Chapter 31 Double-Layered Tomb Wall

Chen Wen-Jin and Uncle Three had completely different backgrounds. Uncle Three was a rough character who would’ve definitely been a bandit if he hadn’t been born into a grave-robbing family. He always considered profit before anything else and would judge a person’s worth based on what kind of benefit they could bring him. Chen Wen-Jin, on the other hand, was completely different. She came back from studying abroad and was very open-minded. Grave robbing was mainly a hobby for her, and one which enabled her to further her studies while doing so. As a result, when Uncle Three said this, her first thought was to consider the archaeological value of this ancient tomb and share the theory with her classmates.

Shipwreck tombs buried below the seabed were very rare—in fact, legend had it that Shen Wansan’s son was the only one to use this type of burial method⁽¹⁾—so Chen Wen-Jin’s idea could be considered very conscientious. Uncle Three, however, was a bit embarrassed because he felt uncomfortable at the thought of those things being confiscated by the government as soon as they were fished out of the sea. But it didn’t take much for Chen Wen-Jin to convince him otherwise. With just a smile and a kiss, she turned Uncle Three from a true hero of Greenwood⁽²⁾ into an archaeologist of the Republic, and one who volunteered at that.

That night, Uncle Three lay awake pondering over the problem. He had never robbed an undersea tomb before but had boasted that he had in front of the others. It wouldn’t be good if he slipped up and gave it away tomorrow. He thought about it for a while but realized that he wouldn’t be able to dig in the sea like he could on land. First, it was impossible to dig up the seabed since it was difficult to find purchase. Second, even if he was able to dig the seabed up, the mud in the sea was completely different from that on land, which rendered his little bit of knowledge totally useless. He thought of the stories in my grandpa’s notebook and recalled that my grandpa did actually rob several undersea tombs, but there was no special method to it. The main thing was to look at the terrain.

A shipwreck tomb buried at the bottom of the sea essentially involved building a tomb on a ship, finding a valley or trench in the sea, smashing a hole through the ship’s hull so that the tomb would sink, and then sealing the whole thing with a layer of soil on top. The whole process actually wasn’t all that different from what was done on land, it was just that the location was in the sea.

Uncle Three estimated that the place where they were currently anchored must have been a small sea valley, which was later filled in. When the ship was sunk, a lot of anchors would have been needed to keep it in place so he could use the focal point at which they were dropped—or a spot near it—to figure out where the burial site was.

The more Uncle Three thought about it, the more reasonable it sounded and he suddenly became more confident. The weather the next day also turned out well so he took everyone into the water, had them connect all the stone anchors with ropes, and then marked the point in the middle. After digging up several places in the surrounding area, they found that there really was wood beneath the seabed to the east of the center marker.

Next, they used the traditional positioning method to determine that the layout of the underground palace was actually in the shape of the Chinese character “土”.⁽³⁾ It consisted of two ear chambers, two rooms that were of identical shape and size, a corridor, and a back hall. The structure covered an area of about one thousand square meters, of which the back hall was the largest. With a length of more than thirty meters and a width of more than ten meters, this back hall seemed to be the place where the coffin would be located.

Uncle Three was completely stunned when he saw this and thought to himself, my God, whose tomb is this? It seems that it’s really not that simple. This scale is comparable to an imperial tomb!

That night, everyone was so excited that they couldn’t sleep. Instead, they gathered around and ate fish head hotpot while discussing how to get into the tomb. Uncle Three analyzed the structure of the shipwreck tomb and told them that their main concern was the water. At present, they didn’t know if the back hall had been flooded with water or not. If it was flooded, then they could just make a hole and enter it that way. They all had diving suits, after all, so it shouldn’t be a problem. But if the tomb chamber below was still sealed, then that made things more difficult because once it was breached, the water rushing in may cause catastrophic damage to the things inside. Based on the pieces of wood they had seen when digging up the seabed earlier, there should still be air in the tomb below. The whole tomb was very large so it was easy to create a capillary structure, which meant that there may be a lot of air in several of the rooms inside.

Uncle Three’s theory was based on his years of experience robbing tombs so those nerds couldn’t help but feel awed by him.

But when it came down to it, he decided to focus all of his attention on the problem of making a grave robbers’ tunnel. The seabed was nothing but sand, which couldn’t be dug into a fixed shape and would easily collapse. It wasn’t something you could take lightly, especially because being pinned down in the water was basically tantamount to death. In the end, after numerous discussions, they finally decided on what method to use to make their way under the seabed.

The fishing boat had explosives for blast fishing⁽⁴⁾ so they would first use some of the explosives to blow a pit in the seabed so that the easily collapsible sand on top would be blown away. Then, they would dig a slanted tunnel in the sturdier sea mud below. This was going to be a big project, but everyone was full of fighting spirit. Uncle Three estimated that it would take them about a week to complete everything, but the body of their dead team member was still on the boat and would start to stink if it wasn’t sent back.

After thinking about it, they came up with a compromise. They would have the big boat send the body back first while they used the smaller boats to do their work. Since the weather had been great over the past few days, nobody worried at all. They simply tied three kayaks together and then moved all of the equipment they needed to the nearby reef.

When the big boat sailed away the next day, Uncle Three couldn’t help but feel a little uneasy since they wouldn’t have any backup at sea once the boat was gone. But he was quickly distracted from these thoughts by everyone’s excitement over the big tomb. He only spent a few minutes thinking about it before getting back to work. The grave robbers’ tunnel actually went very smoothly and they dug much faster than Uncle Three had originally predicted. They ended up reaching the tomb wall four days later, but the ship still hadn’t returned yet so everyone was starting to worry. Uncle Three knew that the only way to maintain order and prevent the others from panicking was to continue working, so he kept comforting them and offering them words of encouragement from time to time.

When they eventually cleared out a hole in the tomb wall, Uncle Three tapped on the bricks and found that they were hollow, presumably to reduce the weight of the entire tomb. Otherwise, no matter how big the boat was, the bottom wouldn’t have been able to support the overall structure.

He could also see that small holes the diameter of a pen had been placed in the wall every five meters or so. It seemed that the tomb was designed to be sealed with water, which meant that the inside was probably filled with water as well. They all settled down and began to dismantle the bricks.

Actually, Uncle Three had already thought about what kind of traps might be awaiting them when they entered the tomb. In this water, any hidden weapons from a mechanism would be useless because the water resistance was too great. For example, even if there was a hidden crossbow that hadn’t decayed with the passage of time, the arrow that would be shot out of it would move in slow motion through the water. Even a pitfall trap would be useless. Not only would you not fall into it, but even if you did somehow manage to fall into it, you could just swim your way out of it. Various other rock-falling mechanisms—which were triggered with mercury—would also be completely ineffective in the water since mercury flowed very slowly in water and spread very easily. In fact, the water was a deadly mechanism in and of itself. In ancient times, there wasn’t any oxygen equipment so it was completely impossible to rob an underwater tomb. As a result, the possibility of there being any traps in this tomb was very small.

They finished dismantling the tomb wall and found that it was empty and dark inside. Uncle Three knew that he couldn’t rely on these people from this point on so he told them not to move, turned on his flashlight, and then went into the hole. But he had only gone one meter when he found that there was another wall right in front of him. The bricks that made up this wall were much larger than the ones that made up the outer wall and the seams had been sealed with white plaster.

As Uncle Three floated between these two walls, he looked in front of him, behind him, and then to the left and the right. He found that on the inner wall above his head, there was a square opening about half a meter long and wide that led to a tomb passage. Uncle Three understood what this meant with just one glance—it appeared that it was impossible for them to dig their way into this tomb.

After returning to the surface, they climbed up the reef and held a meeting. “This tomb has two layers of tomb walls,” Uncle Three said. “The area between the outer and inner walls is filled with seawater. There’s also a passage running through the inner wall where the water spirals inward. Based on this design, there must be a space inside that’s free of water. And due to the principle of air pressure, some oxygen must have been left in the tomb chamber.⁽⁵⁾ I don’t know how long the tomb passage is so three of us will go down tomorrow—each with four oxygen tanks—and see if we can get to the end.”

They continued discussing the plan in further detail. Uncle Three was definitely going down, but the other two people needed to be chosen with care. This was because if there was no water in the tomb, then the situation would be more complicated and may even be dangerous.

At this time, everyone was startled out of their discussion by Chen Wen-Jin’s frightened shout. They all looked around and found that the reef they were sitting on had actually risen into the air at some point. Uncle Three looked down and saw that the sea, which had been less than half a meter away before, was now more than five meters away.

Realizing that something was wrong, he immediately looked up at the sky and saw a black line approaching on the far horizon. One of the archeological team members was a male student named Li Sidi, whose parents were fishermen. When he saw this scene, his lips turned pale with fright and he said, “A big storm is coming!”

<Chapter 30><Table of Contents><Chapter 32>　　 

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TN Notes:

(1) Shen Wansan (1330-1379) was a wealthy businessman during the beginning of Ming Dynasty. I wasn’t finding anything about his son but here’s some info on his underwater tomb, which is located at the bottom of Yinzibang in the north of Zhenbei.

(2) “True hero of Greenwood” refers to a popular hero in the Robin Hood style. Robin Hood is a legendary heroic outlaw originally depicted in English folklore. According to legend, he was a highly skilled archer and swordsman who stole from the rich and gave to the poor.

(3) Fun fact: “土” can mean soil/earth/dust/clay.

(4) Blast fishing or dynamite fishing is an often illegal practice used by some nations’ fishermen to increase their catch. Shock waves from the explosions rupture the fishes’ swim bladders, immobilizing the fish and causing some to float to the surface. More info here.

(5) Think of it like that air bubble you get when you turn a glass or bowl upside down in water.

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Ya’ll, I am APPALLED. The licensed version fucking gutted this chapter. I couldn’t stand it anymore and bought the Chinese raw off Amazon and compared it to the online version I’m working out of and they’re BASICALLY THE SAME. We got gypped I tell you! Now, this clearly isn’t professional work since it’s an MTL but at least I don’t skip like a whole fucking half of a page (I only did that once by accident and Tiffany came in and saved the day lol). Lawd Jesus I can’t even right now. *end rant* On a brighter note, hope everyone’s week has been going fine so far. Til next time~