Lu Shimo, a Shanghai doctor in the late Qing Dynasty, had a dream in the second year of Xuantong, and woke up in the forty-third year of Xuantong, in 1951 in the Western calendar. -- It has been 40 years since China implemented a constitutional monarchy, and Shanghai's foreign concessions have long been recovered, with high-rise buildings lined up one after another, countless airships soaring in the air, and foreigners are all respectful when they see the Chinese. Held in the bustling Manhattan-like city of Pudong, the Universal Exposition "hollowed out the ground, built tunnels, placed railroad tracks, lit electric lights day and night, and the trams flew in endlessly." "A big iron bridge across Huangpu and straight to Pudong on the other side." The Chinese Navy held a military parade at Wusongkou, ranking first in the world in terms of total tonnage, with 58 first-class cruisers alone. After Huang Liang woke up from a dream, he wrote a fantasy novel with a majestic name - "New China".

In the summer of 1917, it was still the standard old China. Several Chinese warships anchored at Wusongkou have gone south to Guangzhou to support Sun Yat-sen's protectors. The Huangpu River is full of foreign warships, and chimneys spew black smoke that "decorates" the sky on the rooftops of the Bund Tower.

A river ship from Hankou, carrying the silt and aquatic weeds from the lower reaches of the Yangtze River, whimpered and stopped at the Shiliupu Wharf. The statue of the Goddess of Peace, commemorating the victims of the First World War, has not yet been erected, and Shanghai is like a jumble of building blocks. On a long trestle, Chinese coolies load a wooden box onto a truck.

The car drove past the colorful flag-laden building as if it were inspecting the entire Bund, with shadows of Roman columns and granite bars sweeping across the front of the car. After the all-steel structure of the Waibaidu Bridge, under the bridge is the intersection of Suzhou Creek and Huangpu River, turbid waves are monstrous, how many heroes are buried. On the other side of the river, it is an idyllic Pudong.

The truck stopped in front of a bungalow in Hongkou, a three-story sturdy building with a black façade and narrow panes, and a baroque gate with a plaque hanging - Dharma Mountain on the Sea.

Wooden crates were carried into the building. The magnificent foyer has two Jingdezhen porcelain vases, a complete set of Ming Dynasty Jiajing Huanghuali furniture, framed with Dong Qichang's characters and paintings of Bada Shanren. There is a dark hall on the second floor, and the doorway is decorated with a pair of deer heads, and the antlers with teeth and claws show the domineering spirit of the owner. There are dozens of large glass cabinets in the hall, which respectively display the bronze tripod of the Western Zhou Dynasty, the soldiers of the Western Han Dynasty, the stone carved Buddha statues of the Northern Dynasty, the Tang Sancai warriors and maids, the azure glazed bowls of the Ru kiln of the Northern Song Dynasty, and even the silk painting of the Guanyin of the Western Xia Water Moon......

The crowd dispersed, leaving only a few craftsmen, and opened the wooden box, revealing a strangely shaped metal statue.

"Like a dragon is not a dragon, like a phoenix is not a phoenix, like a unicorn is not a qi, like a turtle is not a turtle!"

A middle-aged man twists a Napoleon III-style beard, and in the palm of his right hand turns a pair of old walnuts - the stuffy pointed lion head of an authentic Pinggu old tree. His name is Ouyang Sicong, the owner of this building, wearing a royal blue silk robe, tall, red-skinned, with a thick beard, and aggressive eyes, he knows that he is a character at first glance.

However, the treasure in this box still surprised him. Reaching out and touching the monster's head, and the snow-white antlers. All the way was wrapped in sawdust and waste paper, just for fear of shattering the two horns.

"Young Qilin Town Tomb Beast!"

Ouyang Sicong accurately called out the name of this treasure.

Half a month ago, he went to Hankou to purchase a batch of goods. Local friends knew that he loved to collect antiques, so they said that a treasure was shipped from Shaanxi, which had just been dug up from the tomb of the Tang Dynasty, and it was still fresh and hot. The seller was a warlord's lieutenant, with heavily armed soldiers, escorting a cart. Ouyang Sicong only glanced at it, and immediately decided to ask for it, and after bargaining, he finally sold it for a thousand yuan. He took cash from the bank, handed over the money with one hand, delivered the goods with the other, packed it and shipped it back to Shanghai.

At this moment, this young Qilin Town Tomb Beast has been cleaned up and put into a special glass cabinet.

Ouyang Sicong raised his magnifying glass and carefully observed every detail of the tomb beast. This is a juvenile unicorn, that is, the four dislikes, maybe the owner of the tomb is still a teenager. The main material is bronze, which is quite well preserved, still golden, and under different lights, it will also emit colorful reflections. As for the red mane on the neck of the Tomb Beast, it was hard to determine what it was. Maybe it's really some kind of animal mane, like a lion. There are also layers of armor, which are absolutely ingenious, not to mention the pair of antlers on the top of the head.

At first sight, he was conquered by the pair of snow-white antlers.

It's a pity that the surface of this juvenile tomb beast is full of cratered bullet marks, and some bullet casings are still embedded in it......

These grave-digging warlords love to wreak havoc with weapons and brute force! Ouyang Sicong bet that this was made with a Gatling or Makqin machine gun, otherwise ordinary rifle fire would not be so intensive. Maybe it's some kind of terrible mechanism, or maybe it's a superstitious ghost belief at all, so they shoot with a machine gun just to be safe.

It's dark.

Ouyang Sicong stared at the eyes of the tomb beast, no—the eyes of this tomb beast seemed to move just now! He went around again

A circle, is it an illusion? Wait a minute, he was sure that the position of the tomb beast's eyelids was different just now and now. He touched the eyeball, and felt that it was not made of metal, as if it was some kind of gemstone, or was it the glass of the Tang Dynasty and ancient Persia?

No, the young grave beast was watching him.

He felt flustered and a little out of breath, as if this hall full of antique relics had become a mausoleum in an instant, with a huge set of coffins behind it.

Ouyang Sicong slowly retreated, locked the door of the hall, wiped the cold sweat from his forehead, and hurriedly went to his daughter's boudoir on the third floor.

Actually, the feeling just now is not an illusion.

The young Qilin Town Tomb Beast was indeed looking at him, and it did roll its eyes and blink its eyelids.

It's not a dead thing, it's not a metal statue, it's not a killing machine.

It is a beast that is still alive.

It's called Nine Colors.

Late at night, the neon lights on Nanjing Road and Sima Road have not yet been extinguished, and the sailors of the British Club are still partying all night long. It's just that this western-style building called "Dharma Mountain on the Sea", a hall full of antiquities for 3,000 years, is like returning to the underground palace of the Tang Dynasty tomb.

Jiu Se looked at the dark hall, at the Tang Sancai warriors and maids on the opposite side, at the stone carved Buddha statues of the Northern Dynasty, and at many faces that had been frozen for a thousand years in silence...... From the inside of its steel-clad body, there is a certain "squeak" sound, like a small animal abandoned by its owner.

Jiu Se is very sad, not because he is locked up in this gorgeous prison, but because he is sad that the owner of the tomb, Huang He, is gone, slim, and does not know where he is at the end of the world.

This is the irresistible destiny of the Tomb Beast: once you leave the dungeon and are exposed to the light and air of the human world, all power is fleeting. Only in the dead of night, or in a completely dark place, will a little strength be restored. It could only wail, tremble slightly, open its eyes, almost rippling with tears, staring at the world as dead as the grave......

Suddenly, the door opened.

The sound of a girl's footsteps. The nine colors can be determined, just like those girls who wore skirts and big sleeves more than 1,200 years ago.

The nine colors in the glass cabinet instantly returned to their seriousness, and they became the tomb beasts of the young Qilin Town again, staring blankly at the floor.

The girl turned on a small lamp. She wore fluffy slippers and a snow-white Western-style silk nightgown that set off her wheat-like golden complexion. Her eyes are actually glaze-colored, the bridge of her nose and lips are slightly contoured, and her long hair is slightly naturally curled, which seems to have a coconut breeze. When Jiuse saw this face, he remembered the Persian slave girls in Chang'an City.

Her name is Ouyang Anna, and she is Ouyang Sifan's only daughter.

In the dim light, a seventeen-year-old girl saw this new baby, a tomb beast from the underground palace of the little prince of the Tang Dynasty.

“Bonjour.” Ouyang Anna said "hello" in French. She stared at it for a long time, as if it were a century, and finally let out an exclamation, "Déjà vu."

The second half of the sentence means "déjà vu" – everyone has had the experience of seeing something unfamiliar or a strange face, but it seems like they had seen it when and where, as if it was yesterday......

Like all women who see beautiful jewelry, she couldn't resist opening the glass case, and her fingers touched the mane, scales, and nose of the town's tomb beast......

Suddenly, she felt some kind of liquid, secreted from the corner of the beast's eye.

Ouyang Anna was a little scared, in this tomb-like room, it seemed that every Western Han burial figurine stared at her back with wide eyes. She closed the glass cabinet door, tightened the collar of her nightdress, and hurried away.

In the days that followed, the girl came to see it. Secretly open the cabinet and pet it as if it were a tame pet. Every time she touched the cratered bullet marks on the surface of the tomb beast, she had a distressed expression......

It's another hot afternoon, and the cicadas in the big trees outside the window are endlessly noisy. Here she was again, dressed in a white school uniform and followed by a young man.

Ouyang Anna asked, "By the way, I don't know your name yet!" ”

"My name is Qin Beiyang."

He was about Anna's age, more than six feet long, and a head taller than the girl. He was dressed in a white cloth coat, his whole body was short, like a coolie on the dock, with a wooden box on his shoulder and a hammer in his hand, like a craftsman walking the streets. Under the clothes on his chest, a blood-colored jade pendant faintly appeared, emitting a faint warmth.

"Oh, that's it!"

Ouyang Anna pointed to the town's tomb beast. Qin Beiyang walked to the glass cabinet and bent down to stare at the silent young beast.

He saw the nine-colored eyes.

Nine colors also saw his eyes.

What familiar eyes, eyebrows, nose, mouth...... Where did this craftsman come from? It's clearly -

The tomb beast Nine Colors who left the dungeon recognized this face in an instant!