Many years ago, I was in the third grade at Changshou Road No. 1 Primary School in Shanghai. Writing a propositional essay in Chinese class - a dream when you grow up? Someone writes about scientists, engineers, PLA and even police officers...... And I'm an archaeologist.

It was my childhood dream.

None of the students who wrote about scientists, engineers, the People's Liberation Army, or even the police in their essays had ever realized their dreams. Of course, I didn't become an archaeologist, and I didn't even touch the door.

The childhood dreams of the vast majority of people are doomed to fail. Unfortunately, this is the iron law of life.

When I went to middle school, I dreamed of becoming a painter again. As a result, before going to the Academy of Fine Arts for the exam, I gave up because I was afraid of failure, which made me regret it for the rest of my life. I don't know what else I can become? Dreams seem out of reach of me, and I'm about to harvest a mediocre and muddy life, just like the people around me.

In my adolescence, the darkest years, I found the antidote to save myself, and that was reading and writing. I went to the library every day and stood up and read book after book. I also used my limited money to buy books, including a set of non-fiction literature about Chinese archaeology and tomb robbery – first the tragedy of the archaeological excavation of the Dingling Tomb of the Wanli Emperor of the Ming Dynasty, and then the legend of the theft of the Dongling Tomb of the Qing Dynasty. During the Republic of China, the Huiling of the Tongzhi Emperor was stolen and excavated, and the tomb robbers opened the coffin and found that the emperor who died young had already become a pile of dry bones, but the queen's body was intact, as if she had just fallen asleep, her face was shiny and natural, and her skin was elastic. Soon after, another gang of bandits broke into the underground palace and frantically dissected the eighteen-year-old queen's abdomen, searching for the little gold she had swallowed when she committed suicide more than sixty years ago. A few days later, another group of tomb robbers entered the underground palace and found the naked queen's long hair scattered, her face was like life, and she had no painful expression, but her intestines were flowing all over the ground......

Although I don't know whether this story is true or not, it has always been strongly haunted in my mind - if I had to rewrite it, would it turn it into a love story? Or a tomb robbery legend?

In 2000, Christmas, I made a bet with a female netizen in the chat room, and I had long forgotten the bet, but for this bet, I thought of the story of the queen of Tongzhi who robbed the tomb, and wrote my first book by mistake - she was born in the nineteenth century, insulted in the twentieth century, treacherous, and lasted for a hundred years, until the Internet in the twenty-first century, sending out two key words "she is in the underground palace" and "return my head". The following year, the book was published, probably the first full-length suspense thriller novel on the Chinese internet.

And then I gradually became the person you know.

But I've never forgotten the excitement when I first conceived "Virus", as if I was in a Qing Dynasty mausoleum, with the Empress standing behind a computer screen, her long hair scattered and her eyes gloomy...... Her surname is Arut, and she has not left a name in history (the Empress Dowager Cixi has not left a name), so I named her: Arut Xiaozhi.

Xiaozhi, Ye Xiao and others have accompanied us to this day, and many years have passed in a flash.

In the spring of 2015, on a drizzly afternoon, I was stuck in a small road in downtown Shanghai. On the right is a securities company, and there are two stone sculptures squatting at the gate. This is not a common stone lion, but a unicorn-like divine beast, each with a pair of antlers on its head - isn't this the tomb beast in the ancient tomb?

At that moment in spring, three Chinese characters flashed in my mind-

Gravemon!

What a heart-warming name, as if returning to the first year of the 21st century, when dreams began to sprout, and connecting the uninterrupted Chinese history and the secrets in the ancient tombs for 3,000 years.

I've unearthed hundreds of pictures of tomb beasts, from artifacts freshly unearthed at archaeological sites, to national treasures in museums, to priceless antiques in auction house manuals.

In order to bring more tomb beasts to the light of day, I spent nearly two years, downloading hundreds of archaeological reports (accurate enough to be accurate to every centimeter, every bone, and every latitude and longitude), interpreting countless epitaphs, collecting historical documents and academic papers all night, and even discovering a little prince of the Tang Dynasty buried in Bailuyuan......

Tomb Beasts are real.

This is an indisputable conclusion, they have hideous faces, but they never betray, they not only protect the tomb owner, they are also guarding Chinese civilization.

Some people say that the Chinese are a nation without faith, without a moral bottom line, and without the spirit of perseverance. They were wrong! I know that Chinese have faith, and this belief is history, the tradition of writing history since Confucius, from the Book of Shang, Spring and Autumn, Zuo Chuan, to Sima Qian's Shiji, the 40 million-character history of Huanghuang.

The town tomb beast is always guarding the faith of the Chinese!

The secret behind the Tomb Beast is between me and you. Whether you believe it or not, I am here, neither sad nor joyful, neither increasing nor decreasing, gazing into your eyes, telling you the story of the Tomb Beast, and accompanying you through countless long nights.

On the first day of 2017, I officially wrote the first stroke of the "Tomb Beast" series of novels-

In the first year of the twentieth century, many major events took place on the planet: the Boer War was in full swing, the Holodomor in India starved millions to death, and the second Olympic Games in Paris, where Nietzsche and Wilde died......

In Shenzhou, Chixian County, Dongfang, Sven Heding, a Swede, discovered the ruins of Loulan in Lop Nur; Wang Daoist opened the Tibetan Scripture Cave in the Mogao Grottoes in Dunhuang, and the Eight-Nation Coalition broke the city of Beijing, and our story begins here......

The railway came through the wall, and the railway station under the big front gate looked at the Forbidden City in the distance. Emperor Guangxu and Empress Dowager Cixi collapsed one after another. Pu Yi ascended the throne at the age of three, declared the emperor in three years, and capsized the boat in the three hundred years of the Qing Dynasty. The emperor's head was not killed, repeating the mistakes of 3,000 years of Chinese history, and civilization has progressed! There were 397 emperors in China's 83 dynasties, and although the statistics are not accurate, the fate of the last emperor is undisputed. He lived in exile, became the emperor of the Republic of China, became a Japanese puppet, was captured by the Soviet Union, and finally died of illness in Beijing in 1967 as a citizen of the Republic without an heir.

This is the history that our fathers, grandparents, and great-grandparents have witnessed firsthand.

In another 50 years, that is, today in the 21st century, there will be no "quiet night and sparse people, Sha Zilong closed the small door and stabbed down sixty-four guns in one go; Then, with a gun, he looked at the stars in the sky and remembered the majesty of the wild forest in Yedian back then. Sighing, he slowly touched the cool and slippery body of the gun with his fingers, and smiled slightly: "No! Don't pass it on! ’”

This is not only the story of the tomb beast, but also the story of China in the twentieth century, and even the story of the entire human race for 5,000 years. And how much I like the protagonist of this story - a young man born in the ancient cemetery palace, burdened with a sea of blood and hatred, hiding a secret for 3,000 years, destined to be displaced all his life, treacherous waves, turning the tide and supporting the building!

May you also like this story, like the men here, like the women here, like the beasts here, like me who created it all, and our childhood dreams!