In the cold winter of that year, when we opened the stone door of the underground palace and entered, slowly moving our flashlights, we were all shocked by the scene in front of us.
What is the purpose of archeology? Just to finally discover these secrets that have been hidden underground for thousands of years.
Dou Sprout looked up at the huge bronze bird sculpture in front of him, his mouth wide enough to swallow a whole egg.
A pair of bronze sacred bird statues with a height of 1.5 meters stand on the stone platform. The wings of the bronze birds are spread out and their heads are lowered. They seem to be about to fly, and they also seem to be waiting for their master to ride on and go to the bliss of the west together.
Behind the bronze bird is a huge granite coffin bed. The whole body of the coffin bed is carved with nine majestic five-clawed golden dragons. The nine dragons' bodies are intertwined, their whiskers are fluttering, and the dragon's head is raised high on the front, with its eyes glaring upward.
Nine is the ultimate number, dragon with five claws is the honor, nine and five are the honor...
The flashlight moved and his eyes moved to the coffin bed, and he suddenly saw a strange coffin!
The coffin is more than two meters long. When I first saw it, I thought it was made of jade... When I turned on the flashlight, a faint green light was reflected from the whole body. This green color was like water, flowing slowly on the coffin.
I had never seen this scene before, and my attention was immediately attracted.
What is this?
Jade coffin?
Impossible... No coffin made of pure jade has ever been found in history.
After two minutes, I raised my head and took two deep breaths, and then I heard him say: "Come forward and take a look."
Just a few steps away, when we got closer, Dou Sprout's entire face was reflected in green.
The faces of Brother Yu and Xiaoxuan were the same. I stretched out my hand to see that it was also half green.
I turned off the flashlight and the green color was gone.
When I turned on the flashlight, it appeared again, indicating that it was caused by reflection.
Douyazai swallowed, stared and shouted: "Oh my god! What kind of coffin is this! Is it an emerald coffin!? Why is it like this!"
Dou Sprout excitedly shook my arm: "We're getting rich! We're going to get rich, Fengzi!"
It is taboo to shout in a tomb, especially shouting in front of people's faces. I said to Dou Sprout: "Don't shout, keep your fucking voice down."
He stared at the coffin for a long time and said solemnly: "This is not a coffin made of pure jade, this is a nail coffin."
After saying that, he hooked his head on the coffin with his fingers. Unexpectedly, a piece of jade was lifted up.
The inner layer of this thing is made of wood, and the surface layer is like fish scales. It is covered with high-quality jade flakes, and then a large number of special thin nails, which people in the industry call "bubble nails", are polished smooth. The wooden coffin is covered with jade pieces.
I knew at that time that only two such bubble-nailed coffins had been unearthed in China. One was excavated from a Chu tomb in Shizishan, and the other was excavated from a Han tomb in Mancheng. Later, in 2009, a similar one was excavated in Dayun Mountain, Jiangsu.
This kind of jade coffin with bubble nails is extremely rare, even rarer than jade clothes with gold threads! Non-emperors cannot enjoy it.
Now, the identity of the tomb owner is about to come out.
The last emperor Li Xian.
Once we open the coffin and see a male corpse lying there, the history books may need to be rewritten. Li Xian lived in the Xixia period. Why did he use this kind of burial equipment that was popular in the Han Dynasty? After thinking about it, there is only one reasonable understanding.
Anticorrosion.
Ancient people believed that lying in this kind of jade coffin would keep the body incorruptible forever. There is also the bronze bird I just saw. The polishing process is exactly the same as the large bronze bull excavated by the archaeological team in the imperial tomb area of Ningxia in the last century. My hand felt cold when I touched the coffin. This is a characteristic of natural jade.
The level of the tomb owner was too high, and for the first time, I felt scared.
"Open...have you started?"
Having been accustomed to big scenes in his first life, he immediately said calmly: "Wen Bin, you and Yunfeng drive together, and everyone else stays away."
The jade coffin was of the chute type without nails. Brother Yu and I looked at each other and pushed open the coffin lid.
When I looked down, I saw that all I could see were burial objects.
All kinds of exquisite funerary objects and wooden utensils! gold! Jade! porcelain! lacquerware! wait wait wait! Burial objects filled every corner of the jade coffin!
Instead of seeing Li Xian's corpse, he saw a wooden figurine about 1.6 meters tall.
No, it shouldn’t be called wooden figurines! It should be called Puppet!
This thing is made of cypress wood and is brown in color. It looks like it has been painted with a layer of tung oil on the surface. It is the same size as an adult, with complete limbs and movable joints. The puppet's face is painted with black and red paint to depict lifelike facial features. .
The most bizarre thing is that the puppet's belly is made into a small door that can be opened and closed, just like a wardrobe.
Dou Yazai said with a look of disbelief: "Hey, why is there a wooden man lying in the coffin? Fengzi, where is the body? Where are the bones?"
I said I didn't know, and asked the boss what it meant.
He sighed for no reason, frowned and said: "I didn't expect it...I didn't expect...the tomb owner actually chose to be cremated in the end. Yunfeng, this kind of wooden man was called a true-face doll in our industry in the past. It's very strange." It’s a rare sight. It was briefly popular during the Liao and Jin Dynasties. Generally, only devout Buddhists would choose to use this kind of thing after death. The small door on the belly of the wooden figure can be opened, and the ashes wrapped in linen are most likely to be placed inside.”
"Ah?! Boss, so Li Xian was cremated?"
He nodded his head and said it was very possible.
After hearing this, I boldly opened the small door on the wooden man's belly, put my hand in, and felt that I touched a large ball of rotten linen. When I took it out, I saw that it was really yellow-brown ashes and lumps of ashes. There was no special smell, only a faint smell. The scent of cedar wood.
The head said: "Don't stare at it. This thing is unlucky. If you touch this thing in the past, you have to wash your hands with chicken blood. Pack your things quickly and pick something valuable."
Douyazai and I took out the real-looking doll and threw it aside. We immediately found the sack and put whatever we found in the coffin into it. When it was full, we sealed it and replaced it with a new sack!
There are so many types of funerary items that I don’t even have time to look at them one by one. Anyway, all kinds of items can be sold for money.
Four full sacks!
Not only are there in the coffin, but there are also many niches dug in around the walls of the tomb. There are also a dazzling array of funerary objects and various bowls in the niches! plate! dish! pottery figurine! Flask and more!
I have been searching hard for more than half a year in Kangding, just for this day!
The leader immediately ordered that all the things in the backpack that were not needed for the time being be thrown away to make room for the burial objects. The jade pieces on the nail coffin were also pried off by Dou Sprout with a knife and put into the bag. The copper bird is too big and heavy! There's no other way, you really can't move it?
We didn't feel tired, and we moved out one trip after another.
I said I didn’t want the real puppet, but Douyazai insisted. He twisted off the puppet’s head and legs and stuffed them into his bag. He tied the puppet’s body tightly with a rope and carried it behind his back. He said he would take it out and assemble it in exchange for money.
...
It was around 9 a.m. on a dirt hillside.
Brother Yu ran over quickly, and then he heard a muffled boom behind him, which was the order from his head to blow up the thief's cave.
There was a pile of sacks under the tree.
I sat on one of the sacks and smoked. I couldn't hold the cigarette steady because my hands were shaking.
