Daomu Biji

Chapter 43: What was dug up?

I felt perplexed, so I immediately leaned over, moved the fat man's feet away and took a closer look. Sure enough, part of the incense ash was embedded in the tiny gaps on the surface of the stone, forming some lines. And it is obvious that these lines are very rounded and are not textures on the surface of the stone itself.

I am a rubbing artist, and I know that this is a rubbing principle. It is a method of using very fine powder to show shallow marks on the ground. It is similar to what is used in many spy dramas. Use a pencil to smear a note paper to get the result written on the previous page. message, someone had obviously carved something on the rock face in front of the shrine.

I got excited, overturned the incense burner, poured all the ashes inside on the ground and rock surface, and started to smear it with both hands. Soon, more subtle lines began to appear on the ground and rock walls.

"This is..." Fatty also noticed something strange.

"It should have been carved by the craftsman who dug this hole." I said.

"I see, Secretary Lei has manifested his spirit so quickly!" Fatty said, "The efficiency is much higher than in the human world."

"Don't say it so quickly." I said, spreading the ash evenly.

He knelt down to help, and the oil bottle came up, and we spread the incense ash over a large area. Soon, a piece of crooked text appeared in front of him.

Each of these characters is the size of a chess piece, all in traditional Chinese, and extremely sloppy. Some are almost blurry, but there are quite a lot of them, between thirty and forty, large and small.

Looking at the notes, it must have been written by one person.

The text is in Chinese characters, but some of them I have never seen before, and they should be pronounced in dialects.

The fat man wondered: "Could it be that the previous craftsmen discussed things on this rock like us?"

I shook my head and said no. These words are continuous. Obviously the person who carved them wrote a whole paragraph, but the scratches were very shallow. Like us, they should have been simply scratched on the rock wall with stones. There was no use. Engraving tools.

What kind of person, and for what purpose, wrote these words in front of this statue? I can't remember it, but the key should be in the text.

I identified it and found that the text was read vertically. If I couldn't read it outside, I carefully identified it word by word, and then re-engraved it on one side with a stone.

It's a very simple sentence.

November and seven. The east wall, seven feet from the left, has sixteen. The west wall, three feet from the left, has seven. On the north wall, five feet from the left, there are ten. The south wall, six feet from the left, has four. In detail, the excavation must be resumed within three days.

"This is... a record of mining measurement?" I hesitated.

Looking at the whole language, it seems to be a message, a little reminder left by a foreman to others before leaving, and there is an instruction: count in details. It seems that the superior wrote to the subordinate.

"Southeast, northwest?" The fat man looked around, "Is this the record of the distribution of jade veins?"

I shook my head. The direction of the jade veins was completely natural and had no rules at all. It was useless to just determine how many feet to the left on a section. "There are sixteen", "There are seven", "There are ten", "There are four", it seems to be a kind of counting mark, he is counting things on the wall.

Looking at the east wall, there was nothing on it, only the jade veins and the rocks were naturally wrinkled. The dark jade veins were so complex that they were like blood vessels in the rock, and could not be represented by a number as small as "sixteen". And he said at the end: Excavation must be resumed within three days, which seems to mean that the things represented by "sixteen" and "seven" hinder the continued mining.

what is it then? Could it be an extremely hard rock spirit with stone veins? But the rock spirit is extremely hard and weighs hundreds of tons. How could it be excavated in three days?

We all stood up, walked to the far left of the east cave wall, and measured the distance of seven feet with our fingers to see what was there.

Seven feet later, it was still the surface of the rock, with countless dark green traces and nothing.

The fat man and I looked at each other. In fact, we looked at the rock face here very carefully. Even if we didn't look at it this way, we knew that there was nothing visible on the surface.

"What he wrote on it,

Could it have been dug up? "

It's possible, but after thinking about it again, a very strange idea came to my mind.

I returned to the shrine, gathered up the incense ashes on the ground, put them back into the incense burner, then took them to the rock wall, grabbed a handful, and smeared them on them.

There was nothing there at first, but after a few rounds of painting, sure enough, lines appeared on it, which seemed to be the outline of something.

"Huh?" Fatty said in surprise, "How did you know?"

"That kind of message is too vague. It is a summary of the last message. It will definitely leave a mark on the rock surface." I said, while continuing to smear.

Soon, an irregular polygonal outline appeared on the stone. I took off my powerful search light from my body and turned it on. The outline is very obvious, just like when drafting a painting, you first use short straight lines to outline the general shape of the object.

However, we did not see any shapes related to this outline from the veins of the rock. It seemed that they were randomly drawn on the rock wall as a reference for cutting.

But even so, I still felt cold all over, and many fragments in my mind began to spontaneously make various combinations. I already knew in my heart that there must be something in this rock wall, otherwise, this outline would not be engraved here. They wanted to dig out things here, so they made a rough mark.

Why can't I see it? Is it the wrong method?

Thinking about it, I asked: "Does any of you know what special process they go through when mining jade?"

The fat man shook his head and said, "Didn't you use explosives?"

Mengyou Ping said: "First burn it with fire, and then pour cold water on it to make the stone crack naturally."

"Splash with water? Let's go! Go get water!" I said immediately. I didn't know what I wanted to prove, but I had a strong intuition in my heart that I had hit the key!

I rushed to the hole on the other side, knotted the pants of my diving suit that I had taken off, filled it with water, carried it back, and the fat man and I grabbed it and splashed it on the rock wall.

After splashing it for more than ten times, the color of the rock became darker due to water seepage.

After taking a few steps back and looking again, due to the splashing of water, the jade veins on the rock surface became blurred, while other parts became smooth and transparent. It turns out that these stones are also jade, but the content is different, so they are called ordinary rocks by the dark green jadeite.

At the same time, we saw a looming shadow emerging from the rock wall.

It's a human figure.