With his feet firmly planted on solid ground, Zhang Fan felt a bit better. The cave was only two meters high, and he could reach the top with his hand. The air was a bit chilly, with gusts of cold wind blowing.
The cave was very damp and smelled of rotting wood. The Qinglong Ravine was nearby; the tomb robbers' tunnel had damaged the rammed earth layer of the burial chamber, allowing groundwater to seep in and turning the underground area into a muddy mess.
In the center of the tomb chamber was a raised platform upon which a stone coffin was placed. The platform was 50 centimeters above the ground, keeping the stone coffin away from the dampness of the ground.
Zhang Fan reached out and touched the stone coffin. The surface was still relatively dry, indicating that the tomb robber's hole had only been dug recently, and the damp air from the infiltrated groundwater had not yet soaked into the surface of the stone coffin.
The smell of rotting wood came from the burial pits on the left and right sides. The simple wooden coffins had long since rotted away, and the pits were filled with black water. It was unclear whether the color was caused by the rotting wood or by the putrid liquid from the "salted fish" inside.
Zhang Fan approached the burial pit on the left, where seven coffins were placed side by side, their lids all opened. Judging from the openings, they had clearly been forcibly broken open, and the contents had been looted, leaving only a dark brown salted fish floating in the black water.
Zhang Fan frowned. He didn't dislike tomb raiders; after all, the dead can't take their things to the underworld. It was understandable for the living to take some burial goods to survive. He even quite enjoyed reading tomb raiding novels. However, this kind of disrespect for the dead was truly unforgivable.
Zhang Fan put his mask on tightly. The smell emanating from the coffin opening was unpleasant, and the tomb robber's hole was too narrow to ensure good air circulation inside the tomb.
This tomb is too small, less than 20 square meters in total. It cannot be a Tang Dynasty royal tomb. It is more likely just a funerary tomb for a minister or concubine of the Western Liang Dynasty.
The stone coffin on the high platform in the middle is clearly the tomb owner.
Want to open it and take a look?
Since we're already here...
Zhang Fan lit a candle in each of the four corners of the tomb chamber, then approached the stone coffin on the high platform.
The stone coffin is about half a meter wide and about 1.7 meters long. The lid is upturned at both ends and concave in the middle, making it look like a boat.
Boat-shaped coffins were very popular in Xiliang because they believed that people had to pass through the Yellow Springs after death to be reborn, and the boat-shaped coffin could help the deceased cross the Yellow Springs smoothly.
Judging from the size of the stone coffin, the tomb owner was likely a woman.
In the Western Liang Dynasty, women were respected, so the generals and ministers were naturally women. Moreover, considering that the Tang emperor was a male emperor, it would not be surprising if the concubines were women. Ultimately, we will have to open the door to find out.
Zhang Fan walked around the stone coffin and discovered that the coffin was actually carved from a single piece of large blue stone. He drew the dagger from his waist and inserted it into the gap between the coffin body and the lid. The two fit together perfectly, and the tip of the dagger could only go in halfway before it could not go any further. The tightness of this was too high!
Zhang Fan tried to push the coffin lid upwards and to the side, but it remained motionless.
Even if the coffin lid was made of metal, Zhang Fan was confident he could lift it. But if he couldn't lift it, it meant there might be some kind of hidden mechanism inside the coffin that locked the lid.
Zhang Fan brought the small kerosene lamp close to the coffin and carefully examined the patterns on it. The sides of the coffin were decorated with many images of horseback archery and soldiers in formation, suggesting that the person inside was undoubtedly a female general.
On one side of the coffin, Zhang Fan also found many scratches. These scratches were new and appeared to be marks left by some kind of metal tool.
It seems I'm not the only one who wants to open this stone coffin.
Zhang Fan majored in civil engineering in college. In addition to taking him to the deep mountains and fields for biological research, that professor also had another hobby: taking him to various construction sites for research.
However, they went to the construction site not to look at the buildings above ground, but at what was underground. When laying the foundation, they often unearthed all sorts of ancient tombs.
Well, in a sense, tombs are also a type of architecture, so the professor is not wrong.
The professor said that the craftsmen who built the imperial tombs were actually very clever. They knew that on the day the imperial tombs were completed, they would likely be the first people to be buried alive as sacrifices.
Because tomb raiding is something emperors never want to happen after their death, and they certainly don't want a group of people who know the structure of their tombs to exist after their demise.
Therefore, craftsmen would often secretly leave a secret passage in the imperial tomb that only they knew about, so that they could sneak out of the passage the moment the dragon-slaying stone was lowered.
The same principle applies to stone coffins; if there is a lock, there must be a key to unlock it.
Zhang Fan pressed the small kerosene lamp close to the stone coffin, not missing a single detail.
Finally, in a pattern of horseback archery, Zhang Fan discovered that the belt of the soldier carved in the pattern was empty.
It is a slit about half an inch long and less than one millimeter wide. The slit and the soldier pattern are perfectly integrated and cannot be seen at all unless you look very closely.
Hey! Zhang Fan smiled smugly, pulled out his dagger, inserted it into the crevice, and pushed it in forcefully.
Click!
A soft sound, like the sound of a pebble falling, could be heard very clearly in the quiet cave.
Zhang Fan smiled, stood up, took a deep breath, and rubbed his dry eyes.
The flickering candlelight in the four corners of the tomb chamber illuminated five black shadows on the surrounding tomb walls, making them appear as if they were alive.
Um?
Four candles, but why does it seem like there's an extra shadow?
Zhang Fan turned around, and a woman with long hair and dressed in white was standing at the entrance of the tunnel.
The woman's eyes were wide open like copper bells, and her hands, face, and hair were covered in yellow mud, as if she had crawled out of the mud.
“You…” Zhang Fan looked at the woman in white.
"Waaah, I'm so scared..." The woman in white's soft sobs echoed in the tomb.
"Why did you leave me... I'm cold... It's so cold here... Nobody's with me... I'm all alone..."
"..."
"Didn't I tell you to wait for me upstairs?" Zhang Fan said somewhat speechlessly as he took off his coat and draped it over the woman in white, wiping the yellow mud off her face.
"That incense stick burned out a long time ago!" Qiu Wanlan cried. "And since you wouldn't come up, I had no choice but to come down, boohoo..."
Zhang Fan felt a little guilty, realizing he had been so engrossed in the place that he had lost track of time. At the same time, he was also touched, feeling that it must have been difficult for a woman to come down to such a place.
Where is your hairpin?
"I don't know." Qiu Wanlan touched her disheveled hair. "Maybe it got rubbed off somewhere when I was climbing the cave."
“Since you’re already here, then do me a favor.” Zhang Fan pointed to the stone coffin on the high platform, “Help me open that lid.”
Only then did Qiu Wanlan see the stone coffin clearly, and she immediately jumped behind Zhang Fan like a rabbit, trembling with fear.
"You, you, why are you touching that thing?"
"Let's see what's inside." Zhang Fan walked forward, and Qiu Wanlan pulled his arm and walked behind him. "Although we know it can't be the Tang King inside, we still have to open it to see for ourselves, right? Otherwise, we'll have come all this way for nothing."
"What if it's a ghost?"
"What's there to be afraid of! Ghosts are dead people, and people are ghosts that aren't dead yet. It's not certain who's scarier!"
Zhang Fan placed his hand on the coffin lid: "I'm going to open it. Are you sure you don't want to look? This isn't a frequent opportunity."
Qiu Wanlan closed her eyes, buried her face in Zhang Fan's back, and kept shaking her head.
Zhang Fan took a deep breath, exerted force with his hands, and slowly pushed the coffin lid downwards.
Click, click, click—
With a sound of stones scraping together, the coffin lid was pushed open halfway, revealing the upper body of the person inside.
"How is it? Is there anything wrong?"
Qiu Wanlan squeezed her eyes shut, her voice trembling.
"Hey, it's actually quite beautiful," Zhang Fan said casually. "The deceased was a woman wearing a phoenix crown and a wedding dress. It's not as scary as you think."
Hearing Zhang Fan say that, Qiu Wanlan finally mustered up her courage, peeked half her head out from Zhang Fan's shoulder, and looked into the stone coffin.
Inside the stone coffin was a female corpse, as could be seen from her clothing. The corpse's skin was grayish-brown, clearly indicating that it had undergone preservation treatment. Although the body had long been dehydrated, the skin still appeared shiny, making the whole thing look like a skeleton covered in brown human skin.
Qiu Wanlan almost fainted after just one glance. If Zhang Fan hadn't caught her quickly, she would have collapsed to the ground.
"You call this beautiful?" Qiu Wanlan felt weak and sore in her limbs.
“How is it not beautiful? You haven’t seen anything uglier.” Zhang Fan put on gloves and poked the female corpse’s arm with his finger. The skin was still elastic. “It’s quite remarkable that it has been preserved to this extent after a thousand years.”
When Qiu Wanlan saw Zhang Fan's finger movements, she almost fainted again.
"Don't touch her," Qiu Wanlan said tremblingly. "That's not a phoenix-embroidered crown, it's the uniform of an imperial guard from the Tang Dynasty. This person must have been the Tang Emperor's personal guard during her lifetime, which is why she was buried here after her death."
"He wants people to be buried with him." Zhang Fan shook his head and said, "It seems that this Tang King wasn't a good emperor in his lifetime."
“You’re wrong. King Tang was a renowned wise ruler in the history of Western Liang,” Qiu Wanlan said. “It was also from King Tang onwards that the precedent of burying living people alive with the dead was completely abolished.”
“Then why…” Zhang Fan pointed to the coffin in front of him.
"King Tang was wise and virtuous, a great emperor for all time." Qiu Wanlan said with some longing. "After King Tang passed away, many court officials wanted to follow him, but they were all stopped by King Tang's last instructions."
"Some ministers and generals had chronic illnesses or had been bedridden for many years. Knowing that their lives were numbered, they were determined to die when the Tang Emperor went west. After bidding farewell to their families, they took medicine and committed suicide with the help of their loved ones. Only then were they able to be buried with the Tang Emperor's Mausoleum."
"I see." Zhang Fan understood somewhat. It's like someone with a terminal illness choosing euthanasia; you can't say it's wrong.
Perhaps for them, following the Tang emperor in death would be a greater relief than being tormented by illness.
Moreover, the emperor was male and his ministers were female. The Tang emperor only married one queen in his life. Who knows how many of them died for love?
"Come and lend a hand." Zhang Fan looked at the female corpse inside the coffin, which seemed to be covered by something. "One of you on each side, help me lift her up."
"..."
"This is impossible!" Qiu Wanlan thought Zhang Fan must be crazy. "I wouldn't touch a single hair on her head!"
"never mind."
Just as Qiu Wanlan breathed a sigh of relief, she saw Zhang Fan step directly into the coffin, his gloved hands supporting the female corpse's shoulders as he slowly lifted her up.
Cluck, cluck, cluck—
The female corpse made a sound of bones grinding together, and after a thousand years, her joints could still move.
The colorful ornaments on the rosary swayed, and Zhang Fan pushed the female corpse in the coffin to sit up with both hands.
Qiu Wanlan covered her face, too ashamed to look, but she still wanted to see. So she peeked through her fingers while still covering her face, and then she clearly saw and heard...
"Hooray..."
The female corpse let out a sigh.
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