Soon, a Great Wall pickup truck stopped at the other end of the checkpoint, and a middle-aged man with prematurely gray hair opened the door and walked towards Liu Yue, who said: "He is my master, named Zhang Keming, a leading figure in the Mesozoic era in the archaeological field. "The profession of archaeology is not that the older you get, the more popular it is, and the elderly are not in good health and are not suitable for long-term participation in field archaeology.

"It turned out to be him. Tang Feng had a little impression of this person, last time he and Chen Yan went to Miyun to hunt for treasures, Liu Yue and he and other archaeological team members were exploring a stone arch bridge in the seventh year of Xuanhe in the Northern Song Dynasty, he was Professor Zhang that Liu Yue said.

Professor Zhang said hello to the armed police officers and soldiers on duty at the checkpoint, and then walked out of the checkpoint, Liu Yue opened the car door and got out of the car to greet him, she said, "Master, you are here." ”

Professor Zhang said with a smile: "Xiaoyue, don't scream, this is in the workplace, and others will have opinions." ”

Liu Yue smiled obediently and said, "I saw that there were no other people who called it." ”

"It seems that you have excluded him from the scope of others. Professor Zhang didn't forget to make fun of his beautiful apprentice, he said: "The vision is very good." ”

Liu Yue said softly: "Oh, Master, don't talk nonsense, after a while, others will hear it, and the things that are not there at all will become plausible." ”

After that, Professor Zhang and Liu Yue got into the car together, and Professor Zhang stretched out his hand to Tang Feng and said, "Mr. Tang, we meet again." ”

Tang Feng stretched out his hand to shake him, nodded and said, "Professor Zhang, hello." ”

Zhang Keming handed a sign that could be temporarily entered and exited to Tang Feng and said, "Welcome Mr. Tang to join us, you are the real expert in this regard." ”

"Professor Zhang, you are too polite. Tang Feng was polite again and again, and after greetings, Zhang Ke returned to the truth, he said: "We all know what's going on, so there's no need to detour, your current identity is an intern researcher, and I will arrange for you to enter the grave when the time comes, and the cooperation is pleasant." ”

Tang Feng admired Zhang Keming's style of work, he nodded and said, "Happy cooperation." ”

Then, Liu Yue drove past the sentry post, the Great Wall pickup truck also turned around and followed the Wrangler, the sentry post was very far away from the excavation site, and after passing two more sentry points, a dome shed like an aircraft hangar appeared in the distance, Tang Feng said: "The scale of this excavation is not small." ”

Zhang Keming nodded and said: "It can be said that this is the largest excavation in history, and it is estimated that only the excavation of the underground palace of the Mausoleum of Qin Shi Huang in the future can be compared with it." ”

The two cars drove into the greenhouse, and several people got out of the car, and Tang Feng began to observe the surrounding situation, this mausoleum is completely different from the tombs of Chinese emperors in the past. Most of the tombs of ancient Chinese emperors were buried deep underground, and a large amount of earth was excavated when the tombs were built, and when the emperor was buried, the soil would be backfilled. When the soil is manually backfilled, it will be compacted layer by layer, and this process is the same as the subsequent result, which is called rammed earth.

The rammed earth is far stronger and tighter than the raw soil, and it is easy for people to see that there are tombs underground, in order to hide people's eyes and ears, the rammed earth will be covered with soil, which is the sealing mound. The top of the underground tombs usually has a conical mound of earth, which looks like an ordinary hillside, and over time, the mound will be covered with grass and trees, so that people can mistake it for a natural slope.

The tomb of Emperor Huizong of the Song Dynasty is backed by a hill about 300 meters high, and the combination of the mausoleum's sealed mound and natural peaks makes it even more difficult for people to see the flaws. Tang Feng understood as soon as he looked at the terrain that the interior of this mountain must be empty, and the underground palace was just below the mountain.

Several people walked into the temporary headquarters together, Zhang Keming brought Tang Feng and Liu Yue into the office, and he said to Tang Feng while controlling the mouse: "Let me give you a general introduction to the situation here." ”

Tang Feng came to the computer monitor, which was a virtual topographic map, and through Zhang Keming's introduction, Tang Feng had a deeper understanding of the terrain here. From the outside, this mountain is no different from ordinary slopes, the slope on one side is very gentle, which is the sealing mound that Tang Feng just saw, and the other side of this mountain is very steep, a cliff about 400 meters high, and there is a deep pool under the cliff. Zhang Keming said: "We have measured this deep pool, and the deepest point is at the bottom of the cliff, 50 meters. ”

After the virtual map, it can be seen that this mountain is actually a boulder, but this boulder is wrapped in a thick layer of soil, which looks like a mountain. In this way, the overall structure of the location of the mausoleum comes out, the whole mountain is like a triangle, and the underground palace is in the middle of the triangle.

Zhang Keming pointed to the picture after changing the document and said: "This is the progress of our excavation, and you can understand it when you go to the scene." The excavation shape of the hillside is a trapezoid, and the top of the trapezoidal shape is the entrance to the mausoleum, Zhang Keming continued: "The periphery of this tomb is somewhat similar to Wu Zetian's Qianling, there are iron bolt plates between the stones, and every two layers of stones are pierced with iron rods, and then the liquid metal after melting tin and iron is used to pour the stone joints, which is very firm. ”

Tang Feng couldn't help but shake his head, this Li Jie is indeed a master of architectural design, every two layers of stones are connected with iron rods, that is to say, the stone strips that make up the stone walls around the mausoleum are connected in pairs, in ancient times when there was no large machinery involved in the construction, this amount of work was very large.

On the virtual topographic map, the boulder is marked in green, and the red under the boulder is the size of the underground palace estimated by the archaeological department, as Liu Yue said, there is a football field the size, so to speak, this underground palace is like a stadium buried underground.

Tang Feng thought about it and felt that it was wrong, so he asked Zhang Keming, "How did you find this mausoleum?"

"Alas. Zhang Keming shook his head and said: "It's cruel to say, a year ago, a mass grave was found six kilometers away, and these bodies were buried layer by layer, and 10,000 people are just a preliminary estimate." ”

The heaviness of history cannot be carried by words of understatement, and the tragedy of that time cannot be described by numbers, which means tens of thousands or even hundreds of thousands of lives. Feudal society abandoned the bad custom of human martyrdom in slave society, but the death of an emperor often cost tens of thousands of lives.

According to the records of relevant historical materials, when the Yongtai Mausoleum of Song Zhezong was built, 4,600 craftsmen were mobilized and 27,600 stones were quarried for stone alone. Twenty or thirty kilometers away, these stones were transported from Yanshi Suzi Mountain, in the middle of the lofty mountains, to the mausoleum area, and 9,744 soldiers and 500 people were mobilized. According to historical records, the rocks produced in Sushan are warm and moist, and they are rare and incomparable, and they are not easy to collapse when the sun shines for a long time.

In 1100 A.D., Song Zhezong fell ill and died within a few days, and on the tenth day of the second lunar month, the quarrying team arrived at the construction site after gathering. The emperors of the Northern Song Dynasty had the custom of being buried in July, and they only chose the site and did not build the mausoleum during their lifetime, what does it mean, that is, from the day the emperor died, the mausoleum must be completed within seven months.

Time waits for no one, the quarrying begins on the tenth day of February, and the quarrying volume of 27,600 blocks must be completed on the eleventh day of May. Whether it was the emperor's original intention or not, but it was a fact that the project was large and the construction period was tight, and the officials in charge of the construction of the mausoleum had to force the craftsmen to overwork in order to meet the deadline. Due to poor working conditions and no clean and hygienic drinking water, in just one month, there were more than 1,700 craftsmen who fell ill one after another on the construction site where they slept in the open air, and there were craftsmen dying every day, and it became a trouble to dispose of the corpses.

Therefore, whenever a mass grave is found, there must be a large tomb nearby, in fact, the corpses buried in the mass grave are considered "natural deaths", and for the sake of secrecy, after the completion of the mausoleum, the craftsmen involved in the construction of the mausoleum will not be left alive. In ancient times, the construction of the mausoleum was no different from being sentenced to death, not only craftsmen, but all those involved, whether it was a supervisor or a responsible official, were all spared, including Li Jie, in 1110 AD, Li Jie suddenly "died violently", it is not difficult to imagine that the day Li Jie committed suicide was also the time when this mausoleum was completed.

Moreover, those soldiers who participated in the massacre of artisans for unknown reasons would also be killed, and this massacre would continue for a long time until the emperor personally believed that no one knew, and the implication of tens of thousands of people was only a conservative estimate. According to some information, after the burial of Qin Shi Huang, Qin II ordered the slaughter of as many as 700,000 insiders, of course, there are also stupid hats who committed suicide and martyrdom, and the funny thing is that this kind of people often die endlessly. It is precisely because of this that Tang Feng never thinks that there is anything dishonorable about tomb robbers, and how can the unrighteous people take the ill-gotten wealth of the unrighteous people, so how can they be psychologically burdened.

The construction of the mausoleum not only labors the people but also hurts the money, in October 1063 AD, Song Renzong Zhao Zhen was buried in the Yongzhao Mausoleum, the mobilization of skilled craftsmen and people needless to say, the soldiers who participated in the construction of the mausoleum alone were as many as 46,700 people. The construction of Yongzhao Mausoleum cost 500,000 taels of silver, 1.5 million pieces of money, and 2.5 million horses of silk, and the total cost accounted for half of the annual revenue of the Northern Song Dynasty treasury at that time. It can be imagined how magnificent the mausoleum that was built with half of the country's capital should have been at that time

The funeral procession is very huge, there are more than 1,000 people who pull the coffin alone, the carriages and horses are vast, stretching for dozens of miles, obviously, there are few people who go back alive.

Zhang Keming concluded: "So far, this is the information we have. ”

Tang Feng nodded in understanding, and he said, "Can you go to the scene to have a look?"

Zhang Keming nodded and said, "No problem, I'll take you there now." ”

After a while, Tang Feng, Liu Yue and Zhang Keming arrived at the excavation site, and the excavation site gave people the feeling of two words, spectacular. The trapezoidal excavation is wide on the outside and narrow on the inside, the whole tomb is 6 meters wide, 250 meters long, and the depth of the downward extension is 100 meters. Historical records record that Li Si said when he made a report to Qin Shi Huang on the construction of the Lishan Tomb that the oil lamp was not flammable, indicating that the underground palace of Qin Shi Huang's mausoleum was at least excavated to the stage of lack of oxygen.

In order to prevent the collapse, the mountain walls on both sides of the trapezoid were dug into a stepped shape, Zhang Keming pointed to a place in the distance that spewed fire outwards and said: "It was this robbery hole that made us make an inference of the fire mound, and we also temporarily gave up the plan to forcibly open the tomb door." ”

Tang Feng understood as soon as he saw the state of the fire, this thief hole must have penetrated deep into the interior of the underground palace, only in this way, the combustible gas inside the underground palace will be released, this is the ambush fire, the ancient tomb with the ambush fire is called the "fire pit tomb", and the tomb robbers in some places are commonly known as the "fire cave".

There is such a passage in the archaeological document "Changsha Antiquities" - once vented, the fire burst into life, and the phosphorus fire erupted from the gap, up to five feet, sneering, at this time, the pit was full of fire, and the kiln workers were buried in the kiln. Tang Feng knew this too well, the fire pit tomb often had an explosive fire scene, and it was a kind of ancient tomb that tomb robbers feared. However, the road is one foot high and the demon is one foot high, and there is no way for tomb robbers to enter the fire pit tomb, which is the rooster breaking the evil.

In today's prevalence of tomb robbing, many tomb robbery methods have been stranged by the author, such as rooster breaking evil, fecal water decontamination, father and son do not act, etc., in fact, these strange methods are very scientific basis.

The rooster is actually to prevent poison, after opening the tomb, in order to prevent poison in the tomb, the tomb robber will first put a rooster in, combustible gas is definitely poisonous, the rooster is not willing to go in, forced to stuff in is also a dead end, if there is combustible gas in the tomb, then it is necessary to burn it out as it is now.

The reason is actually very simple: oxygen is needed for combustion, and once the combustible gas comes into contact with oxygen, as long as it touches a little spark, there will be a scene like a gas explosion, and no one present will be spared. These combustible gases are not phosphorus fires, but biogas formed by the decomposition of organic matter in a closed environment with a lack of oxygen.

There is still controversy in the academic community about whether the fire in the ancient tomb is an anti-tomb robbery design, because they don't know whether the ancients deliberately put organic matter into the ancient tomb to decompose or it was a coincidence. Theft and anti-theft are always contradictory, and Tang Jiazu will inevitably add ideological views when commenting on anti-theft skills.

After inserting the rooster, the robbers will block the light from the hole, and the rooster will run around when it can't find its way, which will probe all corners of the tomb. When the time is almost up, the robbers let the light in, the rooster is phototaxis, and the only light in the tomb is the hole dug up, so it will come back on its own. After the rooster returns safely, the grave robbers can enter the tomb with confidence.

The purpose of decontamination is to crack the tomb wall made of molten iron, which is the use of very acidic manure to rust the iron, which is a stupid method and often takes a long time.

The father and son do not act differently not because they are afraid of running into ghosts, but because it is too dangerous to rob the tomb, and the father and son must leave one person to pass on the lineage and continue the glorious and great profession.

was chatting here, and a voice came from Zhang Keming's walkie-talkie, and the other party said, "Professor Zhang, the fire is starting to weaken." ”