We finished work at 3:30 in the evening. Apart from the four iron bells from the Iron Buddha Temple Tower, we found nothing else in the Pear Tree Wasteland.
I put a lot of effort into backfilling and restoring the tomb, including the color of the surface soil, the position and depth of the tombstone, and I tried my best to restore it.
I wanted to prevent Bailash Qiong from seeing it. I knew what I did was disgraceful. If Bailash Qiong found out, none of my friends would have to do it.
The wages of avarice is death.
I am a tomb robber. I am a bad person, not a good person, but... I also want to make friends with others.
As mentioned before, the Second Cotton Factory will be on holiday until March, so Tian Sanjiu asked us to stay in the factory during the day to find the background location for the third photo that year.
Tian Sanjiu guessed that if he found the place, it would be either the Iron Buddha Temple or the Cast Iron Buddha. One of them should be hidden there.
Times are progressing and enterprises are developing.
Northwest China Cotton, from the first factory director Wang Xinggui in 1958 to the current factory director Chen, there have been countless changes in the process. Nearly 50 years have passed, and many places have changed drastically. If you look for some old employees who have retired Judging from the looks of it, they probably wouldn't recognize some places in Ermian either.
Large warehouse, small warehouse, cotton removal room, production room, material preparation room, finished product room, office, canteen, dormitory, equipment room, oil room, equipment room, parts warehouse... my legs are numb.
Many old houses were locked and the windows were opened so high that we couldn't get in. On the road, we occasionally met workers building sheds in the south factory area. People asked us what we did. Tian Sanjiu said we were from the branch company to inspect and asked who it was. The branch company, he said, was Daxing Dyeing and Weaving.
It's about one o'clock in the afternoon.
"Where are you?" Tian Sanjiu looked around while talking on the phone.
"It's not there. You turn left. As you go forward, you can see a broken tractor. We are here."
After waiting for more than ten minutes, a middle-aged man in his thirties came running quickly with a bag on his back.
"Hey, I'm sorry, Brother Tian, this fucking place is too big, I almost fainted."
Tian Sanjiu nodded: "Shunzi, have you received the money?"
"Copy that, brother, you're so polite." The man smiled.
"Stop talking nonsense, just follow us. As long as no one is around, open all locked factories, whether they are warehouses or whatever."
"No problem, brother," the man patted the backpack he was carrying and said with a smile that these locks are ordinary locks and it's a piece of cake.
The guy named Shunzi that Tian Sanjiu found is a professional thief with a large-scale organization. He can't open the lock of the factory. He is really awesome. I saw him just use a small wire to poke a bucket back and forth. It was an understatement to open.
It was also thanks to the fact that no one was around at the Second Cotton Factory during the holiday, otherwise I wouldn’t have dared to do this.
Three hours later.
Tian Sanjiu looked around, and after dozens of seconds, he looked down at the photo again.
"Shunzi, let's go. You know the rules."
The man nodded hurriedly: "Of course I know, Brother Tian, then I won't disturb you. If you need help, Brother Tian, please call me at any time."
After the unlocker left, Tian Sanjiu suddenly said: "Finally found it, it's here."
"Ah? How can you tell this?"
I turned to look around.
The place where we are standing now is a large warehouse. The room is densely packed with all kinds of debris and very dusty.
Among them, the largest piles are all kinds of old equipment and machines in the cotton factory. There are so many of them that you can’t count them at a glance. It is estimated that these are the inventories of the Ermian factory for decades.
Brother Yu also asked how you could tell?
Tian Sanjiu looked up at the roof, and said with burning eyes: "It's just a feeling. My feeling tells me that the thing is here, maybe underground." He looked down at his feet.
There was a solid cement floor under the feet. Tian Sanjiu asked Hongyan and Brother Yu to get things from the car.
After Brother Yu and Hongyan left, Tian Sanjiu and I were the only two people left in the warehouse.
It was almost evening at this time and the sun was setting. The warehouse windows were opened very high, and a ray of sunset shone through the windows, and some dust could be seen floating in the air.
Tian Sanjiu's eyes were shining brightly. He squatted down and gently rubbed the cement floor with his right hand, showing a faint smile on his lips.
This smile seemed familiar. He also smiled like this when he looked at Luo Jiashan in the wheelchair.
Brother Yu and Hongyan quickly came back with metal detectors, and they also took an oil-burning impact drill.
Use the detector close to the ground and scan it inch by inch.
"Didi...didi..."
The detector responded.
Brother Yu stretched out his hand and pulled the lead wire, then directly drilled the impact drill at the right location, drilling through the concrete floor with a click.
I didn't know if Tian Sanjiu was nervous too, but I saw him watching from the side, smoking non-stop.
The impact drill penetrated the ground, and after a few digs with a shovel, I hit something.
"What is it?" Tian Sanjiu threw away the cigarette butt and ran to look.
"Is it a large cast iron Buddha weighing several hundred pounds?"
"Is it the Great Tasha?"
When I saw clearly what I had dug, my face suddenly turned ugly.
Damn, it’s a rusty, rotten washbasin....
Tian Sanjiu kicked the basin away angrily and shouted: "Look! Keep looking! The thing is definitely here somewhere!"
After closing the warehouse door, from when the sun set until it was so dark that nothing could be seen, we used detectors to scan almost every inch of the concrete floor.
Nothing was found.
Except for the rotten washbasin dug up earlier, there was not even a hair on the concrete floor.
Veins popped up on Tian Sanjiu's forehead, and he kicked the equipment in anger.
"Um?"
He suddenly raised his eyebrows and frowned at the various old equipment and machines piled together.
"Wang Xiaoqin...Tang Xin...Bai Tingli..."
"Science Popularization Committee..."
Tian Sanjiu was stunned. He kept pacing back and forth, mumbling something.
"Snapped,"
He suddenly snapped his fingers, looked up at the roof and said: "I know... This used to be the second floor. Did you see the old blackboards piled in the west corner? Those were used by the science popularization committee for publicity. The blackboard is not underground...go, go to the roof."
After we came out of the warehouse, we didn't turn on the lights for fear of being caught using flashlights.
Looking up at the roof of the large warehouse, Tian Sanjiu looked at Brother Yu and said, "Go up and bring the rope down."
Brother Yu threw the rope he took from the car behind him. He stepped back more than ten meters and started running to speed up.
Pushing his feet on the wall, Brother Yu directly grabbed the mouth of the water pipe with his long wingspan.
A vertical pull-up, Brother Yu changed his hands and stepped on the water pipe with his feet, turned over and climbed up to the roof.
"Come up."
He dropped the coiled rope from the roof.
Red eyes grasped the rope tightly, relying on the strength of his hand, he pushed the wall with one hand and went up...
The same goes for Tian Sanjiu, but I can’t.
I pulled the rope and pushed my feet against the wall, my face turned red from suppressing it, my arms were almost exhausted, and I moved up bit by bit.
"hand....."
Huang Tianbao, with red eyes, lay on the roof and reached down.
As soon as I grabbed his hand, I suddenly felt a strong force coming from me. It was like I was on a rocket, soaring up.
Tian Sanjiu was right. There were a lot of old equipment piled up on the roof. Some of the equipment was familiar and some was not, such as dryers, looms, cleaning machines, velvet stripping machines, etc.
Tian Sanjiu walked quickly past these machines.
He finally stopped in front of a large cylinder.
This big cylinder is very similar to the thing on the front of the road roller. It was probably used for cotton picking in the early years. It was pushed by a machine and rolled around the cotton field to collect cotton.
I don’t know the scientific name of this machine, nor do I know how many years it has been on the roof of the warehouse.
Because cotton is picked, the large cylinder is hollow.
Tian Sanjiu took a step back and said, "Dabao, kick him away."
Red Eyes had to give orders.
"boom!"
"boom!"
Every time he kicked, I had the illusion that the whole roof was shaking.
"boom!"
Dust rose up, and one end of the big cylinder was kicked in by the red eyes.
Tian Sanjiu waved away the dust, turned on the flashlight and looked into the tube.
Brother Yu and I also leaned over and looked inside.
There was some black cotton in it, all rotten.
In the center, lying horizontally, there is a large iron bump with an upper circle and a lower bottom.
This thing....
It is the seventh floor of the Tiefo Temple Pagoda where Monk Yuetian of Linji Zong was buried in the 13th year of Zhengde in the Ming Dynasty.
The sky is round and the place is at the top of the tower.
