In the cold winter of that year, when we opened the stone door of the underground palace and entered, and slowly moved our flashlights, we were all shocked by the scene in front of us.
What is the purpose of archeology? It is to finally discover these secrets that have been hidden underground for thousands of years.
Dou Sprout looked up at the huge bronze bird sculpture in front of him, his mouth wide enough to swallow a whole egg.
A pair of bronze sacred bird statues with a height of 1.5 meters stand on the stone platform. The wings of the bronze birds are spread out and their heads are lowered. They seem to be about to fly, and they seem to be waiting for their master to ride on them and go to the bliss of the west together.
Behind the bronze bird is a huge granite coffin bed. The whole body of the coffin bed is carved with nine majestic five-clawed golden dragons. The nine dragons' bodies are intertwined, the dragon's whiskers are fluttering, and the dragon's head is raised high on the front, and the dragon's eyes are staring upward.
Nine is the ultimate number, dragon and five claws are the most respected, nine and five are the most respected...
Moving the flashlight, his eyes moved to the coffin bed, and he suddenly saw a strange coffin!
This coffin is more than two meters long. When I first saw it, I thought it was made of jade... When I turned on the flashlight, a faint green light was reflected from the whole body. This green color was like water, flowing slowly on the coffin.
I had never seen this scene before, and my attention was immediately attracted.
What is this?
Jade coffin?
Impossible...A coffin made of pure jade has never been found in history.
After two minutes, I raised my head and took two deep breaths, and then I heard him say: "Come forward and take a look."
Just a few steps away, when we got closer, Dou Sprout's entire face was reflected in green.
The faces of Brother Yu and Xiaoxuan were the same. I stretched out my hand to see that it was also half green.
I turned off the flashlight and the green color disappeared.
When I turned on the flashlight, it appeared again, which means it was caused by reflection.
Douyazai swallowed, stared and shouted: "Oh my God! What kind of coffin is this! Is it an emerald coffin!? Why is it like this!"
Douyazai excitedly shook my arm: "We are getting rich! We are going to get rich, Fengzi!"
It is taboo to shout in a tomb, especially shouting in front of people's faces. I said to Dou Sprout: "Don't shout, keep your fucking voice down."
He stared at the coffin for a long time and said solemnly: "This is not a coffin made of pure jade, this is a nail coffin."
After saying that, he hooked his head on the coffin with his fingers. Unexpectedly, he lifted up a piece of jade.
The inner layer of this thing is made of wood, and the surface layer is like fish scales. It is covered with high-quality jade flakes, and then a large number of special thin nails, which people in the industry call "bubble nails" are used to polish them smooth.
Jade pieces were plastered all over the wooden coffin.
I knew at that time that only two such bubble-nailed coffins had been unearthed in China. One was excavated from a Chu tomb in Lion Mountain, and the other was excavated from a Han tomb in Mancheng. Later, in 2009, another one was found in Jiangsu.
A similar one was excavated in Dayun Mountain.
This kind of jade coffin with bubble nails is extremely rare, even rarer than jade clothes with gold threads! Non-emperors cannot enjoy it.
Now, the identity of the tomb owner is about to come out.
The last emperor Li Xian.
Once we open the coffin and see a male corpse lying there, the history books may need to be rewritten. Li Xian lived in the Xixia period. Why did he use this kind of burial equipment that was popular in the Han Dynasty? After thinking about it, there is only one reasonable explanation.
.
Anticorrosion.
Ancient people believed that lying in this kind of jade coffin would keep the body incorruptible forever. The polishing process of the bronze bird we just saw is exactly the same as that of the large bronze bull excavated by the archaeological team in the Imperial Tomb Area of Ningxia in the last century.
My hands felt cold when I touched the coffin, which is a characteristic of natural jade.
The level of the tomb owner was so high that I felt scared for the first time.
"Open...have you started?"
Having been accustomed to big scenes in his first life, he immediately said calmly: "Wen Bin, you and Yun Feng drive together, and everyone else stays away."
The jade coffin was of the chute type without nails. Brother Yu and I looked at each other and pushed open the coffin lid.
When I lowered my head and looked down, I saw all the burial objects.
All kinds of exquisite funerary objects, including wooden wares! Gold wares! Jade wares! Porcelain wares! Lacquer wares! And so on! The funerary wares filled every corner of the jade coffin!
Instead of seeing Li Xian's corpse, he saw a wooden figurine about 1.6 meters tall.
No, it shouldn’t be called wooden figurines! It should be called puppets!
This thing is made of cypress wood and is brown in color. It looks like it has been painted with a layer of tung oil on the surface. It is the same size as an adult. It has complete limbs and movable joints. The face of the puppet is painted with black and red paint, which depicts the lifelike facial features. .
The most bizarre thing is that the puppet's belly is made into a small door that can be opened and closed, just like a wardrobe.
Dou Yazai said with a look of disbelief: "Hey, why is there a wooden man lying in the coffin? Fengzi, where is the body? Where are the bones?"
I said I didn't know, and asked the boss what it meant.
He sighed for no reason, frowned and said: "I didn't expect it...I didn't expect...the tomb owner actually chose to be cremated in the end. Yunfeng, this kind of wooden man was called a true-face doll in our industry in the past. It's very strange." It is rare to see it. It was briefly popular in the Liao and Jin Dynasties. Generally, only devout Buddhists would choose to use this kind of thing after death. The small door on the belly of the wooden figure can be opened, and the ashes wrapped in linen are most likely to be placed inside."
"Ah?! Damn it, so Li Xian was cremated?"
He nodded his head and said it was very possible.
After hearing this, I boldly opened the small door on the wooden man's belly, put my hand in, and felt that I touched a large ball of rotten linen. When I took it out, I saw that it was really yellow-brown ashes and lumps of ashes. There was no special smell, only a faint smell. The scent of cedar wood.
He said, "Don't stare at it. This thing is unlucky. If you touched this thing in the past, you would wash your hands with chicken blood. Pack your things quickly and pick out valuable ones."
Douyazai and I took out the real-looking doll and threw it aside. We immediately found the sack and put whatever we found in the coffin. When it was full, we sealed it and replaced it with a new sack!
There are so many types of funerary items that I don’t even have time to look at them one by one. Anyway, all kinds of items can be sold for money.
Four full sacks!
Not only are there in the coffin, but there are also many niches dug in around the walls of the tomb. There are also dazzling funerary objects in the niches, such as various bowls! Plates! Dishes! Pottery figurines! Wine jugs and so on!
I have been searching hard for more than half a year in Kangding just for this day!
The leader immediately ordered that all the things in the backpack that were not needed for the time being be thrown away to make room for the burial objects. The jade pieces on the nail coffin were also pried off by Dou Sprout with a knife and put into the bag. The copper bird is too big and heavy! There is no way, it can’t be lifted?
We didn't feel tired, and we transferred out one trip after another.
I said I didn't want the real puppet, but Douyazai insisted. He twisted off the puppet's head and legs and stuffed them into his bag. He tied the puppet's body tightly with a rope and carried it behind his back. He said he would take it out and assemble it in exchange for money.
...
It was around 9 o'clock in the morning, on the hillside.
Brother Yu ran over quickly, and then he heard a muffled boom behind him. It was his boss who gave the order to blow up the thief's cave.
There was a pile of sacks under the tree.
I sat on one of the sacks and smoked. I couldn't hold the cigarette steady because my hands were shaking.