Chapter 0902 – Emperor’s Tomb

“What is this thing?”

Zhuang Rui saw a corpse emerge through the glass on the oxygen mask, but the body was gray and white, and the fingers touched it hard, how does it not look like a human body?

“Gold …… witch hazel?”

Zhuang Rui this side is puzzled, over there Professor Meng mouth issued a cry of alarm, the whole person is flung to the copper coffin, if not inside the mercury water level has dropped, designated will splash him all over.

“Quickly, speed up a bit, this ancient corpse has the protection of the golden hazel, I’m afraid it hasn’t decayed.”

Although he couldn’t see Professor Meng’s face through the oxygen mask, but from his words, he could hear that the old professor would be very agitated, almost as if he had gone up to grab Zhuang Rui and Dr. Ren’s scoops to personally do the work of cleaning up the mercury.

Mercury has the effect of antiseptic, and jade also has the role of freshness, the two together, no wonder Professor Meng will make such an inference.

Witch hazel also called “jade box” is the emperor of the han dynasty and high-ranking aristocrats died with the mortuary clothing, the appearance of the same shape with the human body.

Jade is a symbol of the wearer’s status, the emperor and some of the nearest ministers of the jade to the gold wire knot, known as the “golden strand of jade,” the other aristocrats are using silver, copper wire fabrication, known as the “silver strand of jade” and “copper strand of jade Jade Coat of Silver Wisps” and “Jade Coat of Copper Wisps”.

China has unearthed a total of eighteen Western Han Dynasty tombs with jade clothes, while there are only eight tombs with gold strands of jade clothes, the most representative of which is the gold stranded jade clothes of Liu Sheng, the King of Zhongshan, unearthed from the No. 1 Tomb of Mancheng, Hebei Province.

After the relevant stone evidence, this gold and jade coat is more than 1,000 grams of gold wire linking up 2498 pieces of jade of different sizes, by hundreds of craftsmen spent more than two years to complete, the whole piece of jade coat design is exquisite, meticulous workmanship, is a rare art treasure.

In 1968, this golden jade coat was unearthed, which stirred up the domestic and foreign archaeological circles, and countless scholars from home and abroad rushed to Hebei to carry out scientific research on this rare treasure.

Now this coffin has been revealed in the interval of the jade pieces, with the naked eye can see that the slight still has a golden luster of the thin line, even if like Zhuang Rui has never been exposed to the gold witch hazel novice, it is not difficult to judge that this is a gold witch hazel jade coat!

As the mercury inside the coffin continued to be scooped out, the corpse wearing the golden wisp jade coat was presented more in front of the crowd, what was initially seen was his abdomen, which was high and bulging, and now, the chest and feet had also been exposed.

“There’s something in the head.”

Professor Meng, who had been staring intently at the golden wisps of jade inside the coffin, suddenly shouted out, and all the people’s gazes were instantly attracted, and the head of the corpse that had been exposed to the surface of the water was actually flashing with golden light, and it was actually a golden mask.

And Zhuang Rui once got that gold mask is different, this mask is not very big, only cover to the nose part of the body, but the mask is carved with extremely complicated pattern, the whole mask is densely packed with all kinds of lines.

Professor Meng probed his body and tried to take it, the rope tied to the jade coat behind that mask should have already decayed, it was easy to take the mask down.

“National treasure, national treasure! It’s even more exquisite than the gold mask unearthed at the Sanxingdui in Hubei.”

Professor Meng couldn’t wait to take off his gloves and directly caress on the mask, muttering under his breath with a look of love.

After playing with it for a while, Prof. Meng looked at Zhuang Rui and said, “Xiao Zhuang, although this mask isn’t as big as the one in your museum, the workmanship is much more exquisite.”

“Hehe, that’s right, our old ancestor’s craftsmanship, of course it’s better than the foreign devils.”

Zhuang Rui laughed, but after saying this, his heart was suddenly a little twisted, what he is doing now, is not exactly disturbing the old ancestors?

“Dude is in archaeology, save from being dug up by grave robbers in the future.”

Zhuang Rui in his mind to find a reason, in fact, the state archaeology, to put it bluntly is also the official thief, the only difference with the grave robbers: one is used for private profit, one is open to the public masses only.

“Xiao Zhuang, Xiao Ren, immediately take out all this mercury, in addition to call them to prepare tools, to transport this golden witch hazel to the laboratory in Yu Province, long time for fear of problems, can not call the local helicopter.”

After seeing the gold stranded jade coat and gold mask unearthed, Prof. Meng immediately made a decision.

To be honest, this time the opening of the coffin was a bit too hasty, but also because of the conditions, such a large volume and weight of the copper coffin, there is no way to transport out of the tomb intact.

Professor Meng said, everyone was busy, at this moment to protect the witch hazel and its body is the most important, and the coffin and what unearthed artifacts, are now put aside, anyway, things in the inside, and will not run away from their own long legs.

The national machine is used, the efficiency is very high, more than half an hour later, a helicopter stopped at the top of the mountain, will be carefully placed in a bag full of ice witch hazel along with the body inside, to transport out of the mountain.

And at this time in the tomb of mercury gas, also in the role of the blower basically all evaporated, the crowd and down to the tomb, began to count the objects in the copper coffin.

To know, from the beginning of the survey to excavation, to now has been more than ten days of work, even the identity of the owner of the tomb are not clear, this is also let including Professor Meng, including many experts and scholars, feel a trace of ugly.

Although the domestic excavation of the nameless tomb many, but those are because of the military disaster thieves, will be within the tomb to prove the identity of the objects swept away, but this tomb is very well preserved, if the test is not the identity of the owner of the tomb, it is definitely a thing that makes peers laugh.

Originally there was a layer of mercury inside the copper coffin that hadn’t been scooped out, but the mercury from more than two thousand years ago was quickly lost and evaporated when it saw the air, and inside the coffin, a thick layer of funerary objects was revealed.

“This is a jade grip, right?”

Wearing gloves, Zhuang Rui turned out a pair of dark, olive-shaped, rounded in the center and pointed at both ends, with some lines on it.

“This should be a jade pig.” Zhuang Rui surveyed for half a day, recognizing the shape of the artifact, a long cylinder with faceted single lines, typical of the Han Eight Knives technique.

Jade grip for one of the jade burial artifacts, has always been the artifacts held in the hands of the deceased, the ancients believe that you can not go empty-handed at the time of death, to hold wealth and power, the pig represents wealth, so the Han Dynasty jade grip, basically the shape of the jade pig.

Professor Meng took the jade artifact handed over by Zhuang Rui, nodded and said, “Yes, it’s the jade grip, but you definitely won’t be able to find the jade plug in here, that thing is designated to be inside the Witch Hazel.”

As the cleanup proceeded, one artifact after another was taken out from inside the coffin, there were gold and silver products, small animal ceramic figurines representing auspicious symbols, and most of all, jade artifacts.

Jade Juan, jade pendant, jade people, all kinds of jade, on the ground on the white cloth set full, due to the protection of mercury, these jade as if new jade, without any traces of excavation.

And the most surprising object, is a bronze short sword with a sheath, short sword long but two fingers, but extremely sharp, Zhuang Rui tried, it is very easy to dozens of layers of white cloth clapper to cut open.

This bronze short sword has just been unearthed, was Professor Meng with the soil in the grave to the package, according to his words, unearthed bronze see oxygen, will be qualitatively changed, to use the soil in the grave will be wrapped, such as to get to the laboratory and then processed.

Zhuang Rui also didn’t know if Prof. Meng’s statement had any scientific basis, but when he plucked that stereo sword himself, it seemed that it was also full of patina and soil.

“Be careful, this is pottery.”

“Wow, this piece of jade is a fine suet jade!”

The unearthed pieces of artifacts caused gasps to be heard from the surroundings from time to time, and there was even a set of sixteen, colorful terracotta figurines that were only the size of a thumb inside.

The figures shown in these terracotta figurines were supposed to be the imperial chefs of the emperor, there were those who cut meat and cooked vegetables, those who panned rice and steamed rice, and there was also a water well made of pottery, with ceramic people doing the act of fetching water by the side of the well.

Although these terracotta figurines are extremely small, but the facial expression is portrayed perfectly, it is like a reduced size of the real person.

Inside the coffin was originally some brocade was, but in the mercury was scooped out, those brocade was then materialized off, sticky in the coffin, a pile of very difficult to clean up.

“What’s going on? Is there no seal or jade seal?”

Coffin cleaning work is almost to the end, but let the crowd expect the jade seal or seal did not appear, has always behaved very calm Professor Meng, at this moment also a little anxious.

“No, could this be the tomb owner deliberately not letting others know his identity?”

“Impossible, the entry into the ground is done by the descendants, and will definitely put his accompanying seal into the tomb.”

“Then how come it’s not there? Let’s all look more carefully!”

Not only was Prof. Meng a bit anxious, the rest of the people weren’t very calm either, if the identity of the owner couldn’t be found inside this coffin, then the rest of the ear and side chambers would even less likely have objects that proved the owner’s identity.

Zhuang Rui released the aura in his eyes while the people were discussing, and rechecked the coffin, when he saw the upper right side of the copper coffin, his eyes couldn’t help but pause.

There was a large piece of brocade decayed object there, but in its center, Zhuang Rui sensed a very strong aura, although the size of the object inside was only the size of a baby’s fist, purple aura filled it.

“Teacher, I found this thing, it should be a jade seal, right?”

Zhuang Rui reached out and took the remnants of the mass of brocade in his hands, and after peeling away the decaying brocade on the outside, a pile of jade suddenly appeared in his hands.

The jade was in a quadrilateral shape, with a coiled dragon carved at the top, with clear scales and armor on its body, the dragon’s head contained a dragon pearl in a majestic shape, and at the bottom was a square seal.

Zhuang Rui turned it over and looked at it, there seemed to be quite a few words on it, but he only recognized the word “seal”.

Recognize a “seal” word, in fact, has been enough, at least shows that this is the emperor’s tomb, because the ancient use of the chapter of a clear hierarchy, to the Qin Dynasty, but also after the seal and the seal of the difference, the emperor with the seal called the seal, the subjects can only be called seal.

According to the records of the Han Dynasty, the emperor had six seals: the emperor’s line seal, the emperor’s seal, the emperor’s letter seal, the emperor’s line seal, the emperor’s seal, the emperor’s letter seal. Each of the six seals had a different purpose and was in the charge of the Rune Order Chancellor.

However, the Jade Seal of Transmission is not among these six seals, this jade seal is used to represent the orthodoxy, the so-called “true son of God” must have this jade seal, otherwise it can only be a grass chicken king rather than the true dragon son of God.

The so-called Jade Seal of Passing State refers to the famous He Shi Bik in history. After Qin broke Zhao and got the He Shi Bik, Emperor Qin Shi Huang ordered Li Si to write in seal script on the He Shi Bik the eight words of “Receive the Mandate of Heaven, Both Life and Eternal Prosperity”, and Wang Sun Shou, the jade craftsman of Xianyang, refined and polished the He Shi Bik and sculpted it as a seal, so that the Jade Seal of Passing State came into being.

The seal of state through the East and West Han, Song, Qi, Liang, Chen four generations of change, and finally was Yang Jian income to the Sui dynasty palace, just after the death of the Sui dynasty, the queen Xiao with the royal grandson of Zhengdao with the seal of state disappeared into the north of the desert Turkic.

Later, Li Jing crusade Turkic, Xiao Empress return to the Central Plains, will be offered to Li Shimin, just at the end of the Tang Dynasty, the world is in chaos, the group of heroes, the end of the Tang Dynasty Emperor Li Congke embraced the seal of the state of the Xuanwu building to self-mutilation, the seal of the state of the missing.

“Jade seal?”

Zhuang Rui’s words attracted all the attention of the crowd to him, more than ten hands reached over to Zhuang Rui at the same time, frightening Zhuang Rui backed up, who would be responsible if this thing broke?

“Bring it to me.”

Prof. Meng also lost his composure at this moment, after receiving the jade seal in Zhuang Rui’s hand, he didn’t care if there was any hazardous material on it, he directly took off his gloves and printed it on the back of his hand.

Prof. Meng was recognizing the seal characters on the back of his hand, and suddenly his face revealed an unbelievable look as he stammered, “Liu …… Liu Xiu’s Emperor’s Treasure Seal?”

“Liu Xiu? Wasn’t Liu Xiu’s tomb publicized long ago?”

“Yes! How is this possible? Liu Xiu’s tomb is just a few dozen miles away!”

“Prof. Meng, you’re not mistaken, are you?”

When Prof. Meng said this, the tomb room was like a pot exploding, thousands of years down the line, Liu Xiu’s tomb has long been recognized as being on the banks of the Yellow River, and built a garden, how is it possible for another Liu Xiu’s tomb to appear here?

“It’s true, Old Li, Old Song, come and look at these words, it can’t be fake.”

Prof. Meng was also a bit unable to believe his eyes, but the few words on the back of his hand that gradually became blurred did confirm that this was Liu Xiu’s Emperor’s Jade Seal.

After Professor Meng handed the jade seal to a few of his peers, he muttered, “Could that legend be true?”

“Teacher, what legend?”

Zhuang Rui had a good ear and asked a follow-up question after hearing Professor Meng’s words.

“Legend has it that Liu Xiu’s son, was a very rebellious person, Liu Xiu told him to go east he must have gone west, told him to shoo the dog must have chased the chicken. Legend has it that when Liu Xiu was about to die, he asked his son to bury him on the bank of the Yellow River, in fact, he wanted this disobedient son to bury himself in Mang Mountain, now it seems that this rumor is a little bit true.”

The truth of history can no longer be examined, and Professor Meng can only use these wild rumors to explain the unearthing of Liu Xiu’s jade seal.