I recall Old Blind Chen recounting tales of tomb raiding, mentioning the Guanshan Taibao. When the Banshan and Xieling crews worked together to raid the ancient tomb at Pingshan, deep within the mountain corridor of the Iron Pavilion exposed in the Dan Well of the Wuliang Palace, they encountered a corpse of uncanny appearance. Based on the relics found on the body, they surmised it was a Guanshan Taibao tomb robber from the Ming Dynasty.

Even with the experience and insight of Chen the Blind, the leader of the Xieling Bandits, and the Daoist (Zhegushao) of the Banshan Sect, the Guanshan Taibao were merely names they had heard of, not individuals they truly knew. They had only heard that these people moved with elusive, inscrutable secrecy, and that as for the affairs of Guanshan, even the Immortals could not fathom them. At that time, the Xieling bandits were focused on finding the Pingshan ancient tomb, so they simply gave the corpse of the Guanshan Taibao a hurried cremation and moved on.

Chen the Blind’s words were still fresh in my mind, yet Shirley Yang and I never expected that this working log, left behind by Professor Sun, would actually mention the Guanshan Taibao.

I only met Professor Sun twice in Gulan County, Shaanxi. We rarely saw eye-to-eye; he possessed an eccentric temperament, prone to sudden fits of anger and elation. When he spoke, he was evasive, frequently halting mid-sentence, seemingly harboring a deep-seated loathing for those who practiced the art of grave robbing. Yet, as an archaeology expert, he secretly scrutinized relics in museums and researched the history of ancient tomb robbers in his notes. I surmised that Professor Sun must have been a man teeming with secrets, whose actions were even more incomprehensible than what the Immortals could divine.

But for someone burdened with too many secrets they cannot disclose, life must be agonizing. Over time, those secrets transform into a torment that gnaws at the conscience. Thus, some people choose unconventional channels to relieve the pressure, such as recording everything in meticulous detail through writing. Sun Xuewu was likely one such person. His field notes not only documented many obscure secrets but also revealed much of his subjective viewpoint woven between the lines.

Shirley Yang and I studied the record carefully. Professor Chen had been a long-time friend of Sun Xuewu and often spoke of him to us. Combined with our own deductions, understanding the contents of the notebook became quite straightforward. It turned out that the "state secrets" Professor Sun mentioned were indeed state secrets, though not contemporary ones, but rather absolute secrets from antiquity.

Ancient texts recording divination, portents, prophecies, and hints exist not only in the East but also in the West, generally shrouded in mystery and ambiguity in both content and form. China’s ancient secret documents first appeared on oracle bones from the Yin-Shang period—inscriptions and symbols carved onto tortoise shells. Later scholars referred to these strange and difficult-to-decipher mysterious writings as Heavenly Scripts or Enigmatic Texts.

The Dragon Bone Heavenly Scripts contained extensive records of shamanism, celestial omens, immortality, and longevity. The work of experts in deciphering these "Heavenly Scripts" is arduous and monotonous, pursued by very few. Although, from a modern perspective, much of the shamanistic content is unbelievable—a product of a time before science fully bloomed—these scripts remain immensely valuable for studying the societal, economic, military, and political activities of millennia ago.

Sun Xuewu's work involved deciphering ancient secret documents and specifically focusing on collecting tortoise shells and animal bones unearthed from various sites, inscribed with diverse ancient characters and symbols. While collection and organization were relatively easy, interpretation lacked any reference materials. Cracking ancient ciphers with differing systems and historical contexts was akin to scaling a sheer cliff. Sometimes, studying and verifying a single, simple symbol could consume months. Long exposure to this difficult and tedious work shaped Professor Sun's reclusive nature, yet he remained hopelessly obsessed, a fixation that could fairly be described as 'going completely astray from the right path.'

It wasn't until the later excavation of the Tang Dynasty text, The Compendium of Dragon Bone Enigmatic Texts, that significant progress was finally made in studying the Heavenly Scripts. However, this brought forth another insurmountable barrier: hexagrams and arcane numbers.

In the Western Zhou period, divination by casting hexagrams was prevalent. The hexagrams generated by applying fire to tortoise shells represented the highest attainment of shamanistic practice—the so-called 'Heavenly Secret.' Perhaps many people today find it hard to understand: if the ancients possessed the art of predicting fortune and misfortune, why display the results through hexagrams instead of stating them directly?

In fact, not only the hexagram casting that unlocked heavenly secrets but also all subsequent prophecies in Chinese history—such as the Tuibeitu, Maqianke, Meihua Shi, and Shaobing Ge—are obscure and difficult to interpret, often deliberately obfuscating matters. They passed down supposed predictions and secrets through suggestive methods, whether diagrams or poems, in a myriad of forms, revealing their meaning only in hindsight, as if deliberately withholding the outcome beforehand.

This format is actually an embodiment of ancient traditional beliefs. The ancients held that, "Subtlety and mystery are the mechanism of Heaven; change and transformation are the principle of Heaven. Discussing the principles of Heaven concerning mankind is permissible; but revealing the mechanism of Heaven to confuse mankind will surely incur Heaven's wrath."

This means that the ceaseless 'Way of Heaven' can be discussed to enlighten people about the correspondence between Heaven and humanity, but the 'Heavenly Secret' must not be spoken plainly, because the heavenly mechanism is too subtle and easily leads people into delusion and arrogance. As the common saying goes, "Heavenly secrets must not be disclosed." A true gentleman should "hide his talent within himself and await the opportune moment to act."

The sixteen Zhou Heavenly Trigrams of the Western Zhou period encompassed the transformations of Heaven and Earth, illuminating all things without concealment. According to the records on the "Dragon Bone Heavenly Scripts," when the Zhou Heavenly Numbers emerged, ghosts wailed at night, followed by the catastrophic flooding of the Yellow River, drowning countless people and animals. This was because the secrets of creation were entirely vented, forcing the destruction of half of them, leaving only the Eight Trigrams in existence.

These lost ancient trigrams became a bottleneck in Professor Sun's research. The tortoise shells recording ancient hexagrams numbered in the tens of thousands, an inconceivably vast treasure trove of information. But without the Zhou Heavenly Numbers, they were utterly unreadable. The fruits of his life's dedicated research lacked only the most crucial key.

Furthermore, due to his rigid personality and poor social skills, Professor Sun rarely received the attention he deserved. However, stubbornly pursuing his goal, he was determined to rediscover the Zhou Heavenly Numbers and completely crack the ancient Western Zhou trigrams recorded on bone. At that point, he was certain, he would shock the world, both at home and abroad, finally validating the countless efforts expended over the years.

Ancient secret documents are mostly hidden in ruins, tombs, or grottoes. Because the depths of ancient tombs are relatively sealed, the burial accompaniments often remain perfectly preserved. Professor Sun placed his hopes there; whenever an archaeological team uncovered a mausoleum, he paid close attention to any tortoise shells, animal bones, or bronze inscriptions within, hoping for some revelation.

But post-liberation archaeological excavations are mostly reactive, and those ancient tombs that have not yet been damaged are protected in their original state as per regulations. Professor Sun spent many years working at the grassroots level and on excavation sites, and in all his observations over the years, most local tombs were found to be completely empty—already filtered countless times by generations of tomb robbers.

On a few occasions, archaeologists discovered ancient tombs with fewer signs of intrusion and were momentarily delighted, thinking that something might have been preserved. But upon entering, they found the tomb interiors had been dug out like a honeycomb. It turned out that ancient tomb robbers, skilled in Guanshan (mountain viewing) to locate burials, could direct their shafts straight into the central chamber, deliberately bypassing the thick earth and massive stone structure of the tomb ceiling. Compared to those tomb robbers whose experience, tools, and techniques had been inherited over millennia, contemporary archaeological methods appeared clumsy, backward, and agonizingly slow.

Professor Sun was deeply pained by this, hating the tomb robbers to the core. These scoundrels, succeeding one another from ancient times to the present, had been raiding tombs for thousands of years, leading to the situation where countless mausoleums holding precious artifacts were reduced to nothing but hollow pits. If not for the excessive number of robbers, the mysterious hexagrams recorded in the Dragon Bone Heavenly Scripts would have been deciphered long ago, and Professor Sun’s worth and research findings would have been recognized, earning him respect everywhere. Instead, he endured constant marginalization, complaining about his hard lot, unable to shake off this bitterness for the time being.

This personal grievance regarding academic standing was only one factor. Additionally, Professor Sun had become utterly obsessed with the contents of the Dragon Bone Heavenly Scripts. If he could not solve the mystery of the arcane trigrams carved on the shells, he would suffer sleepless nights and loss of appetite day after day.

Once, Professor Sun unexpectedly came across a vital clue. During the Ming Dynasty, there was a powerful clan in Sichuan Province, akin to peddlers of dark arts and superstition, proficient in a geomancy technique called Guanshan Zhimizu (Guanshan's guidance through obscurity). The men were called 'Taibao,' and the women 'Shi Niang' (Mistresses). This group swayed the populace, possessing immense influence. By the late Ming Dynasty, when central government control was weak, they could do little against them.

The leader of the Guanshan Taibao was a local magnate named Feng, skilled in the art of the furnace, cultivating Qi and nurturing his form. He possessed capabilities that rivaled the heavens and wealth that could challenge nations, gathering countless disciples. He styled himself an 'Earth Immortal.' This man not only harbored an obsession with grave robbing—having looted numerous imperial tombs across dynasties—but also a mania for building mausoleums. He spent decades constructing an 'Earth Immortal Village' in the mountains. Though called a village, it was essentially an Yin Zhai—a tomb complex.

He collected all the ritualistic artifacts, coffins, tripods, and ceramic figurines looted from ancient tombs, along with rare architectural materials and wooden coffins excavated from other burials, storing everything in his own tomb city. He built many chambers of bizarre styles, setting up various mechanical traps and locking devices within the rooms. The Earth Immortal City was cast with 'Silver Screens and Iron Walls,' housing the 'Xuanji Tower,' where many of the secret artifacts and treasures from imperial mausoleums of past dynasties were stored.

Viewed through a modern lens, this Guanshan Taibao might have suffered from some form of mental aberration—perhaps nothing more than a madman utterly obsessed with mechanisms, feng shui, and mausoleums. Driven by unknown motives, he spent half his life building this 'Museum of Ancient Tombs' for himself. Another legend suggests that he once robbed a massive ancient mound in the area, unearthed Dragon Bone hexagram charts, glimpsed the Heavenly Secret, and underwent a radical personality change, thus creating the Earth Immortal Village as his true resting place for the afterlife. As for the real reason behind building the Guanshan Mausoleum, perhaps only he knew.

When the rebel forces of Zhang Xianzhong swept into Sichuan in the late Ming era, Feng led his followers into the deep mountains, then killed every man, woman, and child of his clan, along with all the artisans who had worked on the tomb construction, inside the complex before activating the mechanisms and sealing the final stone door, burying himself alive within it. The locals also called this mysterious 'Earth Immortal Village' the 'Feng Wang Tomb,' and after that, no one ever knew its location again.

This event is not recorded in any definitive historical records; Professor Sun only heard various legends about the 'Earth Immortal Yin Zhai' from mountain dwellers while working in Sichuan. The accounts were inconsistent, and it was difficult even to ascertain the truth of these rumors, which grew scarcer as time passed.

However, as Professor Sun encountered more and more information during his work, he became firmly convinced that the Guanshan Taibao and the Earth Immortal Village genuinely existed in the Ming Dynasty. When Zhang Xianzhong’s rebel troops entered Sichuan, they extensively dug into mountains and tombs. Historical records state: "The rebels entered mountain caverns seeking the Golden Scriptures, Jade Incantations, and Dragon Bone Heavenly Secrets hoarded by the Earth Immortal, but failing, they slaughtered tens of thousands and filled the ravines with corpses." This likely meant the peasant army attempted to raid the Guanshan ancient tomb, failed to locate it, and then vented their frustration by massacring local populations, filling in the deep trenches they had dug while searching the mountains.

Additionally, sporadic records corroborated this indirectly. This museum of ancient tombs, painstakingly built by a tomb robber and hidden deep in Shu (Sichuan), contained rare treasures from ancient mounds of all dynasties. More importantly, it very likely housed secret artifacts related to the Western Zhou period hexagrams.

Consequently, Professor Sun submitted a report requesting approval to organize an expert team specifically to search for the Earth Immortal Village in Sichuan. Many criticized this as wishful thinking. The Guanshan Taibao was merely folk legend, and with limited manpower and funds, how could they expend resources based on flimsy hearsay to search for a tomb that likely did not exist? This, they argued, violated established work principles.

After hitting a wall and being labeled mentally unstable, Professor Sun had to suppress his temper and gather information in secret. Every time he traveled to Sichuan for work, he would always carve out time to visit villages and hamlets, gathering intelligence from multiple sources. Yet, as he delved deeper, he discovered that finding the precise location of the Guanshan tomb was utterly impossible.

It was rumored that the Mojin Xiaowei (Grave Speculators), who topped the hierarchy in China's traditional trades, excelled at locating dragons (veins of energy), searching mountains, and determining the precise location (fenjindingsxue). The Guanshan Taibao’s Guanshan Zhimizu technique was derived from ancient arts passed down from the Faqiu and Mojin practitioners of the late Han Dynasty. Their mastery of Qingwu Kanyu (geomancy) was unfathomable, and since the Guanshan Taibao were masters among tomb robbers, the defenses they built must be beyond ordinary imagination, perhaps even making the exact location impossible to pinpoint. Perhaps even a thousand years from now, the mystery of the Earth Immortal Ancient Tomb would remain nothing more than a piece of folklore.