Shadow of the Tomb Raider: A Complete Record of the History of Tomb Raiders in China

Chapter 55 Tomb Raiders and Anti-Tomb Raiders
Tomb robbery and anti-theft measures are tit for tat.Tomb robbery has been rampant, and anti-theft measures have also improved.The anti-theft measures have some new tricks, and the tomb robbers soon have cracking technology.So there is a vicious circle of "the height of the Tao is one foot, and the height of the devil is one foot".Overall, anti-theft measures are always in a passive and backward state.

Death Walk: Tomb Raider is a game for the brave
Tomb robbery is more dangerous

There are two kinds of people who do tomb robbery. One is official robbers, such as Dong Zhuo and Cao Cao in the late Han Dynasty, Wen Tao in the Five Dynasties, and Sun Dianying in the Republic of China. Daqian; there is also a kind of civilian robbers, distributed all over the country, with a large number of people, they all secretly dig tombs and coffins, take out the buried treasures and treasures from them, and make a fortune. Most of them are concentrated in places with many ancient tombs. Such as Luoyang in Henan, Guanzhong in Shaanxi, Changsha in Hunan and other places.

In ancient times, these full-time tomb robbers were generally two-person partnerships. Relatively few people formed gangs, and even fewer people did it alone. One person digs the hole, the other clears the soil and watches the wind at the same time; later one digs into the tomb, and the other collects the pit soil and funeral objects on it.The mutual deceit among accomplices is another dangerous situation faced by tomb robbers.These two people are mostly related by blood (there are also many good friends), this is to prevent the people who pick up the work at the entrance of the cave from killing themselves for money.That is to say, when the people under the cave finished their work and passed all their belongings up, he would slap his hands or pull the rope to signal the people at the entrance of the cave to pull him up.If the person at the entrance of the cave sees money and wants to loosen the rope when the person coming up is about to come up, the person below the cave will suddenly fall from a distance of more than four or five meters, fractured, injured and unable to move, and the person at the entrance will quickly lift the rope If the pit soil is filled down the hole, the people below will undoubtedly die.This is why the two partnered to find relatives.

But the strange thing is that there is less relationship between father and son. This may be because the business of tomb robbery is shameful after all. Even if I do this disgraceful business, I still have to maintain the image of being a father. Even pretended not to know.

People die for money, birds die for food, and greed is far greater than human rationality.Therefore, the partnership of tomb robbers, in addition to good friends, is also blood relatives, the purpose is to prevent each other from killing each other by monopolizing the treasure.The maximum number of partners is limited to five people. In addition to confidentiality reasons, preventing Neijiang caused by uneven distribution of spoils is probably also an important reason.Tomb robbers partner with others, and they most need the premise that the other party pays attention to the word "righteousness". If one party forgets righteousness and has evil thoughts, then the other party will undoubtedly die if he is unprepared.

Blood relationship and friendship cannot restrain people's evil heart, so there are countless examples of tomb robbers killing each other, between uncles and nephews, uncles and nephews, etc., and between iron buddies, human nature is constantly being staged. tragedy.

In comparison, people waiting outside the tomb always have a survival advantage over those who enter the tomb to steal treasure. If people outside the tomb want to steal the treasure, they can easily do so.Those who steal treasure in the tomb will risk their lives if they want to steal the treasure for themselves.Some people secretly bury some treasures when they are extracting treasures from the tomb, and wait for the opportunity to steal them for the second time. This risk is also very high; It is also extremely dangerous to discharge it from the stool in the next day.Limited to the level of craftsmanship at that time, some gold, silver and jade wares were likely to be highly toxic, and if swallowed, it was very likely to be life-threatening.

When the tomb of Princess Yongtai, the burial tomb of Empress Wu Zetian’s Qianling Mausoleum, was excavated in 1961, a corpse of a dead man with only a pile of skeletons was found in the No. between the ages.An ax was placed next to the skeleton, and the skull of the corpse was hidden in the silt of the tomb passage. A large number of gold and jade ornaments were piled up one meter to the north of the skull, and there were many traces of man-made robbery in the tomb.

Through this clip, we can infer: more than a hundred or hundreds of years ago, thief A and thief B were close partners. When they discovered the tomb of Princess Yongtai, they were overjoyed.So he planned day and night and formulated a reasonable and rigorous theft plan.One night, they got through the robbery hole into the tomb in the dark. Thief B entered the tomb to plunder the treasure, and transported the treasure to the ground in several batches.When Thief A on the ground saw the piles of treasures, he immediately became ill-willed, and forgot about the agreement between the two of them to share the treasures equally.So, after thief B sent most of the treasures to the ground, he held the remaining treasures in his arms, shook the rope, and motioned to the thief A above to pull him up. When he fell down, his head hit the silt next to him heavily, and he passed out immediately. The ax was thrown aside, and the treasures on his body were scattered all over the ground.Thief A hurriedly buried the soil on top, buried thief B below alive to death, and fled with the treasure.Poor thief B can only turn into a wronged soul, and has been with Princess Yongtai for a long time in the tomb.

This kind of danger caused by human greed is extremely lethal and hard to guard against.

Retribution for digging graves

Since ancient times, tomb robbery has been a "game for the brave in the dark night".As one of the most shady professions, mainstream public opinion in any social system opposes and condemns tomb robbery; laws in various social periods punish tomb robbers very severely.If the tomb robbers are not exposed, it is difficult to be severely punished by the law.At this time, the reasonable deterrence of social morality and human ethics will take effect.Society punishes tomb robbers through various forms and means outside the law.They even used the most vicious trump card - "curse", to design a life ending that would make the tomb robbers "retribution" - most of the tomb robbers would die badly.

Retribution is a mysterious cultural phenomenon, and its central idea is to emphasize that good will be rewarded with good, evil will be rewarded with evil, and the cycle of cause and effect. "Yi Kun Wen Yan" said that "a family that accumulates good will have more celebrations, and a family that has accumulated bad things will have surviving disasters." A matter of human relations.

Retribution is the most severe punishment demanded by the ancient people for tomb robbers. They hope that the evil consequences will come to the tomb robbers as soon as possible, so that they will suffer the severe punishment brought by digging up their ancestors' graves.In the legend of tomb robbery in ancient China, retribution, like "resurrection from the dead" and "zombie", is widely spread among the people.The subjective condition for the existence of "retribution" is the ancient concept of ghosts and gods.No matter in official history, unofficial history or folklore, there are stories of tomb robbers suffering bad retribution.There has been a saying in ancient folk since ancient times: When grave robbers are digging graves, they will encounter some special weather phenomena, such as thunder, lightning, strong wind, heavy rain and fog, or hints of some magical animals, etc. Issue a warning and persuade him to stop as soon as possible, otherwise he will be severely retaliated against.

Fuwen, a monk of Tianyi Temple, was one of the initiators of the tomb robbery incident, and he also suffered retribution.After Fuwen dug and robbed the tomb, he swaggered and robbed the property of the villagers with the help of local powerful forces.The villagers were furious, and gathered more than 20 people on the road to wait for an opportunity to take revenge on Fuwen, beating Fuwen into meat paste.As for the people who participated in the murder, because the criminal law was unclear at the time, and the law does not punish the public, they were only punished with sticks.

"Yong Building Essays" is a note-style novel written by Zhu Guozhen, a native of the Ming Dynasty. It records a story about a tomb robber suffering from a serious illness.There was a Song Dynasty man named Zhang Shiwu whose family was poor.Seeing an ancient tomb in the garden, they excavated and stole the property inside, and ransacked the bronze mirror and other funerary objects inside.It didn't take long, and he got the "zhǒng poison" and screamed "kill" every day until he died.

"Zibuyu" compiled by Yuan Mei, a litterateur of the Qing Dynasty, describes many strange and absurd anecdotes.Among them, in the ninth volume of "A Collection of Strange Anecdotes", a short story called "The Strange Report of Digging a Tomb" is widely circulated:
There is a tomb robber Zhu in Hangzhou. He is a big name in the tomb robbery circle. He is highly skilled and experienced.Zhu is well-informed and experienced. He stated his experience of tomb robbery, saying: "There are different types of zombies in the coffin, such as purple zombies, white zombies, green zombies, and hairy zombies." It is several feet wide, and there are iron chains in it, and the red coffin decorated with gold is hung", and "the vermilion coffin is very large", "there are four bronze figures like eunuchs, kneeling to carry the coffin with their heads, holding it with both hands, the earth and flowers are green and green" and so on.

In the eyes of ordinary people, tomb robbers do not shy away from ghosts and gods, and they are not afraid of karma.Every time before excavating a tomb, it is always necessary to ask the gods or divination experts whether it is good or bad, as well as the abundance of burial objects in the tomb.

On the edge of the West Lake, there is a Yuewang Temple, which enshrines the tablet of Yue Fei, a general who resisted the Jin Dynasty in the Southern Song Dynasty and a famous national hero.Before a tomb robbery, Zhu went to the Temple of Yuewang to ask the hexagram. The Yuewang said to Zhu: "If you take the wealth of the dead, your crime is more than that of thieves. If you don't change it, I will kill you."The meaning of this sentence is: You steal graves and plunder the money of the dead, and your crimes are heinous, surpassing ordinary thieves.If you don't repent again, I will kill you!
This warning is very severe.After hearing this, Zhu was so frightened that he almost died. From then on, he decided to change from evil to good, wash his hands in the golden basin, and quit the tomb robbery industry forever.

As the saying goes, the country is easy to change and the nature is hard to change. After a year, Zhu gradually forgot the oath he made to "quit the world of tomb robbers", and he no longer cared about the stern warning given to him by King Yue.Unbearably itchy, he decided to come back and start his "Legend of Tomb Raiders" again.

According to the usual practice, before taking action, Zhu asked the gods and gods, and asked the Narcissus of the West Lake about the number of treasures in the tomb.The Narcissus of West Lake told Zhu that under a certain pagoda, there was a tomb of a rich man, which was rich in treasures and could be dug for thousands of gold.

Zhu was tempted when he heard this, and went to rob the tomb with his accomplices regardless of King Yue's warning.Zhu searched for a long time, and finally found it after being guided by the gods.After digging, it was found that there was a large stone coffin underneath, which was so heavy that six or seven people could not carry it out.Uncommonly strong and cannot be opened.Later, he invited a monk with secret skills from a nearby temple to help him, but something happened. Unexpectedly, the monk was captured alive by the monster in the tomb, torn apart and eaten.No one could be found in the temple, so he thought Zhu had murdered him, so he went to the government to report.As a result, Zhu's family was ruined because of this lawsuit, and under remorse, he hanged himself in prison.

Judging from Zhu's stated experience, he can indeed be called a tomb robbery expert who "started with hair tombs", but in the end he suffered bad retribution, and the situation was extremely tragic.Of course, the statement in the tomb that "the blue arm comes out, and the length is long" can only be an exaggerated rumor.The popularity of the above-mentioned legends about tomb robbery is inseparable from public opinion’s denial of tomb robbery. Together with official laws and the patriarchal clan system, it constitutes a barrier for traditional society to combat tomb robbery and maintain social stability.

Tomb robbery is an extremely shameless and inhumane crime, and should be punished badly.From this little story, we can see that people hate tomb robbers extremely.Strong condemnation on the social and moral level, that is, relying on Yue Fei's mouth, to give Zhu a stern warning: Tomb robbers will not die!Under such huge psychological pressure and conscience condemnation, even if the tomb robber gets rich, it is impossible to obtain real happiness.The retribution of tomb robbery, in addition to evil retribution, also has the meaning of persuasion and warning.This exhortation also played a certain role.Out of fear and awe of retribution and punishment, some tomb robbers quit the tomb robbery industry after washing their hands;

"Taiping Guangji Tomb I" (Volume 380) records a tomb robber named Yang Zhichun. After sending the stolen things back to the tomb, he voluntarily surrendered to the government. As a result, he avoided a personal accident.

This happened during the Kaiyuan period when Emperor Xuanzong Li Longji was emperor.At that time, a thousand-year-old zombie was resurrected due to the collapse of the tomb.After the zombie is revived, he can survive without eating, drinking water and inhaling wind. At that time, people called him "Earth Immortal", and others called him "Madman".Zombies often haunt Wu, Chu, Qi, and Lu areas, and they know where gold and silver treasures are buried underground.

Two tomb thieves asked Dixian for divination, and learned that there was an ancient tomb called "Imperial Mao Tomb" in the boundary of Shengtang County, in which a large amount of gold, silver and jewels were buried.The tomb robbers gathered ten people to steal, and Yang Zhichun was one of them.

When they entered the tomb, they saw that there were four chambers in the tomb.The tomb in the east is full of weapons such as knives, guns, bows and arrows; the tomb in the south is full of silk fabrics, and there is a dressing table in the middle, which is divided into upper and lower compartments.Top-quality cloth is placed on it, and there is a sign on the cloth that reads "Three hundred pieces of brocade bestowed by King Zhou Shou".The lower floor is full of gold, silver, jewelry, and jade treasures; the tomb on the west is full of lacquerware, the lacquer surface is smooth and bright, and looks like new; in the tomb to the north, there is a coffin made of jade. Lying there was a pure and beautiful young girl with ruddy and shiny skin, white and regular teeth like shells, and thick black hair, just like a real person who was sleeping "as if alive".The figure of the jade girl is moderate in height, fat and thin, just like the beauties in the paintings.The clothes, bedding, embroidered shoes and socks in the coffin exude a faint fragrance.Touching the jade girl's body with her hands, there is still body temperature.In front of the coffin, there is a silver wine bottle, which is filled with fine wine.The tomb robbers competed to drink, the wine tasted sweet and fragrant, and it was a rare wine in the world.

After drinking the wine in the tomb, the tomb robbers began to search for the gold, silver, jade, silk and satin inside.The female corpse wears a jade ring on the ring finger of her left hand, and the tomb robbers are scrambling to grab it.Yang Zhichun persuaded his accomplices not to pick them up, as they have obtained a lot of treasures, so don't rob them again just for a jade ring.The accomplices ignored him, and one of the tomb robbers cut off the finger of the female corpse with a knife in a hurry, and blood like red bean juice flowed out from the severed part.Yang Zhichun couldn't bear it, thinking that this was going too far, so he advised his accomplices a few words.The accomplices suspected that Yang Zhichun was unreliable, worried that he would be too soft-hearted, and his mouth would leak out about the tomb robbery, so they became murderous and wanted to kill him.

At this time, a strange thing happened.When the accomplices raised their knives and slashed at Yang Zhichun, they instantly became strangers and enemies, and the nine of them killed each other.After a fierce fight, all nine people died.Yang Zhichun thought it was the tomb owner who saved his life, so he immediately put the packed treasures back into the tomb, arranged them neatly according to the original style, drilled out of the tomb, filled it with soil, and surrendered to the government Report the crime.Report the process and circumstances of the theft to the government in detail.So the government sent more than 20 people to repair the ancient tomb, but the epitaph was never found.

(End of this chapter)