Chapter 373: The Qiong Long Stone Shadow Found

These are indeed old archives, chewed to pieces by rats and covered in their droppings. I randomly pulled out one sheet—it should have been an old document from back then—and as I shook it, dust flew everywhere.

If someone had rummaged through them, there would inevitably be differences. I quickly instructed Wang Meng to examine carefully whether there were any suspicious spots. Tiptoeing through the piles of documents, Wang Meng soon found something. I went over and saw several stacks of files neatly arranged on the floor. Four stacks were lined up side by side, forming a square.

Wang Meng said, "Boss, do you think this means something? The person was looking through files here, got tired of standing, and used these files to make a stool."

I nodded. Indeed, I could almost picture the scene. That person sat on that file stool, which allowed him to look more carefully.

I turned three hundred and sixty degrees on the spot, trying to figure out which direction he had been facing while sitting. Then I noticed that if he faced the back side, a shelf on one side would be just right for propping up a flashlight as a lamp. As I reconstructed the scene in my mind, I placed my flashlight there and looked down at my feet. Brushing away the dust, I indeed found several old cigarette butts in front of me, and directly ahead, there was another stack of files placed there.

Each large envelope here weighed at least four or five jin; loose files couldn't be held in hand to read. The pile in front of me might have been used as a table. The things he was looking at would have been placed on top. He smoked while reading—damn, that guy was pretty relaxed!

But it still didn't help. The place was full of files, and there was no way to deduce what exactly he was looking for. Maybe he found what he needed and took it away.

I was a little obsessed, making a few flipping motions with the files, when suddenly a thought flashed through my mind. I remembered the handwriting on the note, and a crazy idea struck me—setting everything else aside, if that note was really written by "me," how would I look at the files? I asked Wang Meng to hand me an envelope, opened it, and placed it on the "table" in front of me. I picked up a sheet and flipped through it. Then, recalling my usual habits, I pondered while using my right hand to stack the pages I'd read on my palm. When the pile reached a certain thickness, I placed it far away, neatly arranged.

This is one of my habits. When I'm sorting through rubbings, the entire table is usually covered in paper, very messy. I like to set the organized papers far apart, distinguishing them from others. And the distance I set them apart must be within arm's reach.

I looked around to see if there was a place within that distance where I could put things. I spotted a stack of papers on a box to my right. I reached out, and the distance was just right.

My heart skipped a beat. I felt a bit resistant. If even this was guessed correctly, wouldn't it prove that the person looking at things here was really me? But I hesitated only for a moment before picking up the papers. Whatever! I've already died once; why worry about something like this? I placed the stack on the pile of files in front of me. The first sheet was a form, seemed to be a subsidy budget. There were a few names, with the largest subsidy being 447.92 yuan. I wasn't very familiar with the wage system back then, but such a large subsidy would have been astronomical for that time.

Subsidies like this were usually given to Soviets. I wasn't interested in that, but I quickly noticed a line in the corner of the form: "Subsidy Table for Field Personnel of the Guangxi Shangsi Zhangjiapu Site Archaeological Project."

Right! That's it! I flipped through it—all the pages had been shuffled. Below were extensions of the table, listing names. At the very end was a seal, indeed from that archaeological institute. In that seal, I spotted a date: it was a document from 1956.

After that came a summary of data, not mimeographed but all handwritten records, like "Room No. X, length and width," along with a schematic diagram. The handwriting was sloppy. Because of what had just happened, I subconsciously looked at the handwriting—it was completely unfamiliar, with numerous variations, clearly not written by one person.

I flipped quickly, and after about fourteen or fifteen pages, I finally saw something different.

It was a floor plan of something, but not a modern professional floor plan. It was drawn with a brush. I looked at it and realized it was a Qing Dynasty "Yangshi Lei" drawing.

"Yangshi Lei" is a collective term referring to a Qing Dynasty imperial designer family surnamed Lei. They oversaw the design of almost all royal buildings. However, craftsmen had low social status back then; even the number-one family of craftsmen was obscure in the eyes of ordinary people. Most people today have no idea such a family existed. Only those of us in architecture and landscape architecture know how impressive the Yangshi Lei were.

In China's five-thousand-year history, the Yangshi Lei existed for only two hundred years, yet one-fifth of China's current World Heritage sites were built by them—you have to admire that.

After the Summer Palace was completed, the Yangshi Lei suddenly declined. Some speculate it was related to the fact that the Qing dynasty could no longer afford to build massive architectural complexes. However, the decline of the Yangshi Lei was quite suspicious. I read a report saying that they abandoned their official positions overnight, very quickly, as if some great upheaval had occurred.

After their decline, descendants of the Yangshi Lei sold off a large number of their ancestors' "hot-pressed model drawings." These were the culmination of Chinese architectural achievements, and there were many of them. Some were lost overseas or to the private sector, and domestic officials also owned a considerable number, so they are still relatively common. In our department—anyone studying landscape architecture or planning—they are all too familiar with these, so I recognized them immediately.

This drawing should be related to the Zhangjiapu site. That means the site might be from the Qing Dynasty, possibly a work of the Yangshi Lei.

This was a hand-copied version; the original must be in a museum.

I was a bit interested in these things, so I glanced through quickly. The drawing showed a large courtyard, which should be a residence. Judging by its scale—several halls deep and wide—it was quite large. Looking at the structure, it was a private residence.

The Yangshi Lei were imperial architects; they rarely designed private homes. The owner of this house must have been a high official or someone with significant connections.

I looked for small annotations in regular script indicating the name of the house, but found nothing.

The following pages were also similar drawings, mostly "leveling" diagrams. Yangshi Lei drawings were extremely detailed, capturing various angles, individual buildings, and disassembled components, including surrounding feng shui, topography, and even massive grid point maps of the entire ground for leveling.

I flipped through—there were about a dozen pages. At the end was a file index, showing how many items were included. Something struck me. I compared it with the data inside and found that, just by page count, six sheets were missing.

If my guess was correct, that person took them back then. What I had in my hands now were all key materials. Even so, for someone with no leads at all like me, this was already a major breakthrough.

I organized the files in my hands, then looked around again. Knowing there was nothing more to gain here, I called out to Wang Meng, who was still searching, to head back.

I called him a few times before he snapped out of it. I walked over and asked what he was doing. He shone his flashlight into a corner of the warehouse and asked me, "Boss, what's that used for?"

I looked up and saw, behind some clutter, a cage welded together from iron bars both horizontally and vertically.

I moved closer to look. The cage was about half a person tall, horribly rusted. Wang Meng shone his flashlight inside, revealing a broken bowl. "Is it a dog cage?"

I shook my head. The iron bars on this cage were welded densely. Would it need to be this dense just to hold a dog? Maybe it was leftover rebar from when the building was constructed—that wasn't really my concern. I told Wang Meng to stop dawdling; I was in a hurry to verify some things.

We went straight back to the hotel. He went to take a shower, while I went online to start looking up the things in my hands.

First, I searched for information on the so-called "Shangsi Zhangjiapu Site Survey." Nothing came up. Then I thought, things from the 1950s weren't likely to be posted online anyway; even if they were, it would be just fragments. So I moved on to searching the place name.

In my line of work, we don't pay much attention to the Guangxi area. Although there are ancient tombs there, the climate is very different from places like Hunan, Shaanxi, and Shanxi. If you stay there for three days, you're downing herbal medicine before you even set foot on the ground, let alone venturing into the local virgin forests. Moreover, the local customs, ethnic distribution, and habits are all different—it's not a place for normal people. In old society, for people from the Central Plains, it was a place you only went to when you were truly desperate.

When I checked, I was quite surprised. However, the local mountain landscapes varied greatly. Although many Han people from the Central Plains had settled there and followed Central Plains feng shui customs for choosing yin and yang dwellings, the concepts were completely different.

This kind of place was actually the domain of newer folk grave robbers. I've heard of people in Guangxi robbing large tombs using excavators—far more unorthodox than the Southern School.

Information online was limited. I was sticky with sweat. After searching for a while, the air conditioning cooled me down and calmed my mind. So I went to take a shower first. While washing, I started thinking, and I got so distracted that when I came out, I wasn't wearing underwear—startling Wang Meng. I realized my thoughts were a mess; everything was too scattered. With my own intelligence, it was obviously hard to think through all the problems in such a short time.

The Yangshi Lei drawings were a good clue, but such drawings are very numerous in surviving collections, and there's no good complete index. Trying to find a lead from these would be like looking for a needle in a haystack—even less reliable.

That night I mulled it over and eventually fell asleep, my mind a jumbled mess.

I woke up groggy the next morning, splashed cold water on my face to clear my head, then scanned all the documents and sent them to a few acquaintances. I also dropped by to see some relatives, just going through the motions, all the while racking my brain for someone who might know about this. Suddenly a name popped into my head — my grandfather's old friend, who had also taken a liking to me when I was a kid. He was in the same line of work as me, formerly at the landscape architecture institute, specializing in the restoration of ancient buildings. So I bought some wine and snacks and went to pay him a visit.

Years had passed since we last met. Knowing the old man's temperament hadn't likely changed, I cut straight to the chase without much pleasantry. He flipped open the drawings, took one look, and within seconds said, "Are you sure this is a house meant for people to live in?"

Catching the implication in his words, I asked him what he meant. He replied, "You've studied architecture for years — can't you see it yourself? Look at the lighting in this house."

I thought to myself, I can read design drawings, but not those of the "Yangshi Lei" style — they're nothing like standard software output. I took the drawings back and gave them a rough glance, only to suddenly realize it wasn't a matter of the design itself. The problem lay in the layout of the house. I turned it a few times to orient it north-south-east-west, and after careful consideration, I felt a jolt — there was indeed something wrong! With this design, every room under the eaves would receive virtually no sunlight, not even reflected light. Even when the sun blazed outside, the interior would be pitch-black.

"This..." "It's a dark room."

Why would the "Yangshi Lei" family design such a house? I examined it more closely and discovered the layout was ingeniously crafted, deliberately avoiding light. Though it couldn't guarantee complete darkness, it was clearly intentional.

Could it be that the people living here couldn't be exposed to sunlight? Vampires? That's nonsense. Then I thought of "Black Blind's eyes" — did the residents have the same problem with bright light? Or had the emperor whimsically ordered a house built for hide-and-seek?

"Have you ever seen a house like this before?" I asked the old man.

He frowned and shook his head. "I've seen the opposite, but not this. This place is unlivable! That said, I do know of an ancient type of building with similar requirements, though not as strict."

"What kind of place?" My heart stirred, and I pressed him.

"A funeral parlor."

"A funeral parlor? The whole house filled with corpses?"

Impossible — a funeral parlor wouldn't be this huge. I could clearly see that the house had many different structures, typical of ordinary Ming and Qing dynasty residences.

"Where did you get this?" the old man asked.

I couldn't tell him the truth, so I said I'd picked it up at a market. He was clearly intrigued and asked me to leave it with him so he could study it further.

I naturally refused, but then thought it over — keeping it wouldn't do me much good. So I asked if he could make some inquiries among his contacts in the trade. If anything came of it, I'd give it to him for free, no charge.

It was a well-placed gesture, and the old man gladly agreed without further talk. That evening he insisted I stay and plied me with drinks.

Living alone, he was lonely in his old age. I'd come prepared to keep him company and chat, so I stayed.

After half a jin of liquor, he launched into a lengthy discourse on the "Yangshi Lei" family. He told me that the Yangshi Lei had been a family of master craftsmen since the late Ming Dynasty. By the Qing, the first to enter the imperial service was Lei Fada.

When Emperor Kangxi rebuilt the Hall of Supreme Harmony, on the day the main beam was to be raised, the emperor arrived with his civil and military officials for the ceremony. But the beam was an old one, and the mortise and tenon didn't align — it hung in the air, refusing to settle. The officials in charge of public works exchanged panicked looks, fearing they'd miss the auspicious moment. They hastily summoned Lei Fada and bestowed upon him an official cap and robe.

Lei Fada, with an ax tucked in his sleeve, agilely climbed the beam. Raising the copper ax high, he struck three times: "Dong, dong, dong!" With a rumbling "Honglong," the beam settled firmly into place. Immediately, drums and music erupted, and the officials shouted "Long live the Emperor!" The beam-raising ceremony was complete. Emperor Kangxi, greatly pleased, summoned Lei Fada on the spot and appointed him head of the Construction Department. Hence, a song circulated: "Above is Lu Ban, below is the head foreman; the Purple Star commands, the golden hall seals the palace."

After that, the Yangshi Lei family soared in prominence. By the time of Lei Fada's son, Lei Jinyu, he had become the chief designer of the Yangshi Fang. It was said his skills were even more extraordinary — he could replicate intricate Western clocks, blending Western mechanics with Chinese tradition. Beyond large structures, he also crafted many ingenious gadgets for the palace.

I was already quite familiar with the Yangshi Lei family and wasn't particularly interested. So I asked the old man if he knew how they fell into decline. He replied that no one was sure — there were several theories. Some said the last generation offended the Empress Dowager; others claimed that in the late Qing, the country was too weak to undertake large-scale construction. But there was another story, though its veracity was uncertain.

I begged him to elaborate. He was a bit drunk by then, very earnest, and lowered his voice: "We all know the Manchus came from beyond the Pass, a nomadic people, with their roots outside the Pass as a tradition. After the Mongol emperors died, their bodies were transported beyond the Pass for burial. Legend has it that when the Manchus first entered the Pass, Regent Dorgon, unsure how long their rule would last, shipped all the treasure to the Pass and buried it. The emperors of that time were also buried beyond the Pass. Only later, when the situation stabilized, did the Eastern and Western Qing Tombs appear within the Pass.

"However, that was just a smokescreen. The imperial clan was never at ease. The Eastern and Western Tombs are fake — they hold eunuchs and maids. Most Qing emperors, after death, were secretly buried in hidden places beyond the Pass. The Yangshi Lei family produced many strange drawings, for purposes unknown. It's speculated that these were components for the imperial mausoleums beyond the Pass.

"Although the Yangshi Lei didn't directly build the tombs, most of the interior designs came from them. When the Qing dynasty declined in its final years, they naturally faced persecution. Fortunately, the chaotic times meant the court had little attention to spare for such matters. Otherwise, the Yangshi Lei family would have suffered an even worse fate."

I listened, dumbfounded: "The Eastern and Western Tombs are enormous — how could they be fake?"

"That's the brilliance of the Qing. Instead of painstakingly securing every single imperial tomb, they built a huge decoy to divert everyone's attention. I suspect if such a complex of tombs beyond the Pass exists, it must be in the Changbai Mountains or the Greater and Lesser Khingan Range."

My heart skipped a beat as I recalled the Jurchen script and the vast underground mountain range I had seen in the Changbai Mountains.

"These are all hearsay, basically impossible to verify," the old man added. "Look, Genghis Khan's tomb hasn't even been found yet! The chance of exploring imperial tombs beyond the Pass is extremely low. Even a hundred of your Third Uncle couldn't find them in his lifetime."

I nodded. That was true enough, and I couldn't help breaking into a cold sweat.

I'd never heard any of this before. The Qing plundered within the Pass for years, and many researchers have noted that the dynasty's weakness in the late period was abnormal, wondering if the emperors had buried their wealth. If this theory held, the area beyond the Pass might harbor a tomb complex even larger than the mysterious Mongol imperial tombs.

After saying all this, the old man was pretty drunk and soon became incoherent. I took my leave and returned to the hotel, spending a long time researching house lighting, but I didn't find much.

I originally thought this would drag into a protracted battle, so I decided to head back to Hangzhou first. After all, I was managing Third Uncle's business — though it wasn't thriving, I couldn't let it decay, and I needed to be there when required. But as it turned out, the very next morning, the old man rushed over to find me, accompanied by two others.

Both were about his age. One was surnamed Ruan, the other Fang. After introductions, I learned they were well-known brokers operating across Beijing, Changsha, and Shanghai. They came straight over, shook my hand warmly, and lavished me with flattery, leaving me completely baffled.

We sat down in the hotel lobby, and the old man got straight to the point: "These two want to buy that 'drawing' of yours at a high price. You said yesterday you'd give it away for free, but the price they're offering is quite high, and I'm not sure if you'll change your mind."

The old man was fairly wealthy himself, and if he considered it high, the price must be outrageous.

Mr. Ruan immediately extended his hand — I recognized the gesture as a traditional handshake for bargaining. He was definitely an old-school expert.

In antique street trading, people don't really "haggle" verbally. Instead, a handshake with a few finger movements follows a set method of communication.

I reached out and shook his hand. The price he offered was indeed high, beyond the range for Lei-style architecture, but having spent time with Third Uncle and seen real big-ticket items, the price didn't surprise me. What did surprise me were the calluses on his hands. The second knuckles of his fingers were all callused—these were coffin calluses, earned from carrying too many coffin lids. Even if this guy wasn't a grave robber, he'd definitely worked in that line.

I kept my expression neutral, feeling I was starting to carry myself with some dignity, and said, "If I sold it to you at this price, experts would think I was cheating you. That would hurt my reputation. Besides, I still have use for this item, so I really can't give it to you. Tell your client I'm sorry I can't part with it."

He reached out again, clearly ready to haggle for a higher price. I raised my hand to refuse, holding my teacup in my hand—that gesture was called "holding," connected to "breaking off," meaning I absolutely wouldn't sell.

Both of them looked dejected, and one said, "Then just name your price. To be honest, my boss really likes this thing. If you have a price in mind, just say it straight."

If I asked for a million, would he still take it? My heart stirred—it seemed their client might know something about these drawings. Curious, I asked, "What does he want this thing for, anyway?"

"We don't know," he replied. "The client likes it, so we have to find it for him. Usually we can't ask too many questions."

The old man gave me a wink. I knew he was thinking the same as me—that I should try to see if I could pry something out. So I said, "How about this: you two go back and tell your client that we should talk face to face? The money is a small matter. I'd like to make his acquaintance, so that if anyone asks later, I'll have a story to tell."

But the two of them looked troubled and said, "I'm afraid that gentleman isn't someone we can meet."