Daomu Biji

Chapter 4 Found

These are really old files, gnawed to pieces by rats, and covered with rat droppings. I randomly pulled out a piece of paper, which must be an old document from that time. When I shook it, my face was covered with dust.

If someone had flipped it, there would be differences. I quickly asked Wang Meng to look carefully to see if there was anything suspicious about it.

After walking quietly among the piles of documents, Wang Meng soon made a discovery. When he went over and took a look, he saw that there were several piles of documents placed neatly on the ground. Place four stacks side by side to form a square.

Wang Meng said: "Boss, do you think this is what it means? This man was looking through the documents here. He was too tired to stand, so he made a stool out of these documents."

I nodded, indeed, I could almost imagine the situation at that time. The man sat on the document stool and could look more carefully.

I turned 360 degrees on the spot, trying to determine which direction the person was facing when he was sitting. Then I found that if he was facing the back, the shelf on one side could just fit a flashlight as a light. While replaying the scene in my mind, I put the flashlight up and looked down at my feet. Pushing aside the dust, there were indeed a few old cigarette butts in front of him, and there was a stack of documents right in front of him.

A large envelope here weighs at least four or five kilograms, and it is impossible to read the scattered documents in your hand. The pile in front of me may have been used as a table. This is where the things he is looking at are placed. Smoking and watching at the same time, this guy is pretty laid back!

But it was still useless. There were documents all around. It was impossible to guess what he was looking for. Maybe he found what he needed and took it away.

I flipped through the documents a few times with a bit of obsession, and suddenly an idea flashed through my mind. I thought of the handwriting on the slip, and I couldn't help but have a strange idea - regardless of other things, if the slip was really "I" Written, how would I read the document?

I asked Wang Meng to hand me an envelope, opened it and put it on the "table" in front of me, picked up one and flipped it through. Then recalling my usual habits, I folded the pages I had read with my right hand while thinking about it. When they reached a certain thickness, I put them far aside and placed them very straightly.

This is a habit of mine, because when I’m sorting out rubbings, the entire table is often full of papers and it’s very messy. I like to put the things I’ve sorted out far away to distinguish them from other documents. The distance you let go must be within reach of your hand.

I looked around to see if there was any place within this distance that I could use to put things. I saw a pile of paper stacked on a box to my right. I reached out and found that the distance was just right.

My heart skipped a beat and I felt a little resistant. If even this was guessed correctly, wouldn’t it prove that the person looking at things here is really me?

But I only hesitated for a moment and took the paper over. who cares! You've already died once anyway, so what's there to worry about?

I put a stack of files on the pile of documents in front of me. The first one was a form, which seemed to be a subsidy budget. There were several names, and the maximum subsidy was four hundred and forty-seven, nine yuan. I don’t know much about the salary system at that time, but such a large amount of allowances must have been an astronomical figure at that time.

This kind of allowance is usually given to the Soviet people. I am not interested in this. I quickly noticed that there are lines in the corner of the form: Guangxi Shangsi Zhangjiapu Site Archaeological Project Subsidy Table for Expatriates.

correct! This is it!

After flipping through it, all the pages have been scrambled. Below is an extension of the table, which contains some names. There is a chapter at the end, which is indeed the stamp of this archaeological institute. I saw a date in this stamp, it was a document from 1956.

Next is a summary of information, not mimeographed, all handwritten records, what room number. Chang Wan: There were also schematic diagrams, and the handwriting was sloppy. Because of what happened just now, I subconsciously looked at the notes. They were completely written by strangers, and there were a lot of differences. It was obvious that it was not recorded by the same person.

I quickly opened it and only after fourteen or five pages did I see something different.

It was a floor plan of something, but it wasn't a modern professional floor plan.

Still painted with a brush. If you look at it yourself, you will know that this is a "style mine" from the Qing Dynasty.

"Style Lei" is a generational name, referring to a family of royal designers of the Qing Dynasty named Lei. They were in charge of the design work of almost all royal buildings, but the status of craftsmen at that time was low, and even the best craftsman family in the world had always been unknown in the eyes of ordinary people. Most people in modern times have no idea that such a family exists. Only those of us who are engaged in architecture and gardening know how awesome "Style Lei" is.

China has a history of 5,000 years, and Shinglei has only existed for 200 years. However, one-fifth of China's world cultural heritage today is made by Shinglei, and we have to accept it.

After the completion of the Summer Palace, Style Lei suddenly declined. Some people speculate that this was related to the fact that the Manchu and Qing dynasties could no longer build huge complexes of buildings. However, Shi Shilei's decline is very strange. I have read a report that he abandoned his official position overnight, very quickly, and I don't know what big changes he went through.

After the decline, the descendants of Shinglei sold a large number of their ancestors' "hot sample drawings". These things are the crystallization of Chinese architecture and are extremely numerous. Some of them are lost overseas and among the people, and a considerable number of domestic officials also have them, so they are still relatively common. In our department, everyone who studies forestry or planning is very familiar with this, so I recognized it immediately.

This picture should be related to the Zhangjiapu ruins. In this way, the ruins should be from the Qing Dynasty, and may be the work of Shi Lei.

This is a duplicate, and the original must be in the museum.

I was somewhat interested in these things, so I took a quick look. The drawing shows a large courtyard, which should be a house. Judging from the scale, it is quite large in terms of length and depth. Judging from the structure, it should be a private residence.

Xiang Lei was a royal designer and had very few opportunities to design private houses. The owner of this house must be a high official or someone with a good background.

I looked for the name of the house in small letters on the side, but I didn't see anything.

The next few pictures also cause the same death, most of them are "copying the flat" pictures. Style Lei's design drawings are extremely detailed. Various angles, single buildings, and decomposed parts are all recorded, including the surrounding Feng Shui, landforms, and even a giant meridian grid square dot matrix diagram that "flattens" the entire ground. .

After flipping through it, there were more than a dozen pages, and at the end was the index page of the document, which showed how many things were in it. My heart moved, and I took it and compared it with the information inside, and found that the number of pages alone was six pieces of paper missing.

If your guess is correct, it was taken away by that person at that time. Everything I have in my hands now is the key, but even so, it is a big breakthrough for me who has no clue at all.

After sorting out the documents in his hand, he looked around again, knowing that there was no chance of gaining anything here, so he called Wang Meng, who was still rummaging around, to go back.

He yelled a few times before he came back to his senses. I walked over and asked him what he was doing? He shined a flashlight into the corner of the warehouse and asked me, "Boss, what is that for?"

I looked up and saw a cage made of iron bars welded horizontally and vertically behind the debris over there.

Looking closer, I saw that the cage was half a person's height and was completely rusty. Wang Meng shined a flashlight inside and saw a broken bowl. "Is it a cage for dogs?"

I shook my head. The vertical and horizontal iron bars in this cage were welded very tightly. There is no need to weld a dog like this! Maybe it's the steel scraps left over from building the house before, but that's beyond my control. Then he told Wang Meng not to waste time, I was in a hurry to verify something.

We went back to the hotel the same way we came. He went to take a shower, and I went straight to the Internet and started checking the things in my hands.

First, I looked for information about the so-called "Inspection of Shangsi Zhangjiapu Ruins", but found nothing. When I thought about it, it was unlikely that things from the 1950s would be posted on the Internet. Even if they were, it would probably only be a few words, so I continued to look up the place names.

People in my field don’t pay much attention to the Guangxi generation. Although there are ancient tombs there, the climate is very different from places like Hunan, Shaanxi, and Shanxi. After staying there for three days, I had to drink soup and medicine before going to the fields, let alone entering the local virgin forest. Moreover, the customs, ethnic distribution and habits are all different, so it is not a place where normal people can mix. In the old society, for the Central Plains people, they would only go there if they were really desperate.

I was quite surprised by this check, but the local mountainous landforms are very different. Although many Han people who came from the Central Plains also designed Yin and Yang houses according to the Feng Shui customs of the Central Plains, the concepts are completely different.

This kind of place is dominated by the new private tomb robbers. I heard that some people rob large tombs in Guangxi and use excavators to dig them out. They are much better than those from Nanpai.

There was limited information on the Internet, and I was sweating all over my body. I checked it out and found that the air conditioner blew and I calmed down, so I went to take a shower first. I was thinking about it while I was taking the shower. I actually got distracted. When I came out, I wasn’t even wearing any underwear. Wang Meng was shocked. I found that my thoughts were very messy, and these things were too scattered. With my personal wisdom, it was obviously difficult to think through all the issues in such a short time.

The pattern of style thunder is a good clue, but there are many such patterns left in the world, and there is no good complete index. Looking for clues from here is like looking for a needle in a haystack, even more unreliable.

That night I fell asleep thinking about it, my mind was in a mess.

I woke up in the morning feeling heavy, so I rinsed myself with cold water to wake myself up. Then I scanned all these things, sent them to some people I knew, and went to visit a few relatives. It was all just going through the motions, and at the same time I thought I could find something. Who is going to ask about this. Suddenly, I thought of a person who made my grandfather's old friend like me when I was a child. This guy and I are in the same industry. We used to work at Ziai Landscape Design Institute, which specialized in repairing ancient buildings. So I bought some wine and snacks and went to visit him.

I haven’t seen him for N years. I thought that this old man probably still had the same temper as before, so I didn’t have to be polite and just told the truth. The old man opened the drawing and looked at it. After a few seconds, he said, "Are you sure this is a house for people to live in?"

I heard something in the old man's words, so I asked him what he said? He said: "You have studied architecture for so many years, and you don't know how to look at this? Look at the lighting in this house."

I said to myself that I can read the design drawings, but I can’t do the style! That's not drawn by national standard software. I took it and took a quick look at it, and suddenly realized that it had nothing to do with the design, the problem lay in the layout of the house. After pouring it down a few times, I determined the north, south, east, and west, and pushed it carefully. I felt a thrill in my heart. There was indeed a problem!

This house is designed in such a way that all the rooms under the eaves have no chance of getting sunlight, and there is no reflected light. When the sun is shining brightly outside, it can be completely dark inside.

"this……"

"This is the darkroom."

How could "Style Lei" design this kind of house? I pushed it carefully and found that the house was very cleverly designed to avoid light. Although doing so does not guarantee that nothing will be reflected, it can at least be a deliberate layout.

Don't the people living in this house have access to sunlight? vampire? This is nonsense, and I thought of "dark eyes" again. Are the people in this house unable to see bright light like him? Or maybe the emperor suddenly had a whim and wanted to build a house to hide and seek?

"Have you seen this kind of house before?" I asked the old man. ,

He frowned and shook his head: "There are some who do the opposite. This house cannot be inhabited! But I do know that there was a place in ancient times that had similar requirements to this one, but it was not so strict."

"Where?" I asked with my heart moving.

"Yizhuang."

"Yizhuang? Are all the dead people in such a big house?"

Impossible, Yizhuang would not be so large in scale. I can clearly see that this house has many different structures, and it should be an ordinary residential house in the Ming and Qing Dynasties.

"Where did you get this?" the old man asked me.

Naturally, I couldn't tell the truth, so I just said that I got it from the market. The old man was obviously very interested, so he asked me to forward it to him so that he could study it carefully.

Of course I refused, but thinking that it wouldn't be of much use if I put it here, I asked him if he could go to the industry to help me inquire about the situation of this thing? If there is any progress, you can give this thing away for free without taking any money.

This was a decent ceremony, and the old man happily agreed not to mention it, stayed with me in the evening, and invited me to drink.

The old man lived alone and was relatively lonely in his later years. When I came here, I already wanted to spend some time with him and chat with him, so I stayed.

The two of us drank half a catty, and he and I talked endlessly about Style Lei. He told me that Shishilei was actually a family of craftsmen at the end of the Ming Dynasty. By the Qing Dynasty, the first generation to enter the palace was Lei Fufa.

At that time, Kangxi rebuilt the Hall of Supreme Harmony. On the day when the beam was installed, Kangxi led the civil and military ministers to come and salute in person. However, the beam was an old beam, and the eyes were not closed and it was hanging. The Minister of Works looked at each other in astonishment, fearing that Jichen had been installed on the beam by mistake, so he hurriedly found Jichen. Lei developed and was awarded the crown and uniform.

With his ax in his sleeves and his body soft, Lei quickly climbed up the beam and raised the copper ax high. He heard three consecutive "dong, dong, dong" sounds, and the wooden beam fell steadily with a "bang". Suddenly the drums and music were blaring, and hundreds of civil and military officials shouted "Long live". The ceremony was completed, and Emperor Kangxi was delighted. He immediately summoned Lei Fafa and taught him face-to-face as the Director of Construction of the Ministry of Industry. Therefore, people at that time left behind the song "There is a Luban above, a Changban below, Ziwei orders, and the Golden Palace seals the palace."

After that, Shizi Lei continued to rise to prominence. When Lei Jinyu, Lei's son, was born, he was already the chief case officer of Shizi's house. It is said that Lei Jinyu's craftsmanship is even more superb. He can imitate Western precision clocks and integrate Western machinery with Chinese traditions. In addition to large buildings, he also made many fancy gadgets in the palace.

I know a lot about Shishi Lei, but I am not interested in these things, so I asked the old man if he knew how Shi Shi Lei declined?

The old man said that no one knew this, and there were many theories. It is said that the last generation Shi Shilei offended the Queen Mother, and said that the late Qing Dynasty was too weak to build large buildings. But there is another theory, I don’t know whether it is true or not.

I would like to hear the details. The old man drank a little too much. He was very serious and said in a low voice: "We all know that the Manchus came from outside the customs. It is a common practice for nomadic people to have their roots outside the customs. After the Mongol emperor died, the body had to be transported outside the customs. To bury. Legend has it that when the Qing Dynasty entered the customs, the regent Dorgon did not know how long the regime could last, so he transported all the jewelry and property to be buried outside the customs. The emperor at that time was also buried outside the customs. After the situation stabilized, the East and West Tombs were built. Within the pass.

"However, this is just a pretense. The royal family has always been uneasy. The East and West Tombs are just fake mausoleums. All the eunuchs and maids are buried there. After most of the Manchu emperors died, they were secretly buried in secret places outside the customs. There are many styles of mines. The strange pattern, I don’t know what the design is, but it is speculated that it is the component used in the imperial tomb outside the pass.”

"Although Xiang Lei was not involved in the specific construction of the imperial mausoleum, most of the internal designs were by his own hands. When the Qing dynasty was declining in the late Qing Dynasty, he would naturally be persecuted. Fortunately, the situation was chaotic at the time and the court no longer had time to take care of too many things in this regard. . Otherwise, Shi Shi Lei may end up like this."

I was stunned for a while, "The Eastern and Western Tombs are huge, how can they be false?"

"This is the power of the Manchu Qing Dynasty. Instead of carefully planning every imperial tomb, it is better to create a huge false target to attract everyone's attention. I estimate that if there is such a group of imperial tombs outside the Guan Dynasty, they must be in Changbai Mountain or the Greater and Lesser Khingan Mountains .”

As I listened, my heart skipped a beat, thinking of the Jurchen characters and the huge underground mountains I had seen in Changbai Mountain.

"These are all hearsay, basically impossible to verify." The old man said again, "You see, Genghis Khan's mausoleum has not been discovered yet! The possibility of exploring the imperial mausoleum outside the customs is too low, even if it is a hundred of your third uncle, I'm afraid You won’t be able to find it in your lifetime.”

I nodded, that's right, I couldn't help but break into a cold sweat.

I have never heard of this. The Manchu and Qing dynasties have been plundering the customs for many years. Many researchers have found that the frailty in the late Qing Dynasty was not normal. I wonder if the emperor buried the property. According to this, there may be a larger group of tombs outside this pass than the mysterious Mongolian imperial tombs.

After the old man said this, he was almost drunk, and soon became unconscious. I said goodbye and left, and immediately returned to the hotel. I searched for information about the lighting of the house for a long time, but unfortunately I didn't find much.

I originally thought that this matter would enter a protracted tug-of-war, so I thought about returning to Hangzhou first. After all, my third uncle's business is under my control. If it doesn't improve, I can't let it decline. I have to be there when it should be there. Unexpectedly, the next morning, the old man came to me with two people in a hurry.

They were both about the same age as him, one with the surname Ruan and the other with the surname Fang. Upon introduction, they found out that they were both well-known brokers in Beijing, Changsha and Shanghai. As soon as he came, he shook my hand warmly and said a lot of compliments, which made me confused.

We sat down in the lobby of the hotel, and the old man got straight to the point and said, "These two want to buy your 'pattern' at a high price. Although you said yesterday that you won't take any penny, the price they offered is a bit high. I don't know if you will change." idea."

The old man is also quite rich. He said it was high, so the price must be a bit outrageous.

The man named Ruan immediately stretched out his hand, and I saw that he was going to fight me. This guy is truly a connoisseur, and old-school at that.

In shareholder transactions, street stall transactions are not very "bargaining". There is a fixed method of communication by holding hands and moving a few fingers.

I stretched out my hand and shook it. The price he offered was indeed high, beyond the scope of the style. But after staying with my third uncle and seeing real large-scale transactions, the price did not surprise me. What surprised me was the old silkworm in this man's hand. The second joints of his fingers are all covered with old coffins, which are called coffin coffins. They are made by carrying too many coffin boards. Even if this guy is not a peasant, he must have been in this industry.

I remained calm, feeling that I was a bit like everyone else, and said: "If I sell you at this price, the experts will think that I cheated you, which is not good for my reputation. And I still have use for this thing. I really can’t give it to you. Tell your customers that I’m sorry and can’t give it up.”

He reached over and challenged me, obviously wanting to increase the price. I raised my hand to refuse, saying that holding the tea cup in my hand is called "holding", and if it is connected or disconnected, it means that it will never be sold.

The two of them looked dejected, and one of them said: "Then just make an offer. To be honest, my boss really likes this thing. If you are worried about the price, you might as well say so."

I want to open a million dollars, can he also ask for it? I couldn't help but feel something in my heart. It seemed that his patron might know something about this pattern. Out of curiosity, I asked, "What is the use of this thing that he wants?"

"We don't know either." He replied, "If the customer likes it, we have to find it for him. Generally, we can't ask too many questions."

The old man winked at me. I knew that he had the same idea as me, which was to let me see if I could get anything out of him. He then said, "Let's do this! You two go back and tell your customers that we Do you want to talk about it face to face? Money is a trivial matter, and I also want to get to know each other so that I can have an explanation when others ask me about it in the future."

The two people looked troubled and said, "I'm afraid that man is not something we can see."