Chapter 418: Stone Shadow: The Trick of the Hint

After saying that, Xiao Hua asked me if I could tell which dynasty everything here was built in.

I said, "It's hard to say. This isn't a typical historical site. If it were the remains of an ancient tomb or temple, the carvings and architecture would contain plenty of cultural details, making it easy to identify the dynasty. But if what you've found is the site of a blacksmith's shop, it's very difficult to determine its age unless that shop was part of a larger ancient city. The reason is that a blacksmith's shop carries very little cultural information."

Everything here, including the stone carvings on the walls and the iron plates, lack the distinctive features of any particular dynasty, so it's nearly impossible to determine when they were built. I didn't dwell on it, because subconsciously I had already associated them with the Lei Family of Style (Yangshi Lei).

There are iron tools here; officially the earliest iron appears in the Spring and Autumn period, but because of the existence of meteoric iron, it's actually hard to date them by iron alone. However, since the Lei Family of Style is involved, even if this place wasn't built in the Qing dynasty, it must have been used during the Qing.

If the Lei Family of Style could figure it out, I always believed that I, a college graduate of the People's Republic of China, had no reason not to. "Do you think you can deduce something from the dynasty here?" I asked.

"The culture of Chinese tomb burial has been constantly developing. Various ingenious mechanisms have very clear era characteristics, and the more prosperous the dynasty, the more technological leaps occur. For example, the 'pigeon flip' that appeared in the Han dynasty evolved into 'linked plates' in the Tang. The Liao people, living in the cold north, used a lot of deadly poison and stone traps in their ancient tombs. In the Qing dynasty, foreign mechanical techniques enriched the development of cunning devices, even creating mechanisms that could reset themselves without making a sound. If we could know when this place was built, we could roughly know what possibilities there are." Xiao Hua said. "To give an extreme example: This place is certainly not modern, so we don't have to worry about things like infrared."

I've heard my grandfather say the same, and it's true. But I think using that approach here is too risky. Having been through many things before, I understand that in this millennia-old mystery, the only thing I can be sure of is that the ancients cannot be underestimated.

My grandfather also told me another story. In a tomb from the Northern Zhou period, he saw a very strange pottery vessel—a long pottery bottle. It was covered with holes the size of a finger, more like a musical instrument. He thought he had found a vessel used for "filtering", but when he picked it up, he found it was extremely heavy. Then, when he turned it upside down to get a closer look, at that moment, many little stone-carved hands extended out from the holes. All the hands had a curve; half the hands from the holes spread to the left, while the hands from the holes on the other side stretched to the right.

All the hands formed a fan shape, like a peacock spreading its tail.

With such a composition, his gaze naturally focused on the center of the fan. Then he saw, at that midline position, from the central row of holes, a black Buddha statue extended out. Paired with the Buddha hands on both sides, at first glance it looked like a Thousand-Armed Guanyin embedded in the bottle.

He was stunned at that moment, because in that instant, all the holes simultaneously grew "things", and they immediately formed into that object. The process was extremely shocking. He even thought the bottle was alive.

Later, he lost this object while fleeing disaster and never saw it again. But he really liked it and often missed it, so he wanted modern craftsmen to replicate it. However, not a single modern craftsman could make it, because they couldn't install mechanisms inside a fired pottery. Even if they managed to produce a semblance, it was not the same at all.

The Northern Zhou period logically should not have had such exquisite craftsmanship. Grandfather told me that this shows every dynasty has some people who completely surpass the era they live in. The more unfathomable the ancient tomb, the more unconventional the place, the more likely you are to see such things.

But since we couldn't determine the dynasty here anyway, I didn't say much to Xiao Hua, and we had to keep thinking. We still needed to figure out the oddity in the photo.

But, if that's the case, what meaning is contained in these patterns? This is much harder than simply extracting graphical information from these patterns, because there is even less to go by. If it's something only the family members know, then it's basically impossible to guess.

Moreover, since there are basically no records about this mysterious family, we are essentially facing an unsolvable situation.

Thinking about this, I immediately began to admire the designer of this setup. If this was an anti-tomb-raiding measure, it was incredibly successful. I remember my grandfather saying that anti-tomb measures have only a few levels, and often all large ancient tombs share these characteristics.

First: can't be found; second: can't be opened; third: can't be taken away. This Zhang Family Ancient Building has achieved the extreme in every single point. No wonder for so many years everyone has been helpless against it.

But thinking like this, aren't we at a dead end? The only thing we can do now is leave here and go collect information about the Zhang Building everywhere. Given the secrecy of the Zhang Family Ancient Building, even if we could find some information, it would probably take half a year, and who knows if that information would be useful.

I was very depressed thinking about this. I'm the kind of person who is full of energy as long as there is a glimmer of hope, but once my mind judges that something is impossible, I immediately get deflated. Xiao Hua also fell silent after hearing me out.

From the time the item was sent to us until now, we've already wasted a lot of time. But we have no clue, and I feel somewhat desperate. It feels like even if we futilely try for a few more days, we can only send a letter back to the old lady saying: "Sorry, we can't solve it. Maybe we go back to Beijing, take a shower, and see if there are other ways?"

I wouldn't mind, but I feel that doing so would make me lose all the face of the Wu family, even though the Wu family doesn't have much face left. However, I know Xiao Hua wouldn't give up so easily.

He was silent for a moment, then said to that Sichuan assistant: "Help me send a letter back. Tell them that photo can't be deciphered. We'll use our own methods. Ask them to wait a while longer."

The assistant from Chengdu nodded, but his expression changed slightly: "Boss, you're doing it yourself? Shouldn't you call the master?"

Xiao Hua shook his head: "It's fine, I can handle it."

That assistant nodded and went out. I pulled the rope to send him out, and meanwhile asked Xiao Hua: "What do you mean by 'our own methods'? What methods can we have now?"

"Change the mode of thinking. For all mechanisms and cunning devices, if you can't solve them head-on, you can use a more brute-force method."

I still didn't understand. He took a sip of the strong liquor and said: "If you can't solve a Rubik's cube, what's the simplest method?" He made a prying gesture, "Peel off all the colors from the cube and stick them back on according to your own idea."

"Ah, you mean?—You want to—"

"I want to solve it from inside the mechanism," he said. "I want to go behind these cave walls and see what the structure of this trap is."