"Moshan Taoist?"
Regarding this nickname, Pu Cheshi and Xiao Qi didn't have much feelings. At most, they felt that this nickname was too prestigious and not "elegant" enough. It was unlike ordinary Taoist priests who used plum, orchid, bamboo, and chrysanthemum as nicknames. . But these four words have another meaning to Yun Ming:
"Taoist Banshan? Is it a coincidence? Or... is the Zhuge Rong in front of me really the kind of country man who digs food in the fields?"
Yun Ming had this idea because he had read many supernatural stories about tomb robbing before traveling through time. He naturally knows about the four major sects of tomb robbers: Colonel Mojin, General Faqiu, Taoist Banshan and Xiling Lishi. Now that Zhuge Rong claimed to be a Taoist who moved mountains, Yun Ming immediately thought about that. However, he actually felt that this idea was too ridiculous, for no other reason than in this time and space, the traditional "profession" of tomb robbers was now dead in name only.
The demise of the tomb robbing business is inseparable from the Tinder War at the beginning of this century. At that time, the southern provinces of China were the front lines of the battlefield. There were many exchanges of fire between the Asian coalition forces and alien invaders. Naturally, it was impossible to carry out any tomb robbing activities south of the Yangtze River. Although the northern region was not directly affected by the war, this half of the country undertook almost all the tomb robbing activities. With the withdrawal of people and production materials from the south, the population density of the Central Plains region with many tombs has increased sharply, and there is no condition for tomb robbing operations.
To take a step back, what if the native masters stole the treasures and cultural relics in the tomb? There is simply no buyer who will take it over. In this troubled world where the end of mankind is imminent, who would have the heart to engage in literary entertainment? All they have to do is dump gold and other precious metals. Even in the ten years or so since the end of the War of the Fire, the global antique collecting world has been lackluster.
As a result, both the upper and lower reaches of the tomb robbing industry were wiped out by the Fire War that lasted for 23 years. Many practitioners died directly in the war, completely cutting off the inheritance. Most of the tomb robbing stunts, such as finding dragons and pointing holes, identifying tombs by listening to the soil, and selecting holes to explore, have not been passed down to the living, and there are almost no "high-end talents" left.
If the tomb robbing industry before the Fire War could still be regarded as a "mixed bag of good and bad", after the Fire War, only small fish and shrimps that could not get on the stage were left in the industry, with no skills or knowledge at all. , just because of his courage, he dared to dig up the graves of his ancestors. People like this are cannon fodder in the relationship. They will definitely be the first to die if something happens, and they won't make a difference.
So, today, has the tomb robbing industry revived? nor. Just like in our time, the promotion and application of mobile payment has made it impossible for pickpockets to steal wallets, because many people have not even used pen and paper for transactions in several years, and there is no way to steal. In this parallel universe, the "only remaining" tomb robbers have also faced the dimensionality reduction blow of technology.
Emerging science and technology are widely used in archaeological research, such as mountainside rangefinders that rely on sound wave reflection to locate tombs, extremely light-weight multi-legged mountain excavators, mini-drill boring machines that are only the size of an old Toole, and backpack archaeological Digging suit boxes and more. The tomb robbing industry, which was already stagnant, had no elites, and was declining, was completely over. After all, no matter how good the Luoyang shovel was in their hands, it couldn't be as efficient as the high-tech officials.
At the same time, since the establishment of the Federation, the overt suppression of antique trade at the government level has never stopped, whether in the private or underground markets. Due to the impact of the Fire War, a large number of cultural relics and monuments from various countries were destroyed by the war. From the perspective of the origin and continuation of human civilization, this was an extremely huge loss. The federation will not allow the antique industry to develop freely, causing possible secondary damage to it. Therefore, even the formal channel transactions in the entire industry are blocked by the government and are full of difficulties, let alone large-scale auctions. It is impossible for any antiques to be sold out.
By the way, antique
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The missing ecological niche of collections will inevitably be filled by another type of collection. Just like in our plane, telecommunications fraud represented by "pig-killing plates" is gradually replacing traditional theft, and "old objects collection" It is the rising star that is encroaching on the share of the collection world.
Old object collectors are a general term with a very broad connotation. Old books, old furniture, antiques, and some interesting old gadgets may all become their favorites. Or because of the devastation of the Fire War, some things that are not very old have become hot. Pu Che Shi and Bai Fei can be regarded as very typical collectors of old objects. The former prefers to collect backward information storage carriers such as film films and video tapes from the last century; the latter is keen on buying various ancient game consoles. and game cartridges, such as Nintendo's Famicom.
This market can be called a rising new business trend, and it has given birth to a new profession in the mid-21st century - pioneer. To put it bluntly, the work they do is a combination of scavenging and garbage sorting and recycling. The pioneers will deeply search the cities that were reduced to ruins during the war, and try their best to find valuable goods in the ruins. . When Yun Ming was working as a mercenary, he received such orders. Most of the work involved escorting transportation or searching for special items.
"You seem to know what this nickname represents?" Zhuge Rong's eyes were always locked on Yun Ming and never left. Therefore, even the subtle changes in the latter's expression could not escape his eyes.
Yun Ming thought about it and decided to tell the truth: "Well... yes, in my original world, "Moshan Taoist" refers to a school in the world of tomb robbers."
"The original world?"
"I am a time traveler. There was no Fire War in the plane I was in, and I passed the turn of the century smoothly. I traveled through time six years ago, and that year was 2019."
"Oh..." Zhuge Rong smiled noncommittally: "I see, then it's not surprising that you know the meaning of the so-called Taoist who moved mountains."
"There are two reasons why I gave myself this nickname. One is my spiritual creation - the scroll of mountains and seas." A scroll about half a meter wide with mountains, rivers, mountain shapes and water potentials painted on the back. In response, Zhuge Rong held it in his hand: "You can think of it as a children's drawing board. You can erase it as soon as you write, and the mountains and peaks drawn on this scroll will become real things. The time of existence depends on the object. Depends on size and detail.”
"To put it simply, this is a real-life version of the story of Ma Liang, the magic pen, but it will only work if the content depicted is scenery such as mountains, rocks, rivers and lakes."
After calling out the mountain and sea scroll and showing it, Zhuge Rong shook his hands and recalled it. The focus of his speech was on the second half of his speech: "From a certain perspective, I do have the ability to move mountains, but I choose to move mountains." The nickname Taoist has another meaning."
"Mr. Yun, you are right. I am indeed a descendant of the Qishan lineage. Not many people know about this matter, even within the Renaissance organization."
Puche's attendant didn't believe it: "It's all these years, but there are still people robbing tombs?"
"Haha, Mr. Pu, this statement is incorrect." Zhuge Rong corrected him: "I only said that I was a descendant of the Bishan lineage, but I never said that I was a tomb robber."
Xiao Qi pondered the implication: "Mr. Zhuge, are you saying that you have theory but no practical experience?"
"good."
"Mr. Zhuge," Yun Ming was eager to get the topic back on track: "Please tell me frankly, why do you want to ask me about my sleep quality?"
"Well...Mr. Yun, since you already know that I have some ability in dealing with mysterious and ghostly things, why would I say this?
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You must also know this in your mind. Mr. Yun, how have you been sleeping recently? Is it really as peaceful as you said? "
"What a great Zhuge Rong, not only do you cosplay as a Taoist priest, but the tone of your speech is exactly the same." Yun Ming was already scolding in his heart: "Because the secret cannot be leaked, so you just pretend to be the Riddler here."
Yun Ming has long heard of stories about fake magicians who deceive people out of their money. Their routine is nothing more than using ambiguous words to coax the victim into revealing information, and then using this to intimidate the victim to make the victim pay out of his own pocket. , euphemistically called destroying wealth and eliminating disaster. This set of procedures is a relatively low-level chat technique, and can be used or countered with a little knowledge of psychology.
For example, many fortune-telling stall owners have a classic opening line - "You must have encountered some difficulties recently, right?" Isn't this nonsense? Who has a smooth life and has nothing to do to tell fortunes?
According to Yun Ming's estimation, the Zhuge Rong in front of him may indeed have some truth. The confession is probably not a lie. It's just that when talking about "that aspect", it has to be more or less convoluted and obscure. a little.
After thinking for a while, Yun Ming launched a counter-test: "Since you think there is something wrong with me, you must have seen something, so... can you open your eyes?"
As expected, Zhuge Rong took the bait. He hesitated for a moment and replied: "No, I don't think it can be called opening the sky. After all, I can only see very blurry, almost illusory floating shadows. This level of spirituality The visual ability may not be as good as that of a few newborn babies.”
Pu Cheshi interrupted: "You mean, babies and toddlers can see certain dirty things as soon as they are born?"
"Of course not everyone is born with this ability. A small number of people are indeed born with spiritual vision, and most of these people will automatically lose it when they grow up to be children." Zhuge Rong pointed. Self: "The probability of someone like me who can retain the ability of psychic vision until adulthood is extremely small, almost one in ten million."
"In fact, my master saw that I had this skill, so he decided to lead me into the industry and teach me the art of divination related to tomb robbing. There are specialties in the art, and my strengths lie in finding dragon acupoints and Feng Shui fortune telling. , but I don’t know anything about earthwork such as digging a hole.”
"Okay, then Mr. Zhuge, I think you must have seen something in me before you took the initiative to talk to us, right?" Yun Ming launched a direct attack, and he vaguely guessed what Zhuge Rong had in his eyes. What exactly is the thing you see?
Zhuge Rong replied briefly: "Yes."
"ghost?"
"I'm not sure. Because in my eyes, it's just a faint, gray-black smoke, without a human shape. It's even more impossible for me to describe its appearance."
Hearing this, Xiao Qi moved his chair slightly away from Yun Ming, while Pu Chai Shi said in a very righteous manner: "What's the matter? Yun Ming used to be a mercenary, killing people like crazy, and he was killed several times. It’s normal for an unjust ghost to target you and seek your life.”
"I really appreciate you speaking for me..." Yun Ming said weakly with gratitude.
"If it's really that simple, I wouldn't be surprised." Zhuge Rong shook his head decisively: "There are many combatants in the revival organization who went into battle to participate in the fight, and behind their colleagues stood a few souls who refused to reincarnate. I was in that scene. I’m used to it.”
"But Mr. Yun, your current situation is different."
Yun Ming felt a little nervous under Zhuge Rong's gaze. Although he had already expected it, he swallowed his saliva subconsciously and asked slowly: "What's different?"
"This phenomenon of yours is called by people on the Tao - two souls in one body."
(End of chapter)
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