Chapter 0901: Copper Coffin

From Zhuang Rui’s position, the coffin used wood, no traces of splicing, seems to be a whole piece of wood made, Zhuang Rui can not imagine, this is to use how big a cypress tree ah?

And the coffin lid and the coffin combined seamless, someone took a piece of paper to try, can not be stuffed in, the match is almost completely no gap.

“This …… is a bit difficult.”

Professor Meng circled around the coffin a few times, his eyebrows locked, he originally thought that this coffin was mortise and tenon structure, but after carefully coffin, but found that there is actually not a single mortise and tenon nail on the coffin, which makes Professor Meng feel a little incredible.

Generally the protruding part on ancient wooden furniture is called mortise and tenon, and the concave part is called mortise, this form reaches a very high level of skill in China’s traditional furniture, and the coffin is naturally the same, only this huge coffin seems to be a bit different.

“Teacher, it seems like the holes were opened and filled with burnt copper juice into it.”

Zhuang Rui used his aura to observe the outer structure of the coffin, and found that in eight places of the coffin, the structure was completely different from the wood, and after he gently wiped with sandpaper in one place, he found that the substance in that hole with a diameter of about two centimeters was completely different from the material of the coffin itself.

After Professor Meng heard Zhuang Rui’s words, he came over to take a knife and scraped off a layer of substance on the coffin, and after carefully distinguishing it, he said, “That’s right, it’s the copper juice that was inculcated by burning it, and it’s unlikely that he wants to open it from the mortise and tenon.”

This can make the sealing of the coffin become even better, but this also increases the difficulty of the work of opening the coffin, want to open the lid intact, almost impossible.

Professor Meng circled around the coffin for half a day, there is no good way, and finally, after no choice but to let the people in the coffin in different positions to hit the gap, in order to prepare the crowbar to open the coffin used.

“Xiao Liu, you’re at the back, two people on the side as well, Zhuang Rui, you go to the head of the row, well, everyone take the crowbar, be careful, don’t push too hard, and work together to pry up the coffin lid.”

Prof. Meng commanded the crowd, stuck the crowbar into the gap cut in the coffin lid, under a command, the crowd all exerted force, the huge coffin, issued an unpleasant “click” sound.

“Up, up.”

“Use a little more force, pry it open.”

“People are standing a little farther away, be careful there are organs inside.”

Various shouting voices resounded in the middle of the tomb, such a large coffin, maybe there will be some life-threatening organs and hidden weapons placed inside, Professor Meng loudly reminded the crowd to pay attention to safety.

Getting injured in these thousand year old tombs, that would definitely be a very unpleasant thing for people, because after thousands of years of sealing under the ground, a lot of material bacteria would have deteriorated, and once infected, it would be very difficult to be cured by modern medical means.

But fortunately, after the bulky cypress coffin lid was opened, there didn’t seem to be any movement inside, and at the end of the coffin, two people took iron hooks and pulled down the lid.

Removing the lid of the coffin, together with the thick base, the height of the coffin is also more than one meter eight, intuition does not see the situation inside the pavilion, the people who have a ladder around them, have climbed to the ladder, to look inside the coffin.

“There’s another coffin.”

“Professor Meng, there’s another bronze coffin.”

“Grandma, whose tomb is this? So complicated?”

The people who saw the situation inside the pavilion shouted, it turned out that inside this cypress coffin, there was actually a copper coffin, under the light, the copper coffin lid revealed a few simple stripe engravings, making it more and more mysterious.

“Not right ah! Yellow intestines subjected to a generally cypress coffin, why is there a copper coffin out?”

Prof. Meng also climbed up the ladder and took a closer look, his brows furrowed, obviously unable to figure out the joints.

To know, the ancients understood death as ascension, will also take another form, in another world to continue their lives, so after death, they prepared coffins for themselves thick burial, in anticipation of bringing these things into the other world.

Since the human body belongs to wood in the five elements, the ancients were very particular about the choice of coffins and believed that if one was buried in an iron coffin, that person’s soul would not be able to enter reincarnation.

So in history, the use of copper coffins, which belonged to gold in the five elements, was extremely rare.

“Prepare the pulley and start this copper coffin out.”

Professor Meng made a decision after observing for half a day, only by opening this coffin could he reveal some of these secrets and learn the identity of the tomb owner.

Due to the limited conditions, the crowd used two alloy ladders to set up on both sides, then reinforced the pulleys on the ladders, and used the ropes to put down from both sides of the copper coffin, fortunately, the bottom of the copper coffin and the cypress coffin is not very close, which made the two ropes to tie up the copper coffin smoothly.

“One, two, three …… force.”

If outsiders see this situation, it is hard to imagine that these people are usually well-dressed scholars, at this moment is like a general civilian workers, pulling the rope by virtue of the power of the pulley, will be at least in the hundreds of pounds of copper coffins, from the yellow intestines of cypress coffins hanging up.

When the height of the copper coffin over the cypress coffin, the following people will immediately move the ladder carefully, little by little to move the coffin in the open space above, just this work, the whole carried out almost two hours.

“I wonder what’s inside?”

“Yes! A coffin within a coffin, I think the burial goods will be very rich.”

“It seems like there’s water inside, huh? Just now when I was lifting it up, I seemed to feel water sloshing around inside.”

“Impossible, this tomb is at least over 2,000 years old, any water would have evaporated.”

Although laborious, but the coffin was successfully taken out, the crowd was all excited, for archaeologists, unveiling one secret after another hidden in the river of history was undoubtedly the most exhilarating thing.

“Take a break and prepare to open the coffin.”

Professor Meng is also a happy face, in this place busy work for a week, will finally reveal the identity of the owner of the tomb, mouth said to let the crowd rest, but he himself is around the copper coffin around non-stop, looking at the observation of the opening method of the copper coffin.

Zhuang Rui sat aside, looking at the bronze coffin, his eyebrows wrinkled up, because although he could feel that the bronze coffin hidden inside a rich number of curiosities, but inside is really just as a researcher said, there is water.

However, Zhuang Rui’s aura could only detect the type of object through the aura contained in the object itself, so he didn’t know what those aura-less waters were, and all of this might be yet to be known after opening the coffin.

Perhaps before there has been sufficient anti-theft measures, the opening of this copper coffin is very smooth, after the two sides of the four experience thousands of years and not corroded live buckle trigger up, the copper coffin can be lifted upwards.

But even the lid, the weight is not light, Professor Meng selected a few strong people, standing in the four corners of the force together, will be lifted away from the lid of the bronze coffin.

“What is this?”

Zhuang Rui was one of the four people who lifted the lid of the coffin, while lifting the lid of the coffin, he turned his body sideways to look at the interior of the coffin, but he found that, at a height of seven or eight centimeters from the edge of the coffin, there seemed to be a layer of watery substance that was gently swaying as the coffin was moved.

However, on that layer of water, it was full of dust, it was impossible to see what kind of substance it was, the people who had been waiting beside it had surrounded it, but it was Zhuang Rui who squeezed a few of the people who were working on it outside.

“Mercury, it’s mercury.”

“Oh my god! No wonder it’s so heavy, a whole coffin full of mercury.”

“Make way, let me go in and take a look.”

Listening to the sound of words coming from inside, Zhuang Rui squeezed in hard, and he saw that Professor Meng was holding a wooden stick and stirring it in the coffin.

The layer of dust on the surface, with the flow of mercury, all disappeared, under the refraction of the light, bright mercury as a mirror, reflecting endless light.

Zhuang Rui once saw a scientific information, once in a Han tomb in Shandong, ceramic coffins, found that there are traces of mercury residue, but the tomb was once excavated, but did not leave more clues and information.

Mercury scientific name is called mercury, history has recorded, ancient Taoists use this alchemy in order to seek immortality, although mercury can indeed be used for medicinal purposes, can kill insects, attack poison, treatment of scabies, paralysis, sores and other diseases, but the harm to the body is also very great.

History has at least three emperors died of mercury poisoning, the emperor seems to believe in the so-called Taoist theory, believe that the body soaked in mercury can not be immortalized.

Professor Meng lifted the wooden stick, a few drops of mercury along the stick dripped back into the coffin, after a little thought, Professor Meng said, “There is something inside the coffin, it must be the owner of the tomb, but the mercury will quickly evaporate when it sees the air, and there is a high level of toxicity in the gas, so let’s first put the lid on the coffin.”

After Zhuang Rui several people re-covered the coffin lid, Prof. Meng and several experts discussed and decided to ask the relevant units for some gas masks to scoop out all the mercury.

The work was unable to continue, everyone retreated back to the mountain, and by the time the gas masks and related paraphernalia were delivered, it was already early morning the next day.

“Xiao Zhuang, be careful later, don’t let the mercury get on your skin.”

There were only eight people who went down to the tomb, and besides Zhuang Rui and Dr. Ren, the other few were also experts in the domestic archaeology field.

After opening the lid of the coffin, two people, Zhuang Rui and Dr. Ren, with shoulder-length leather gloves, began to carefully scoop the mercury inside the coffin into a few buckets, which would later be sent for research and laboratory tests to verify the production process of mercury more than two thousand years ago.

To be honest, after this archaeological excavation, Zhuang Rui’s courage is really a lot, the environment to exercise people this sentence is true, before where he dared to make a big fuss in the coffins of the dead?

With a scoop of flowing silver-white liquid was scooped out of the coffin, the objects in the copper coffin also gradually emerged.