In the spring of 1960, when the drought that had lasted for more than a year was still continuing, there were more than 100 families in a small village in northwest Zhejiang, the fields had long since become a piece of loess, the cracked earth was like barking pine trees, the river had long since run out of water, and the crops in the fields had lost their harvest last year.

This place is called Hongcun, has existed for I don't know how many years, most of the people in the village are from the late Qing Dynasty and the early Republic of China from all over the desert, how many people and how many things in the village have long been buried in the loess. It's just that there is an old archway at the entrance of the village, and the archway is erected with two bucket-thick stone pillars, and there is a stump under the pillar.

At that time, how did people know the meaning of the scum, they all called it Lao Wang Ba, there was a pillar on the back of the old Wang Ba, there was a stone plaque on the pillar, and the plaque was written with a big "Hong" word, so people called this place Hongcun.

Outsiders who have the strength to choose a few plots of land occupy a house, and the seeds and farming tools brought together are planted here by the whole family. Some came from the inland, some came from the coast, some came from Anhui, some came from Henan, and some came from Jiangxi. In those years, where there was food, where there was no war, where to take root, my ancestors were originally from Anqing, Anhui Province, from my great-grandfather's generation fled here, thus becoming a person from Hongcun.

No one knows what year Hongcun was built, no one knows what happened here, the village is full of stone people and stone horses, dilapidated temples and mansions, many of which were demolished in those years.

The smashed stone horses were pulled to repair the ridge and build the dam, the green bricks of the temple mansion were removed to build a pigsty bathhouse, and the only thing left to wait for me to be there was a general temple and a few stone carvings half buried in the loess.

Northwest Zhejiang is located in the junction of two provinces and three counties, it is an important post station in ancient times, as early as the Qin Dynasty was officially sealed by the first emperor of the county, in the earlier era of Qin, there are many traces of human activities here, but a Taiping Heavenly Kingdom to make a long hair movement to a local aborigines to make a fine light.

The aborigines provided ready-made houses and farmland for the newcomers, and slowly, more and more people came, and it became the climate.

Hongcun is a relatively remote mountain village in the northwest of Zhejiang, surrounded by mountains and with a river in the middle, and the residents live along both sides of the waterway to divert river water to irrigate farmland. The latecomers of this village lived and multiplied here, they avoided the War of Resistance against Japanese Aggression and the Civil War, and ushered in the liberation of New China.

As the saying goes, the mountain is high and the emperor is far away, in 1960, it was the era when the Great Leap Forward and the people's communization reached its peak, and the land of China was full of open kilns and steel, and each commune had its own annual steel production target, which was implemented to the brigade and the squad.

Every village has a task, everyone has a target, they eat a big pot of rice, drink a big tank of water, in order to achieve the goal of "catching up with Britain and the United States", the common people have taken out all the iron pots and copper kettles at home, the purpose is to contribute more bricks and tiles to the construction of socialist New China.

By 1960, the drought that lasted for more than a year was still continuing, and the forest coverage rate in the northwest of Zhejiang was extremely high, and the mountains were full of emerald bamboo. The women began to look for wild vegetables in the fields with hungry bellies, the men carried hoes into the mountains to peel the bark of trees to satisfy their hunger, and the older ones even ate Guanyin soil, but the construction of socialism could not be stopped.

In that difficult era of extreme food shortage, Hongcun's "steel" output was in the forefront, and it was always in the headlines. This is different from the exaggerated propaganda of "sows stuffing elephants" and "100,000 catties per mu", and it is a real output.

Northwest Zhejiang does not produce iron ore, why can Hongcun have such a large steel output? That's because it's full of iron bumps. As long as you are willing, you can go to the field in your own backyard with a hoe to plane, throw out the "iron lumps" of various shapes, the small one is just a bowl, the big one is more than a dozen men with a gourd hanging, it is said that the largest one at that time "iron lumps" have to be thousands of catties, it is a triangular incense burner like a thing, so that this group of people knocked for a few days and nights to divide into several large pieces and throw them into the earth kiln to make steel......

Go out of these "iron bumps", there are some other things, what bottles and cans and the like are often thrown out together, washed and used to be used as a home, some people are lucky to dig out some gold ornaments, as for those jade ornaments are mostly given to children as playthings.

In the 70s, there were outsiders who often came to collect those bottles and cans, using some plastic pots and plastic flowers, scissors and kitchen knives to exchange a bunch, as for the jade that children played, a few pieces of candy can be exchanged.

The beginning of the story begins with the last stage of the large-scale steel smelting in 1960, when someone went to gouge the "sticking lumps" and unexpectedly gouged out a child.

In the autumn of 1960, several middle-aged people in Hongcun went up the mountain together to look for raw materials, and they knew which iron bumps were used for, and in the words of the old man, which things were called "dead weapons", which were used for the burial of the dead.

I don't know who started to think of using those things to make steel, probably because they were forced to have no way, anyway, they were all for the dead, and they were regarded as the ancestors who contributed to socialism.

Finding this kind of iron lump is not something that ordinary people can do, and those who know how to do it can just find those places with stone men and stone horses to hoe in the early days. In the later stage, everything that can be dug has been dug up, so you have to invite a master to take a look.

said that he was a master, but he was still very cautious in that era, but in fact, he was a descendant of a native master. In Hongcun, there is a family whose ancestral home has moved from Henan, and their ancestors have settled in the suburbs of Luoyang.

The ancients were born in Suzhou and Hangzhou, and they were buried in the north, and one-third of the emperors in history were buried in Luoyang. The Chinese pay attention to the saying that they rely on the mountains to eat the mountains and the water to eat the water, and some people rely on eating the food of the dead, these people are Tufuzi, and in some places they also have a nice name called "Captain Touching Gold".

This master's surname is Li, according to him, he and the famous Li Yazi are from their own family, belonging to the same big family, I don't know if what this Brother Li said is true or false, at least his ancestors did bring the ability of the Luoyang shovel when they arrived in Hongcun.

Tomb robbers are not a craft that can see the light, digging people's ancestral graves, that is a business that will be struck by thunder, but this line of business is not open for half a year, open for half a year. As long as you are lucky enough to dig up a big tomb, the things there will be treasured, the master of the Li family is called Li Qide, nicknamed "Second Son", and some people call him the Second Master.

The ancestor of this second master, that is, his grandfather, was once a well-known "palm eye" of a generation. Knowing the knowledge of feng shui and worshipping the master, it is said that as long as the old man Li goes to the hill and looks at it, he will know where the old tomb is within a radius of five miles, no matter how deep your grave is.

Li Lao Er ran to Hongcun at the beginning of the 20th century, which was one of the early group of people, and he did not flee the famine, he was wanted by the government at that time and ran here. In his hometown of Henan, the Li brothers are also notoriously ruthless, most of them have a kill under their hands, and he killed a small leader among the local warlords, which is a typical uneven distribution of spoils, and buried people alive in the grave.

In those years, a slightly capable hooligan leader dared to stand up a mountain when he pulled up a group of ruffians of three religions and nine ranks, and if he had a few guns under his hand, he could give himself a name, and one by one he either claimed to be a commander or a commander. As long as the team is here today, it will be the local soil emperor, but the commander also has to pay and buy guys.

As a result, these local warlords set their sights on the cultural relics underground, and the second master of the Li family was naturally the object of their wooing.

In the face of wealth, people will be unbalanced, and no one will be an exception, and when Li Erye really opens a big tomb, the good three-seven accounts will be swallowed by the "commander" alone. Rather than being sold for money, it is better to do nothing, the second master and his brother came to strike first, coaxing the "commander" to say that he had dug up Wu Zetian's tomb, the matter was very important, and he was only allowed to go to discuss.

This man died for the sake of wealth, and the earth commander was suspicious, but he could not resist the temptation of the treasure, so he only brought a few lieutenants to ambush nearby. Sure enough, Li Lao Er tricked him to the edge of the pit and killed him with a slap, and when he was about to fill in the soil and bury people, the guards over there had already discovered that he was flying with bullets on his scalp and "swishing", and he began to escape overnight.

This escape is several days, when he arrived in the northwest, he was once full of light, good guy, I didn't expect that this ravine and ravine are full of old graves, this is God's eyes and intentions to make me rich.

So, one night after arriving in Hongcun and not gaining a firm foothold, Li Lao Er's hands were itchy, and he went straight to a hillside with his hands, where he was eyeing on the first day he came, and there was a brother who went with him, which was his own brother.

Shovel after shovel, the brothers took advantage of the moonlight to dry more and more energetically, simply took off their clothes, and dug with hoes bare-chested.

"Damn, we're going to be lucky this time, but I didn't expect to run for my life and escape to the treasure pile." It was Li's eldest brother who spoke, and he and Mr. Li were the same father and mother, but the two were not similar at all.

The eldest is three or five thick, with amazing strength, and the second is as thin as a monkey spirit, dark and swarthy. These two people made waves in Luoyang for a long time, and finally were reported to the coffin, which was arrested at the time is the crime of losing their heads, the brothers packed up the soft and ran overnight, ran most of China and finally settled here