The hot pot restaurant in Dongsi was packed, the air thick with steam from the bubbling cauldrons, the noise of clinking glasses and boisterous chatter incessant.

We snagged a vacant table in a quiet corner. Da Jinya immediately started pouring for me, and I thought, this fellow must be planning on plying me with liquor to loosen my tongue about the Ming porcelain. I quickly stopped him. "Master Jin, this Erguotou is too strong for my light constitution. I think I’ll stick to beer."

We ate and talked, the conversation naturally drifting toward tomb raiding. Da Jinya grinned, tapping his gold tooth with a fingertip. "Gentlemen, look closely at this gold tooth. I got it in Panjiayuan. It’s pre-Ming Fó Láng Jīn dug out of a tomb, pulled right from a Zòngzi’s mouth. I couldn't bring myself to sell it, so I had my own tooth pulled and replaced it."

Honestly, the man had no sense of timing, bringing that up over dinner—didn't he want anyone to eat? If he was too cheap to spend money, he should just say so. What he described was increasingly grotesque the more I thought about it. I quickly steered the conversation toward other matters.

Money sways the subordinate; skill sways the master. We casually chatted about the secrets of reading feng shui for graves, and I recounted some tales from my time as a sapper in the Kunlun Mountains. Da Jinya listened, clicking his tongue in amazement, utterly impressed by me.

Before Da Jinya’s father was conscripted by the KMT, he had apprenticed under a great tomb raider from Hunan named Cai. He knew a lot about grave robbing, but he never learned the skills of locating a burial site. His master, Mr. Cai, didn't understand the art of feng shui either. The Luoyang shovel wasn't invented until after the twelfth year of the Republic, when a farmer from Luoyang named Li Yazi developed it. Before the Luoyang shovel became popular, their faction relied primarily on their noses. To keep their sense of smell sharp, they strictly avoided tobacco, alcohol, and spicy foods.

They would drive an iron probe into the ground, and after pulling it out, they would smell it. The various scents carried up by the probe from the soil—combined with the tactile feedback felt while driving it—would tell them if the subsurface was hollow, or if it contained wood, stone, or brick. Those sensations were distinctly different.

It was fundamentally similar to using a Luoyang shovel, except one method relied on smell, and the other on sight. The soil brought up by the Luoyang shovel allowed for an analysis of the underground composition. Finding fragments of porcelain, wood, cloth, or traces of gold, silver, copper, iron, tin, mercury, or lead—or even compacted earth and tiles—all served as proof of an underlying tomb structure. These clues helped them infer the era and layout of the ancient grave below.

However, the skill of smelling the earth was lost by the time it reached Da Jinya. His father was crippled in both legs, and Da Jinya himself suffered from congenital asthma since childhood, so he never became a Mò Jīn Xiào Wèi (Grave Robber Officer). Most people in this trade had seen enough genuine artifacts to develop an eye for them, which allowed them to transition into the antique business.

I joked that his ancestral trade sounded a bit outdated. "I've heard stories from my elders about tomb raiding. Truly skilled masters never use iron probes or Luoyang shovels; those are crude methods. A master arrives at a site, takes one look, and instantly knows if there’s a tomb underground, where it's located, and what its structure is. Any place with exceptional feng shui will invariably house a grand tomb, and those buried within were not ordinary people in life—their tombs are filled with treasures. True experts dismiss things like the Luoyang shovel because its effectiveness plummets if the subsurface soil isn't dry enough, especially in prosperous regions like Jiangnan where rainfall is heavy, and many ancient tombs have been submerged by groundwater, leaving the layers a complete mess."

Da Jinya listened to my grand pronouncements, and his admiration for me soared. "Master Hu, I am truly convinced. As the saying goes, to hear the Way in the morning is reason enough to die contentedly by evening. After hearing your profound wisdom, I feel I haven't lived these many years in vain. Someone with your talent—understanding feng shui, having military engineering experience, and knowing earthworks—is truly a rare find. It would be a waste for you not to be a Mò Jīn Xiào Wèi with such abilities."

I shook my head. "I have no intention of committing such wicked acts. What I just told you came from my grandfather. He was a Mò Jīn Xiào Wèi back in the day, but he ran into a major Zòngzi and nearly lost his life."

Da Jinya conceded that risk was inherent. "Just keep a few black donkey hooves on hand, and you won't be afraid. Besides, there’s a code even among thieves. The bad reputation of tomb raiding comes entirely from low-class riffraff who aren't truly part of the trade. They don't understand the rules, they go around causing wanton destruction—naturally, they earn hatred. The history of tomb robbing goes back over three thousand years. During the Three Kingdoms period, Cao Cao had a unit specifically tasked with excavating ancient tombs to fund his military campaigns; that’s where our alias, Mò Jīn Xiào Wèi, originated."

By the time the Liberation, this trade was broadly divided into four schools: East, South, West, and North. By the 1980s, the numbers had dwindled severely, with only a handful remaining, and they had all retired. The current young generation consists mostly of idle country folk who raid graves in disorganized gangs. They know nothing of the professional rules—the 'two noes and one take,' the 'three incense offerings, three bows, blowing out the lamp, and stealing the gold'—and alas, countless valuable items have been ruined by them.

Da Jinya sighed, then addressed us again. "I’ve been trading curios in Panjiayuan for years. If you two ever come across any good items in the future, I can certainly help you connect with buyers. You can negotiate the deal yourselves, just give me a small commission if it goes through."

Fatty, who had been busy eating and drinking, finally felt about eighty percent full and suddenly remembered something. He pulled out the piece of jade from his pocket and asked Da Jinya to appraise it and tell him its worth.

Da Jinya examined it, then held it close to his nose and sniffed a few times. "Master Fatty, this is fine jade you have here, at least a thousand years old... perhaps even older, likely pre-Tang Dynasty. The script on it isn't standard Han Chinese; I can't quite make it out, but it’s certainly valuable. However, until the exact value is determined, you’d best keep it off the market, or you might lose out badly. Where did you acquire this piece of jade?"

Fatty became animated when discussing his family history. "As for its origin, that’s a long story, like a child without a mother. Let me put it this way: my father received this jade from an old comrade during the Huangma Uprising. That comrade was a top commander in the Field Army. When his unit marched into Xinjiang, they encountered a gang of bandits—foolish bandits, to be sure, as the PLA's chief commander’s own guard regiment isn't some weakling force. In less than five or six minutes, they wiped out those hundred or so bandits. While clearing the battlefield, they found this piece of jade on the bandit leader. The top commander kept it as a souvenir and gave it to my father. I don't know anything about its history before that."

We kept drinking until past midnight before parting ways. As we left, Da Jinya gave both of us a hooked object, about an inch long, jet black, incredibly hard, and engraved with two seal script characters that vaguely resembled 'Mò Jīn.' The artifact was ancient, like an antique. One end was drilled and strung with a red silk cord so it could be worn around the neck as an amulet. Da Jinya said, "We gentlemen truly hit it off right away. These two are talismans made from pangolin claws, a memento for you both. Look me up in Panjiayuan when you have time. May the green mountains never change and the clear waters always flow; we shall meet again."