Chapter 21: Helplessness

A state-level underground palace—that was how Yao Yumen put it at the time.

Anything labeled "state-level" implies that the artifacts unearthed within must also be of state-level significance. What exactly defines a state-level artifact? You might not have much exposure to antiques, so let me put it this way: a unique, monumental treasure of a great nation—that is what we call a national-treasure-level artifact.

According to the grading system of the Palace Museum, items are categorized as Grade I-A, Grade I, Grade II, Grade III, or general artifacts. Even something as iconic as a jade burial suit is only classified as Grade I-A, because they are not unique; to date, a precise count of twenty-one and a half such suits has been discovered. The national-treasure-level artifacts are those that surpass even the jade burial suits and the Changxin Palace Lamp. They are singular, monumental pieces of national history—items like the Simuwu Ding, the Four-Goat Square Vessel, the Marquis Yi of Zeng’s chime set, the bronze Square Lei with ram heads, or the Flying Horse of Gansu.

Why did Yao Yumen want to back out? In this day and age, such items cannot be smuggled out of the country. They can only circulate within the domestic market, yet no one dares to touch them. Because no matter how prestigious the auction house or how formidable the collector, the final outcome is almost always the same: permanent acquisition by the National Museum. Once such an object surfaces, the authorities will investigate it to the very end, and as a final "gift," they will provide a lifetime residency in a high-security prison.

Yao Wenzhong, also known as "Master Yao," a man who spent forty-six years in the grave-robbing trade and was famed for his "Ghost Eyes" that could trace dragon veins, met his end by a firing squad on October 17, 2017. What most people don't know is that it was because he touched something that should never have been disturbed.

Yao Yumen wanted to quit because she was afraid, but the Sun brothers were not pleased. The atmosphere was incredibly tense. Yao Wence, with his buzz cut, looked terrifyingly grim. Opinions clashed, and the situation was on the verge of turning violent.

You ask if I was afraid? To be honest, I was seventy percent afraid and thirty percent curious. The fear needs no explanation, but I was curious: what kind of scene lay behind that stone door? It felt as if we were standing before an unknown world—what undiscovered national treasures might be hidden inside? It was impossible to know.

We were just a small team from the Northern faction. At that time, there were countless gangs in the underworld far more powerful than us. Even if we had opened the palace gates, cracked the self-locking stone, and retrieved the contents, we couldn't have withstood the consequences. The items behind that stone door were like a ticking time bomb; the moment you took them out and tried to sell them, you were finished.

The signal for the walkie-talkie was poor underground, so I told Boss Wang exactly what was happening. There was a long silence on the other end.

"Everyone," the red light flickered, and Boss Wang’s voice crackled through. "Eldest, Third, Yunfeng—the Yao girl is right. This matter... this has exceeded the scope of what we can handle while ensuring a safe exit. Come back up. As for the Second... we stop looking for him."

Upon hearing Boss Wang’s words, Sun the Third, usually the calmest among us, began pulling at his hair. His eyes were bloodshot, and like a madman, he kicked the massive stone door repeatedly. "Damn it! Damn it! Damn you!"

The massive stone door remained unmoved, with only a light dusting of grit drifting down from above. Sun the Third sat helplessly before the gate, clutching his hair. My nose stung; I felt a deep sense of grief. The Second brother was the life of our team. His sudden disappearance meant his chances of survival were slim. We wanted to save him, but we couldn't find a single trace. He had simply vanished into thin air within this Western Zhou tomb.

Beyond the pressure of the situation, there was a very practical reason we couldn't get in: the self-locking stone behind the door.

The self-locking stone, also known as the "gate-sealing stone," is a fundamental ancient anti-theft mechanism. Many tombs feature them; for instance, the tomb of Emperor Shenzong, Zhu Yijun—the Wanli Emperor—contained a self-locking stone over 1.6 meters long. It is a sophisticated piece of tomb engineering.

Wherever there are those who invent traps, there are those who study how to break them. There are generally two ways to bypass such a rigid mechanism: the "Ox-Nose Ring" technique or brute force.

A famous incident occurred when Sun Dianying raided the tomb of Empress Dowager Cixi and encountered a self-locking stone. Sun chose the brute force method, using a full battalion of soldiers and over a hundred pounds of military-grade explosives to blast the gate open and shatter the stone, eventually making off with priceless treasures like the Night-Shining Pearl, the Jade Cabbage, and the Nine-Dragon Sword.

There is another method, which those in the trade call the "Ox-Nose Ring Displacement Method"—something Sun the Third explained to me later. You know the iron rings used to lead bulls by the nose, right? The ones where the center is hollowed out, leaving small holes on either side to thread a rope through?

The process is as follows: first, identify the position of the self-locking stone behind the door. Use a hammer and chisel to carve a shape resembling an ox's nose into the surface of the door, allowing you to see the stone braced against the back through the crack. Then, you need a homemade tool called a "Half-Moon Dragon Claw" in the North, or a "Hook Needle" in the South.

The National Archaeological Team tried every method imaginable (short of explosives) to remove the one-and-a-half-ton self-locking stone behind the stone door of the Dingling Mausoleum. In the end, they had to refer to ancient texts—and some say they even brought in a grave robber serving time in prison to help—before they could open the tomb without causing damage.

The names "Half-Moon Dragon Claw" and "Hook Needle" sound complex, but the principle is simple. The tool has a long handle at one end and a semi-circular metal hook at the other. You insert the needle through the door gap, hook the semi-circular part onto the self-locking stone, and thread a rope through the "ox-nose" groove you chiseled earlier. By pulling the rope with force to the left or right, you shift the position of the stone. Once it moves, the anti-theft mechanism is broken, and you can push the stone door open.

The self-locking stone is just the most common of the ancient tomb mechanisms. For thousands of years, ever since people began believing in "returning to the earth for peace," the battle between grave robbers and tomb-builders has never ceased. Whoever is the more skillful survives to have the last laugh.

At three in the morning that night, our group climbed out of the shaft and left. Back on the surface, Boss Wang’s face was grim. Having spent half a lifetime in this trade, he knew when to draw the line. Even with a hook needle and ropes, we two or three people couldn't budge a two- or three-ton sealing stone.

Boss Wang changed the original plan. He ordered the Eldest Sun to contact buyers immediately and liquidate the seven or eight bags of bronze ware. Meanwhile, he contacted "One-Mole" and told her to have her people fill in the tunnel as soon as possible. We couldn't leave any traces behind; we needed to pull out of Shunde quickly to lie low. At the same time, he sternly warned us not to speak of what happened that night, lest we invite a prison sentence upon ourselves.

The three Sun brothers, who had grown up together, drank together, and sought fortunes together, were now one man short. Under the boss’s urging, the Eldest Sun reluctantly began his work as a peddler, trying to turn those bronzes into cash.

I don't know when they will sell, but the days of waiting feel agonizingly slow. Sun the Third spends every day dead drunk, trying to drown his sorrows. I’ve seen him, sometimes clutching a bottle, half-drunk and muttering to himself:

"Usually, at a time like this, you’d be the happiest, Second Brother. You’d be the loudest, shouting because we were about to split the money."

"Second Brother... where, where are you?"

"Come back soon so we can split the money."