These can really be considered old archives, gnawed to pieces by mice, with mouse droppings all over them. I casually pulled out a sheet; it seemed to be an old document from that time, and a shake covered my face in dust.

If someone had rummaged through these, there would inevitably be differences. I quickly instructed Wang Meng to look closely and see if there were any suspicious areas.

He tiptoed around the pile of documents, and soon he made a discovery. Upon closer inspection, it turned out there were a few stacks of documents neatly arranged on the floor. Four stacks side by side formed a square.

Wang Meng said, “Boss, do you think this means something? This person was looking through the documents, and standing for too long would be tiring, so they made a stool out of these files.”

I nodded; indeed, I could almost imagine the situation at that time. That person sat on the file stool and could look more closely.

After turning around 360 degrees to determine the direction the person was facing while seated, I noticed that if they faced the back, one side of the shelf was just right for placing a flashlight as a lamp. As I mentally recreated that scene, I placed the flashlight there and looked down at my feet.

Brushing aside the dust, I indeed found a few old cigarette butts in front of me, and directly ahead, there was a stack of documents.

One large envelope here weighed at least four or five pounds; it was impossible to hold the scattered documents in hand while reading. This pile in front of me might have been used as a table. The things they were looking at were likely placed on top of it. Smoking while reading—damn, this guy was quite leisurely!

But it was still useless; the surroundings were filled with documents, and it was impossible to speculate what they were looking for. Perhaps they found what they needed and took it away.

I was a bit entranced and made a few gestures of flipping through documents, and suddenly a thought flashed through my mind regarding the handwriting on the note. I couldn’t help but have a peculiar idea—setting aside everything else, if that note was indeed written by “me,” how would I look at the documents?

I asked Wang Meng to pass me an envelope, opened it, and placed it on the “table” in front of me, picking up a sheet to flip it over. Then, recalling my usual habits, I pondered while using my right hand to stack the few pages I had looked at. Once I reached a certain thickness, I placed them at a distance to the side, arranging them neatly.

This is a habit of mine; when organizing rubbings, the entire table is often covered with scraps of paper, creating a mess. I prefer to place the sorted items far away to distinguish them from other documents. And the distance must be within reach of my hand.

Looking around to see if there was a place within that distance to put things, I noticed a stack of paper on a box to my right. I reached over, and the distance was just right.

My heart skipped a beat; I felt a bit resistant. If even this was guessed correctly, wouldn’t it prove that the person looking through the documents here was indeed me?

However, I hesitated only for a moment before taking the paper. Whatever! After all, I had died once; what was there to worry about?

I placed a stack of files on the pile of documents in front of me. The first sheet was a form, seemingly a budget for allowances, with several names listed. The highest allowance was four hundred forty-seven, nine-two yuan. I wasn’t very clear about the wage system at that time, but so many allowances must have been astronomical figures back then.

This allowance is generally for Soviet personnel, and I’m not interested in it. I quickly noticed some writing in the corner of the form: “Allowance Form for Personnel Dispatched to the Archaeological Project at the Zhangjiapu Site in Shangsi, Guangxi.”

Right! This is it!

Flipping through, I found that all the pages were mixed up. Below was an extension of the form with various names, and at the end was a stamp confirming it was from this archaeological research institute. I saw a date on this stamp, indicating it was a document from 1956.

Further back were compiled materials, not printed but entirely handwritten records, including room numbers, dimensions, and schematic diagrams. The handwriting was messy, and due to what had just happened, I instinctively glanced at the notes, which were entirely in an unfamiliar hand and showed significant variation, clearly not written by the same person.

I quickly flipped to pages fourteen or fifteen before I saw something different.

It was a floor plan of some sort, but not a modern professional blueprint; it was drawn with a brush. I could tell at a glance that this was a “yangsilei” from the Qing Dynasty.

“Yangsilei” is a term referring to a family of royal designers with the surname Lei during the Qing Dynasty. They were responsible for almost all royal architectural designs. However, at that time, craftsmen were of low status, and even the most renowned family of craftsmen remained obscure in the eyes of ordinary people. Most modern people are completely unaware of this family’s existence; only those of us in architecture and landscaping know how impressive the “yangsilei” really was.

China has a history of five thousand years, but the “yangsilei” only existed for two hundred years. Nevertheless, one-fifth of China’s World Cultural Heritage today was created by the “yangsilei,” which is quite remarkable.

After the Summer Palace was completed, the “yangsilei” suddenly declined. Some speculate that this was related to the inability of the Manchu Qing Dynasty to undertake large-scale architectural projects anymore. However, the decline of the “yangsilei” is quite puzzling; I read a report that mentioned they abandoned their positions overnight, and the speed was astonishing, leaving one to wonder what major changes they experienced.

After their decline, descendants of the “yangsilei” sold a large number of their ancestors’ “template drawings.” These items are the crystallization of Chinese architectural achievements and are quite numerous. Some have been lost overseas and to private collectors, while domestic officials also possess a considerable number, making them relatively common. In our department, anyone studying national forestry or planning is extremely familiar with this, so I recognized it immediately.

This drawing should be related to the Zhangjiapu site, which suggests that the site is likely from the Qing Dynasty and possibly a work of the “yangsilei.”

This is a copy, and the original must be in a museum.

I had some interest in these materials, so I took a cursory look. The drawing depicts a large courtyard, likely a residence. Judging by its scale, with several lengths and depths, it is quite large. The structure suggests it is a private home.

Since the “yangsilei” were royal designers, they rarely had the opportunity to design private residences. The owner of this house must have been a high official or someone of significant lineage.

I looked around to see if there were any small characters indicating the name of the residence, but I didn’t find anything.

The following pages also contained similar drawings, most of which were “copy plans.” The design drawings of the “yangsilei” are extremely detailed, capturing various angles, individual buildings, and disassembled components, including surrounding feng shui, topography, and even a giant grid diagram of the entire land area with “copy plans.”

After flipping through the pages, I found there were more than ten pages, and the last page was the document index, indicating how much information was inside. A thought struck me, and I checked the materials against what I had, discovering that just by page count, six sheets were missing. If I guessed correctly, they were taken by that person at the time. What I have in my hands now is crucial, but even so, for someone with no leads, this is already a significant breakthrough.

I organized the documents I had and looked around, realizing that there was no possibility of finding anything more here, so I called Wang Meng, who was still rummaging through things, to come back. It took a few calls before he snapped back to reality. I walked over and asked what he was doing. He shone his flashlight into a corner of the warehouse and asked me, “Boss, what’s that for?”

I looked up and saw a cage made of iron bars, welded together, behind some clutter. Moving closer, I noticed the cage was about half a person tall and rusted all over. Wang Meng shone the flashlight inside and found a broken bowl. “Is it a dog cage?” he asked.

I shook my head. The iron bars were welded too tightly for a dog; there wouldn’t be a need for such security! Perhaps it was leftover rebar from when the house was built, which wasn’t something I could manage. I then urged Wang Meng not to dawdle, as I was eager to verify some information.

We returned to the hotel via the same route. He went to take a shower while I went online to start researching the materials I had. First, I searched for information on the so-called “Shangsi Zhangjiapu Ruins Investigation,” but found nothing. I realized that information from the 1950s probably wouldn’t be available online; even if it was, it would likely be just snippets, so I continued searching for geographic names.

People in my line of work don’t pay much attention to the Guangxi region. Although there are ancient tombs there, the climate is very different from that of Hunan, Shaanxi, and Shanxi. Staying there for three days without going out meant just taking herbal medicine, not to mention entering the local primitive forests. The customs and ethnic distributions are different, making it not a place for ordinary people. In the old society, for people from the Central Plains, it was a place you only went when you had truly run out of options.

I was quite surprised by what I found, but the local mountainous terrain is so varied. Although many Han people from the Central Plains have settled there and followed the Feng Shui customs of their homeland to build their houses, the concepts are entirely different.

Such places are the domain of those new underground tomb raiders. I heard that some people were digging large tombs in Guangxi using excavators, which is much bolder than the Southern style.

Information online was limited. I was sweating, and after checking a bit, I turned on the air conditioning, which helped me calm down. I then went to take a shower, lost in thought, and ended up zoning out. When I came out, I realized I hadn’t even put on my underwear, which startled Wang Meng. I found my thoughts were very chaotic; everything was too scattered, and with my personal intelligence, it was clearly difficult to think through all the issues in such a short time.

The designs of the styles of Lei are a good clue, but there are many such designs in existence, and there isn’t a good complete index. Finding leads from this is like searching for a needle in a haystack, even more unreliable. That night, I pondered over these thoughts and eventually fell asleep with a jumbled mind.

I woke up feeling groggy in the morning, splashed some cold water on my face to wake myself up, and then scanned through all these documents, sending them to a few acquaintances. After that, I visited some relatives, just going through the motions, while thinking about who I could ask about this matter. Suddenly, I thought of someone: a close friend of my grandfather’s who liked me when I was a child. This guy is in the same line of work as I am; he used to work at a landscape design institute, specializing in the maintenance of ancient buildings. So I bought some snacks and drinks and went to pay him a visit.

It had been years since I last saw him. I figured he probably still had his old temperament, so I didn’t bother with too many pleasantries and got straight to the point. The old man opened the plans and took a look; just a few seconds later, he said, “Are you sure this is a house for people to live in?”

Hearing the implication in his words, I asked him what he meant. He replied, “You’ve studied architecture for so many years; can’t you even see this? Look at the lighting in this house.”

I thought to myself that I could read design drawings, but I wasn’t familiar with the style of Lei. It wasn’t drawn using national standards software. I took a rough look at the plans and suddenly realized that it had nothing to do with the design; the problem lay in the layout of the house. After a few turns, confirming the cardinal directions, I carefully examined it and felt a jolt in my heart—there was indeed a problem!

The way this house was designed, all the rooms under the eaves would never receive sunlight, and there wouldn’t even be any reflected light. When the blazing sun shone outside, it could be pitch dark inside.

“This…”

“This is a dark room.”

How could “Style Lei” design such a house? I pushed the layout again and found that the house was designed very cleverly, deliberately avoiding light. Although this wouldn’t guarantee that no light could enter at all, it was clear that the layout was intentional.

Could it be that the people living in this house couldn’t see sunlight? Vampires? That was nonsense. Then I thought of “black-eyed people”; could it be that the people in this house were like them, unable to withstand strong light? Or perhaps the emperor had a whim to build a house for hide-and-seek?

“Have you ever seen a house like this before?” I asked the old man.

He frowned and shook his head. “There are indeed houses designed in the opposite way. This house can’t be lived in! However, I do know that in ancient times, there was a place with similar requirements, but not as strict.”

“What place?” I asked, intrigued.

“An ancestral hall.”

“An ancestral hall? A huge house like this is all for the dead?”

That was impossible; an ancestral hall wouldn’t be that large. I could clearly see that this house had many different structures and should be an ordinary residence from the Ming or Qing dynasty.

“Where did you get this thing?” the old man asked me.

Naturally, I couldn’t tell him the truth, so I said I found it in the market. The old man was clearly very interested and asked me to pass it to him so he could study it thoroughly.

I was unwilling, but thinking that it wouldn’t be of much use to me here, I asked him if he could help me inquire about the situation in the industry. If there were any developments, I would be happy to give it away for free.

This gesture was quite sincere, and the old man readily agreed without mentioning it again. He invited me to stay for the night and offered me drinks.

Living alone, the old man was quite lonely in his later years. I had already thought about keeping him company for a while and chatting with him, so I decided to stay.

Two people drank half a jin, and he talked endlessly with me about the Yangshilei. He told me that Yangshilei was actually a family of craftsmen since the late Ming Dynasty, and the first generation to enter the palace during the Qing Dynasty was Lei Fada.

At that time, when Emperor Kangxi was rebuilding the Hall of Supreme Harmony, on the day of the main beam raising, Kangxi personally attended the ceremony with civil and military officials. However, the main beam was an old one, and the mortise holes did not align, causing it to hang in the air without settling. The Minister of Works looked at one another in shock, fearing that the auspicious day for raising the beam might be miscalculated, and hurriedly summoned Lei Fada, granting him official robes.

With an axe in his sleeve, Lei Fada swiftly climbed up to the beam, raised his bronze axe high, and then struck it three times with a resounding “dong, dong, dong.” The wooden beam then fell steadily with a loud rumble. In an instant, the drums and music sounded, and the civil and military officials shouted “Long live!” After the beam-raising ceremony was completed, Emperor Kangxi was greatly pleased and immediately summoned Lei Fada, personally appointing him as the head of the Ministry of Works’ construction division. As a result, people of the time left behind the saying, “Above there is Lu Ban, below there is Chang Ban, the purple star shines bright, the golden hall seals the palace.”

After that, Yangshilei continued to flourish. By the time of Lei Fada’s son, Lei Jinyu, he was already the chief of the Yangshilei. It is said that Lei Jinyu’s skills were even more superb, able to replicate Western precision clocks, merging Western machinery with traditional Chinese designs. In addition to large buildings, many intricate gadgets in the palace were also crafted by him.

I was quite familiar with Yangshilei and wasn’t particularly interested in these stories, so I asked the old man if he knew how Yangshilei fell into decline.

The old man said that no one knows for sure, and there are several theories. Some say the last Yangshilei offended the Empress Dowager, while others claim that the Qing Dynasty was too weak in its later years to construct large buildings. But there is also another theory, though I don’t know if it is true.

I said I would like to hear more about it. The old man had had a bit too much to drink and spoke very seriously, lowering his voice: “We all know that the Manchus came from beyond the Great Wall, as a nomadic people, it is customary for them to be buried outside. After the death of a Mongolian emperor, his body had to be transported beyond the wall for burial. Legend has it that when the Manchus first entered the Great Wall, Regent Dorgon did not know how long their rule would last, so he buried all the treasures and valuables outside the wall. At that time, the emperor was also buried outside. Only after the situation stabilized were the Eastern and Western Tombs built inside the wall.

“However, this was just a facade. The royal family always had unstable loyalties, and the Eastern and Western Tombs were merely fake tombs, containing the remains of eunuchs and maidservants. Most Qing emperors were secretly buried in hidden places beyond the wall. Yangshilei has many strange designs, and it is unclear what they were intended for; it is speculated that they were components used in the royal tombs beyond the wall.”

“Although Yangshilei did not participate in the actual construction of the royal tombs, most of the internal designs were by their hand. Naturally, as the Qing Dynasty declined, they would face persecution. Fortunately, the situation at the time was chaotic, and the court had no time to pay much attention to these matters. Otherwise, Yangshilei might have faced an even worse fate.”

I was taken aback, “The Eastern and Western Tombs are enormous; could they really be fake?”

“This is the cleverness of the Qing. Instead of meticulously planning each royal tomb, they created one massive fake target to draw everyone’s attention. I suspect if there really is a group of royal tombs beyond the wall, it must be in the Changbai Mountains or the Greater and Lesser Khingan Range.”

As I listened, I felt a jolt in my heart, recalling the Manchu characters and the massive underground mountain ranges I had seen in the Changbai Mountains in the past.

“These are all hearsay and basically unprovable,” the old man said. “You see, Genghis Khan’s tomb hasn’t been discovered yet! The chances of exploring the royal tombs outside the Great Wall are too low. Even if you had a hundred of your uncle, I’m afraid they wouldn’t be able to find it in their lifetime.”

I nodded; that made sense and I couldn’t help but break into a cold sweat. I really hadn’t heard of this before. The Qing Dynasty had plundered for years within the Great Wall, and many researchers have found that the weakness in the later Qing period was abnormal. They wondered if the emperor had buried his wealth. If that’s the case, the area outside the Great Wall might actually have a larger tomb complex than the mysterious Mongolian royal tombs.

After saying this, the old man had nearly finished drinking and soon became incoherent. I took my leave and immediately returned to the hotel, where I searched for a long time about the lighting of houses, but unfortunately, I found very little useful information.

I originally thought this would lead to a prolonged tug-of-war, so I considered heading back to Hangzhou first. After all, my uncle’s business was in my hands, and I couldn’t let it decline just because it wasn’t thriving. It needed to be active when it was supposed to be. To my surprise, the next morning, the old man came rushing in with two people.

Both were about his age—one was surnamed Ruan, the other Fang. Upon introduction, I learned they were well-known brokers from Beijing, Changsha, and Shanghai. They immediately greeted me with warm handshakes and a lot of compliments, leaving me baffled.

We sat down in the hotel lobby, and the old man got straight to the point, saying, “These two want to buy your ‘design’ at a high price. Although you said yesterday you wouldn’t take a dime, their offer is quite high. I don’t know if you might change your mind.”

The old man was quite wealthy himself, so if he said the price was high, it must have been a bit outrageous.

The man surnamed Ruan immediately extended his hand, and I realized he wanted to negotiate. This guy was indeed an expert, and an old-school one at that. In stock trading, when dealing in street markets, there’s not much “bargaining.” After a handshake, a few finger movements could convey a fixed method of communication.

I reached out and shook his hand. His offer was indeed high, exceeding the scope of the Yangshi Lei, but having been with my uncle and seen real large transactions, this price didn’t surprise me. What surprised me was the old calluses on his hands. His fingers were covered in calluses, which are called coffin calluses, formed from lifting coffins too much. This guy, even if he wasn’t a rustic, must have worked in that line of business.

I remained composed, feeling somewhat dignified, and said, “If I sell it to you at this price, the experts will think I’ve taken advantage of you, which would be bad for my reputation. Besides, this item is still useful to me; I really can’t part with it. Tell your client I’m sorry, but I can’t let it go.”

He reached out again, clearly wanting to negotiate further, but I raised my hand to refuse, holding my teacup in a way that signaled “no deal,” which was absolute.

The two looked dejected, and one of them said, “Then why don’t you just name your price? To be honest, my boss really likes this item. If you have a price in mind, please just say it.”

If I were to ask for a million, could he accept it? I couldn’t help but feel a stir of interest; it seemed his client might know something about this design. Curiosity got the better of me, and I asked, “What does he want this thing for, anyway?”

“We don’t know either,” he replied. “If the client likes it, we have to find it for him. Generally, we shouldn’t ask too many questions.” The old man gave me a knowing glance, and I realized he shared my thoughts—he wanted me to see if I could extract any information. So I continued, “How about this! You two go back and tell your client that we should discuss this in person. Money is a small matter; I just want to make a connection so that when others ask, I can have a good explanation.” However, the two of them showed difficulty and said, “I’m afraid that gentleman is not someone we can meet.”