Chapter 12 A Big Pit
The opportunity to change her destiny lies in her hands.
Bowls were one of the rewards Zhou Si received. In Zhou Si's kitchen, there were ten identical bowls, which meant that they could be displayed as a set of bowls.
Zhou Si said that this bowl was worth at most one penny. That was in 1587. More than four hundred years later, ten Ming Dynasty bowls would be worth at least a small fortune.
Su Luo is a skeptic and sometimes an idealist, at least she firmly believes in the ideas that come to her mind.
It is worth mentioning here the value of Ming Dynasty porcelain. It is well known that Ming Dynasty porcelain is valuable, but that refers to the official kilns, which are top-quality products selected from a thousand or one out of ten and then presented to the imperial palace. Of course, there are also top-quality products in folk kilns, but these bowls made by porcelain apprentices are obviously not of high enough quality. Su Luo did not know this because she was not an archaeologist and her understanding of antiques was limited to the treasure appraisal program on CCTV-2. In her mind, Ming porcelain equals huge sums of money.
So her blood boiled, and her mind was full of thoughts of her younger self receiving an ancient letter that was passed down from generation to generation more than 400 years later, telling her that in a small village in central Henan Province, a batch of gifts from 400 years ago were buried somewhere , which could change her current situation and her future. In this way, Su Luo was completely immersed in her own imagination, completely ignoring the feasibility of how point A could reach point B, and on that dark and windy night, she stole the batch of "nested bowls" from the Zhou family.
She would pay Zhou Si, she thought as she took the bowl.
After that day, Su Luo became very busy. She was busy checking the terrain everywhere. After a few days of reconnaissance, she decided that the treasure was hidden in a barren mountain not far from the village. It was sparsely populated and the terrain was conducive to identification by future generations.
Just like that, in the early morning when everyone in the village was still asleep , Su Luo set out, carrying a hoe he had borrowed from Zhou's house, a set of bowls in a small wooden box on his back, and two sweet potatoes for lunch.
When she arrived at the foot of the mountain, she first identified the direction, then counted her steps and walked up the mountain. It was not yet daylight, and the mountain was unusually quiet. Su Luo should have been afraid, but she had a passion in her heart. In order to improve her family life four hundred years later, and to change the way a mother and daughter would live and get along in the future, she put her fear behind her and sang "I Walk Alone on a Small Road in the Suburbs" with big strides... to give herself courage.
It turned out that this trick didn't work very well. The more Su Luo sang, the more scared he became. He almost forgot the number of steps he had taken. He stopped when he reached an integer and didn't care anymore. That was it.
Hoeing the ground was a new sport and a little difficult for Su Luo because she not only had to hoe, but also dig.
The soil in early spring had not yet fully recovered, which made her digging work very inconvenient. She dug and dug, but after half a day she only dug a small pit not much bigger than a washbasin, which was obviously not good enough. She sat down by the pit, holding her chin in her hand and thinking. She didn't want to give up, but she finally thought of a more serious problem.
For example, she could write a letter to her descendants, telling them to pass it down from generation to generation, and finally give it to a little girl with the same name as herself in a certain city in a certain year. But what ? What’s worse, what if her family line is broken? What if she can’t get married in this era and has no descendants at all?
The more she thought about it, the less feasible it seemed. In fact, this was a good opportunity to face the facts. Su Luo should stop and thoroughly reflect on her idealism. But if she knew how to give up, she would not be Su Luo anymore, so she decided not to give up.
No matter what the future holds, no matter what the process is, or even what the result is, none of this matters. What matters is how she does it and whether she does it or not.
The sun rose at this time, and the first ray of sunlight shone on Su Luo's face. She looked up at the sun, thanking it for driving away her fear of the surrounding environment, and then continued her work.
Digging and digging, Su Luo sang "We workers have strength" loudly, full of energy. But digging a pit was much more difficult than she imagined, because not only did she have to dig, but she also had to remove the soil from the pit, which undoubtedly slowed down the progress of the project. By the time the sun went down, she had only dug a pit that was not even knee-deep.
This depth is far from enough. We have to dig more than ten meters underground and bury it deeply to prevent the treasure from being exposed due to changes in the surface environment.
So Su Luo went down the mountain again with the bowl on his back. Before going home, he sneaked to the top of Zhou's wall to take a look to see if there were any tools like shovels, as hoes were not suitable for digging deep pits. Unfortunately, he didn't see any, so he only took a rattan basket on the wall to carry soil.
Just like that, the next day, the day after that... Su Yi asked twice, and Su Luo said that she went outing. Su Yi was depressed. Why did she take a hoe for outing? And she took someone else's hoe.
Fortunately, he believed everything, especially what his sister said, so he no longer asked questions. He got up early every day to make breakfast for Su Luo and packed two sweet potatoes for her lunch.
With the support of her family, Su Luo became more motivated. She finally found a goal for herself temporarily, digging a hole. With a goal, life will have motivation.
Since Su Luo's main work was done in the pit, in order to have room for activities, the area of the pit became larger and deeper. Although she was so tired that she fell asleep as soon as she got home every day, she felt extremely satisfied when she thought about her happy life in another time and space. However, she soon discovered a problem. She had originally planned to dig ten meters, but she forgot how to get out of the pit after digging. When she dug one and a half meters, she had difficulty getting out of the pit.
So one night, a family surnamed Zhou in the village lost another ladder used to repair the roof.
It took half a day to carry the two-meter-high ladder up the mountain. Su Luo felt that he had the potential to challenge the limits of sports. Digging ten meters was impossible, so he just dug as deep as possible.
Fifteen days, a two-meter-deep pit, sore muscles, and hands full of blisters.
When Su Luo placed the box of bowls in the middle of the bottom of the pit, thinking about everything she expected to happen, she felt it was worth it.
The incident happened before she sealed the pit. She was using a ladder to climb out. When the ladder leg touched a certain place at the bottom of the pit, there was a very dull sound, "bang!"
Su Luo stared at the bottom of the pit for about ten minutes, then used his hands and feet to dig another small hole in the big pit.
It was a box, not big but very heavy, estimated by hand to weigh about 50 to 60 kilograms.
