The bodyguard shook his head and said, "Our men just spotted that group. To avoid alerting them, Mr. Xue didn't send anyone to approach them and asked us to consult him on what to do."
Jiang Man asked, "How many people are on the other side?"
The bodyguard responded, "Five to seven people, but because the two sides are too far apart, there is no exact number."
"There aren't many of them. Have someone keep a close eye on them. If they're heading to other areas, keep an eye on them secretly. If they're heading towards the valley where the burial pit is located, arrest them immediately!"
After Jiang Man finished explaining the plan, she asked me, "What do you think? Are you going to stay here, or go and keep an eye on those people?"
I was curious about why I hadn't found any blue clay in the mountains: "I have to stay. The pottery shards I just dug up in the mountains are very strange to me. I need to figure out what's buried in these mountains and what their purpose is. Only then can I figure out what secrets this place is hiding."
"That's good. Xue Dong is very capable, and he has more than twice the number of people in that team. If those people are really the group that dug the grave pit before, Xue Dong won't let them get away."
Jiang Man glanced at her watch, then looked at the two earthworkers resting not far away: "We don't know how long it will take to bring the monkey back. These two guys aren't very reliable either. If we want to find the Miao Jiang Immortal Palace, it's too unreliable to rely on just these two. Should we bring in another batch of people?"
"It's not easy to bring people over. The Miao Jiang Immortal Palace we're looking for is a tomb that's big enough to cause a national sensation. The team that came to Sichuan to investigate this time all got their information from Fengmen Village. Everyone's information comes from the same source, and the matter is only known to people in this circle. Once outsiders are brought in, it's inevitable that the information will be leaked. Moreover, when it comes to such a large tomb, if the people we bring in don't know its background, they'll be inviting trouble."
Jiang Man glanced at the two construction workers: "But I feel that these two are also unreliable. If they turn against us at a crucial moment, we will be even more helpless."
"Use them for now tonight. If anything is discovered, I'll figure out how to handle the earthwork."
After I finished speaking, I started thinking about the candidates for the earthwork team. I decided that if I really couldn't find a monkey in the short term, I would ask the beautiful snake for help and ask her to send some experts to Fengmen Village for me.
Half an hour later, after the two earthworkers had rested enough, we returned to the site and started drilling again.
As the soil column was raised, the depth of the borehole gradually approached the depth to which we had previously dug up the pottery.
Suddenly, the shovel-wielding worker paused, exclaiming, "Boss, we've hit the jackpot!"
I heard the earthworker's words and quickly walked over: "Drill down and see if it's pottery!"
The earthworker nodded, picked up the Luoyang shovel and smashed it down hard, then nodded to me: "It's hollow down there, similar to the previous situation."
I heard what the geotechnical engineer said, glanced at the two-meter gap between the two test holes, and frowned, saying, "Pull the stuff up, then back up as quickly as possible, be careful of the gas inside spontaneously combusting."
Having gained experience, the two earthworkers quickly lifted the Luoyang shovel this time. I also shoveled some soil to block the probe hole, then pushed it aside and used the shovel to remove the soil from the Luoyang shovel.
The composition of this soil column is similar to the previous ones, but because the earthworker used a large shovel, the soil column is thicker, and the contents it can bring up are about the same.
While I was inspecting, Jiang Man stood beside me, holding up a flashlight as an assistant: "The soil column pulled up from this probe also has mud-like material at the bottom, which means that the previous pottery was not leaking water, but rather that all the pottery here contained liquid."
"Two meters away, there are other pottery pieces underneath, so it's likely that there's already a layer of pottery containing this kind of stuff underneath."
I took out a palm-sized piece of pottery from the soil and saw that it was covered with soil. I scraped it with an entrenching tool: "This kind of wax has appeared in previous soil samples. I originally thought it was sealed on the outside of the pottery jar, but now it seems that the inside of the pottery jar was coated with this wax, which is why the liquid inside was preserved."
Jiang Man was completely baffled: "What exactly is in this canister? Could it be a liquefied gas canister made by the ancients? But how could such technology have existed during the Spring and Autumn and Warring States periods?"
"If nothing unexpected happens, the liquid inside isn't used to produce methane, but rather to melt the corpses."
I spread out the soil sample and pulled out a few reddish-brown fragments: "These are fragments of teeth and bones. They don't look like animal bones; they should be those of a funerary person."
"During the Spring and Autumn and Warring States periods, human sacrifice was still very popular. Do you mean that these people were slaves who were buried alive with the dead and then sealed in these pottery vessels coated with wax?"
Jiang Man nodded: "That must be it! The decomposition of a corpse will produce gaseous substances such as methane, carbon dioxide, hydrogen, and ammonia, as well as liquid substances containing thiols, cadaverine, putrescine, and skatole. That stench just now should be the smell of the corpse after it has hatched. And that water stuck to the shovel, could it be... corpse fluid?"
"These people were all slaves suffering from plague and infectious diseases."
I recalled a passage from the Judge's Record: "This kind of anti-theft measure is extremely rare in history. The designers of the tomb would slaughter the sick and then seal them in large urns, which would be hung on the top of the tomb chamber. Once the mechanism was triggered, these large urns would fall from the height, and the germs produced by the decomposition of the corpses would infect and kill the tomb robbers."
As for the methane produced by the corpse, they probably don't understand the underlying principles. The flames we just saw were likely phosphine produced from the decomposition of the body, which spontaneously combusted upon contact with air.
After hearing what I said, one of the earthworkers chimed in curiously, "Boss, didn't you say this pottery jar was hanging from the top of the tomb? But after I just broke through it, I felt like I was touching the bottom, it doesn't feel like it's suspended in mid-air."
I didn't answer the soil worker's question, but instead stared at the soil sample on the ground, lost in thought.
Since entering the mountains tonight, I have already surveyed two mountain peaks.
In the first mountain, they dug out blue clay through a tomb raider's tunnel. In the second mountain, they dug out these pottery vessels filled with corpse fluid.
Two mountains, two different ways of preventing theft.
As I looked at the two connected mountain peaks, my doubts grew stronger.
If these mountains are indeed decoy tombs, why are the anti-theft measures different for each one? Why would the designers go to such lengths to fill both mountains with traps if they were decoy tombs?
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