Chapter 1 The Dilemma

Jiang Yongguang's questions really stumped me. I didn't understand a single word of the jargon used by tomb raiders, like "living seed" or "becoming an earth immortal."

I shook my head blankly and said, "What is a 'living seed'? What does 'becoming an earth immortal' mean?"

Jiang Yongguang didn't answer my question directly but started explaining from the beginning: "The *haozi* (tomb raiders) are a bunch of greedy bastards. Ten out of ten are greedy. If they weren't greedy, they wouldn't be digging up graves and tombs to snatch money from the dead."

That made sense.

"As the saying goes, greed harms life. Some *haozi* are so greedy that they secretly stash loot when they're in a tomb with their comrades. In the tomb raiding world, this is called 'eating the private stash,' and it's a major taboo!" Jiang Yongguang continued.

Uncle Mei grunted after hearing that. "That's indeed a despicable thing to do. No matter the profession, no one can tolerate such people."

Jiang Yongguang continued, "Once a *haozi* is discovered eating the private stash, they will be executed on the spot by their comrades—the Southern School calls it 'living seed,' and the Northern School calls it 'becoming an earth immortal.' To put it bluntly, it's burying the *haozi* who ate the private stash alive on the spot."

Hearing this, I couldn't help but shudder.

Jiang Yongguang was right. Tomb raiders were ruthless enough. They were indeed a bunch of vicious thugs.

At this moment, Uncle Mei reacted and pointed to the few pale hands stretching out from the soil on the ground. He asked, "Are these hands from the *haozi* who were buried alive here for eating the private stash?"

Jiang Yongguang nodded. "That should be the case. After they were buried alive, they struggled desperately but were never able to crawl out of the soil. In their dying moments, they could only extend their hands out of the ground."

At this point, the truth came to light. These large hands growing out of the ground weren't some supernatural event but rather the sins committed by tomb raiders.

But even after knowing the truth, Little Liang was still terrified out of her wits, kneeling on the ground for a long time before recovering.

We left Uncle Mei to take care of Little Liang while the rest of us walked towards the tomb chamber not far away.

At the end of the tunnel was the first chamber of this ancient tomb. The entire chamber was rectangular, about eight meters long and five meters wide, with a total area of about forty square meters.

Arriving at the entrance of the tomb chamber, I swept it with my headlamp and immediately spotted several exquisite bronze artifacts—

At first glance, it looked like a small tree, slender and upright, with lush branches. After closer inspection, I realized it was a bronze lamp.

Its base was a small bronze figure kneeling on the ground, with a lush tree growing out of the figure's head. The trunk of the tree was tall and straight, and the extended branches were the lamp holders of the bronze lamp, with lamp plates at the ends to hold the lamp oil.

This bronze lamp was about two meters tall and obviously not light. Otherwise, with its artistic value, it would have been packed up and taken away by tomb raiders long ago.

Witnessing an artwork that was several thousand years old at such close range was very shocking. Looking at the bronze lamp shining brightly under the light of the headlamp, I subconsciously wanted to reach out and touch it.

But just as my fingertip was about to touch the bronze lamp, Jiang Yongguang shouted, "Stop! Little Chen, don't touch it!"

I was startled and quickly retracted my hand, asking, "What's wrong? Is it poisonous?"

"It's not that," Jiang Yongguang shook his head. "It's just that these cultural relics are very fragile now. A slight touch might cause them to fall apart, like the bronze statue at the entrance of the ancient tomb. So, be as careful as possible. Avoid touching them if you can."

I suddenly understood and responded, "Got it."

At this time, Little Liang, whose legs were weak, finally recovered and entered the tomb chamber with Uncle Mei.

As soon as they came in, they noticed the three coffins placed in the center of the tomb chamber—one large and two small. With the dim and cold light of the headlamps, they could see that the lids of all three coffins had been opened. These coffins were all open coffins.

Uncle Mei clicked his tongue and asked, "Were these coffins... opened by you?"

Only after hearing this did I notice the coffins in the center of the tomb chamber. To be honest, I was attracted by the magnificent bronze lamp as soon as I entered the tomb chamber and didn't really notice these coffins.

Jiang Yongguang quickly denied, "We've only been in here for a few minutes. How would we have time to open the coffins? Besides, we're not tomb raiders. Under normal circumstances, we wouldn't move the cultural relics at the scene without permission."

Uncle Mei squinted his eyes and said, "Then these coffins were pried open by the *haozi*."

Jiang Yongguang nodded. "Most likely."

As he spoke, he actually took a step towards the open coffins and scanned them with his headlamp.

Uncle Mei said with a pale face, "You little rascal are very bold! You dare to look at open coffins. Aren't you afraid of getting contaminated by something dirty?"

Jiang Yongguang said disdainfully, "If you're really afraid of these things, you can't do this job."

After saying that, he leaned over to take a look and waved his hand at everyone with a smile, "It's okay, empty coffins, no 'filling.'"

The so-called "coffin filling" naturally refers to the dead person in the coffin. "Empty coffins" and "no filling" refer to the fact that there is no corpse in this coffin.

Afterwards, Jiang Yongguang checked the other two smaller coffins and found that these two coffins also had no filling. It was unknown whether the owner of the coffin was washed away by the underground water or dragged out by tomb raiders.

Little Liang originally didn't even dare to look at the coffins directly. It wasn't until she heard that there were no corpses in the coffins that she dared to look over there.

She said with a slight regret, "I thought I could find the remains of the ancient Shu people in these coffins. I really want to know if they look like the bronze statues, with wide ears, big mouths, and protruding eyes."

Jiang Yongguang said, "Don't worry, there's still a chance. This ancient tomb seems to be quite large. There should be some remains of the ancient Shu people left behind, right?"

I walked towards the three coffins and looked down to check, only to discover that they were actually carved out of stone. The coffin lids were also extremely heavy, and one person couldn't move them even a bit!

"This is actually a stone coffin! Who opened the coffin lid of such a heavy coffin?" I couldn't help but ask.

Jiang Yongguang said, "Who else could it be? The *haozi*. Don't underestimate their abilities. In order to steal treasures, they can use any means. They can even chisel open the white marble stone doors of Empress Dowager Cixi's Eastern Mausoleum, let alone these small stone coffins."

While we were talking, Uncle Mei walked to the side of the stone coffin, lowered his head and glanced at it, and suddenly asked:

"Do you think there's a possibility that the 'coffin filling' pushed open the coffin lid and crawled out by itself?"

As soon as these words came out, my scalp tingled.

The timid Little Liang was even more frightened, trembling and saying, "Uncle Mei! Please don't scare me!"

Jiang Yongguang knew that Uncle Mei would definitely not talk nonsense, so he quickly asked, "Brother Mei, did you discover something?"

Uncle Mei nodded slowly and pointed to the inside of the stone coffin and the bottom of the coffin lid, saying, "Look, there seem to be a lot of scratch marks here. These things were probably scratched out by the owner of the coffin, right?"

Following Uncle Mei's guidance, I lowered my head and looked into the coffin. I saw that on the inside of the coffin and the bottom of the coffin lid, there were indeed many scratch marks of varying depths and lengths, which looked very much like marks scratched out with fingernails!