Chapter 25: Ghostly Wall (Part 2)
“Xiaoxiao, you sit in front, Brother Gang sits in the back.”
Before getting into the car, Su Xiaofan rearranged the seating. He was not at ease letting his little sister squeeze into the back seat alone with two men.
It seemed that Wu Chuanbao and Wu Chuanpeng had not yet fully recovered from the fright of the ghostly wall. After getting into the car, they remained silent, their bodies trembling faintly, and both of their faces were somewhat bluish.
“Strange, it’s not even rainy weather, so how come there’s fog in so many places.”
On the road to the town, Su Xiaofan saw fog rising from quite a few fields, gathering in clumps that refused to disperse.
“That……that’s ghost fog!”
Hearing Su Xiaofan, Wu Chuanbao in the back seat could not help shivering, and his body trembled even more violently.
“What ghost fog.”
Su Xiaofan curled his lip and said: “The countryside is open terrain. It’s just water vapor condensing together at night, that’s all. Big brother……it’s the middle of the night, don’t scare yourself.”
“It really was ghost fog. Lao Wu and I were trapped there for four or five hours.”
Wu Chuanbao said with a mournful expression. He had been in the tomb-raiding business for more than twenty years. Although he had later been responsible for selling stolen artifacts, in the early days Wu Chuanbao had also gone into tombs and stripped clothes from corpses, so he was not timid. But this time, he had genuinely been frightened.
“By the way, what happened to you two, and what did you come here for? Brother Gang, give them a bottle of water to drink……”
Su Xiaofan did not argue with them. This was just like the old saying, if you believe, it exists; if you don’t, it doesn’t. The two brothers had already been scared into this state, so no matter what he said, they would not believe him.
“Th……thank you.” The two brothers seemed extremely thirsty. They took the water Zheng Dagang handed over and gulped it down, while Wu Chuanpeng choked and coughed for quite a while.
“Actually, we’re in the same line of work. We came to various villages because we wanted to buy some antiques.”
After finishing a bottle of water, the expressions of Wu Chuanbao and Wu Chuanpeng relaxed somewhat, and they simultaneously made up an identity for themselves.
“Hehe, I really couldn’t tell. Fellow tradesmen, good, fellow tradesmen, good. Go on.”
Zheng Dagang smiled when he heard this. He and Su Xiaofan had long since seen what these two brothers really were, but every snake has its own path and every rat its own way; people who follow different paths have no reason to work together. There was no need to expose them.
“Your Bronze Ware Village isn’t very welcoming to antique dealers like us, so we went to Zhou Family Village……” Wu Chuanbao began to explain.
It turned out that after leaving Bronze Ware Village at noon, the two brothers Wu Chuanbao and Wu Chuanpeng had wandered around other villages. They claimed to be buying antiques, but in reality they were also scouting the area, seeing which villages had fewer people and more open land nearby, making it convenient for them to rob tombs there later.
By evening, the two brothers were both tired and exhausted, so they bought some cooked food at a small supermarket in nearby Zhou Family Village, and each had two bottles of beer.
They had not drunk much. When they left Zhou Family Village, it was not yet completely dark. According to Wu Chuanbao’s estimate, they should have been able to reach the town and find a place to stay by seven or eight in the evening.
But what they had not expected was that, after walking less than two li from Zhou Family Village, they became trapped in that threshing ground.
When they saw the fog, they did not pay much attention to it. Fog was a normal occurrence in the countryside. When they came into contact with it, they only felt a little cold and assumed that the temperature had dropped at night.
Wu Chuanbao could not clearly describe what he had felt. At first, when he and Wu Chuanpeng walked into the fog, neither noticed anything wrong and they had always thought they were simply walking normally.
But as time passed, the two realized there was a problem. Walking from Zhou Family Village to the town should have taken at most thirty or forty minutes, but they had walked for a full three or four hours and still had not arrived.
By then, their consciousness was already somewhat unclear. Their minds desperately focused on getting out, but the more panicked they became, the more confused they got. Even after walking until they were utterly exhausted, the two were still going around in circles in the same place.
The brothers also knew that they had encountered a ghostly wall. As the saying goes, if you have done nothing wrong, you need not fear ghosts knocking at your door. If they had been ordinary people, perhaps it would have been somewhat better.
But these two did not know how many tombs they had robbed or how many guilty deeds they had committed, so they became all the more frightened.
If they had not encountered Su Xiaofan and the others, the two might have kept walking until dawn. By then, even if they did not die, it would have cost them half their lives.
“You two, you’ve been looking for me all this time. What exactly do you mean by it?”
After hearing their explanation, Su Xiaofan spoke up. This time they had seen Su Xiaoxiao, which made Su Xiaofan somewhat wary. He knew that these people had no bottom line when it came to what they did. If he did not resolve this matter, he did not know what trouble might arise in the future.
“That thing was a willing buyer and a willing seller. It’s not like I cheated you, right? And if it really was a Han Dynasty bronze artifact, would it have sold for only eight thousand yuan?” Su Xiaofan had thought it was about that bronze artifact, and that Wu Chuanbao had been resentful over it and come looking for trouble.
“It has nothing to do with those eight thousand yuan. Even if it did, today’s matter was all thanks to you, so we’ll let it go……”
Wu Chuanbao sighed and said: “It’s like this. I have an old client who wants the genuine version of that Daisheng bronze artifact. I figured that since you could make a replica, you must have made it by referring to the genuine piece, so I wanted to ask you whether the genuine one was for sale?”
Wu Chuanbao was quite crafty. He did not ask Su Xiaofan whether he had the genuine piece, but directly asked whether it was for sale.
Because if he asked Su Xiaofan whether he had the genuine piece and the other party did not want to sell it, he could simply say no, which would make it difficult for Wu Chuanbao to judge.
But if he directly asked whether it was for sale, if Su Xiaofan had the genuine piece, he would usually instinctively answer that it was not for sale. That would confirm that the item was in Su Xiaofan’s hands, and Wu Chuanbao could then think of another way to get it.
“Big brother, I really don’t have the genuine version of that thing.”
Su Xiaofan had not thought that much about it. He said with a wry smile: “I found an internal museum catalog in the village and made it according to the catalog. This thing was unearthed more than twenty years ago and was taken into a museum long ago. Where would I find the genuine piece for you?”
What Su Xiaofan said was the truth. Many years ago, a group of tombs had been unearthed beside Bronze Ware Village. As an expert in bronze artifact replicas who also knew something about cultural relics, Sixth Grandpa had been recruited into the archaeological team at the time, leading a group of villagers to help the archaeological team excavate the tomb complex.
Unearthed cultural relics had to be numbered, and the records had to be extremely detailed. Even a single nail had to be recorded. At the time, the excavation, organization, and recording of the bronze artifacts had been entrusted to Bronze Ware Village’s Sixth Grandpa.
Back then, photographs were still taken with film. Out of his love for bronze artifacts, Sixth Grandpa bought film at his own expense and borrowed the archaeological team’s camera, photographing each of the hundreds of bronze artifacts unearthed at the time.
According to archaeological regulations, these photographs could not be kept privately. Even though Sixth Grandpa had paid for the film himself, both the photographs and negatives had to be handed over.
The person in charge of the archaeological team at the time was also an archaeology professor at Yanjing University, and he had a good personal relationship with Sixth Grandpa. Knowing that Sixth Grandpa wanted to replicate these bronze artifacts and needed photographs for reference, he came up with a solution.
The professor submitted a report to the higher authorities, proposing that this archaeological excavation was of great significance and that, based on photographs taken at the site, a catalog of the bronze artifacts and unearthed cultural relics should be compiled, preserving first-hand materials for later researchers to consult.
The Yanjing professor’s report was reasonable and appropriate, and it was quickly approved. Thus, an internal-reference catalog was produced.
As a member of the archaeological team, Sixth Grandpa naturally qualified to receive the internal-reference catalog. The catalog was left in Bronze Ware Village, and the professor also gave Sixth Grandpa quite a few ancient formulas and technical materials concerning the casting of bronze artifacts.
It was precisely because of this catalog and those materials that Bronze Ware Village’s bronze artifact replication techniques later advanced by leaps and bounds, giving it the reputation of being the Number One Village for Bronze Artifacts.
“So that’s how it was……”
After hearing Su Xiaofan’s explanation, Wu Chuanbao was somewhat dumbfounded. It seemed that they would not be able to earn that one million from Xiangjiang after all.
If the item had been in Su Xiaofan’s hands or in Bronze Ware Village, he could still have thought of some crooked ways to get it. But if it was in a national museum, he could only give up on the idea.
“Although I made that thing myself, the craftsmanship alone is worth several thousand yuan. You didn’t lose out by buying it.”
Su Xiaofan genuinely wanted to resolve the matter. Having these people keep an eye on him would sooner or later cause trouble. “If you don’t want it, bring it back and I’ll refund your eight thousand yuan.”
“Forget it. You two saved our lives today, so we’re even.”
Wu Chuanbao shook his head, glanced out the window, and said: “We’re at the town. Let us off here.”
“Okay, until we meet again.” Su Xiaofan pulled over to the side of the road. When he saw Wu Chuanbao getting out of the car, his body was still trembling a little, and suddenly an idea occurred to him.
“Hey, wait.”
Su Xiaofan pushed open the car door and called out to Wu Chuanbao.
“I see that both of you have dark circles around your eyes and bluish complexions. Around here, that’s a sign of being possessed……”
Su Xiaofan paused, pointed at Wu Chuanpeng, lowered his voice a little, and said: “When I brought you out of the fog from the ghostly wall just now, I noticed that all the fog had been sucked into this big brother’s body. I’m afraid something might still happen to you.”
“What?” Hearing Su Xiaofan, Wu Chuanpeng’s already bluish face instantly turned deathly pale. Su Xiaofan had scared him.
“Lao Wu, do you have anything on you?” Wu Chuanbao frowned.
“No!”
Wu Chuanpeng almost burst into tears. Suddenly remembering something, he took a thumb-sized, pitch-black stone from his pocket and said: “Second brother, this is something I got from underground last time. It’s been hot these past few days, and I felt that it was quite cool to hold, so I’ve been carrying it with me.”
“You idiot, how can you just carry something from down there on your body?”
Wu Chuanbao was nearly furious enough to die because of his fifth brother. He slapped Wu Chuanpeng’s hand, knocking the stone away.
Anything brought up from underground had to be handed over to Wu Chuanbao, so Wu Chuanbao knew about this stone. It felt somewhat cold and eerie to the touch.
After bringing it up, they would find some experts to identify it. When the expert saw this small stone, he said it was just an ordinary black stone, not even jade, merely somewhat cool and yin in nature.
At the time, Wu Chuanbao had taken the stone back along with some other cultural relics. While sorting them at home, he casually tossed the stone into the room, never expecting Wu Chuanpeng to have slipped it into his pocket and carried it around.
“Some things can get people killed. All right, we’ll be going first……”
Su Xiaofan said casually, his eyes seemingly glancing at the roadside, and after exchanging a greeting with Wu Chuanbao, he opened the car door and got back into the vehicle.
Su Xiaofan was not driving very fast. He kept watching the two men through the rearview mirror. Only after their figures disappeared around a bend did Su Xiaofan suddenly slam on the brakes.
(End of Chapter)
Comments
Post a Comment