Chapter 8: The Underground Kingdom

On a rainy evening, the author of this article walked in the mass graves, stopping from time to time to observe something. A hill is buried in weeds, and if you are not mistaken, this is the tomb of Princess Jinyu of the Tang Dynasty. From a nearby hole, it can be seen that it was visited by tomb robbers. A year later, during the crackdown by the public security organs, a number of cultural relics dealers were arrested one after another. In the small county town where I live, Liu Chaoyang, the prisoner who stole the princess's tomb, stood in a truck parade with other prisoners. I saw him in the crowd with his head bowed, a sign around his neck, and a car turning around the corner, and I passed by one of the characters in this article.

Liu Chaoyang, nicknamed Mouse, was sentenced to 3 years in prison for tomb robbery, met Kuban in prison, and later followed him to sell drugs.

Here's his story.

On December 28, 1995, Liu Chaoyang was walking home with six cabbages on his back, thinking about a question in his mind.

He sold turnips and cabbage, and later soy milk, and rode a tricycle that often dropped chains, with a small horn in the basket, shouting: soy milk, hot soy milk, original, healthy drinks.

When the rape blossoms came, he stood under a stinky tree in the courtyard and finally figured out why he couldn't make a fortune - he was a farmer.

Just after the Qingming Festival, Liu Chaoyang picked up his luggage and went to Huacheng.

Hwaseong Railway Station is a place where security has deteriorated dramatically. A businessman who often shuttles between Guangxi and Guangxi often admonishes relatives and friends: Don't make phone calls at the station, don't buy anything, don't take a taxi, and don't eat or stay in nearby hotels and guesthouses.

As soon as Liu Chaoyang got off the train, he was robbed of his bag and had to sleep in the station square.

A sign in the square reads - please don't defecate here!

There are many mobile phone numbers on the walls and floors around them, and the words "apply for a certificate" are written on the back.

Liu Chaoyang and nearly 1,000 migrant workers sleeping in the square were escorted by police, armed police, and joint defense team members to a small street and alley for the night. The next day, they returned to the square, where they gathered to form a temporary labor market, and whenever a contractor arrived, Hula surrounded him, and the contractor looked at the group like a cattle, and Liu Chaoyang and several other sturdy migrant workers were selected.

There are many small private coal kilns near Huachengyan Town, and the first time Liu Chaoyang went down the mine was a morning, the sun was shining, he squinted, the sky was light and the wind was light, his body was slowly descending, and since then, he has not seen the sun for a whole year. The miners slept four hours a day, had meat for a meal, but were not allowed to drink, and the good food was not the boss's compassion, but to make the miners more efficient. Underground, an old miner named Ding told Liu Chaoyang that he had not been paid for three years. If anyone dared to ask for wages, a gang of thugs would beat him, and even the driver who hauled coal would come and kick him a few times.

"If you don't pay your salary, why do you have to work for him?" Liu Chaoyang asked.

"It's because the boss is deducting his salary, so he has to continue to work." Old man Ding replied.

A year later, Old Man Ding became Liu Chaoyang's accomplice in tomb robbing. The life experience of this old man in Shanxi can be summed up in one word: poverty. If it can be summed up in two words: miners. When he was a child, he began to mine, and his mother used to collect reeds from the river to make him a cotton jacket, which was humid and stuffy underneath, and overnight, his cotton jacket sprouted and grew a small sapling. When he grew up, his dream was to open a coal mine by himself, maybe a man's dream would never come true, so he was poor all his life, from a vigorous young man, directly to a scorched and thin old man.

Old man Ding was an experienced miner, and this experience was greatly applied in his later career as a tomb robber.

Once, he pointed to the top of his head and asked Liu Chaoyang, "Do you know what's on it?" ”

"It's mud." Liu Chaoyang replied.

"Where's the mud?"

"I don't know."

"It's a river."

In between mining and tomb robbing, they also did one thing - they kidnapped the coal mine owner. The reason is simple, because the boss does not pay salaries. As in all kidnapping cases, Ding and Liu Chaoyang tied up their boss, hid them in a hidden place, and called his family, except that they didn't ask for much money, just the amount of wages they deserved. Despite this, the boss's wife called the police, which was clever, most of the kidnappings were done by acquaintances, and even after the money was obtained, they would kill the kidnappers, cover up the crime, and destroy the body. The highlight of the whole kidnapping case is the method of withdrawing money, they ask the boss's wife to throw the money in a public toilet in Rock Town, and the police keep the surrounding area tightly guarded. That night, the moonlight shone on the toilet, and although no one entered or exited all night, the purse disappeared in the early hours of the next morning. According to the police analysis, the criminals opened the manhole cover from the sewer in the toilet, stretched out a hand, and took the money.

Three hours later, in a cave, Liu Chaoyang threw a bag in front of the coal kiln owner: "Look at it, this is the money sent by your wife." ”

There was a roll of toilet paper in the bag.

The coal kiln owner said, "This bitch. ”

Old man Ding said, "Your wife called the police." ”

Liu Chaoyang looked at Old Man Ding, the two exchanged glances, he sighed, and walked towards the coal kiln owner with a knife.

The boss said, "You're not going to kill me, are you?" ”

Liu Chaoyang said: "I let you go." ”

He used a knife to cut the ropes on the boss's body.

In the subsequent interrogation, Liu Chaoyang did not say a word about the matter, and he did not consider it a crime. The boss also told the police that someone was joking with him, and the kidnapping was eventually dropped because the coal mine owner claimed that he had not been kidnapped.

Where did Liu Chaoyang and Old Man Ding go later?

In the suburbs of Hwaseong, there is a tree in each straw stack, and the locals always pile hay around each tree to store the fodder they feed their cattle. On 3 April 1997, the day after the kidnapping, a woman who had risen in the morning to feed her cattle saw two men emerge from her haystack, apparently sleeping in the haystack for the night. One of them was yawning, sorting the grass clippings from his hair and clothes, and the other was holding a watermelon, and there was a melon field twenty miles away.

Since then, the two men have traveled to the most inhospitable places, and some of the tombs are in the untouched wilderness, and they can dig as boldly as they can. Why did they come up with tomb robbing? There is no sane reason for such a thing, and there is a great similarity between tomb robbing and coal digging. Sometimes, they sleep on a quiet hill; Sometimes, sleeping in a grove, the dew of the night wets the grass and hair. When Liu Chaoyang was selling vegetables, his hair was still jet black, and after robbing the tomb, he began to lose a lot of hair. The ever-widening baldness made others and him ignore his true age, and he wore a hat. Silence and loneliness also began at that time, and he sometimes didn't talk to Old Man Ding for several days, only knowing to work hard and wield a shovel. At first, they had no experience and only dug up rocks and worthless rubbish, but then they learned how to use some simple tools, such as shovels and sondes, to determine the approximate location of the cemetery, and they were confident to keep digging. Some of the caves proved that they had exhausted their scheming rather than their physical strength, and some of the shallow enough to show that they had been discouraged, but there was always some hard courage to question the granite and limestone beneath their feet. As Old Man Ding said, they lack a little good luck.

The first tomb they successfully stole was in a bamboo forest, and they dug it smoothly, and the sealing layer was laterite, which is very sticky, so there is no need to consider the problem of the cave collapse. Under the sealed soil is a layer of bluestone slabs, pry open the stone slabs, jump down, the tomb is not big, but well preserved. As soon as Liu Chaoyang shined with a flashlight, he saw the entire coffin surrounded by dense white bamboo roots.

This is a Qing Dynasty tomb, and they accidentally found some Ming Dynasty utensils, and from the bronze mirror dressing box in the coffin and several pieces of jewelry, it can be seen that a woman was buried here. This beauty from many years ago, now a skeleton, turns into dust when you touch it with your hand. Some of the pearls and jade emitted a faint blue light, and the two of them were not in a hurry, they sat cross-legged, drank wine, and smoked a cigarette.

Old man Ding said, "We have made a fortune. ”

Liu Chaoyang said: "Yes, I have made a fortune." ”

Early the next morning, Liu Chaoyang put on his hat with an old boat and mast on it, he smashed the crockpot on the tombstone, grabbed a few handfuls of rice with his hands and stuffed it into his mouth, a bird flew over his head, he forgot to chew, and those rice grains fell out of his mouth like maggots. He and Old Man Ding glanced back at the hole they had just climbed out, and with those gold, silver and jewels in their arms, they went down the mountain with a smile.

A few years later, the local cultural relics department carried out a rescue excavation of the tomb, and people found a sentence left on the coffin by Liu Chaoyang with a stick smeared with his own feces: "Rats come here!"

Beneath the ground, there is another world.

Light a torch and get into the toilet at your own to see the world. There are also entrances that we notice every day but are forgotten. Lifting the manhole cover, in 1974, Professor Ma Jiyu went down from here; In 1983, the deceased Chen Yin went down from here; In 1996, the hawker Kuroko still went down from here.

Now we're going down from here.

There are only rats here, no flies, and the flies are all above the ground.

In this world, there are two kinds of animals, the rat and the crime.

Plagues and miasma were also born from here. They are twin brothers, and they share a mother.

In Jiangsu, there is a counterfeit money factory, and a few farmers make one-yuan coins in a bomb shelter; There is also a counterfeit money den in Loudi City, Hunan Province, where several laid-off workers make counterfeit 100-yuan bills in the basement; Hanning, an old man in Puyang, made detonators in his family's cellar where he stored ginger, and Fu Chun, a native of Ningbo, dug a hole in the ground under the pigsty to produce explosives.

Crime is a strange flower in the underworld.

There are many excavations in the city, and sewers and drains are two of them.

In 1994, the earthquake in Hong'an County caused an entire section of sewer to emerge from the ground and expose itself to the world. People were surprised to find that there was a ditch underneath the drain, and we saw a lot of things besides the sludge. Pipes and wine glasses sold in the same shop are reunited here, dentures that once made vows have become dentures, handkerchiefs that have evoked remembrance of love have become handkerchiefs again, and the sheets on which a beautiful young woman slept are now wrapped in a dead cat and rotting here.

What makes people wonder what the gutter beneath the gutter is for?

Where does this unknown branch of darkness lead?

Every rainy season comes, Hong'an County is a vast ocean.

A county party secretary who took office in 1986, he reigned for three years and did only one thing: renovate the sewers. He ordered the workers to dig the sewers deep and reinforce them to hold more rainwater. Floodwaters, which used to flow through the streets, now flow through sewers, and the drains under the drains were dug at that time.

This venerable county party secretary was called Sun Zhaoyu, and after his death, there was a new street: Zhaoyu Street. 10 years ago, Zhaoyu Street was called Huazi Street, and there was not a single flower on Huazi Street, but there were many beggars. Fifteen years ago, the common people also called it "stinky street". Sun Zhaoyu embezzled public funds, compressed every fund, deducted the wages of civil servants, he bowed in front of the enterprise like a beggar, begged in front of his wife like a pug, he asked the boss to show kindness, and let his wife take out the passbook. One point, it needs to be made in particular, after his death, it was discovered that his deposits were almost zero. We know that zero is the smallest number and the infinitely large number.

Sun Zhaoyu has done a good deed for the common people and also provided a favorable place for criminals.

Scientists go to the caves, criminals go to the sewers.

There are more than 200 streets and alleys in Hong'an County, and there are more than 400 sewer holes. Late one night in 1999, a kid who was stealing a manhole cover encountered something strange – he heard someone talking in the sewer. The child had the audacity to lift the manhole cover and hide nearby, and after a while, he saw an unkempt old man with a stench coming out of the sewer.

We recognized that this old man was Old Man Ding, and his and Liu Chaoyang's years of tomb robbing did not bring him much wealth. In 1998, there was an unknown underground drug den in Hong'an County, which was built by Shanya, and after Shanya's death, Gao Fei expanded this underground den into a large-scale underground drug factory, and Ding Laotou and Liu Chaoyang were the people who expanded this underground factory at that time. They met Goofy through Kuban and discovered that drug trafficking was far more lucrative than tomb robbing, so they soon became a member of this drug trafficking gang.

The acquaintance of these people is like a stream of sewage meeting another sewage, flowing together and smelling the same.

The design of the underground factory was very ingenious, and they dug a basement in one basement, which was connected to the sewer, and every well in the sewer in the county was both an entrance and an exit.

Late at night on August 10, 2000, four outsiders came to Xiaojing Hutong in the east of Hong'an County. At the end of this rather short street, they saw a wall, which was a dead end.

They exchanged heads and ears, and then quietly waited for something.

"Keep going." A voice said.

The voice was muffled, but it came around again.

"Go forward." The voice continued.

They finally understood that the sound was coming from underground, and they took two steps forward, and a man opened the manhole cover from the sewer, beckoned to them, and they jumped.

Five minutes later, the four men met up with the other four in a secret basement.

These eight people are: Gao Fei, Ding Laotou, Liu Chaoyang, Kuban, Zhou Xingxing, Tiezui, Qiu Ba, and Tu Laoye.

Date: August 10, 2000

Location: Hong'an County

Characters: Gao Fei, Ding Laotou, Liu Chaoyang, Kuban, Zhou Xingxing, Qiu Ba, Tiezui, Tu Laoye.

Zhou Xingxing: "Where is this?" ”

Goofy: "Basement." ”

Zhou Xingxing: "What about above?" ”

Goofy: "There's a basement up there, too. ”

Zhou Xingxing: "What's the sound outside?" ”

Goofy: "Our neighbors. ”

Old man Ding: "It's a mouse, a mouse as big as a pig." ”

Liu Chaoyang: "I'm also a mouse, hehe." ”

Gao Fei: "Where's the mountain master?" ”

Iron Mouth: "We buried him." ”

Qiu Ba: "It was the mountain master who asked us to come here." ”

Goofy: "Well, I see strips of red cloth tied to the trees. ”

Cuban: "How did you get out of prison?" ”

Tu Laoye: "Rub the rope and drill the chimney, haha." ”

Old man Ding: "Whoever came up with it, his head is smarter than mine." ”

Zhou Xingxing: "Me." ”

Goofy: "You're alone with more than 20 people. ”

Kuban: "As I said earlier, you can't break through, the cannon gang is too savage." ”

Gao Fei: "There is just a shortage of manpower, since you are here, let's do it together." ”

Kuban: "We sell white dogs. ”

Gao Fei: "Let me introduce you, this is Kuban, he dug a tunnel, dug into the bank, and didn't get a penny." ”

Kuban: "Haha, bad luck. ”

Gao Fei: "The other two, Uncle Ding and Mouse, are a master of digging holes and an expert in tomb robbing." ”

Liu Chaoyang: "That's all hard work, and now we are businessmen." ”

Iron Mouth: "Let me take two puffs, I can't stand it." ”

Tu Laoye: "My drug addiction is about to kick in. ”

Goofy: "Okay, have you ever killed anyone?" ”

Iron Mouth: "No." ”

Goofy: "What about you?" ”

Zhou Xingxing: "I don't have either." ”

Goofy: "Bring that guy over." ”

Old man Ding and Liu Chaoyang carried a person in and gently placed it on the ground. The man seemed to be asleep or fainted, with a black plastic bag over his head, and his face could not be seen.

Goofy: "Give you a knife and go up to his stomach." ”

Zhou Xingxing took the knife, he was very hesitant in his heart, if he gave up, it would definitely arouse Gao Fei's suspicions, and he could only accept the test in order to gain his trust. The person lying on the ground was motionless, and Zhou Xingxing walked over, squatted down, and carefully observed something. Soon, he stabbed him down, and as he expected, it was a dead man - Zhou Xingxing noticed that the plastic bag covering his face did not move at all, which showed that he was not breathing.

Goofy said, "Cut your belly." ”

Zhou Xingxing cut his belly very neatly, his intestines flowed out, and the air was full of unpleasant smells.

Goofy: "Take your intestines out and see what's in your stomach?" ”

Zhou Xingxing: "There is a bag of white powder!" ”

Gao Fei: "This corpse was bought from the funeral home, and it is safer to transport the goods with the corpse, so let's give a few of you a bag of powder!" ”

Three days later, at 10 a.m.

Zhou Xingxing walked into the Hong'an County Public Security Bureau, a man in a police uniform passed by him in the hall, and Zhou Xingxing stopped him: "Is your director here?" ”

The man looked at him warily and said, "The director is upstairs, in the office." ”

Zhou Xingxing went upstairs and pushed open the door of the director's office, where the director was sleeping on the sofa, snoring loudly.

"Hey, who are you looking for, why did you come in without knocking?" The director woke up, sat up and asked.

Zhou Xingxing glanced at him, didn't speak, walked straight to his desk, and sat down.

The director said, "Go out, is that where you are sitting?" ”

Zhou Xingxing picked up the phone and said to him while dialing: "If you want to keep this position, just shut up." ”

Zhou Xingxing reported to the command of the "17 July Prison Robbery" on the telephone that he had investigated: Shanya bought drugs from abroad, and then sold them to the three monnies in Hwaseong and the guns in the northeast, and then the three monnies and the cannons were wholesaled, thus forming a huge drug trafficking network. The arrest of Shanya is equivalent to cutting off the source of drugs, and the artillery in the northeast gathered a group of bold guys to plan the prison robbery. After Shanya's arrest, Gao Fei became the backbone of this drug cartel, he met Kuban through a small oil hammer, and through Kuban's introduction, he became acquainted with Old Man Ding and Liu Chaoyang, who secretly built an underground drug processing factory in Hong'an County. Gao Fei can be said to be a criminal genius, extremely alert, these days seem to have noticed something, may abscond to the field at any time, request the command to the Hong'an County Public Security Bureau to issue an order to immediately arrest......

Zhou Xingxing handed the phone to the director.

The director broke out in a cold sweat, there was a drug processing plant under his jurisdiction, and he didn't even know anything about it. He took the phone tremblingly, and Bai Jingyu, vice minister of public security, briefly introduced Zhou Xingxing's undercover identity on the phone, because this operation was extremely confidential, so no internal investigation notice was issued. This case is an extraordinarily serious case supervised and handled by the Ministry of Public Security, and it is hoped that the Hong'an County Public Security Bureau will attach great importance to it, actively cooperate, and immediately arrest it.

The director resigned, nodded yes, and hung up the phone.

"How many police forces do you have in your county?" Zhou Xingxing asked.

The director thought for a while and said: "There are 376 police officers on the job, including 200 in the front line of the agency and 176 in the police station. ”

Zhou Xingxing said: "It's not enough, find all of them." There are too few police forces, not enough, and we have to find some more people. ”

The director asked, "How many people are there?" ”

Zhou Xingxing said: "7." ”

The director said: "Ah, it's only 7, and we have more than 300 people to arrest 7 people, isn't it enough?" ”

Zhou Xingxing gave him a detailed description of the peculiarities of this underground drug factory, and an hour later, the two made a foolproof plan to arrest them. The police dispatched nearly 400 police officers, disguised as hawkers, pedestrians, clothing store owners, customers, women shopping, men sitting on roadside benches and talking on the phone, etc., to tightly control the 400 sewer wells in the county's streets, because each wellhead could be an exit for criminals to escape.

At 1 p.m. on 13 August 2000, the Hong'an police suddenly attacked and surrounded the building above the underground drug processing plant. The criminals in the basement were aware of the police when they arrived, and after a brief discussion, they decided to flee separately.

They fled along the sewers, and the first to be caught was Tu Laoye, who carefully opened the manhole cover at the intersection of Center Street, and was arrested as soon as he climbed to the ground, and the others were also captured as soon as they appeared.

There are some details of the arrest that are worth mentioning, Liu Chaoyang burst into tears when he was arrested, Tiezui shouted "pain" when he was arrested, Ding Laotou was incontinent when he was arrested, Kuban injured himself with a knife when he was arrested, and Tu Laoye bit the policeman's arm when he was arrested.

At 3 o'clock in the afternoon, five criminals were arrested, and only Gao Fei and Qiu Ba have not yet been arrested.

Where are they?

Still in the sewers.

When the police surrounded him, Goofy's nose had already smelled danger on the ground, so he chose another direction to escape - the end of the sewer. Indeed, the police ignored this by keeping a close watch on the wellhead and not at the beach at the end of the sewer.

The sewers of Hong'an County lead to the Surabaya River in the west of the city.

Goofy walked hunched over in the dark, getting lost many times, because there were also some dead ends, some complicated branches in the sewers. Soon, he discerned his direction and quickened his pace. Suddenly he heard something, and looked back, behind him, far away, a terrible beam of light cut through the darkness, and several vague black shadows were slowly moving.

At 3:10, the chief of public security ordered a search of the sewers, four policemen and a police dog formed a search team, they entered from the wellhead of Xiaojing Hutong, checked all the way, and like Goofy, they quickly got lost, at a fork in the road their opinions were divided, one said to go this way, the other said that it should go that way, and finally they obeyed the will of heaven and followed the direction of the dog's barking. Twenty minutes later, one team member gave up because he couldn't stand the stench in the sewer, and the other two team members immediately agreed. In order to fulfill their responsibilities as a policeman, they fired a few random shots at the end of the dark corridor and returned to the ground.

Goofy crouched on the ground, holding his breath as the bullet hit the vault not far above his head, and a piece of dirt fell into the water. If the police officers had continued their search, Goofy would have been arrested.

Goofy pricked up his ears, opened his eyes wide, and after confirming that the danger was gone, he quickly walked forward, no longer stopping. The water in the sewers flows to the river, and he relies on this to guide the way. After a while, he looked up, and at the end of the ditch, far, far in front of him, he saw a bright light, and this time, instead of the beam from the policeman's flashlight, he saw the light of daytime.

He saw the exit.

Goofy was ecstatic, and walked to the exit, quickly frustrated again - the exit was blocked by an iron bar, and although it was rusty, it was difficult to bend and break the iron bar with both hands.

He calmed down, thought for a few minutes, and quickly came up with a solution. He took off his clothes, soaked them in water, wound them around two iron bars, and found a thick branch from the debris in the sewer, and twisted it with all his might, so that the iron bars creaked, and the iron fence had a gap that his body could just squeeze through.

Goofy washed his face in the middle of the river and walked onto a bridge, when suddenly he felt as if someone was behind him.

He turned his head.

There was indeed a man staring at him from behind.

Zhou Xingxing appeared like a ghost.

Goofy: "You're a policeman?" ”

Zhou Xingxing: "Yes. ”

Goofy: "I'm so stupid, I should have thought of it. ”

Zhou Xingxing: "Actually, you are quite smart. ”

Goofy: "How do you know I'm going to run out of here?" ”

Zhou Xingxing: "I've thought about it, if I were you, I would choose here." ”

Goofy: "Let me go, will?" ”

Zhou Xingxing: "Impossible. ”

"Well, then." Gao Fei simply sat on the ground, and some passers-by on the bridge stopped to watch, they didn't understand why this person was sitting in the middle of the road.

"Any idea why I'm sitting here?"

Goofy's right hand kept in his trouser pocket and didn't take it out. Zhou Xingxing looked at Gao Fei and said, "You have a gun in your hand, or a grenade, and the people around you are your hostages." ”

Goofy: "Smart, you're also my hostage, I'll be the first to kill you." ”

Zhou Xingxing: "Then you shoot, the gunfire will attract the police in the vicinity, and you still can't run." ”

Goofy: "You know, I killed a man when I was 17 years old, and I didn't even frown. ”

Zhou Xingxing: "When I first solved a homicide case, I was 17 years old. ”

Goofy: "Now that I think about it, there won't be a second person like you in the police across the country, smart, bold, and powerful. ”

Zhou Xingxing: "There is one more, you forgot to say it." ”

Goofy: "What? ”

Zhou Xingxing: "I'm not afraid of death. ”

Goofy: "I don't believe it. ”

Zhou Xingxing also sat on the ground, didn't speak, just looked at him.

Gao Fei took out the pistol from his pocket and said to Zhou Xingxing: "I'll count three, if you don't leave, then I'll shoot." ”

Goofy: "One—"

Goofy: "Two—"

Zhou Xingxing said: "Three. ”

Goofy smiled and said, "Yes, if only there was wine, I can have a drink with you." ”

Pong, the gun went off!