Tang Ren was squatting under a pomegranate tree chewing a meat dumpling when a sudden explosion sounded from the northern foot of Mount Lu. Qin Feng's hand shook as he held up the telescope, and half of the dumpling fell into the pit, startling a few black-winged night crows.
"There's a crack in the earth over there!" Qin Feng pulled Tang Ren by the collar and dragged him up the hillside. Under the moonlight, a half-broken bronze crossbow was exposed between the newly turned loess, and a piece of faded silk was stuck in the arrow groove - with the seal script "匠" embroidered on it.
The tomb keeper, Lao Zhou, came running with a kerosene lamp. When the light passed over the bottom of the pit, he suddenly froze: "The soil is mixed with cinnabar... It's the anti-theft layer of the Qin Mausoleum!" His rubber shoes kicked over a pottery jar. The bottom of the jar was stained with fresh wax and had a faint "Q" mark on it.
Tang Ren suddenly pointed to the west: "Look! Someone is running!" Where the black shadow flashed by, a half-worn cowhide map was hanging on a pine branch, with ink marks winding like a coiled dragon.
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In the old pottery workshop in Lintong, Qin Feng used a brush to sweep away the dust on the pottery mold. The word "Palace" should have been engraved on the bottom of the pottery figurine, but it was changed to "Prisoner" by a sharp tool. Su Chen opened the head of the pottery figurine and a bundle of bamboo slips fell out of the interlayer. The ink was not yet dry and the seal script read: "At 3:00 pm, the dragon head appeared."
"This piece of bamboo is newly cut!" Lao Zhou sniffed the broken surface, "Someone is pretending to be a Qin Terracotta Warrior craftsman to deliver a message." Tang Ren suddenly knocked over the paint rack, and ochre powder spilled on the ground, revealing messy footprints - size 42 rubber-soled shoes with patches on the heels.
Following the red soil to the back alley, Qin Feng dug out half a train ticket from the crack in the wall: Xi'an to Xianyang, the ticket stub date was the birthday of Qin Shi Huang. The ticket had the Big Dipper painted in cinnabar, and a copper-green Qin Banliang coin was nailed to the center of the celestial pole.
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Wild dogs in Yuchi Village barked wildly in the middle of the night. Tang Ren stepped deep and shallow in the rice fields. Qin Feng suddenly grabbed him and said, "Look at the canal!" The floating river lights were arranged in the shape of the Big Dipper, and the wicks were burning with strange green flames.
Old Zhou used a shovel to open the straw stack, revealing a wooden box that had been soaked by rain. Inside the box were ninety-nine ceramic eyeballs, with tiny seal characters engraved in the pupils. Su Chen used a magnifying glass to take a closer look: "These are spare eyeballs from the Terracotta Warriors of the Qin Mausoleum... They should be locked up in the cultural relic warehouse!"
"There's light over there!" Tang Ren suddenly jumped into the reed cave. The three men in black were shining a fluorescent light on the cave thieves, carrying a long object wrapped in waterproof packaging deeper into the cave. Qin Feng felt the shovel marks on the cave wall - the fresh soil shoveled by Luoyang was mixed with mercury beads.
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At five o'clock in the morning, dew wet his clothes. Qin Feng counted the rammed earth layers of the burial mound: "The ninth layer shows traces of a stolen hole backfilled... This is the technique of an expert." Tang Ren's Luoyang shovel suddenly hit a hard object, and what he pulled up was not mud, but half of a bronze scabbard.
Old Zhou used the flashlight to scan the pattern on the sword sheath: "Wrong gold and silver cloud pattern... This is a Qin general's burial object!" Inside the sheath was a piece of yellowed rice paper with the words "Whoever opens the coffin will be punished by heaven" written in blood. Su Chen shone the purple light on the paper, and the floor plan of Xianyang Palace appeared on the back of the paper, with a red pen circled "Magnet Gate" somewhere.
Suddenly, there was a muffled sound from the ground, and the soil beneath Tang Ren's feet collapsed. When he fell into a three-meter-deep pit, he felt a body that still had body temperature - the right hand tightly grasped the crane-billed hoe, and the other hand grasped half of the tiger talisman.
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At the end of the cave, a huge magnet door glowed dimly. The keychain in Tang Ren's arms was suddenly sucked onto the door, making a clanging sound to form the Big Dipper pattern. Qin Feng held the tiger talisman against the Tianxuan position, and a dark red liquid seeped through the cracks of the door - a mixture of cinnabar and mercury, a secret medicine from the Qin Dynasty.
"Behind this door is the Mercury River!" Old Zhou's voice trembled, "The Records of the Grand Historian records..." Before he finished speaking, the stone door burst open. The fishy wind wrapped in silver mist blew in his face, and through the mist, a floating bridge could be vaguely seen, with the seal script "One Hundred Steps, Nine Turns" engraved on the bridge planks.
Tang Ren had just taken a step when Su Chen pulled him back. The stone beast at the bridge head spewed out a bronze crossbow arrow from its mouth, which was deeply embedded in the rock wall. The arrow feathers were tied with a silk book: "One misstep leads to regret."
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The floating bridge swayed under his feet, and Qin Feng's flashlight illuminated a horrifying scene: several modern corpses were floating on the surface of the Mercury River, with swollen faces showing a poisonous dark purple. Tang Ren's rubber shoes were accidentally stained with mercury, and the soles of his shoes were instantly corroded and holes appeared.
"Look up!" Su Chen's beam of light swept across the cave ceiling, and the inverted stalactites were arranged in a 28-star constellation diagram. Lao Zhou suddenly coughed uncontrollably, and black blood seeped from his fingertips: "The air... the air is poisonous..."
Qin Feng tore off his clothes and covered his nose with wet water. He found a copper box on the waist of the corpse. Inside the box, there was a sheepskin scroll with a cross-section of the underground palace, with a mark of "Nine Cauldrons Returning Place" and blood writing next to it: "Sinuoliu". Tang Ren suddenly pointed to the center of the river: "Is that a coffin?!"
Mercury swirled, and the black lacquer coffin loomed. The coffin lid cracked, and what stretched out was not a corpse's hand, but a steel crossbow flashing with cold light.
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After passing through the heavy machine, everyone sat paralyzed in front of the main tomb. Nine bronze tripods were arranged in a circle, and four of the tripod ears were missing. Qin Feng touched the belly of the tripod and saw the cloud and thunder pattern: "The "Biography" records that Yu cast nine tripods, and after Qin destroyed Zhou, the tripods were moved here..."
"Stop being so pretentious!" Tang Ren threw the four tripod ears on the ground, "I just picked them up from the pile of corpses!" Old Zhou suddenly twitched and fell to the ground, with the bronze plate with the letter Q slipping out of his sleeve. Qin Feng suddenly realized: "You are the traitor of the guarding family!"
In the chaos, Tang Ren smashed the tripod ears against the magnet door. In the sound of bronze resonance, the star map on the tomb suddenly turned. Sinuo's paper crane flew through the flying dust and landed on the coffin of the First Emperor. The bloody words written on the crane's wings were shocking: "The mountain is just the beginning."
(The case of "The Mystery of the Mausoleum of the First Qin Emperor" is temporarily closed, the fragments of the Nine Cauldrons point to Kunlun Mountain, and the ultimate mystery of the Shang Mythology is about to unfold)