After listening to what Zhang Kaixuan said, my second brother thought about it for a long time, tapped his fingers gently on the marble table, and slowly said: We have always been unaware of where our father has gone, nor your existence.
.
But since you know that they disappeared because of this jade slip and this tomb, why did you wait until now to find the other half of the jade slip?
Zhang Kaixuan hesitated for a moment, then lit up another cigarette and said, "I'm just kidding, I haven't asked you yet how you got the other half of the jade slip.
You know, these two jade slips were taken away by their team back then. Moreover, I don't know your existence at all.
The half jade slips in this box, like that letter, were all mailed to me in the name of Zhao Sanliang.
It was through this name that I found him.
Now that I think about it, this letter was not sent to me by your third child. It was someone else who pretended to be someone else, so there should be a reason for him to do this.
There is another point, what you just said, which is also the strangest.
You said that your father once left you a message: Only when someone named Zhang comes looking will he ask you to take out the other half of the jade slip.
What does this mean?
Your father has a plan and I will come to you.
But why did I come to you?
Because I received the letter sent to me in the name of Zhao Sanliang.
What does this mean? It can only mean that the letter I received from an impostor was sent to me by your father.
The reason why he doesn't use his own name may be because it is inconvenient, but it just so happens that using Zhao Sanliang's name can help me find him.
But why does it take so long, twenty years?
Is twenty years a coincidence, or has he already planned it?
Another point, to be honest, the incident when they went there had a strong official background. Although I don’t know why the officials later intervened in their team.
But for a long time after they disappeared, someone from above tried not to mention it again. They even deliberately suppressed our family from pursuing the whereabouts of my grandfather.
After my grandfather disappeared, I will not say that the family scandal should not be made public. Every family has problems of this kind. The old man climbed up step by step through meritorious service during the war years. He is an upright person and even a bit pedantic. With him around, corruption is a problem.
Who among our Zhang family dares to do evil things?
So our family is divided into two groups. Many people don't want him to come back.
And I am able to come to you this time because of the letter sent to me by the impostor Zhao Sanliang.
After that, he took the envelope on the table, pulled out a piece of paper, and pushed it in front of us.
This is a 16-karat diary paper with only three big characters in blood red on it.
Help me!
Zhang Kaixuan continued: Based on the comparison of my grandfather's handwriting at home, this is his handwriting.
Moreover, the blood on it was seen by an expert and was leaked in the past three months. The DNA was also tested and it was his blood. So we can basically be sure that this letter was written to me by my grandfather within three months.
letter of distress.
In addition, you also received a distress letter from your father Zhao Jianguo. Now you know what this means, right?
They may all be alive. It is very possible.
At this point, everything is probably clear. My father did indeed rob a tomb and has disappeared since then. And the location of the tomb is the mountain range pointed by the map on the jade slip.
The final result of our discussion was that we wanted to know what they encountered, this mountain, and this tomb. We had to go there. After that, Zhang Kaixuan returned to Beijing and said he wanted to make some arrangements. It just so happened that Luoyang also
We need to settle down, let's leave each other's contact information, and we'll break up for now.
As soon as I got home, I immediately closed the door, grabbed my second brother, and asked eagerly: "Second brother! You're going to suffocate me to death!!"
What jade slips did dad dig out from the quicksand tomb?! Who in the entire Zhaojia Village didn’t know that dad didn’t get anything from the quicksand tomb?!
This quicksand tomb was a bucket dumped by my father before he disappeared. It is not far from our Zhaojia Village.
I was only eight years old that year, and it was just in the early stages of reform and opening up. The so-called reform and opening up had little impact on the mainland and the Central Plains. It just changed from the production team at that time to the family contract responsibility system. After that, every household
Every household has its own plot of land.
Two people in Zhangjiazhuang, the neighboring village of our Zhaojiatunzi, accidentally discovered an ancient tomb while hoeing their own land during the day. Because at that time, our Zhaojiatunzi was already a prosperous and civilized village by relying on tomb robbing.
, people in other villages were also greedy, but the craftsmanship was not spread to others, so they could only feel resentful and jealous. Now that they discovered the tomb, they both became selfish. After thinking about it, they took a shovel in the middle of the night.
Run to dig a grave.
I thought to myself that since the people in Zhaojia Village can make a fortune by digging other people's graves, why can't we?
But the next morning, several villages in the surrounding area were in a state of excitement.
Of the two men who went to dig the grave, one died, and the other was frightened into a state of madness, that is, a lunatic.
When someone asked him what happened last night, he could only describe it intermittently:
"We went to dig a grave and encountered a ghost... a ghost... don't believe it, there really are ghosts!
He was pulled into the grave little by little. I tried my best to pull him, but I couldn't pull him away. Then I watched helplessly as he was buried little by little!"
These were the original words of the crazy man, which meant that he watched his companions being dragged into the tomb by ghosts and buried alive.
This haunted incident is very convincing in several other villages. The old people say that it is the tomb of a high official and that there is something that has become a spirit inside. It scares the children so much that they dare not cry loudly at night.
However, when the incident spread to the Zhaojia Village and fell into the ears of people who depended on digging graves for a living, it was not that scary. At that time, my father was young and energetic. After thinking about it with a few people in the village, the stunned man told a little bit.
If you sink in, you will most likely encounter a quicksand tomb.
This is a very common anti-theft method in ancient tombs. It is generally used in ancient tombs before the Eastern Han Dynasty. The entire cemetery is made of double-layered arches, filled with sand in the middle, and sealed with soil. People who do not know how to do it can identify the soil embryo and go to it.
Digging underneath, once the tomb is dug, the whole quicksand will flow into the tomb, taking the person digging the tomb deeper into the tomb, giving people the illusion that a ghost is pulling people.
To deal with this kind of cemetery, you need to dig a hole next to it, and then penetrate it horizontally to form a ninety-degree corner. Wait until the quicksand on the surface is exhausted, and then go into the tomb to get the underworld tools.
The transportation back then was not convenient. My father and his friends robbed tombs in just a few places, but how many ancient tombs could there be in one place? Their brothers were worried about having no ideas for food. When they heard the news, they totaled up.
I picked up the guy and set off in the evening. I was young at that time, and my father wouldn’t let me touch these things. Children from other families started digging graves with adults since they were young. One was to accumulate experience, and the other was to practice courage, so at that time
, although I am curious about this thing, I still can't understand it.
That night, four people went to dig the grave with my father, my two uncles with the same surname, and my father's two friends from out of town. They set off around ten o'clock in the evening. I was still thinking about waiting.
Could they help me touch a smaller thing when they came back? But then I couldn't help feeling sleepy and fell asleep.
But when I woke up, I found my mother sitting by the bed crying. I looked under the bed and was shocked!
My dad was sitting on the ground covered in blood, smoking hard, his hands shaking constantly. The other one was my dad's friend, and it was even worse, his whole body was shaking like chaff.
I heard my father's friend shivering and asking him: Jianguo, what...what...what do you do?
My dad took a puff of his cigarette and cursed: I'm just kidding his grandma, who knew that such a big meat dumpling could be found in such a small place?
We didn't even get a damn thing, but we paid them in, and they deserved to die. The rule of our ancestors is to turn off the lights, kowtow and leave. When we went in, we couldn't even light the lights. It was obviously not an easy host to deal with. They were very
If you covet those underworld weapons, you damn well deserve to die.
But to be honest, I still don’t know what this thing is, but it looks like a zombie.
But are there any zombies who won’t take advantage of the black donkey’s hooves?
I understood it as soon as I heard it. Although I had never been to the fields with my father, I knew from other people in the village that Zongzi was a zombie. Grave robbers were most afraid of encountering this thing and usually carried black donkey hooves with them.
Stuff is the nemesis of Zongzi. As for why the black donkey's hooves can control zombies and who first invented this method, there is no way to know whether the black donkey's hooves can restrain zombies or is a means of self-comfort by fighting backwards.
Five of them left, but two of them came back. My two clan uncles and a friend of my father must have been bitten to death by rice dumplings in the tomb.
Although my father said that I couldn't blame him for his death, after all, when you enter this industry, you have chosen to take risks, people and wealth, and birds and birds, and you will die for food. Who can you blame? Fighting is a crooked and extremely dangerous thing.
Not to mention being bitten to death by a rice dumpling, even if the tomb collapsed and you were suffocated inside, it would be normal, right?
But the families of my two clan uncles had a quarrel. They insisted that it was my father, Zhao Jianguo, who stole the artifact from the tomb and killed them both. Although my father said he was bitten to death by a rice dumpling, after all, there were
People who walk in ancient tombs for a lifetime may not see rice dumplings. Except for the legend that there are zombies in the tombs, who else believes this?
My father, Zhao Jianguo, had a bandit character at that time. He was not afraid of anything. He said, "I said they were harmed by the rice dumplings. They were harmed by the rice dumplings. If you don't explain, what can you do to me?"
My two uncles' families are actually afraid of my father, who is usually braver than ever. Moreover, although my father has a bad temper, he is a righteous man and he really won't do anything to make money or even kill someone.
, and later the two families came up with the idea: The person was bitten to death by the zongzi, and if he was bitten to death, he was bitten to death, but their share of the treasure in the tomb must be divided between the two families.
It's okay if I don't say this. My father got angry when he talked about this. He didn't catch anything and almost lost his life in it. Are you angry? He beat up the people sent by the two families to discuss and drove them away.
go out.
Now the two families were not happy. On the surface they didn't dare to say anything, but secretly they didn't know which family reported my dad for tomb robbing. The next day, he was taken away by the police uncle wearing shiny silver handcuffs.
He came back three days later. Without saying a word, he hugged me and kissed me hard, then left home again with a solemn expression. After this time, he never came back again. This departure lasted twenty years.
Later, the army came and surrounded the entire Zhangjiazhuang. The army did more than fight upside down. They also dug holes for robbery and so on in the dark. The soldiers directly blew up the ancient tomb in Zhangjiazhuang because my father and the others had planted it.
The news that three people were inside was widely spread throughout the villages, so on the day the army arrived, many people came to see it.
The army later carried out three corpses, which had been bitten until they were no longer human. I was a child at the time, and I was among the crowd watching. I was so frightened that I shivered all over.
In addition to the three corpses, the soldiers also carried away a large black lacquer coffin and several dark iron boxes from the tomb, exuding a cold atmosphere. Maybe it was because there were so many people during the day and the energy was strong, but there was no
People always forget when they see something that the old people say has become a thing. After a period of uproar, this matter was gradually forgotten by people.
However, now he suddenly said that my father once dumped half a jade slip from that quicksand tomb. I couldn't tell it in front of Zhang Kaixuan just now, but now I will definitely ask.
Why does the eldest brother and I not know what daddy poured, but only the second brother knows?
If it weren't for Zhang Kaixuan's appearance today, we would still be in the dark until now, right?!
But after I asked my second brother, he said calmly: I don’t know either. When my father came to me and gave me this thing, he asked me not to mention it to anyone. Only people named Zhang came.
Only then can we take out this jade slip.
After saying that, he locked himself in the room.
My eldest brother and I looked at each other and both smiled bitterly.
The eldest brother said: I really can’t see through this second brother more and more.
I nodded and had nothing to say. The second brother seemed to be mysterious and even slightly melancholy. Sometimes I wondered if he had a mental problem. (To be continued)