Professor Sun went to great lengths to locate the ancient tomb museum in Dixian City, yet ultimately found nothing. All the materials he had painstakingly gathered over the years from folk sources regarding the Guanshan Taibao tomb robbers of the Ming Dynasty were meticulously recorded in this working notebook, leaving him somewhat dejected in the end.
Yet, in studying the Guanshan Taibao, he had learned many secrets of ancient tomb raiding from country gossip and various historical records and gazetteers, realizing that in this world, there has never been an immortal, nor a tomb that could never be plundered—any ancient grave would eventually be dug open. The art of tomb robbing, at its core, consisted of four techniques: “Wang (Observation), Wen (Listening), Wen (Inquiry), and Qie (Excavation).”
“Wang” referred to observing the feng shui formation; by looking up at the stars and down at the terrestrial veins, one could determine the location and layout of an ancient tomb. This required an understanding of the pulse of mountains, rivers, the sun, and the moon, a discipline so profound and vast that ordinary robbers could not master it. Furthermore, this method of observing tombs also involved examining surface differences in soil and vegetation to locate the grave, also known as “observing mud traces and discerning grass color.”
The “Wen” (Listening) character technique was also divided into two methods. Some individuals possessed extraordinary innate talent and extremely acute senses of smell, allowing them to distinguish unique scents deep within primeval forests through their noses. “Wen” also referred to the robber’s sharp hearing; when one achieved the realm of “cock heralding dawn, dog guarding night,” they could infer conditions underground by listening to the sounds of nature. Those with ordinary hearing could employ tools, such as the “urn listening method,” where an urn was buried to channel sound to locate the aperture.
It was said that the “Wen” (Inquiry) technique involved “consulting” local inhabitants to indirectly gather intelligence and orientation information about ancient tombs; when luck was on their side, this could yield unexpected results. However, the “Wen” (Inquiry) technique also had a more mystical aspect: inquiring of Heaven. Legend held that ancient tomb robbers could determine the tomb’s structure and the auspiciousness or ill fortune within by divination and calculation, but this art vanished long ago, with no one left who understood it.
Finally, there was the “Qie” (Excavation) technique, which primarily concerned the various methods robbers used to breach ancient tombs—how to exploit voids and avoid solid masses using different tools to dig entrance shafts. There were methods like "dividing the gold to fix the position" or "striking directly for the central palace," as well as employing long hoes and large shovels to shatter mountain tops, and even employing arts to command beasts for burrowing through mountains and penetrating the earth.
Professor Sun knew of these techniques, but the arts of “Wang, Wen, Wen, Qie” were often secret disciplines passed down for thousands of years. While one might hear about them in folk tales, truly mastering them was impossible without genuine transmission. Moreover, most tomb-robbing arts had long since been lost.
By this point, he should have given up, but Sun Xuewu possessed a stubborn nature, relentlessly pursuing anything he set his mind to. He wouldn't give up until he reached the Yellow River, nor shed tears until he saw the coffin. He continued to search day and night, foregoing sleep and food, desperate to find Dixian City and hoping to glimpse the heavenly secrets hidden within the Xuanji Tower.
Perhaps Heaven rewards the diligent; while sorting through ancient texts and documents one day, Professor Sun unexpectedly came across a secret history. During the era of King Mu of Zhou, there was an ancient ding (tripod vessel) forged with Dragon Fire from the South Sea, adorned with hexagram mirrors and talismanic symbols. This ancient ding originated from Guixu, and its material was a rare alloy among bronzes. Because the sea vapors condensed within the vessel, its bronze nature remained undiminished over millennia, its greenish-black hue deepening with age.
The hexagram talismans and mirrors inlaid upon the ancient ding represented the pinnacle of divination practices of the Western Zhou period, capable of utilizing the sea vapors latent in the bronze to deduce omens related to burial rites. Ancient people were superstitious about the form and qi principles in feng shui, placing the utmost importance on qi, specifically the “living qi” within the terrestrial veins. Mirages seen over the ocean were often manifestations of shifting sea vapors. The sea vapor from Guixu was precisely this “Dragon Vein Dragon Qi.” Even a single shard from this Guixu ancient ding could transform an ordinary grave site into a blessed land where living qi congealed. The hexagram mirrors on the ding could further be used to observe and calculate the orientation of ancient tombs.
Initially, Professor Sun did not believe the Guixu Ancient Ding existed, but upon diligent investigation, he realized the matter was not baseless rumor. However, this ding had been interred as a funerary object with King Mu of Zhou. Later, when King Mu’s tomb was excavated, the bronze ding was found shattered by lightning, and its hexagram mirrors and four ancient talismans had been taken and scattered to the four winds.
The historical legends of tomb robbers using divination to seek ancient treasures likely originated from the Guixu Ancient Ding. It was said that the divination mirror of Guixu was intricate and complex; following the guidance of the hexagram talismans, it would display different hexagrams based on the ebb and flow of surrounding living qi. Professor Sun knew there were sixteen Zhou Tian Hexagram Talismans in total, but the ancient ding only possessed four: Dragon, Ghost, Human, and Fish, specifically used to observe and capture yin and yang qi apertures. While using these four to decipher the Dragon Bone hexagrams of the Western Zhou was perhaps unrealistic, it represented a vital starting point. With his decades of accumulated research into ancient secret scripts and symbols, he was fairly confident he could interpret the hexagrams displayed by the four talismans. If he could obtain this ancient bronze mirror of infinite mystery, he might have a chance to find Dixian City.
But up to this point, these suppositions remained merely a castle in the air within Professor Sun’s mind. After the Guixu Ancient Ding shattered, the bronze body was melted down and recast as an elixir furnace, while the hexagram mirrors and talismans vanished without a trace. These were considered secret feng shui artifacts by the ancients; heaven knew whether some discerning tomb owner had taken them into eternal slumber underground. Professor Sun had neither wealth nor influence; relying solely on his own strength to reassemble them would be an immense undertaking.
However, as the saying goes, fate is unpredictable, and celestial mechanisms are often coincidental. He did, in fact, find an opportunity. Two years prior, Professor Sun traveled to Inner Mongolia for business, and while staying overnight, a herdsman told him about a very strange incident. The Inner Mongolian grasslands were already severely desertified, but one patch of sandy grassland boasted exceptionally lush, green grass, appearing from a distance like a verdant meadow, though not very large, spanning only a few dozen meters.
This meadow harbored many weasels, emerging and retreating in large, furtive groups. Previously, local herdsmen rarely saw weasels and considered their presence an ill omen, so they gathered a large contingent of herding dogs and hunting rifles to exterminate them. Prairie dogs were the specialty of these herding dogs, and they proved no less capable with weasels. In less than a day, they had killed over a hundred weasels, large and small, their corpses scattered haphazardly across the ground.
After clearing them out, the herdsmen began skinning the weasels, while others set fire to the scrubland. One man noticed a bronze, dragon-shaped artifact nestled in the earthen den beneath the grass. It didn't look valuable, and he didn't know it was an antique; he casually hung it as a decoration on his mount, intending to take it to the supply and marketing cooperative in the town to trade for some cigarettes in a few days.
Professor Sun, being a man who paid attention, immediately purchased a carton of cigarettes from the supply and marketing cooperative that very night upon hearing the news. He effortlessly exchanged a pack of cigarettes for the object with the herdsman who found the eyeless dragon talisman and secretly stored it away. The first hexagram talisman was acquired through what felt like a blind cat stumbling upon a dead mouse.
From then on, Professor Sun became even more intent on the hexagram mirror and talismans, but the other secret artifacts remained untraceable until recently when he got a new lead. It turned out the hexagram mirror had flowed overseas during the late Qing Dynasty and sank into the sea along with a ship during a smuggling operation. Knowing his old friend, Professor Chen, had overseas connections, Sun Xuewu concocted a lie, telling Professor Chen that what sank was one of the Qin King’s Eight Mirrors—the Qin Yu Bone-Illuminating Mirror, a priceless national treasure—and asked Professor Chen to find someone to salvage it.
The back of that hexagram mirror was covered in densely packed, intricate symbols and patterns. To prevent abrasion and, more importantly, to ensure the sea vapor within the mirror remained condensed, the collector had sealed it with sealing wax for storage. Sun Xuewu, having learned this beforehand, covered his tracks by telling Professor Chen, “That is because the bone-illuminating mirror has suppressed corpses for a thousand years; the shadows within must not reflect a human face.”
Sun Xuewu knew salvaging an object from the vastness of the sunken ship and the sea was difficult. His intention in using Professor Chen’s connections to retrieve the Guixu Hexagram Mirror was based on the principle of “man proposes, God disposes”; he held little hope. To his utter surprise, the ancient mirror was actually retrieved intact from the South China Sea—a windfall beyond expectation. Upon obtaining it, he did not turn it over but secretly hid it at home, analyzing the diagrams on the back of the mirror in secret. Professor Chen was delayed by his medical treatment in the United States and remained busy after returning to China. He trusted his old friend implicitly and willingly ceded the credit for recovering the national treasure to Sun Xuewu, never once inquiring if he had presented the treasure to the state, nor did he know that the ancient South Sea mirror was not the Qin King’s Bone-Illuminating Mirror at all.
The Copper Fish, one of the four ancient talismans, remained attached to the ancient mirror after thousands of years. Sun Xuewu never dreamed that two talismans and one mirror had fallen into his hands. It seemed fate dictated that he should remain silent until he could astound everyone. Now, only one human talisman and one ghostly talisman remained missing. Once these items were gathered, he could enter the river and open the ancient tomb of Guanshan; the secret of the Zhou Tian hexagram calculation seemed tantalizingly close.
Professor Sun recently learned that before the Liberation, someone had purchased a batch of cultural relics from a Hunan tomb robber. These items had circulated among the populace for many years, fortunately without being damaged or lost, and were recently donated by patriotic overseas Chinese. They were currently on a nationwide exhibition tour, including the elixir furnace recast from the Guixu Ancient Ding, along with two other bronze hexagram talismans. Furthermore, during the casting of the elixir furnace, the process of excavating the original ding from King Mu of Zhou’s tomb, and the original form of the ding’s body, were cast as pictorial records onto the furnace itself.
Professor Sun happened to be back in Beijing at the time and saw these antiquities being exhibited in Tianjin, and he could endure it no longer. Already a solitary man, he didn't even request leave but rushed directly to the museum to see the truth. However, viewing it from afar in the exhibition hall was unsatisfying, and he didn't want anyone to know about his decades-long research into the Guixu Ancient Ding, so he couldn't approach through official channels. So, he decided to go all the way: he snuck into the museum late at night and copied all the inscriptions and diagrams from the elixir furnace, hoping to decipher the usage of the hexagram talismans and mirrors from them.
The final pages of the notebook were filled with inscriptions and patterns from the elixir furnace, but they abruptly cut off halfway. This notebook, recording Professor Sun’s secrets, stopped right there. It seemed I caught him at that very moment; Professor Sun, fearing exposure, fled the museum in haste, leaving behind his most crucial notebook due to a single oversight.
After reading it, I snapped the working record shut and let out a cold snort, cursing, “This old man usually acts so proper, but he’s actually a shadowy backer, hidden deeper than the Guanshan Taibao. He’s cunning as hell, actually using Master Hu as a pawn. I’ve never been played like this in my life! I braved life and death through storms and waves, nearly lost my life in the South China Sea, and if I hadn’t seen this ledger of betrayals right now, I’d still be hoodwinked by him—thinking like an idiot that I was serving the nation! But even a fart can’t hide the stench forever; his monopolizing conspiracy will eventually be exposed. Now that I know the truth, I’ll make sure he pays dearly.”
Shirley Yang, however, shook her head: “Don’t get angry just yet. I don’t think this matter is as simple as it seems; there might be hidden circumstances we don’t know about yet.”