Guanzhong Tomb Robbery Notes

I wrinkled my nose and sniffed.

It does smell a strange odor.

It smells like woody and medicinal fragrance.

The smell in most tombs is unpleasant.

Tombs that emit fragrance are extremely rare.

In my career as a tomb robber, I can count on one hand the number of times I have come across tombs that exude a fragrant scent.

Later, I robbed the tomb of Marquis Haihun.

There is also a very special fragrance in that tomb.

Most tombs have a damp and musty smell because of the heavy moisture underground.

There will also be the stench of rotting corpses, the smell of rotten wood from rotting coffins and other wooden products, and the metallic smell of rusted bronze burial objects.

When those smells mixed together, the resulting taste is very unpleasant.

The taste that left the most profound impression on me was a bronze tripod filled with broth that was discovered when I later excavated an ancient tomb from the Warring States Period.

As soon as the cauldron was opened, the broth inside looked like it had just been cooked.

We were amazed by what we saw, and Cui Hao even said he wanted to take a sip to taste it.

But within two minutes, the soup and meat began to oxidize and mold, turning into a bowl of black slime that emitted a very pungent odor.

It stinks so much that we are about to vomit out the leftover food.

But no matter how smelly it was, it was still a bronze tripod, so we endured the stench and got it up.

I thought that if I washed it well and removed the smell, I could still sell it.

As a result, I took it home and washed it more than ten times, but it was still emitting a pungent odor, and no one was willing to spend money to buy it.

We called that tripod the stinking tripod and simply threw it into the basement out of sight and out of mind.

Let’s talk about the strange fragrance emanating from the Tomb of the Living Dead.

I took a few deep breaths and felt the fragrance was refreshing and invigorated.

Then he thought of what Cui Hao had heard from the restaurant owner, that several small bottles of elixirs were dug out from Wang Chongyang's tomb.

I had a guess instantly.

Could it be that these strange fragrances come from elixirs?!

Although Quanzhen mainly practices internal alchemy, external alchemy was popular at the time when Wang Chongyang was studying Taoism.

Simply put, external alchemy is the way of refining elixirs.

The elixir of immortality that Qin Shi Huang and other emperors of successive dynasties sought was the elixir made by alchemy.

This type of elixir usually uses mineral medicines such as lead and mercury, and is refined into elixirs in an alchemy furnace.

Before the birth of Taoism, alchemy was already widely spread among alchemists.

Taoism absorbed the elixir recipes and refining methods circulated among the alchemists, and continued to improve and develop external alchemy.

It can be said that external alchemy is the source of ancient chemistry.

Although he failed to refine a true elixir, he did refine gunpowder...

Neidan Dao refers to treating the human body as a furnace, cultivating the essence, energy and spirit in the body to condense into an elixir, thereby achieving immortality.

Later, the golden elixir realm in many fairy tales evolved from the term "Jiedan" in inner alchemy.

"Wang Chongyang has been practicing in the Tomb of the Living Dead for many years. Maybe he is refining elixirs."

"He seems to have written a poem."

I pondered it to myself.

When I was looking up information before coming here, I also read the poems written by Wang Chongyang in the tomb of a living person.

The title of the poem is "Presented to Ning Bogong from the Tomb of the Living Dead".

"Living dead, living dead, wind, fire, earth and water are all the cause. In the tomb, I eat real elixirs every day, and in exchange for a mortal body, I have become a dust..."

"Brother, why are you reciting poems?" Cui Hao asked in confusion.

"I'm thinking the source of this strange fragrance might be the elixir Wang Chongyang left inside, or the medicinal ingredients used for alchemy."

"In the poem I just recited, Wang Chongyang explicitly mentioned that there are real elixirs in the tomb."

"This means that he took elixirs every day in the tomb. This also means that he was very likely refining elixirs in the tomb."

The more I think about it, the more likely my speculation is.

Moreover, there is such a strong fragrance in the tomb, there is no possibility of poisonous gas.

So the previous vigilance against poison gas was completely dropped.

"Emperors used to take elixirs to achieve immortality. If we find any in there, we can definitely sell them for a good price!"

Cui Hao's eyes lit up.

He was extremely excited at the thought of selling it for a high price.

I smiled and patted the back of his head: "You are obsessed with money."

"You have to be money-conscious. Only with money can you live the carefree life that Boss Dong talks about!"

"Think of Hong Kong's most popular beauties, blonde and blue-eyed foreign girls, slurp!"

Cui Hao sucked hard.

Just thinking about that scene makes me feel quite emotional.

I also want to go and broaden my horizons.

"You can have a good daydream when the sun comes up, now go tie the ropes."

"Hey, there's everything in dreams."

Cui Hao took out a rope from his bag.

He tied the rope tightly to a stone tablet nearby and threw the other end of the rope into the hole.

No matter how many people go into the tomb, the rope must be tied to a heavy object and secured.

Because you have to rely on the rope to get up.

Once the rope is gone, there is a 99% chance that the people going down will be helpless.

I pulled the rope hard twice to make sure it was tied securely.

"Mouse, although the Tomb of the Living Dead is said to be where Wang Chongyang practiced, there are also records that Wang Chongyang prepared to raise an army to resist the Jin here."

"In the Tomb of the Living Dead, a secret passage was set up to hide a large amount of weapons and armor."

"The mumbler also said there's a trap inside, so you have to be extra careful once you get in."

I have no idea what kind of secret mechanism or secret passage is inside.

So please remind me in advance.

"You have to be careful every step you take down there."

"Tonight, focus on exploring the route. The rest depends on luck. Don't be greedy."

"Understood!" Cui Hao went down the cave first.

I followed closely behind.

Because the hole was not deep, they entered the tomb passage with almost no effort.

"Brother, there are a lot of big rocks piled up at the entrance of the tomb at the back. It looks like it was really filled in by humans."

I looked back at the entrance to the tomb.

Shining the headlight over there, you can see the stones and soil blocking the entrance to the tomb.

If we dig from the entrance of the tomb, we will die of exhaustion and never be able to remove all the big stones.

I looked again at the brick walls surrounding the tomb passage.

The blue-gray brick walls are large and thin, making a dull sound when knocked on.

"For safety, let's knock as we walk."

"You knock on the floor tiles and I knock on the wall tiles."

Knocking bricks and stones is to prevent the mechanism.

Where there is a mechanism, there must be a hollow space behind the brick, and it will make a crisp sound when knocked.

Cui Hao started knocking on the floor tiles with an iron chisel, while I used the iron chisel to knock on the brick walls on both sides.

Although this is slow, the safety factor will be much higher.

Later, as I robbed more tombs, I also formed my own judgment on the mechanism.

The anti-theft measures for most tombs are passive.

Being able to pile up stones and sand in a tomb to prevent theft means that the use of mechanical devices has reached its limit.

As for rotating plates, crossbows and other mechanisms, there are also some.

However, most of them have completely lost their functions due to reasons such as material decay and have no anti-theft effect at all.

Therefore, tomb robbers will not be particularly wary of traps.

Well, except for the GA agency.

We walked and knocked as we went, but we didn't find any mechanism when we reached the entrance of the tomb.

"Brother, we've been tricked. There's no trick at all."

"Meng Huluzou is a chatterbox. He's drunk and making up stories."

I continued to poke around with the iron rod.

"Better safe than sorry, safety first."

"It's too late to regret after something goes wrong. Even if you are ten thousand times more cautious, it won't hurt."

Because the Tomb of the Living Dead is not a real tomb.

Therefore, there is no sealed door at the entrance of the tomb, it is just an entrance in the style of a door frame.

I stood at the door and looked inside.

Inside is a square tomb chamber, about sixteen or seventeen square meters in size.

There is a stone bed in the middle.

There are bowls, plates, oil lamps, water tanks and other daily necessities on the stone platforms around.

It must have been used by Wang Chongyang when he was practicing here.

The imagined pills, medicinal herbs and other things were not seen.

I took a deep breath.

The strange fragrance I smelled became stronger.

The source of the strange fragrance is in the tomb!

"Mouse, don't you say you have a dog's nose? Come on, smell the source of the fragrance."