what's written in the ancient books is wrong?" he thought to himself, "No way?"

  "Dig a bigger hole. You few dig in those several places." He instructed, pointing to the place where he had just tried digging.

  A group of people were exhausted and drenched in sweat, but still had nothing to show for it. He could only return to the mountain villa with a sullen face, waiting for news from the other two groups.

  By the time it was late afternoon, Er Dangjia and San Dangjia led their men back one after another, all of them with their heads hung low in dejection. One was an ordinary grave, inside which there were only a few copper coins. The other was an empty grave, where no one had been buried yet.

  Leng Jiangbo was so angry that he shouted loudly. He slammed the book to the ground and yelled "I've been cheated, I've been cheated..." He sat paralyzed in his chair. The secret recipe he had spent over a decade pondering turned out to be a fake book. "Master, master, is this how you treat your disciple? You must have left the real recipe for him..." Leng Jiangbo muttered in disappointment.