Volume 2Chapter 2: Double-layered Tomb Wall
Wen Jin and Uncle San had completely different backgrounds. Uncle San was a local bandit, and if he hadn’t been born into a family of grave robbers, he would have been a bandit. He always considered the profit factor first, and he judged people based on their profit potential. Wen Jin is different. She is more open-minded after studying abroad. She is mainly interested in tomb raiding, and she studies while she is raiding. So when she heard what her uncle said, the first thing she thought about was the archaeological value of this ancient tomb. At that time, she wanted to tell her classmates about this idea.
Shipwrecks and underwater tombs are very rare, and it seems that the only person in legend who used this burial method was the son of Shen Wansan. So Wen Jin’s idea should be very conscientious, but Uncle San was a bit embarrassed because he thought about the things that would be confiscated if they were fished up. But Wen Jin was very resourceful. A smile and a kiss turned Uncle San from a hero of the green forest into an archaeologist of the Republic, and he was still doing volunteer work.
That night, Uncle San thought about it all night. He had never dug a sea grave before, and he had bragged to others that he would do it tomorrow. He thought about it. He couldn’t use a shovel in the sea. First, he couldn’t use his strength to drive the nails in. Second, even if he dug it out, the sea mud was completely different from that on land, and his little experience was completely useless. He recalled the records in my grandfather’s notebook. My grandfather had indeed dug a sea grave a few times, but there was no special method. It mainly depended on the terrain.
A ship burial is when a tomb is built on a ship, then a valley or trench is found in the sea, the ship is smashed through, the tomb is sunk, and then the tomb is covered with soil. It is actually the same as on land, just in the sea. Uncle San estimated that the place where they were staying must have been a small sea valley, which was later filled in. When the ship sank, it must have needed a lot of anchors to secure it. In that case, the center of the anchor drop point, or a little bit off, must be the burial point.
The more San Shu thought about it, the more it made sense. He was suddenly full of confidence. The next day, he took the men down to the water, tied all the anchors together with ropes, and then marked a point in the middle. He shoveled in several places in that area, and sure enough, in the east of the center, they found wood underneath.
Next, they used the traditional positioning method and were able to determine a huge underground palace in the shape of the Chinese character “土” (earth), consisting of two ear chambers, two auxiliary chambers, a corridor and a rear hall. The building area was about 1,000 square meters, with the rear hall being the largest, measuring more than 30 meters long and 10 meters wide. It seemed to be the place where coffins were placed.
Uncle San was stunned. He thought to himself, “Who is this person in this tomb? It seems to be really something. This scale is comparable to that of an imperial tomb.
That night, everyone was so excited that they couldn’t sleep. They gathered around, eating fish head pot seafood while discussing how to get in. Uncle San analyzed the structure of the shipwreck burial for them. The tomb is most afraid of water. Now they don’t know if water has entered the underworld palace. If it has, they just need to make a hole they should be fine. If it is still a sealed tomb chamber, then it will be more difficult, because once it is drilled through, the water rushing in may have disastrous consequences. Judging from the pieces of wood brought up by the probe, there should still be air below. The whole tomb is very large, and it is easy to cause capillary structure, and there may be a large amount of air in several rooms inside.
Uncle San’s theory was based on his many years of experience in tomb raiding. He talked the nerds into a daze. In the end, he focused all the difficult problems on how to dig a hole. The bottom of the water was all sand, which could not be fixed, and it was easy to collapse. After much discussion, they decided to use a more traditional method. There were bombs on the fishing boat for blasting fish, so they first used a bomb to blast a hole in the side of the boat, blasting away the sand that was prone to collapse. Then they dug a hole diagonally downwards in the relatively solid sea mud below. This was a huge project, but these people were all full of fighting spirit. Uncle San estimated that it would take about a week, but the corpse was still on the boat, and it would start to stink if it wasn’t sent back soon.
They came up with a compromise: the big boat would take the corpse back first, and they would work from the small boat. Because the weather was so good those few days, they weren’t worried at all. They tied three kayaks together and moved all the equipment they needed to a reef.
The next day, the big ship left, and Uncle San felt a little uneasy. Once the ship was gone, there was no protection at all at sea, but they were so excited about the big tomb that they just thought about it for a moment and then went back to work. The tomb was hit very smoothly, much faster than Uncle San had expected. But after four days, when they hit the tomb wall, the ship had not returned yet, and the men began to worry. Uncle San knew that the only way to maintain good order was to keep working, otherwise there might be panic, so he kept reassuring them and saying encouraging things to distract them.
They cleared a tomb wall in the cave. Uncle San knocked on it. The bricks were hollow, probably to reduce the weight of the entire tomb. Otherwise, even if the ship was bigger, the bottom of the ship would not be able to support it. He saw that every five meters, there was a small hole with a diameter of a pen that was punched into the wall. It seemed that when this tomb was designed, it was sealed with water, and it should be filled with water. They calmed down and began to remove the bricks.
Before entering the tomb, Uncle San had already thought that in this water, no hidden weapons would be useful because the resistance of the seawater was too great. If there were hidden crossbows, even if they were not rotten, the arrows would be fired in slow motion, and it would be impossible to fall into a pit. Not to mention that they could not fall at all, even if they fell, they could swim up. Other various falling rock mechanisms, which were fired with mercury, would not work at all in the water. Mercury flows very slowly in water and is easily dispersed. In fact, this water is a deadly mechanism. In ancient times, there was no oxygen equipment, so it was completely impossible to pour the sea bucket. Therefore, the possibility of this bucket having a mechanism is very small.
They removed the tomb wall, and inside was a hollow, dark space. Uncle San knew that these people were unreliable, so he told them not to move and used a flashlight to drill in. He found that after going forward one meter, there was another wall. The bricks used for this wall were much larger than those on the outside, and the cracks in the wall were sealed with white clay. Sandwiched between the two walls, Uncle San looked around and found a square tomb entrance about half a meter long and wide on the inner wall above his head. Uncle San immediately understood the situation. It seemed that digging was not going to work to get into the tomb.
After returning to the surface, they climbed onto a reef to hold a meeting. Uncle San said, “This tomb has two layers of walls. The outer wall and the inner wall are filled with seawater, and then a channel is made on the inner wall to spiral into the water. With this design, there must be a space inside that is free of water, and the principle of air pressure is used to keep some air in the tomb chamber. Now I don’t know how long the tomb passage is. Tomorrow, we will go down three people, each with four oxygen cylinders, to see if we can make it there.”
They discussed it over and over again. Uncle San was determined to go down, but the other two places needed to be selected. If there was no water inside, the situation would be more complicated and possibly dangerous. At this time, Wen Jin suddenly screamed, and they were startled. They realized that they had been sitting on a rock that had suddenly risen. Uncle San looked down. Originally, it was less than half a meter from the surface of the sea, but now it was more than five meters.
He realized that something was wrong and looked up at the sky. He saw a black line approaching on the far horizon. One of them was a male student named Li Sidi. His parents were fishermen. As soon as he saw this, he was so scared that his lips turned white and he said, “A big storm is coming!”