Ancient tomb excavation traces

It was already noon, and Chuba had risked bringing us blind fish again, but to be honest, eating this kind of cold, unsalted food all the time was making me a little nauseous. Lan Quexi didn't eat anything, just drank some water. After calming down a bit, she answered the little Taoist's question about how she knew the structure of the ancient tomb.

This was mainly due to the silk scroll containing the noble records. Because she and Lan You knew their fate, they memorized the map of the Chu tomb drawn in the scroll so that they could escape in the future.

Speaking of the ancient tomb's structural diagram, a question arose in my mind: How did that Chu nobleman know about the structure of this Chu tomb? Who exactly was he? Why did he record these things in the silk scroll that was buried with him? So I asked Lan Quexi if he knew the identity of the owner of the silk scroll.

She nodded, saying that it was recorded in several other silk manuscripts, but when she revealed the answer, we were all quite surprised.

It turns out that the owner of the silk scroll was the father of Sima Yan, a master geomancer from the State of Chu, who designed the tomb of the Chu witch. The young Taoist had also heard of his great reputation, saying that he was a disciple of the reclusive hermit Jia Zhui, who was knowledgeable in astronomy and geography and was known as a divine being. However, this man never concerned himself with worldly affairs and did not accept disciples unless the other party was a prodigy, and Sima Yan was such a person.

However, what puzzled the young Taoist was that Sima Yan was naturally aloof and, like his master Jia Zhui, did not easily interact with people. Why would he build a tomb for a witch?

Lan Quexi's answer surprised us. She said that the silk manuscript recorded that Sima Yan and the Chu witch understood each other and cherished each other. After she said this, we were all stunned.

Bao Cai was puzzled and said, "Mutual affection? Didn't that Chu witch love the musician and want to be buried with him? What? Is it a love triangle now?"

Before I could figure it out, the young Taoist priest frowned and suddenly said, "I heard that Jia Zhui took in two disciples, one who knew how to survey the earth and the other who could observe the heavens..."

"What does this have to do with the pit we're in?" Chu Ba asked, puzzled.

The young Taoist priest said, "Because the one who can observe the heavens is a woman..."

"Ah! I get it!" Bao Cai exclaimed in sudden realization, "You mean the owner of this Chu tomb was also a disciple of Jia Zhui, and Sima Yan was in love with his junior sister?"

The young Taoist nodded and said, "Those who can become disciples of Jia Zhui are no ordinary people. Such people are often very lonely because no one can understand them. So when Sima Yan and the Chu Kingdom witch were disciples of the same master, they were each other's shadows." The young Taoist spoke as if he were talking about himself.

However, we still needed Lan Quexi's answer, so we turned our gaze to her. At this crucial moment, the question became increasingly difficult to answer, and she nodded, agreeing with the young Taoist priest. But what she said next left us completely baffled:

As mentioned before, both the Chu Kingdom witch and Sima Yan were disciples of Master Jia Zhui of Qingwu①, and it is said that extraordinary phenomena occurred at their births. On the day Sima Yan was born, there was thunder and lightning, and thunder rumbled on the ground, transforming into countless silver dragons. The silver dragons hissed and crashed down on the roof just before Sima Yan was born, but without causing any damage to the building, as if the lightning was there to welcome Sima Yan's arrival.

At that time, the Sima family was a prominent family. Sima Yan's father consulted a famous fortune teller. After calculating Sima Yan's destiny, the fortune teller was astonished, saying that he was a divinely ordained child, and knelt down to pay homage. Sima Yan's father was overjoyed and had Sima Yan learn various arts and techniques from a young age.

A year later, in the Chu royal palace, a baby girl was born. At her birth, the sky was ablaze with color, cranes cried in unison in the palace pond, and the sounds of countless birds filled the air. Seeing this auspicious scene, the Chu king, a believer in spirits, believed it to be a divine gift and bestowed upon her the name Mi Ling. This Mi Ling is the owner of the ancient tomb we are in; as Chen Yi had previously speculated, she was a Chu princess of extremely high status.

The birth of these two people was like the myths we heard when we were young. Chen Yi and I had similar thoughts. He said that the ancients always mythologized things that could not be explained, which misled us.

That being said, there is one thing I am absolutely certain of: Mi Ling's abilities. Lan Quexi describes how, when Mi Ling was twelve years old, she returned to the Chu palace from Jia Zhui's place to visit her family. It just so happened that the King of Chu was undertaking a major construction project to build a detached palace. Mi Ling told her mother, "On the day my father started the construction, it was the end of the year, and he offended an evil spirit."

Her predictions were always very accurate. When her mother heard this, she knew something was wrong, but she was afraid that such words would bring trouble if she spoke them out, so she dared not speak them out. It wasn't until the people of Xingtu died one by one and the King of Chu fell ill and could not be cured for a long time that Mi Ling's mother carefully spread the news.

King Chu was already terminally ill. Upon hearing this, he immediately ordered his men to summon Mi Ling to his bedside and instructed his twelve-year-old daughter to find a way to exorcise the evil spirit. Mi Ling, who had been with Jia Zhui for five years, used her extraordinary talent to observe celestial phenomena through divination, determine the location of the evil spirit, and then had earthworks broken down to retrieve a writhing piece of flesh. The flesh resembled a twisted, distorted human face, frightening many who called it an ominous and disgusting sight. In fact, this piece of flesh is what we now consider a precious treasure, the Tai Sui, and what Qin Shi Huang regarded as an elixir of immortality.

The proverb says, "You can't disturb the Grand Duke Jupiter, or you'll suffer." But we 21st-century people don't believe in these things. But for the ancient Chu people thousands of years ago, it was a different story.

After Mi Ling ordered people to remove the Tai Sui, she held a sacrificial ceremony to completely dispel the evil. Keep in mind that she was only twelve years old at the time, while I was still in the fifth grade of elementary school.

A few days after the sacrificial ceremony, the King of Chu's illness gradually improved, and no more news of artisans dying emerged. From then on, Mi Ling's status was no longer that of an ordinary princess, but that of the highest priestess, controlling all the shamans.

The Siwu was in charge of sacrifices and praying for blessings... It was said to be a spiritual person who could be in sync with the heavens. One can imagine the status of this spiritual person in the Chu state at that time, where "sacrifices were held in high esteem, ghosts and gods were served, and blessings were sought."

However, Mi Ling, who had been treated inhumanely since childhood, was not happy about this. On the contrary, since the exorcism, she could not return to the mountains and fields to learn magic from Jia Zhui, and was instead imprisoned in the world where she lived for her country. She was lonely and depressed, and only two loyal maids could talk to her. Later, she gradually became fascinated with the music of the zither and found some happiness in it.

When Mi Ling was sixteen, parts of the Chu Kingdom suffered a severe drought. To pray for rain, she perfumed her fine clothes with incense and communicated with the gods through song and dance. This activity to entertain the gods is the huge, exquisite carving we see on the waterfall cliff.

After the rains fell, the King of Chu cherished his daughter, who possessed spiritual powers, even more. Little did he know that this very rain-seeking ceremony would lead Mi Ling to meet her beloved Wu Xia, thus beginning a tragic story...

Qingwu①: This refers to geomancy and feng shui, originating from the "Annals of Xuanyuan".