The term "porcelain chamber" used by the middle-aged man, also known as "solid chamber," refers to a tomb chamber that has collapsed.
Old Song sighed and looked at me helplessly: "We dug tunnels into Sui and Tang tombs, dug pits into Ming and Qing tombs, and after the Han Dynasty, we looked at our ancestors. It seems our ancestors didn't bless us two brothers today!"
"The feng shui of our location is only average. It's already good enough that we were able to find a tomb. The collapse was to be expected."
I wasn't surprised by this, and looked at the middle-aged man: "Is the bottom a dry chamber (original tomb)?"
"There are pottery fragments in the soil, so the item should still be there."
The middle-aged man paused for a moment: "But we're only paid for digging up the earth, not for cleaning the burial chamber (clearing the collapsed tomb and searching for treasure). If you want us to continue working, the price will be different."
“Friend, there’s no such rule in the underworld, is there?” Old Man Song squinted at the middle-aged man. “We agreed on a quick and easy deal. You help me find the item, and I’ll pay you 300,000. We haven’t even seen the item yet. It’s not right for you to ask for a higher price right now.”
The middle-aged man spread his hands: "Boss, we earn our money through hard work. If we want to retrieve something from inside the porcelain chamber, we have to risk a collapse. The soil hasn't been moved yet. If you think our price is unreasonable, we can just part ways. That's not extortion, is it?"
Seeing the middle-aged man's expression, I knew he absolutely wouldn't work unless we raised the price, so I interrupted their conversation: "How much money do you need to continue working?"
"An extra 100,000 per person, that's just for cleaning the body. If any of our men are buried underneath, we'll add 50 for each life." The middle-aged man, seeing that I was not old, thought I was just asking around and kept looking at Song Laosan: "That's the rule in the underworld."
I nodded: "Okay, we'll pay for it. Let's get started!"
The middle-aged man looked at me with surprise: "Boss, can he make this decision?"
"You're mistaken, he's the owner." Song Laosan paused for a moment, then said, "Xiao Duan, do you think we still need to open the altar?"
"No need!"
I thought about it for a moment, then waved my hand in refusal, simply lighting seven cigarettes and arranging them in two places: "Let's break ground."
My purpose in coming here to rob the tomb today is to take away all the burial objects. This has already broken the rules of the four gates. If I were to hold an altar to worship, it would be easy for the digging team to see through my secret. So I just did a simplified worship.
While the drilling team was working, I said to Song Laosan, "After the tunnel is opened, you guys stay up here. I have to go down and follow them in case they try anything funny."
"Hammer job" is one of the earliest ways insiders ripped off bosses. They would hire desperate people to dig tunnels, then smash them to death inside the tunnels with a hammer, and then come up to the boss demanding compensation.
Originally, Qinghuai said that all expenses for tonight would be covered by the Qing family, but Song Laosan and I refused, because if we spent their money, it would be equivalent to being employed by the Qing family, and it would be difficult to extricate ourselves from the situation later.
Therefore, the cost of hiring these people was shared by me and Song Laosan.
I was a novice, and Song Laosan had only recently returned to China. We all had very limited funds, so every penny had to be spent wisely.
If you are really scammed, you will not only be involved in a murder case, but you will also have to spend a lot of money unnecessarily.
"Let's go down together." Old Song handed over a cigarette: "The Qing family has already placed their bets on us. The people of Qinghuai are trustworthy. If you go down by yourself, and those people have bad intentions, it will only cause trouble."
The three members of the drilling team worked for several hours to drill a hole 50 centimeters in diameter in the ground and lowered the rope down. The rest of us then began to help by removing soil from the hole.
When the soil on top was almost forming a mound, the middle-aged man finally climbed up and handed me a shard of pottery: "We should be where the tomb is now, but the area below has completely collapsed. Whether we can find anything depends entirely on luck."
I took the pottery shard and examined it. I sighed and said, "Judging from the shape of this shard, it should be a pottery vessel. The scale of this tomb is smaller than I imagined. Western Zhou tombs are mainly divided into several types: double-passage tombs, single-passage tombs, earthen pit tombs, and cave tombs. This should be an earthen pit tomb, so the tomb owner was not of high status."
Ever since the trip to India with me, Monkey has been cramming on history. He leaned over and asked, "Young Master Duan, how did you determine the age of the tomb based on just a piece of pottery?"
"The burial goods in Western Zhou tombs mainly include pottery, bronze ritual vessels, weapons, chariot and horse fittings, jade ornaments, proto-porcelain, and lacquerware. Large and medium-sized tombs have rich burial goods. In addition to human sacrifice, they are also accompanied by exquisite bronze ritual vessels. The vessels are diverse in shape, but they are basically centered around the ding (a type of ancient Chinese cooking vessel). The number of ding also indicates the status of the tomb owner."
I gestured to the pottery shard in my hand: "This pottery shard is exquisite and has patterns and inscriptions. If it was a daily item of the tomb owner during his lifetime, he must have been of very high status. The tomb area would not be as small as the circled area, so this was a specially prepared burial item."
The middle-aged man nodded in deep agreement: "That's right. As we dug down, we found that the collapse below was more serious than we expected. Even small items like pottery zun were crushed. We probably won't find any decent funerary objects. You see..."
"Keep digging!"
I weighed the broken pottery shard in my hand: "This is exactly what I want. I must take all the pottery shards that have been excavated here."
"Keep working, bring up all the pottery and shards inside!"
When the middle-aged man heard that I was going to keep digging, he shouted angrily at his companion. When I got to the entrance of the cave, I heard him telling his companion that I was making things difficult for them because I was worried about the money.
Seeing the digger team descend into the tomb, I changed into my rat-themed clothes and crawled in through the tomb robber's hole.
Working in this solid-chambered area is very dangerous because the original tomb was an unreinforced earthen mound. We need to find the boundary between the tomb and the ground, and then dig horizontally to find burial goods. If we are not careful, we will be buried underneath.
Although the people Song Laosan hired had little credibility, their skills were quite good. They quickly dug several holes and cleared away the fragments buried in the soil.
Often, real life is full of unexpected drama.
We weren't as professional as those people, so we didn't dare to drill horizontally into the ground. We could only dig and shovel along the walls of the vertical hole, not to look for anything, but mainly to prevent the drilling team from playing tricks.
But it was just my random digging that unearthed something incredible.
When I shoveled down, the soil on one side of the hole collapsed, revealing the soil layer behind it.
Amidst a patch of yellow earth, a narrow yet striking horizontal black line appeared.
I dug deeper with my shovel and found that the black line was still going deeper. My face lit up with joy: "Everyone come here, I have a copper road here!"
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