There were rumors among the people that he was a gambler. I didn’t say anything. I just lamented that it was a pity. The eleven pieces of early Shang bronzes, even the most common three-mold round tripod without inscriptions, would add up to a huge price.
Hundreds of thousands.
"Stop playing with Aji! Why are you still playing? Do something serious!" Seeing that Aji was still concentrating on his cell phone, Dou Sprout couldn't help scolding him.
Aji was playing with his cell phone and made a sound. He raised his head and asked Uncle Hulu what was going on when he walked in, and whether he still remembered where he picked up the stone carving board.
Uncle Hu Lu stood up, pointed forward, and said something.
Aji immediately translated: "My uncle said that he could see an ancient well as he walked forward. The stone carving was originally used as a well cover. He thought it was interesting and took it back."
Ancient well?
Drilling a well in the desert?
Boutou and I looked at each other and both saw the confusion in each other's eyes.
This is contrary to common sense.
No modern person would go to a place like this to dig a water well. It must be an ancient water well. You know, it is useless to dig a submersible well more than ten meters in the desert because it cannot store water at all.
However, it would be very difficult to drill a deep underground water well over 100 meters deep, and ancient people did not have the well-drilling equipment to change their profession.
After everyone finished eating, we packed up and set off again. Uncle Hu had a good memory, so he used some dead poplar trees on the road as reference points. We led the camels and walked for about two hours until we arrived at the dry well that Uncle Hu had mentioned.
Qin Xingping sighed: "It's really a dry well. It's so strange to be in a place where birds don't poop."
The part exposed above the ground is indeed the wellhead, but it has been severely damaged by weathering. The wellhead is built with stones and is very crude. I roughly estimated the width of the wellhead, and the stone carving board should be large enough to cover it.
Uncle Hu said that the stone carving board was a manhole cover. If he said this, the problem would arise again.
The bluestone carving board dates from Xixia, and the theme of the carving is the three-faced Guanyin, which is a Buddhist theme. Xixia has been advocating Buddhism since the founding of the country by Li Yuanhao, and Buddhism is the state religion of Xixia.
If you look at it this way, it would be disrespectful to use a Guanyin statue as a manhole cover. Anyone who works in antiques knows this. For example, there are some individual copper Buddha heads and stone Buddha heads in the antique market. These Buddha heads have a flat section from the neck down and have closed eyes.
You can tell it's fake without even looking.
Ancient folk worshiped Buddha. Throughout the dynasties, there was no single Buddha head. The real ancient Buddha heads must have uneven sections under the neck, and they were all removed separately due to violent destruction.
Then Dou Sprout found a flashlight and looked into the ancient well for a long time.
I said Yazai, what did you see?
"It seems like it's all sand and rocks. Hey, wait a minute."
Dou Sprout was lying at the mouth of the well and suddenly said: "I seem to see a pile of rotten iron pieces."