Chapter 177: Who Are You?

Following the directions of the locals, Third Uncle traveled for about four days along a nameless path carved out by ancient ancestors through the mountains. Roughly a third of this trail was cut into the waist of a cliff, and according to his estimate, it had been abandoned for several hundred years. Originally it might have been a military plank road, but now it was overgrown with moss and covered by vegetation. The further in he went, the cruder the construction became.

The path extended deep into the forest. The outer section was still occasionally used by mountain villagers, but beyond the area of Guizi Stockade, the inner road was almost completely untouched. Parts had collapsed, parts were covered by vines and trees, making it nearly impassable.

Relying on his stubborn determination, Third Uncle struggled through this ancient road and arrived at the other end of the cliff. Looking down from his vantage point, he saw the valley described in the notes directly below him. After twenty years of wind and rain, any traces of when Grandpa and his group had come had long disappeared beneath the extremely dense canopy of trees. However, a bare, reddish dirt mound exposed in the middle of the valley stood out sharply, extremely conspicuous, telling him that this was the legendary Biaozi Ridge.

At the same time, he also noticed that beneath the tree canopy on one side of the red dirt mound, there seemed to be something strange standing there. Because its color was similar to the canopy, from his height he couldn't make out what it was.

He had a vague feeling something was wrong. This was a valley where few people ever set foot. No man-made structures or signs of activity should be found here. So he climbed a few steps higher, pulled out a telescope smuggled from Russia, and looked.

The moment he looked, he froze. Beneath the tree canopy beside the dirt mound stood several military tents, scattered and sparse. The tents were camouflaged, so they were hard to spot from a distance. If Third Uncle hadn't been extremely sensitive to subtle color differences and anomalies from his work in soil identification, he might have missed it with that first glance.

At that moment, Third Uncle's heart thumped a few times. He thought to himself, why would anyone be in this godforsaken place? And they'd set up tents. They couldn't be hunters—hunters wouldn't come this deep, and they wouldn't have such good equipment.

Just as he was puzzling over it, suddenly one of the tents shook and a person emerged. Third Uncle raised his telescope and looked, and his confusion only deepened.

Coming out was a man with white hair, wearing clothes with four-cornered gold embroidery. He was actually a foreign devil (foreigner).

At that time, Third Uncle couldn't distinguish between Northern and Western European races, but in that era before reform and opening up, there weren't many foreigners coming to China. The most numerous were adventurous Americans, so without much thought, he assumed this foreigner was American.

He considered the situation: if there were people here, there was a problem. Now not only were there people, but a foreign devil too. What were they doing here? Could it be that American imperialists had come to cause trouble? Or perhaps—they were also after the ancient tomb beneath Biaozi Ridge?

Although everyone knew foreigners loved antiques, it didn't mean they would come dig themselves. They hadn't seen the old man's notes, so how would they know there was a burial site underground?

This was completely far-fetched. Third Uncle simply had no way to figure it out, and he was extremely puzzled.

Filled with questions, he climbed down the cliff, set down his own gear. Lightly dressed, he passed through the dense forest below and sneaked near the tents. He found that the foreign devils' camp was right at the edge of the red dirt mound. There were about four tents, so the number of people couldn't be large. On one side, a few Chinese men who looked like local porters were smoking and resting. He also saw that on the mound a large pit had been dug, covered with a bamboo frame and green waterproof cloth. Since these things were on the north side of his field of view, he hadn't seen them from the cliff earlier.

The red dirt mound beside should have been the original sealed earth mound. The soil must have been fried with a kind of alchemical pill to prevent plant growth. But now, up close, he could see that many weeds had grown over it—apparently the ancients had underestimated the adaptability of plants.

Seeing that trumpet-shaped large pit, Third Uncle immediately understood that these Americans had the same goal as him: they were excavating the ancient tomb.

At that time, Third Uncle wasn't very old. Seeing this, the only explanation he could barely come up with was that this might be a Sino-American cooperative archaeological team, here to do archaeological digging. That seemed to be the only reasonable explanation at the time.

If it had been the Northern School, at this point they'd just have to accept bad luck, because according to their rules, individuals don't compete with officials. If you run into an archaeological team, what can you do? You can't just go kill them all. But Third Uncle was different. He wasn't willing to let someone else cut him off. Watching where and how hard the Americans were digging, he knew these people had no experience as grave robbers; they were definitely using their own method of digging foreign cemeteries to deal with a Chinese ancient tomb. Digging like that, they'd never get into the tomb. As long as he found the right spot and dug a tunnel, he could sneak in and out without anyone knowing, taking everything out before they even entered the tomb.

Third Uncle returned to the spot where he had come down, retrieved his gear. It was now late afternoon, near sunset. In the twilight, using his own stride as a measure, he walked through the valley, measured the area around the earthen mound, and looked for the best spot to dig a tunnel.

The process was very complicated, and Third Uncle didn't go into detail. He only told me that at the time he was quite confident; his only worry was the situation inside the ancient tomb.

That tunnel Grandpa had dug back then wouldn't last long. It would definitely collapse after a few rainy seasons. He didn't know how far they had gotten back then, or whether they had already entered the burial chamber underground. If so, the chamber might have collected rainwater, and besides the coffin's contents, other burial goods might have rotted. Whether the things inside the coffin had been damaged depended on the quality of the coffin and how well it had been sealed at the time.

After nightfall, the foreigners' camp lit a campfire. Third Uncle waited quietly until they were all asleep, then carefully began digging with his "cat shovel."

The cat shovel was a special shovel used by grave robbers. It made very little noise when digging. But by that time, military shovels were already sharper and quieter, so the cat shovel had faded from use. But back then, the cat shovel was the quietest tool Third Uncle could use.

Even so, Third Uncle was extremely nervous while digging. Since he couldn't use a Luoyang shovel to probe the underground situation (striking the ground would make a sound, and for some reason, the sound of a Luoyang shovel entering the ground easily startled wild birds into flight), he wasn't confident he could find the outer edge of the ancient tomb on the first try.

After digging for about two hours, he had made five test holes but hadn't found the right spot. However, he had gradually narrowed the area. On the sixth hole, after digging about six meters deep, his shovel finally hit something hard. Just as he leaned in to shine his flashlight on it, suddenly he felt something wrong. A slight wriggling came from beneath the soil. The next moment, the whole tunnel collapsed. Before he could even scream, soil filled his mouth and nose, and then he, along with the earth around him, plunged deep into the ground.

(To be continued. If you want to know what happens next, please visit www. CMFU. COM for more chapters. Support the author, support legitimate reading!)