Uncle Hai and I are not close enough to talk about everything. We usually only communicate about business matters. After we got to know each other, I called him Uncle to give him face. He suddenly wanted to get close to me, and I felt a little strange. But the little girl couldn't show it in front of me. I agreed casually and asked her, "What's the matter? What information did he find out?"
Qin Haiting smiled mischievously, "My uncle said that he will tell you when the time comes. I don't know what's going on, so don't ask."
I cursed inwardly, thinking that this old scoundrel was trying to blackmail me again.
On the third day, Lao Hai arrived as expected. I picked him up from the train station and took him to the viaduct to the booked hotel. In the car, I asked him what news he had heard. If he lied to me, I would not forgive him.
Lao Hai was shivering with cold and said, "A powerful dragon cannot defeat a local snake. Now that we are in your territory, how dare I deceive you? But let's not talk about it here. I am almost freezing to death."
I took him to the hotel, put down his things, and found a private room in the canteen. I heated up a pot of wine, drank a few glasses, and finally recovered.
I saw that he was drunk up to his neck, so I knew he was almost done, so I asked him, "Okay, you've drunk and eaten, now it's time to tell me, what did you find out?"
He blinked his lips, chuckled, took out a stack of papers from his bag, and slapped them on the table, "Look at this."
I picked it up and looked at it. It was a yellowed old newspaper, dated 1974. He circled a news item and there was a large black-and-white photo. Although it was not very clear, I still recognized it. The photo was of a bronze fish with snake brows. There were many small cultural relics around it, like Buddhist beads.
But the fish looks different from the one in my hand and the one in Uncle San's hand. There are three fish reliefs on the forehead of the statue in the tomb passage in the underwater tomb. This one should be the top one. In this way, it can be said that all three fish have appeared in the world.
I asked Lao Hai: "How did you find this newspaper? Is there any hidden story behind it?"
Lao Hai said, "I've been helping a big boss sort through old newspapers recently. You know, rich people collect everything. Look, this is the Guangxi Cultural Evening News from 1974. He asked me to find all the newspapers from January to December. It took me two months to find them all. I'm going to deliver them these days, and I'm checking them. I just happened to see this news. Isn't that a coincidence? This newspaper was only published for one year in 1974, and closed down in 1975. It's hard to find it on the market. You're lucky. If I had been quicker, it would have been gone."
I glanced down and saw a 300-word news article under the photo, saying that the fish was found in the base of a Buddhist temple in Guangxi. The tower had collapsed naturally due to its age, and an underground palace was dug out when the ruins were cleared. There were some rotten scriptures and treasure boxes inside, and the fish was placed in one of the treasure boxes. Experts speculated that it was a relic of a monk in the late Northern Song Dynasty.
Northern Song Dynasty? I lit a cigarette and leaned back in my chair, wondering, the first fish of this kind of snake-browed bronze fish appeared in the tomb of a prince in the late Warring States period; the second fish was found in an underwater tomb in the late Yuan and early Ming dynasties; the third fish was found in the underground palace of a Buddhist pagoda in the Northern Song Dynasty. What the hell, the time is totally unrelated.
I flipped through the rest of the newspaper, and only this one piece of news was about this fish. There was nothing new in the content, which was equivalent to saying nothing. I still knew nothing about this fish, and I felt depressed thinking about it.
Lao Hai looked at my expression and said, "Don't be discouraged. I haven't finished yet. The rest of the story is even more exciting."
I frowned. "What do you mean? Is there anything else that can come out of this newspaper?"
Lao Hai nodded and said, "That's right. If I had only found a newspaper, there would be no need for me to come to Hangzhou to find you, right? This matter has to start from the beginning. By the way, you are also in the industry, do you know a man named Chenpi Ah Si?"
I was shocked when I heard this. Chenpi A'Si was a famous local monk in Changsha in the old days. He was a contemporary of my grandfather. I heard that he is now over 90 years old. He went blind during the ten-year catastrophe and has not been seen since then. No one knows whether he is dead or alive. However, his name is still very famous in my grandfather's mouth.
But this man was different from my grandfather. He lived on the edge of a knife. He not only robbed tombs, but also committed murder and arson. As long as he could make money, he would do it. That's why before liberation, people called him Barber Si, meaning that he killed people like shaving people's heads, without hesitation.
I was a little surprised when Lao Hai mentioned this person, because he was not a contemporary of ours, and I had never met him. Could this fish be related to him? The story behind this fish, even if it has nothing to do with me, is definitely worth listening to.
Seeing that I didn't say anything, Lao Hai thought I didn't know, and said, "It's not surprising that you don't know about Mr. Chen Si's affairs. After all, he is not from the same generation as us. But I have to tell you that the bronze fish in the newspaper was what he brought out from the underground palace of the pagoda. Things are really not as simple as the newspaper says." As he said that, he briefly told me what happened that year.
It turned out that in 1974, Chenpi A Si was nearly sixty years old, but his eyes were not blind. It was the ten-year turbulent period at that time. He had served as a platoon leader in the Kuomintang army in the early days of liberation, and later became a bandit for several years. Therefore, he had no legal identity, which meant he would be killed if caught at that time. He could only move around in ethnic minority areas around Guangxi and did not even dare to set foot in the county town.
A few years ago, when the Four Olds were eliminated, many ancient sites were almost destroyed. Chenpi Ah Si had been to many places in Guangxi. Since Guangxi was not considered the Central Plains in ancient times, there were not many ancient tombs. He lived a relatively honest life in those years. But unfortunately, that year, he happened to be passing by Jiaqiaoling to count the goods. He chatted with some local Miao people. Those people drank too much and talked about the collapse of a tower in a temple on Maoer Mountain. They said that there was a big noise, and even the ground sank, and a big pit collapsed. On the night of the collapse, many people heard a very strange scream.
Chenpi Ah Si felt something was wrong when he heard this. He had been to Maoer Mountain many times, and the temples there were very solidly built. How could it collapse so easily? After asking carefully, he found out that the tower was not on Maoer Mountain, but in the center of a mountain range called "Wofo Ridge" on the side. This place is very strange. There are villages all around, but in the middle is a basin of about ten square kilometers. The altitude is very low, with dense vegetation and tree cover covering the sky. The village is on the cliff and the forest is below the cliff. The drop is more than a hundred meters, which is two completely different worlds. There is no road down from the village, and the only way to get down to this basin is to use a rope.
Locals said that there must be other entrances and exits to this basin, but the vegetation underground is so dense that it is difficult to walk. In the past, Miao people who went down to hunt and collect herbs often disappeared, so generally no one is willing to go down.
The ancient tower was built in such a place. It is almost in the center of the basin. When people look down from the cliff, they can only see a very small tower tip exposed from the dense tree canopy, and it is covered with plants, so they can't see what is below. The Miao people said that they knew there was a tower here more than ten generations ago, but no one thought of going down to see it, and now they are used to it. Recently, one day, there was a sudden loud noise, and when they came out to see, the tower tip was gone, and they knew that the tower had collapsed.
There are many legends about this mysterious ancient tower among the locals. According to some old people, this tower was built by a monk in ancient times to suppress demons. Now that the tower has collapsed, the demons will come out to do evil. The strange cry is the cry of the demons breaking free from their restraints.
After listening to it, Chenpi Ah Si found it very interesting. He felt that the location of the tower and the sound heard by the Miao people in the middle of the night were a little bit wrong. People like them may have a strange intuition and can instinctively find information from other people's narrations and some legends. This is hard to find in our generation.
Chenpi A Si thought for a moment and decided to go and take a look.
Guangxi has many mountains, which can be regarded as the most in the country. Maoer Mountain is an important source of them. It spans three counties, Xing'an, Ziyuan and Longsheng. It is the source of Lijiang River, Zijiang River and Xunjiang River, and connects the two major water systems of Yangtze River and Pearl River. There are large areas of primitive jungle in that place, and Laoshanjie, the first mountain crossed by the Red Army during the Long March, is located in it. During World War II, several bombers of the Flying Tigers who aided China mysteriously disappeared here, so this place has always been a bit mysterious.
After many twists and turns, Chenpi A Si arrived at a village on the "Wofo Ridge". Standing on the mound and looking at the basin in the middle of the mountain range, he was shocked to find that the tower was much bigger than he had imagined. When it fell, it knocked down several trees, so a gap appeared in the green tree cover of the forest. On the "Wofo Ridge", you can't see what's in the gap, but Chenpi A Si discovered it almost immediately. Around the collapsed tower, all the trees looked very messy because the ground had sunk. It seemed that there was something under the tower, and it was even bigger than the tower base.
When I heard this, I knew it was a "Jing'er Palace". "Jing'er Palace" is a dialect used in Changsha before liberation. It means that there is an underground part of the same size as the above-ground building below the above-ground building. It looks like the reflection of the above-ground building on the lake, with symmetry between the upper and lower ends.
This is also called "Yin Yang Shuttle" in the Northern School, which means that the whole building is like a shuttle stuck in the ground, one side is the underworld, and the other side is the world of the living. However, such ancient tombs or ancient buildings are rare, and most of the remains on the ground have been destroyed, so this saying was almost not mentioned in the ten years before liberation.
Chenpi Ah Si could tell that there was a "Mirror Palace" buried underneath just by looking at the changes in the arrangement of the trees. This kind of judgment would be impossible without extremely rich experience. I couldn't help but sigh inwardly, calm down, and listen to Lao Hai continue.
After Chenpi A Si made up his mind, he became greedy. There would only be three things in the underground palace of the pagoda. Either the relics, the golden body of the eminent monk, or a large number of Buddhist scriptures. Any of them would be priceless.
However, it was not very convenient for him, a foreigner, to move around here. Firstly, he had a special identity and a bad background. Secondly, there were constant disputes between the Miao and Han ethnic groups at that time. Several villages here were Miao villages. If he went in rashly, he might arouse suspicion from others.
After much consideration, he came up with a plan. He paid a high price to find a local Miao guide. He told the guide that he was an old intellectual who came from outside to support the border area. When he came, one of his students fell off the cliff. The Miao people were simple and honest, and they were not familiar with worldly affairs. How could they think that there was a trick? When they heard that someone fell off the cliff, they immediately notified everyone in the village. The young Miao man tied a hanging basket with ropes and put Chenpi A Si and several young people who helped him down the cliff.
According to Chenpi Ah Si's own recollection, crossing this 100-meter drop was a hellish experience. The cliff was so steep that the person's weight was completely supported by a rattan rope, and his buttocks were wrapped in a basket. When the wind blew, the whole person spun like a top, extremely unstable. By the time he passed through the dense tree cover and reached the bottom of the jungle, he was already half dead.
There was almost no sunlight inside the forest, the light was extremely dim, and the air was filled with the smell of marsh gas. There were many kinds of trees here, but without exception, all places were covered with green mosses, and the mud was very soft and almost impossible to stand on.
After Chenpi Ah Si came down, he pretended to be exhausted (in fact, he was really scared) and sat there to catch his breath. The Miao leader saw that he was not young anymore and looked like an old man, so he asked him to wait for them to come back there, and he lit a torch and asked others to search in the direction he pointed.
As soon as they left, Chenpi Ah Si immediately took out his compass and headed deeper into the jungle according to the direction he had written down. He estimated that it would take the Miao people a whole night to go back and forth in such a large area. With his ability, it should be enough to find the entrance to the "Jing'er Palace" and go back and forth. Unfortunately, he did not bring enough equipment this time, so whether he could enter the palace depended on his luck.
After walking aimlessly in the jungle for four hours, relying on a compass and his courage from traveling far and wide over the years, Chenpi A Si finally arrived at the area he had planned on "Wofo Ridge", which was the ruins of the temple around the tower.
After walking aimlessly in the jungle for four hours, relying on a compass and his courage from traveling far and wide over the years, Chenpi A Si finally arrived at the area he had planned on "Wofo Ridge", which was the ruins of the temple around the tower.
As he went deeper, Chenpi Ah Si saw more and more broken eaves and broken walls. It was obvious that the ancient buildings here had disappeared. Only some foundations and broken walls were left, almost mixed with the vegetation, and it was hard to see what they were originally. But judging from the scale, the temple was very large. Although the tower fell within this large area, it was difficult to see where it was exactly.
Chenpi A'si was quite old after all, and after walking around, he felt a little short of breath. Just as he was about to sit down to rest, he saw a flash in front of his eyes. The grass that covered the entire wall suddenly shrank, and it seemed as if something was wrapped inside.
Chenpi A Si was startled and rolled over, taking out an iron bullet in his hand. Looking back, he saw a Miao corpse in the vine grass blanket wrapped around the wall. The corpse was almost shriveled, but the belly of the corpse was moving slightly for some reason, as if there was something inside.