Chapter 49: Earthen Blend

"Stop, let me say something," Sister Red seemed to have recovered from her previous emotional state.

"The few of you scribbling and drawing around here is useless. Boss, let me ask you, what was the purpose of our coming down here?"

"To find Second Brother," the Boss replied very bluntly.

"And have we found him?"

The Boss shook his head despondently.

However, his expression changed instantly.

"We didn't find Second Brother, but we found this."

"Look," the Boss pulled half a cigarette butt out of his trouser pocket.

The cigarette butt was battered and worn, but the brand logo on it was still faintly visible.

"Five Golden Flowers." This was a pack of Five Golden Flowers cigarettes.

The Boss pointed to the cigarette butt in his hand and said, "Second Brother only smoked this brand of cigarettes. I checked beforehand; this brand isn't sold locally in Shunde. These Five Golden Flowers cigarettes are popular around the Beijing and Hebei regions and are basically never seen in the South. They belong to regional cigarettes."

I knew about this.

Back in those days, regional cigarettes were popular all over the northern regions, such as Guanting, Forty-Seven, Yingbin, Baishilin, Red Diamond Generation Two, Monkey King, Jasmine, Little Panda, and so on. Basically, each region had its own popular brand.

What I found strange was that earlier, the piece of clothing scavenged by the dwarf mountain ghoul contained half a pack of Five Golden Flowers cigarettes, which had been confiscated by Chen Jiansheng.

This cigarette was the same brand Second Brother often smoked, but that garment definitely did not belong to Old Second Sun. Old Second Sun was lean and thin, while that clothing was very baggy and completely mismatched.

Yet Chen Jiansheng had previously said that within their tomb-robbing gang, the Pot-Support Chen faction, someone had died, and Chen Jiansheng claimed that Five Golden Flowers was that person's favorite brand of cigarette during his lifetime.

If it were a coincidence, at least two people smoked this type of cigarette. That is to say, the cigarette butt the Boss picked up could not prove that Second Brother had been down here, let alone prove that he was still alive.

Looking at the Boss's hopeful eyes, I started to speak several times but stopped, unable to bear telling him the truth.

If they ultimately failed to find Second Brother, then until that moment, this worthless cigarette butt served as their spiritual sustenance and hope as brothers.

So, putting on a happy appearance, I feigned astonishment and said, "That's right, Big Brother! I know, Five Golden Flowers is the cigarette Second Brother usually smokes! He must have been here, and he's still alive, otherwise, he wouldn't be smoking!"

"That's right, that makes sense, I also think Second Brother is still alive," the Boss put the cigarette butt away, a glimmer of hope returning to his eyes.

Sister Red saw right through it but said nothing.

She changed the subject and asked, "We've told you about our encounters. What about yours?"

"Don't even mention it, it makes my blood boil just thinking about it. I told you before, to deal with special circumstances, I specifically brought four sticks of dynamite before coming down."

Sister Red was the team's logistics person and was quite familiar with these items.

Sister Red nodded: "Fire-dynamite, size 9.5. My men helped prepare it, of course I know about this."

"What, you've used them? How many sticks did you use?"

"Mhm, that's right," Third Brother nodded, "We used one. Thank goodness for this thing, otherwise, the Boss and I would be goners!"

"This is a long story that can't be explained in a sentence or two. I'll tell you about it when we have time. Right now, I'm taking you to a place. I think that place is related to the main tomb chamber."

"Yunfeng, how is your leg injury? Can you walk? Do you need me to carry you?"

Enduring the pain, I gritted my teeth and stood up.

"No need, Big Brother, I can manage on my own."

"Alright, that's the spirit of a man. I'll walk slower. If you can't keep up, remember to speak up anytime, don't push yourself."

I nodded.

The large tomb beneath Moth Mountain featured a structure of stone walls and underground palace styles on the upper levels, and underground cave structures on the lower levels. The foot of the mountain was riddled with underground rivers and hidden caves, a truly complex construction.

The Sun brothers' torches were homemade, burning mostly scraps of clothing and dry tree branches, which lacked strong endurance. The flame of the torch had already begun to dwindle.

Holding the torches and following the path along the edge of the pool, the Sun brothers led Sister Red and me to a specific location.

Upon arriving, we saw a Vajra wall before us, sealed entirely with blended *liuhe* earth. There were neither doors nor windows on the wall; it was simply a solid barrier.

*Liuhe* earth and Vajra walls were modern terms, much like white lime mud and cyan paste mud; ancient people did not use such terminology.

The tomb-robbing trade had its own secret slang.

Cyan with white brings wealth; three-blend earth buries the azure heaven; the Vajra wall cannot be breached.

The color of three-blend earth is milky white, and its ingredients include glutinous rice soup, clay, and nightsoil juice. Such earth lasts for a millennium without degrading, possessing extremely high hardness and stability while also resisting water seepage.

Beyond that, there were four-blend, five-blend, and supposedly even seven-blend earths, though no one had ever seen the latter.

The Boss recognizing the wall as *liuhe* earth at a glance actually had a rationale. Three-white, four-cyan, five-black, and six-yellow referred to the colors these mixed earths turned after solidifying.

As for the ingredients within the *liuhe* mix, the Boss said he could only guess at five of them.

Boy's urine, molten copper, clay, mulberry leaf powder, glutinous rice soup, and one other unknown material. Gathering these materials, undergoing repeated pounding and refining, mixing them together, and letting them air-dry produced *liuhe* earth.

In the past, let alone *liuhe* earth, even the cost of three-blend earth was extremely high. Each additional blend increased the hardness by a fraction, hence the ancient saying that a bowl of three-blend earth could be traded for a bowl of meat.

Walls cast from five-blend and *liuhe* earth were called Vajra walls. Officially speaking, a Vajra wall had only been discovered once, and that was a five-blend one, belonging to the Wanli Emperor of the Ming dynasty. Back then, opening that Vajra wall cost the archaeological team an immense amount of effort.

Sister Red tapped the dark yellow stone wall, frowning, "Third Brother, there's no way around this. A *liuhe*-yellow Vajra wall—nobody in the trade has ever heard of anyone encountering one. Normally, if someone in the trade runs into three-blend earth, they use alum flour soaked in vinegar, but you two didn't prepare either of those things, did you?"

"Could you possibly..." Sister Red's eyebrows suddenly arched.

The Boss's expression darkened as he said, "Back at Dingling, the coffin of the Wanli Emperor lay right behind the five-blend Vajra wall. We've come all this way, how could we be content without taking a look at the true master of this place?"

Sister Red looked up, furrowing her brow deeply as she said, "When all is said and done, we're still inside an underground palace. Two 9.5-caliber dynamite sticks pack quite a blast. Aren't you afraid of collapsing the underground palace and burying us all alive in here?"

"Of course we considered that. But look at it this way, Xiaohong, this underground palace hasn't collapsed in over two thousand years, which shows the structural quality is quite reliable. Third Brother and I still have confidence."

"Then suit yourselves." Seeing the Boss so determined, Sister Red finally nodded and said no more to dissuade them.

A *liuhe* earth Vajra wall existed precisely to block tomb robbers. If ancient tomb robbers encountered this, they almost always had to choose to detour. Any clever tricks, including crooked needles, were utterly useless. Even masters skilled in locating dragon veins and divining stellar positions were helpless here. To get inside, no matter who came, it was useless—only violent breaching would work.

Take the five-blend Vajra wall at Dingling back then, for instance. How was it opened?

The archaeological team paid to hire sixteen robust villagers, giving each a large sledgehammer and a pointed chisel, rotating shifts every two hours.

Eighty, eighty.

Sixteen grown men hammered away stubbornly for more than twenty days just to punch a hole through that wall.