Eastern Tomb Expedition Chronicles

Chapter 8: The Water Jar

I also pulled out my snakeskin bag and squatted down to stuff it with bronze artifacts. The round and square dings were heavy and difficult for me to lift, so Third Brother took care of me by having me pick up the smaller items. I filled my bag with bronze beans and small bronze goblets, which wasn't unusual, as during the Western Zhou and Spring and Autumn periods, these items were common kitchen utensils. The bronze dings were used for cooking meat, the goblets for drinking wine, and the bronze beans for holding salt and seasonings, similar to modern-day small dishes for dipping dumplings in vinegar. It was like picking up money with a sack; that’s what I was doing. Being rather slim and not very strong, I stuffed my bag as much as I could before preparing to make a trip up. Turning my head around, my headlamp just happened to shine on a corner of the ear chamber. “Huh? What’s that? A water jar?”

"Second Brother! Quick, look! There's a jar!" I shouted. Sun Lao'er, who was intensely focused on stuffing the copper dings into his bag, jumped at my sudden loud voice. “Damn it, Yunfeng, what are you yelling about? You scared me.”

I told him, "Second Brother, there's a big jar in the corner of the wall." He responded without even looking up, "That's just coarse pottery, not as valuable as bronze. It's too big to transport down the mountain; even selling it for a few hundred wouldn't cover our efforts, we don’t need that thing." Heeding Sun Lao'er's words and glancing at the large water jar covered with a stone lid, I still didn’t go over to it. Struggling with a bag full of bronze artifacts, I waded back through the water. At that moment, a rope was lowered from the ceiling above the tomb passage. The voice of Wang, the boss, came from above: "Yunfeng, tie the snakeskin bag securely to the rope, and once it’s up, go back and fill up another. Hurry up, we don’t have much time left." I twisted the bag full of bronze artifacts a few times and tied it to the rope, then watched as it was gradually pulled up by the boss above.

Over the next hour, we worked overtime and managed to transport a total of eight large bags of bronze artifacts. Then, through the walkie-talkie, Wang's urging voice came through: "You three, hurry up and come up, it's almost dawn, we need to get down the mountain quickly." You know what a human pyramid is? I was lifted to the ceiling by the Sun brothers using a human pyramid method, and then Wang lowered a rope from above and pulled me up. The Sun brothers were even more impressive; they climbed up to the ceiling without even needing the rope, just using their legs to brace themselves in the thief’s hole.

After getting up, the smile on Sun Lao'er's face was unmistakable. Looking at the ground filled with bulging snakeskin bags, he asked with a grin, "Boss, how many points do you think we've got here?" Wang shook his head and chuckled, "Specialization is key in our trade, and how many points that is, you'd better ask the boss. He’s the one who can estimate it accurately." I later learned that what they referred to as 'points' meant tens of thousands; one point was ten thousand, and a hundred points were a million. With salary levels back in the year 2000, many people couldn’t earn one point in a whole year. Sun Lao'da was in charge of lookout and sales. Usually, he wouldn’t talk on the walkie-talkie unless there was no issue, but conversely, if Sun Lao'da actively spoke during work, it definitely meant strangers were nearby.

"Boss, this is just one western ear chamber; there’s also an eastern ear chamber, and it's weird that we haven't seen the main tomb chamber yet. I think we need to set up a base here; we haven’t found the main chamber yet, who knows how many treasures are still inside. This job, we can't finish in less than ten or eight days." "Base," in the context of tomb raiding, specifically refers to a situation where a large tomb is encountered that can’t be thoroughly explored in just a day or two, requiring the design of a base around this large tomb. In the early years, people familiar with tomb raiding often greeted each other by asking, "Hey, I heard you hit two big bases last year?" The response would usually be modest, "Not at all, just got lucky and hit two small bases."

Setting up a base carried risks because it could easily be discovered. If an elderly person decided to take a walk up the mountain in the morning and accidentally

fell into our thief’s hole, we’d be done for. Thus, the higher the potential reward, the greater the risk. After considering, Wang nodded and said, "Western Zhou goods have been skyrocketing in the black market recently; I think it's worth taking this risk. Let’s set up a base." Knowing we had succeeded, Sun Lao'da immediately contacted a woman known as 'Mole,' who arranged for people to come over to move the items and help cover up the thief’s hole. Mole was also quite a character; I learned through several interactions that the 'older brothers' and 'younger brothers' she knew had significant backgrounds. She not only handled logistics for Wang but was said to also work part-time for other gangs. Technically, this was against the rules, but Mole was so capable that Wang turned a blind eye, pretending not to see. It was like those professional managers in big companies, who often hold important positions in multiple companies. Mole had a few young men under her, who loyally followed her, bringing us generators and water pumps at night to help hide our thief’s hole. Our gang really couldn’t have operated without Mole at that time. The soil from the plastered ceilings, which was too obvious and, given the urgency, couldn’t be casually discarded, was also brought back by them. This soil was like a ticking time bomb; many in our trade have been caught because of this kind of soil. Back in the day, a tomb raiding gang in Beijing's Babao Mountain was busted because an old lady walking her dog discovered a small pile of this distinctive blue and white soil, which led to the whole gang being arrested and serving over a decade in prison.

The next day, back at the small inn in Shunde, I squatted by the sink brushing my teeth, considering where to scatter the blue and white soil later. Just then, "Smack!" someone slapped my backside hard from behind. Still brushing, I hadn’t even spit out the mouthwash when I swallowed it instead. I turned around angrily to see Mole in a tank top, laughing. Although older than me, Mole was well-maintained and wealthy, using only the best skincare products. Her thighs under the pink tank top were so white, they made my throat dry. "Hehe..." Mole teasingly said to me, "Little Yunfeng, I heard from Second Brother that you haven't even touched a girl's hand, is that right?" I blushed and retorted, "None of your business." Mole saw my embarrassment and laughed even harder, her chest heaving. She beckoned me with a hooked finger, "Little Yunfeng, want to be your sister’s forty-fifth man?" I was young then and didn’t know much about the ways of the world, so I blurted out, "I don’t want to, by the time you're forty, I'd be wearing 99 green hats. You shameless woman, don’t think you can ruin Xiang Yunfeng!" Mole got mad at my insult and, grabbing a mop from the inn, chased me around the courtyard. At noon, taking advantage of mealtime, I disguised myself as a high school student with a black backpack, wandering aimlessly around Shunde. The backpack was filled with blue and white soil, which I needed to find a suitable place to scatter. As I walked, I kept thinking about something. I couldn’t figure out why, but something about that covered water jar in the corner of the western ear chamber from last night seemed off.