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The lid of the box slowly opened by itself, revealing a tiny space the size of a pinky finger, which held a small bronze fish. I took it out and saw that the fish looked very ordinary, but the workmanship was very fine, especially the eyebrows above the fish’s eyes, which looked like a snake. I was very surprised. What was so precious about this thing that it had to be kept so well?

At this time, Uncle San had already dragged a gas-cutting cylinder into the room. When he saw that the box had already been opened, he exclaimed, “How did it open? How did you open it?”

When I told him about the numbers, he also frowned and said, “It’s getting more and more chaotic. It seems that these Americans aren’t here to simply dig up the tombs.” He picked up the copper fish and suddenly his face changed. He exclaimed, “Isn’t this a copper fish with snake eyebrows?”

I saw that he seemed to know, and I asked him hurriedly. He took something out of his pocket and handed it to me. I saw that it was also a very exquisite copper fish, about the size of my little finger. The eyebrows of the copper fish were also two sea snakes. The workmanship was very good, and each scale are very delicate. It should be from the same source as the one in the box. The only flaw is that there is a lot of fine white lime-like dirt in the grooves of his scales, which is very firmly stuck. I knew it as soon as I saw it and said, “Is this sea cargo?”

Uncle San nodded, and I was quite surprised. Sea goods are antiques that are fished out of the sea. They are generally blue and white porcelain. It is more convenient to find antiques in the sea than on land, because many things are exposed on the seabed. However, there are too many microorganisms in the sea, and most of the things brought from the sea have white, grayish dirt, which is difficult to wash off, so the value is discounted.

I was very confused. I remembered that my uncle would not be interested in such low-priced goods. I asked my uncle, “Did you ever go to the bottom of the sea?”

My uncle nodded and said, “Only once. I really regret it. If I could have resisted going to that dirty water, I would have had a lot of children by now.”

I know a little about Uncle San’s story. He had a woman before, and she was also a heroine. I heard that they met in the tomb. The woman was called Wen Jin. I heard that she was a very quiet woman. I couldn’t tell that she was a tomb raider from the Northern School. Uncle San and her were together for five years. The woman searched for dragons and acupressure points, and the man explored the acupressure points and positioned them. They were known as the divine eagle couple in the tomb raiding world. Later, I suddenly heard that the woman had disappeared. I only thought that he had lost his grip when he was digging. It was not appropriate for a girl to do this. The family was very sad, but I was only a few years old at the time and didn’t understand much. I only saw that Uncle San was like a piece of wood for a week, always sad and sad. Later, he gradually got better. I don’t remember this clearly from when I was a child. Now that I hear that Uncle San seems to want to talk about it, although I really want to know, I can’t be too nosy. I asked, “Was it a sea battle that happened at that time?”

Uncle San sighed and said, “At that time, she and I were both young. Several of her classmates were on the archaeological team. They vaguely knew that I was a craftsman, and I didn’t want to hide it from them. We were all very good friends. Later, they went to Xisha to do shipwreck archaeology, and I went with them. I just didn’t expect it,” he paused, as if he didn’t want to think about it, “I didn’t expect that the things that sank under the water would be so big.”

It was more than ten years ago, and Uncle San actually had no experience with sea diving. He was so carried away by love that he bragged to Wenjin about how great he was, and so he followed the archaeological team out to sea. They chartered a local fisherman’s boat and spent two days sailing to the vicinity of the Wun Jiao reef in the Xijiao area. That place was one of the most dangerous sections of the ancient Maritime Silk Road, with many shipwrecks. When Uncle San went down to take a look, he was almost stunned. He saw that the seabed was full of broken blue and white porcelain. The scale was truly breathtaking.

Wen Jin told him that these things fell off the ship and were washed everywhere by the sea. In the past, when the fishermen went down with a net, they could pull up four or five pieces of porcelain, but they thought that whatever fell into the water belonged to the Dragon King of the Sea and was usually thrown back.

Unfortunately, most of these things are broken, and it is rare to find any that are intact. Even if they are found, most of them have marine life attached to them, which is difficult to clean. Wen Jin’s classmates looked at these things from an archaeological perspective, so they were all very excited. Third Uncle looked out and saw a desolate scene, and he felt so sorry that he wanted to die. He thought to himself, “Why didn’t I give birth when the ship sank? He also didn’t think that the blue and white porcelain at that time was not an antique at all.

They had been in the water for two or three days, and had brought up baskets and baskets of porcelain. Uncle San liked this. He knew everything about porcelain, and could talk about it for a long time if you picked up just one piece. All of a sudden, he became the spiritual leader of the archaeological team. His name was Wu, and he was called Sanxing. The young people called him Brother Sanxing, and Uncle San was so pleased that he really thought of himself as their leader.

On the fourth day, something happened. One member of the archaeological team went out in a kayak and didn’t come back at dusk. The others were worried and asked the big boat to set sail and look for him. Later, the stranded kayak was found on a rocky hill two kilometers away from the Wanjiao, but the person on it was gone.

Uncle San thought it was terrible. Perhaps the man had gone into the water to look for something and something had gone wrong. He hurriedly put on his diving equipment and went down. After searching for a long time, he finally found the man’s body. His feet were stuck in the coral reef and had swollen up. They dragged the body up. Uncle San saw that he was clutching something in his left hand. When he opened it, it was the snake-eyed copper fish. Although everyone was very sad that a person had died, Uncle San had already realized that there might be something under the water, otherwise this person would not have come here to salvage it overnight.

Uncle San guessed that it might be that during the day when they were dragging (searching with a boat dragging a person), this person saw something and didn’t say anything, and at night he wanted to go back and take a look when no one was around, but something went wrong. Of course, Uncle San didn’t say what he thought, because now the person was dead, and it was meaningless to say these things. However, the snake-eyed bronze fish he was holding was definitely a hint.

The next day, Uncle San mentioned this to the others, of course, he said: Comrade So-and-so worked overtime for the sake of archaeology, unfortunately, he had an accident, but from the fruits of his labor in his hands, it was clear that this comrade had already discovered something at the bottom of the sea. After some mobilization, everyone’s mood had somewhat recovered, so they returned to the sea where the accident had occurred and conducted a thorough search.

They found more than 40 huge stone weights (ancient ship anchor accessories) nearby, all the same size and specifications, and the inscriptions on them were basically illegible. Uncle San estimated that these 40 stone weights had either been lost from 40 ships of the same specifications or had come from the same ship. It was clear to him that it was impossible for forty ships to have sunk in the same place at the same time. There must have been a very large ship down there, so large that it needed forty anchors to hold it in place.

Uncle San was very familiar with history, and when he saw this, he already had a very bold guess in his mind. When he surfaced, he said to Wen Jin, “It looks like a sunken ship tomb down here.”