Volume 3 Chapter 1: Lao Yi is released from prison

These few words have drawn my thoughts to the past.

“I have the fish…”

What fish? Could it be the snake-browed bronze fish?

Judging from the patterns on the stone carvings in the tomb, this strange bronze fish should be three fish joined together at the head and tail. Now I have two of them, and there should be one more to complete the set. Could this strange sentence be hinting that the last fish is in his hands?

The person who posted this message, since he has this photo and knows about the fish, could he be one of the missing people?

I carefully looked through this webpage, and judging from the time it was posted, it should have been two years ago. The message has no signature or contact information except for this sentence.

I felt a sense of discord. Since it is a search for people, why not leave your contact information?

I searched in Google in various ways, hoping to find more information, but after searching for a long time, I only found this one that was related to this.

I was frustrated, but this was already a big discovery. At least it can be said that two years ago, there were still people paying attention to a 20-year-old incident.

Soon, the damn storm finally passed. The day after the storm passed, there was a boat from Qinglan Port in Wenchang. We saw that there was nothing to stay here, so we packed our bags and prepared to go back.

Before we left, we went to the military medical clinic to look for Ah Ning, but she had already disappeared. We asked the doctor, and he said that a group of foreigners had suddenly come over a few days ago during the storm and taken her away.

I knew in my heart that it must have been Ah Ning who had picked her up on the island. The storm had closed the island for a few days, and there was nothing we could do even if we wanted to stop it.

Fatty cursed, saying that she got off easy, but I couldn’t help but feel relieved. I didn’t know what to do with her. I couldn’t kill her, and I couldn’t torture her to get a confession. This situation was exactly what I wanted. Let her go. She didn’t do anything to us anyway.

However, their company entering the sea cave was not as simple as saving someone. What were their intentions? What happened between Uncle San and them? Where was he now? These hidden secrets will never surface in the tranquil blue sea of Xisha.

To make a long story short, we took the Qiongsha Ferry back to the mainland. Two days later, at the Haikou Airport, I said goodbye to Mian Youping and Fat Boy, and boarded a plane to Hangzhou. Life in reality is always surprisingly smooth. Four hours later, I was back at home in Hangzhou.

The long period of intense activity had exhausted me, so I spent the rest of the time sleeping, waking up only once a day, always hungry, and eating whatever I could find in the fridge before lying down again. Two weeks passed without me noticing. A friend thought I had died at home and came looking for me, and I realized that I had rested enough.

I felt uncomfortable after sleeping too much, so I called Wang Meng to ask about the situation in the shop. Apart from the lack of business, everything was normal. In fact, the lack of business was also a normal part of it. The boss was not there, and it would be strange if there was business. Then I called all the relatives of my uncle all the relatives who had dealings with Uncle San, I asked them all if they knew the whereabouts of Uncle San, but none of them had any results. I finally called Uncle San’s shop, and one of his employees answered the phone. I asked him, “Has Master Wu San returned?”

The clerk hesitated for a moment and said, “Master Wu hasn’t come back yet, but a strange person said he was your brother and insisted that we tell him where you were. I don’t know where he came from, but he looked shifty and not like a good person, so I sent him away. He left a phone number when he left. Why don’t you call him?”

I was stunned for a moment, and I felt strange in my heart. I have many friends who nod in all directions, but I can’t think of many who would think of going to my uncle’s side to find me. After thinking for a moment, I asked him, “How old is that person?”

“I can’t say for sure. He’s probably about the same age as you, a little older than you, with a short haircut, triangular eyes, a high nose, wearing glasses, and an earring. He looks neither Chinese nor foreign, and he’s not a good fit.”

“Not a good fit?” I repeated these words, wondering who it was. Suddenly, I felt a sudden heart-throb, and asked the clerk, “Is that person not very articulate?”

“Yes, yes, yes… that guy stutters a dozen times before he finishes a sentence.”

I was delighted, already knowing who the other person was, and quickly asked for the phone number, and immediately called. After a while, the phone was connected, and a familiar yet unfamiliar voice came from the other end, “Who—who—who? (stammering)”

I laughed and said, ‘I’ll fuck your balls, can’t you even recognize my voice?’

He was stunned for a moment, and then he let out a few excited sounds and yelled, ‘Three-three-three years have passed since I last heard you speak, of course I can’t recognize your voice.

I couldn’t help but feel a little sad, and I wanted to cry. I scolded him, ’You still have the nerve to say that to me? You haven’t given me any news for a few years, and I thought you were dead!”

The person on the other end of the phone was Lao Yang. I had forgotten his real name. We grew up together, doing everything together. For a while, we were almost like one person. His family was poor, and after graduating from college, he couldn’t find a job, so he came to work at my store. Don’t look at him, he’s not good at talking, but he’s especially good at fooling people. The two of them are like-minded, and they run the business haphazardly.

Three years ago, this kid got into trouble and was caught while following an old friend from Jiangxi Province to the Qinling Mountains to dig for treasure. He was sentenced to life imprisonment, and he used his mouth to fool around and fool himself into becoming a good young man who was deceived by the bad forces of society. At first, I wanted to see him, but this kid was too proud to see me. Later, I moved, and we lost contact. I never thought he would be out of prison now.

I have a lot to do with his decision to go digging. Since I was a child, I have always bragged about how great my grandfather was, and I even showed him my grandfather’s treasures. I guess that’s when he got the idea to go digging. This kid is so bold, and when I was a kid, I would give him ideas to get into trouble, but I never thought that he would actually go through with something that could cost him his life.

I have three years of stories to tell him, and once I start talking, I can’t stop! I couldn’t stop talking until my mouth was cramping and my phone was hot. I was so excited that I said to him, “Are you okay at night, buddy? I’ll pick you up and we’ll go eat and drink.”

Lao Yi was also excited and replied, “That’s great! I haven’t eaten big chunks of meat in three years, so I’m going to eat a lot this time!”

The deal was done, and I was so excited that I couldn’t sleep. I took a shower, tidied up the house, and went to the agreed hotel to wait for the kid. I ordered all the big meat dishes on the menu. Before the evening was over, the kid came. I looked at him and said, “Wow, this kid is not normal. He has been in prison for three years, and he has even gotten fat.

When we two old friends met, we didn’t say a word, and first finished half a bottle of Wuliangye. We reminisced about our past lives and looked at the current situation, and we couldn’t help but sigh. We drank until we were full and satisfied, and the plates on the table were upside down, and we realized that we had nothing more to say.

I had drunk too much at the time, and my brain was confused, so I started talking about the things he had done when he was in trouble. I asked him with a burp, “Tell me the truth. What the hell did you pour down back then? Your old cousin from Jiangxi was even sentenced to life in prison?

As soon as I said it, I regretted it. I thought to myself, why did I bring this up? I’ll only make him sad and I won’t be able to make it up to him.

But when he heard me ask, he actually looked pleased, clenched his teeth and said, “The stuff I spilled out was really weird.

I saw that he looked down on me and was furious: “You can forget it. I’m not the same kid I was three years ago. I can tell what it is if you can describe it.”

Lao Yang looked at me seriously and laughed: “Just—just look at you. You’re still in the Tang, Song, Yuan, Ming, and Qing dynasties!” He then used his chopsticks to dip in the wine and drew a strange shape on the table. “Have you—have you seen this thing before?”

I was drunk and couldn’t see clearly. I thought it looked like a tree or a pillar. I scolded him, “You idiot, you’ve been in the brothel for three years and you haven’t improved at all. What’s this called? It’s a stick!”

Lao Yang said, “You, you, you can just look at it! With your eyes, you’re only fit to look at this kind of painting!”

I took a closer look and really couldn’t make out what it was. I said to him, “Who knows what you’re painting? You see these branches? You mean the pattern? It’s painted like a tree branch. This painting is too bad. I can’t see it!”

Lao Yang smiled proudly, lowered his voice, and said to me in a mysterious tone, “Don’t say it. This is a tree branch, a bronze tree branch with a thick wrist!

I heard “Oh, no!” This guy had actually made a bronze artifact. This was really reckless. I sentenced him to three years in prison, which was really a good deal. I said to him, “This thing must be heavy. You don’t make small things, but you make a huge thing.

He patted my shoulder, peeled a piece of fried taro with spring onions, and threw it into his mouth and said, ”You don’t understand the situation at the time. That place is different from what you think. It’s a long story.”

I have a little research on bronze ware, and I pondered the thing he drew. I thought of the bronze trees that were unearthed in Sanxingdui not long ago, and they really looked a bit like it.

Sanxingdui is the remains of ancient Shu, and strictly speaking, it is no longer within the scope of our antique business. It is too far away in time, too precious, and the price is not high no matter how much it is. If Lao Yi went to a place with this thing, I don’t know whether to say he was lucky or unlucky.

I was suddenly interested in this thing, so I asked him what it was like at the time. He had drunk too much and didn’t want to hide it, so he told me everything.

At that time, they had been in the Qinling Mountains for more than ten days, and had found nothing but a sea of virgin forest, and they were almost out of food and ammunition.

Lao Yang and his cousin actually had no basic knowledge of tomb raiding, but they were full of enthusiasm. At this time, his cousin had already become disheartened and wanted to turn back, but Lao Yang insisted on continuing, so they didn’t immediately turn back.

On this day, they trekked to a valley hidden in the mountains. They had seen many such valleys in the past few days, but this time, Lao Yang noticed that it was a bit different.

The geography here is very peculiar, with a low altitude and high temperature. In the center of the valley, there is a vast area of old banyan trees. Wow, that forest, I don’t know how many banyan trees there are that ten people can’t wrap around, covering the sky and blocking the sun. The roots of the banyan trees are crawling all over the ground, leaving almost no space to walk.

When Lao Yang’s cousin saw this scene, he felt that something was not quite right. The banyan forest could not have grown to such a scale naturally.

There is an old saying in the land of immortals, “Where the land is salty, there are no tall trees; where the sun rises over the Nine-Eight Bridge, there are no forests on bald mountains; there must be sand and mud.” In other words, where grass and trees grow abnormally, there may be problems underground or around, and there may be ancient tombs.

The roots of banyan trees are like snakes, intertwined with each other, and the forest is much denser than an ordinary forest. Entering it is probably going to be a bit of a pain, but thinking about how this time he came and ate so much pain for nothing, his cousin was not comfortable in his heart, and he went in with his old itch.

They kept walking until the sun set, and only then did they slowly approach the heart of the forest. The sound of night owls could be heard all around them, and the light was extremely dim. They turned on their flashlights and slowed down to avoid getting lost.

At this time, his cousin tripped over something and almost fell. Lao Yang quickly helped him up and turned around to see that it was a bale of roots wrapped around something at his feet, sticking out of the ground.

They used a short axe to cut off a few roots of the banyan tree root bag, exposing the contents. When they shone a flashlight on it, it turned out to be a moss-covered stone man. Judging from the costume, it seemed to be from the Han Dynasty, with very exquisite totem patterns embossed.

The appearance of this stone man made Lao Yang and the others immediately realize that something really exists in this forest. The old saying was right…

They looked around the stone man and soon discovered that there were many large stone slabs buried under the fallen leaves on the surface of the banyan forest here, seemingly the remains of an ancient road. The stone man was located on one side of the ancient stone road, seemingly the guardian of this stone road.

Could this layout be the sacred road of the imperial tomb? Lao Yang thought: When we were still outside the small village dozens of miles away, an old man said that there were several Western Jin princes buried in the mountains here. Could it be that after so many days of hard work, we really ran into them?

If that’s true, the suffering we’ve endured these past few days has really been worthwhile.

He and his cousin discussed it and decided to first follow the ancient road to see if there were any nearby ancient tombs, which would surely have left some traces.

They trudged along the ancient road for several more hours, entering the heart of the forest. On both sides of the stone path, they found the remains of many stone men. Some were lying on their backs on the stone path, and one was wrapped in the interior of a tree, all covered with moss. The traces of the gods’ path became more and more obvious.

Lao Yang and his friends were secretly excited and quickened their pace. But the strange thing was that the more they advanced along the ancient road, the more dense the aerial roots became. In the end, they had to cut the roots to get through, as if the trees here did not want strangers to walk this path.

After walking all the way until the middle of the night, they were exhausted when the moonlight appeared in the tree gap in front of them. Lao Yang felt that they might have reached the end of the stone path, so they climbed over piles of rocks and cut the last air root, emerging from the banyan forest.

Suddenly, in the moonlight, a huge, sunken, inverted pyramid-shaped stone pit appeared in their field of vision. It was as big as a football field, shaped like a huge bucket, and was tucked in the middle of the forest. The sides of the pit were built into steps, with a total of about a hundred steps leading to the bottom of the pit.

Lao Yang was almost dumbfounded. He had never imagined that the end of the stone path would be such a spectacular ancient architectural relic. He felt his heart racing and almost felt his legs go weak, wanting to kneel down and bow to the pit.

But it was clear that this was not an ancient tomb. What was it, and which dynasty had left it behind?

Lao Yang’s cousin, who was quite knowledgeable, was also shocked by the sight. He said to Lao Yang, “This must be related to a sacrificial ceremony. It looks like an altar. Let’s go down and see if there are any sacrificial vessels in the sacrificial pit.”

At this time, the sky had already turned white with a layer of mold, and the light was very dim. They used flashlights to avoid tripping over the snake-like roots, and nervously followed the stone steps down to the bottom of the pit.

The entire pit was hidden by the aerial roots of the banyan trees around it. If they had not followed the ancient path, they would not have found it even if they had walked past it. The stone slabs inside the pit were almost all cracked into jigsaw puzzles, and a large number of roots were jutting out of the stones and into the gaps on the sides.

The bottom of the pit was also covered with a thick layer of weeds, and only a few places had traces of the green stone slabs underneath.

The weeds were half as tall as a person, and they used machetes to cut their way forward.

At the center of the altar was a well surrounded by a circle of stones. The well was about ten meters deep, and when they shone their flashlights down, they saw that the bottom was also covered in grass. They used a rope to descend to the bottom of the well, and after looking around, they saw that there was nothing there, so they just started digging with their Luoyang shovels.

The first shovel hit 15 meters, but they didn’t see the bottom. Lao Yan pulled it out, smashed the mud, and found that the mud brought out was mixed with carbon ash, as if a large amount of things had been burned, and in the carbon ash, they also found a few fragments of pottery and jade.

The carbon soil in the decaying mud was the remains of the burnt offerings, and the pottery and jade fragments that were left over were also offerings at the time. It seems that this well was the place where the offerings were burnt when the dead were sacrificed, and it was used more than once.

At this point, Lao Yan could no longer contain his excitement. In history, during sacrificial ceremonies, large quantities of exquisite bronze and jade artifacts were often burned. If they could dig up one or two, they would really be rich.

They started digging with shovels, taking turns, tirelessly. In no time at all, they had dug down about seven meters to the bottom of the pit, and a large number of jade and pottery fragments had been unearthed. They couldn’t even count them all. There were jade pieces, jade cakes, pottery jars, pottery pots, and almost everything else. Soon, a pile of such things had been heaped up on one side.

Unfortunately, most of the jade and pottery were broken, which was not worth much on the market, which made Lao Yang and his friends very disappointed. What disappointed them most was that there were no bronze vessels they wanted.

They continued digging, and soon reached a depth of ten meters. They still didn’t find anything good, and digging straight down to a depth of ten meters or more was already the limit.

His cousin was more cautious and said that after digging for so long and finding nothing, he was afraid that the altar was not used with bronze vessels during the sacrificial ceremonies.

However, Lao Yang was not willing to give up. No matter what his cousin said, he still wanted to continue digging. He asked his cousin to go up and he dug for another two hours by himself, digging until he reached a depth of more than 14 meters. Suddenly, with a loud clang, his shovel hit something metallic.

Lao Yang and his cousin looked at each other, then bent down to take a look. In the center of the hole, there was a dark green protrusion.

There was indeed a bronze artifact, and Lao Yang’s heart skipped a beat, and his hands trembled. His cousin cheered, threw away his shovel, and jumped into the hole. The two of them began to dig the protrusion with their hands.

Soon, a strange object appeared before them. It was a bronze stick, but they couldn’t tell what it was. When they removed the surface carbon soil, a delicate bronze cast branch appeared before them.

They were overjoyed, they had never seen this before, it must be worth a lot of money, they quickly dug with their hands for several meters, but they could not see the bottom, they could not pull it out, so they used the shovel to dig, digging all the way down, until they reached another six or seven meters, the bronze branch still did not seem to reach the bottom.

Lao Yi began to feel strange. His experience as an antique dealer told him that bronze artifacts rarely exceeded three meters in height, but the object in front of him, according to a conservative estimate, must have been at least 20 meters high.

The hole was already nearly 20 meters deep, and it would definitely collapse if they dug any deeper. But it was really annoying to go back empty-handed. The two of them were at a loss, standing there, not knowing what to do.

In the end, his cousin had the solution. He hammered a Luoyang shovel head into the bottom of the bronze branch, about one meter away, and then continued to hammer it in at an angle in the direction of the bronze branch. He continued to hammer it in until it was about ten meters away, and the sound of the steel pipe suddenly became dull and he couldn’t hammer it any further.

When Lao Yi said this, his expression was a bit unnatural. He lit a cigarette and took a deep breath, saying, “That means that the part of the bronze branch under the mud has a length of at least ten meters, which means that the total length is at least thirty meters. Such a large thing, even if it is dug out, cannot be taken back.”

I was shocked and thought he was exaggerating. The Si Mu Wu Ding unearthed in the Wuguan Village of Houjiazhuang, Anyang, Henan Province, is the largest existing bronze vessel in China, but it is only about one meter high. At that time, it would have taken nearly 200 to 300 people to cast such a large object. To cast a bronze tree more than 30 meters high, wouldn’t it take tens of thousands of people?

But seeing that he had said so much, I didn’t want to contradict him, so I asked, “What happened later? Did you continue digging?”

Lao Yang said, “No, I wanted to dig it up, but my cousin suddenly said that this thing might be a divine object, and that it might really have grown out of the ground. I thought about it later, and it was too risky to dig it up, so I gave up. Isn’t that strange? I think this tree fork is still part of a large bronze vessel, and the thing underneath it might be even bigger. To dig it all out, I’m afraid it would shock the world.”

I was surprised and said, “So you didn’t dig up the bronze tree, how did you get caught?”

He said, “It’s weird to talk about this. We were not willing to give up at that time, and we dug a few more pits in other places. We finally dug up some complete pots and pans. After we left the Qinling Mountains, we wanted to find a place to sell the stolen goods, but my cousin has been acting crazy since he saw the thing. Once in the city, he told everyone about the bronze branches. The Qinling area has always been hostile to tomb robbers, and the news has always been very tight. When we went to the antique shop to sell the goods, a few people heard my cousin talking nonsense and realized our identity, so they reported us! Fortunately, the policeman who arrested me was a fellow villager. When he saw that I was young, he let me say that I had been deceived, and I was sentenced to three years in prison. My cousin was originally sentenced to four or five years, but he went crazy and told everything about the past, so he was sentenced to life imprisonment and almost killed.

I said, “Oh, you’re really unlucky. You’ve been busy for so long and you’ve got nothing. I’ve told you many times not to sell stolen goods on the spot. What you’re doing is a business that’s outside the law. You’re in conflict with the locals. This is called instant retribution.”

Lao Yang smiled mysteriously and said, “I—I can’t say I’ve got nothing—I’ve got something. Look at this—this?” He pointed to his earrings!