Daomu Biji: Restart

Last words?

I frowned, thinking that it really did make sense.

The overall tone of these last words did seem to be kind of desperate. After careful consideration, it seemed that someone had made up his mind to enter this hole, even after knowing what would happen when he did.

I translated this seal script using the interpretations I was accustomed to. It got the general idea across, but ancient words often had different meanings compared to their modern counterparts. It suddenly dawned on me that I had forgotten to look at the grammar from an empiricist (1) perspective.

Never see the light of day… in modern Chinese, it meant that the present situation was hopeless and there was no chance of being saved. This idiom began to have symbolic meaning in the Song Dynasty, but if the words were carved before that, then it should be a literal translation.

“Can’t see the sky or the sun.”

I looked at Fatty, "Is it—will we go blind?"

Fatty touched his chin, thinking that it was starting to make more sense now.

If entering the hole was fatal, then doing so was tantamount to suicide. But why not use a simpler suicide method like beating your head in or something? Based on this stone tablet’s text, entering the hole was very dangerous. But the words on the suicide note were also full of despair, which indicated that the person who carved them was in a state of panic and couldn’t do anything.

Why?

I thought about it from beginning to end. First, this was an abandoned tomb passage. When the ancient tomb was being built, someone dug a hole in the rock stratum.

Generally, the construction workers would dig down directly and shovel the hole off, since holes were so common in rock strata.

But for some unknown reason, these workers abandoned the tomb passage and resumed construction in another area.

Because of that, we could be sure that something strange happened in the hole after it was dug. It was so strange, in fact, that all craftsmen didn’t dare shovel it off and chose to avoid it instead.

But they didn’t leave the area. Instead, they started digging the tomb passage again under the abandoned passage.

This behavior was really very strange. If there was something dangerous or taboo in the hole, then the tomb definitely wouldn’t have been built here. But the craftsmen had just decided to dig a little lower instead.

I told Fatty my theory that there was an expert among the craftsmen who knew what the hole was. When they dug it, the expert knew that it would be dangerous to continue digging, so he stopped the craftsmen. But the expert also knew that the hole wasn’t dangerous so long as it remained unexcavated.

After choosing another location for the tomb passage, the tomb was successfully completed and the burial proceeded as usual.

Assuming that there were tribes in Minyue who still did burial sacrifices, was this person going to be sacrificed in the tomb? In order to escape, did he venture into the hole?

I immediately rejected this theory. First, it was obvious that the person who left the words behind knew what would happen when he entered the hole. That was why he sounded so desperate. Second, slaves who acted as burial sacrifices were usually poisoned first so that they wouldn’t destroy the tomb. Moreover, seal script wasn’t something that slaves would know.

The person most likely to leave this kind of writing was a grave robber who got trapped here. In order to find an exit, they let their companion enter the hole first. But then their companion had an accident. Under the crushing despair and loneliness, they also chose to enter the hole.

Uncle Three and the others entered this ancient tomb, but Poker-Face said they probably stole the sarcophagus directly from the back chamber. That meant they had probably never entered the same area as us.

So, it shouldn’t be Uncle Three, but someone in the same situation as us.

Fatty looked inside the hole and saw that the glow stick was getting dimmer. He took out a pack of cigarettes, but there was only one left. He tapped on it as he looked back and suddenly stood up.

"Stop guessing."

We followed his line of sight and saw that the hole in the floor where we had come up earlier was gone. At some point, a rock wall had magically appeared in its place. It was blocking the view and the way out.

****

TN Notes:

(1) Empiricism is a philosophical theory that states that knowledge comes only or primarily from sensory experience (like you learn stuff from sight, taste, touch, smell). More info here.