I counted seven paintings on the walls, depicting some kind of ancient person. In the painting, whether it is a man or a woman, old or young, there is a strange smile on the corner of the mouth, and the face is painted a miserable white color, although the people in the painting are all smiling, but I have an indescribable weirdness in my heart, which makes people very uncomfortable.

I did a little bit of research on history, but I couldn't really tell which era of people were depicted in this painting. Regardless of whether it is the Tang, Song, Yuan, Ming and Qing dynasties, or the Xia, Shang, Zhou, Qin, and Han dynasties, there seems to be no era in Chinese history where people are dressed like this. The person in the painting is wearing a very wide robe, which looks very evil. To put it mildly, it's a bit like the "bachelor's gown" I wore when I graduated from college. To put it mildly, it's like a wizard.

The famous French artist Claude Monet once said: "The life that people can understand is called the mean." The extremes and tranquility that people can't understand are called art. ”

These paintings on the wall made me suddenly realize that this old man in a black coat was an old artist, and at the same time I understood his poverty. When I traveled to Dali, I saw a lot of people like him, unkempt, dirty, uneaten, undrunk, sitting on the side of the road like a beggar. Actually, they're not beggars, they're all unknown artists. Don't be kind enough to throw coins at others, or they will get angry and really burn you with the half-eaten boiled fire.

After the water boiled, the old man in the black coat made a cup of tea and handed it to me, I took the teacup and thanked me again and again, thinking that it would be a little embarrassing not to find something to talk about, but what should I start with? One of my shortcomings is that I have a low emotional intelligence. I remember that the last time my mother helped me introduce someone, it was the daughter of Aunt Wang's family in her unit. The girl and I were both introverts, and we sat in the café and didn't talk to each other. The big eyes are like preserved eggs in two pickle jars.

I thought to myself, this can't be done, I'm a man, I can't be cold, so I chirped and chatted with her about League of Legends, what blind man touched his eyes and kicked, when should Sindra push the ball, what assistance should Wayne match, the white spit stars in my mouth were like snowflakes, and my eyebrows were dancing, but as soon as the little girl heard that I was playing a game when I opened and closed my mouth, my impression suddenly dropped to the freezing point. slapped a hundred dollars on the table and settled the bill, and left listlessly.

When I got home, my mom helped me learn a lesson and said that the next time I talk to someone, don't just talk about the topics that I am interested in, but also talk about the topics that the other person is interested in. After this lesson, I learned wisely, and I smiled and said to the old man in the black coat, "Old man, it turns out that you are a painter." ”

The old man in the black coat sat across from me, looking up at the painting on the wall, his eyes revealing a complex look of joy and sorrow. He shook his head gently and said, "I'm not a painter. ”

I said, "So what are you drawing?" ”

The old man in the black coat said: "These paintings are based on my imagination based on a mysterious ancient text. ”

I asked curiously, "Paleographies?" What exactly is in this painting? ”

But the old man asked me, "What do you think?" ”

I said, "The people in the painting are laughing, it's quite festive, I guess it's a festival." ”

The old man smiled, shook his head slightly, and said something that made me feel creepy. He said, "It's all about dead people. ”

I gasped and was startled. I looked at him in astonishment, and the more I looked, the more I felt that there was an inexplicable weirdness in the old man in the black coat, but if I really wanted me to say, I couldn't tell what was wrong, so I asked him: "Old man, what are you doing painting dead people at home?" ”

The old man took a deep breath of his cigarette, and the smoke from his fingertips set off that he must be a man with a story under his thin and vicissitudes of life. After pondering for a long time, his hoarse voice said the first eight words: "Life is also death, and death is life." ”

I said, "Old man, who are you?" ”

The old man said in a low voice, "You want to hear a story?" ”

I was confused and said, "I want to listen." ”

After pondering for a long time, the old man slowly told me his story:

The old man in the black coat is indeed not a painter, but a civil servant of the Hebei Provincial Institute of Cultural Relics and Archaeology. His real name is Lu Zhenghua, and everyone who knows him calls him Lao Lu. But the people in the rivers and lakes didn't dare to shout like this, and the bulls, ghosts, snakes, and gods of the black seven or eight roads all called him "Mr. Dacarp". Dace is a name for pangolins in ancient times. Lao Lu is revered as a dace because their family's skills in digging graves can be said to be unprecedented.

Lao Lu's ancestors were all tomb robbers, and when the country cracked down on feudal superstition, if anyone dared to hide an antique artifact at home, they would be criticized. So for a while, as long as the old objects were basically smashed in every household, they didn't dare to touch the slightest old thing, and even Yuan Datou threw it away, for fear that the red babies would bite to death and say that this was Maitreya Buddha.

Lao Lu's family has a cellar, which is their family's "treasure pavilion". The baby bumps in this cellar are revealed, and I am afraid that they can smash the Pan family in Sijiu City over. In order to save the lives of his family, his grandfather burned the cellar and the house to ashes, and left Baoding with a litter of children and went to Qinhuangdao, a place where no one knew them.

Lao Lu is different from his grandfather and father, although he also inherited the craft of tomb robbing from his ancestors, but he has never made a living from it. On the contrary, he has loved to read the Four Books and Five Classics since he was a child, and he is very disgusted with these things of stealing chickens and dogs. If it weren't for the fact that his grandfather was old and afraid of affecting his family, he Lu Zhenghua really wanted to go to the government to expose his grandfather, an old tomb robber who lacked front teeth.

After graduating from university, Lao Lu was assigned to work in the Hebei Provincial Geological Survey Bureau, and eight years ago he was transferred to the Institute of Cultural Relics and Archaeology as a civil engineering instructor, specializing in cultivating archaeological talents for the country. Six years ago, the demolition of a camphor tree plantation on the outskirts of Beijing led to a "Ming and Qing Dynasty Eight Banners Tomb Robbery Case". The roof of the four-meter-by-six-meter tomb was densely covered with shovel prints of thirty-eight Luoyang shovels.

Looking at the mineral water bottles scattered in the tomb, the people at the Bunkao realized the seriousness of the matter. The tomb robbers, who thought they had been extinct a long time ago, are still rampant and active, and what is even more infuriating is that the location of the accident is still in Beijing.

Therefore, in order to reflect on this profound lesson, the Institute of Cultural Examination carried out a six-year cultural preservation work, in which two people worked in groups to cross the mountains and mountains in Hebei Province to find those ancient tombs that have not yet been discovered, and to mark them, and monitor the scene in real time, so that those hateful tomb robbers would not even want to steal a clay pot.

The partner assigned to Lao Lu is a strange person in the institute, known as "old man".