Chapter Four 2
Unable to find any valuable cultural relics, Pu Jianyilang began to become unscrupulous. He even ordered the Chamber of Commerce in Qingzhou City to collect cultural relics for him. Each merchant had to hand in three to five pieces, otherwise he would be treated as "collaborating with the Eighth Route Army."
The captain of the puppet army security battalion stationed in Qingzhou City was named Zhu Guangwen. This guy was from Linzi, and his hometown was at the junction of Qingzhou and Linzi, very close to Miaozi Town, the westernmost town of Qingzhou. Miaozi Town was close to Wangfen Town, where the Mausoleum of King Heng was located. Therefore, Zhu Guangwen was very familiar with the legend of the Mausoleum of King Heng.
One day, in order to win Pu Jianyilang's appreciation, Zhu Guangwen came to Pu Jianyilang's residence and prepared to tell him about the situation of King Heng's Mausoleum.
Pu Jianyilang lived in the famous Ou Garden in Qingzhou City. It was the private garden of Feng Pu, a scholar of Wenhua Palace during the reign of Emperor Kangxi of the Qing Dynasty. In Ou Garden, there are small bridges and flowing water, lush flowers and trees, pavilions and towers, and various buildings are simple and elegant.
After the Japanese army occupied Qingzhou, Pu Jianichiro came to visit Ouyuan and immediately fell in love with it. He then occupied Ouyuan and lived there as his own residence.
Ouyuan was rebuilt from the East Garden of the Prince Heng's Palace in the Ming Dynasty. Emperor Zhu Jianshen of the Ming Dynasty named his seventh son Zhu Youji as Prince Heng, and he was enfeoffed in Qingzhou in the 12th year of Emperor Hongzhi of the Ming Dynasty. Prince Heng built a magnificent palace in Qingzhou in the style of the Forbidden City in Beijing, and also built a garden outside Donghua Gate, named East Garden. The layout and scale of the entire East Garden are similar to the Imperial Garden in the palace. All the facilities in the Imperial Garden are also available here, but the scale is slightly smaller.
The Hengwang passed down the throne to seven princes in Qingzhou for six generations. The Hengwang Mansion was abolished in the second year of Shunzhi. The entire mansion no longer exists. Now only two stone archways remain in the street garden on the west side of Linglongshan South Road. The stone archways face north and south, and are all four-pillar, three-door archway structures. Each stone archway is more than 11 meters wide from east to west and more than 7 meters high. The two archways are 43 meters apart, with the same architectural style and size, and are all composed of 28 huge stones. Over the years, the stones have turned into an old gray color, full of the vicissitudes of time, and you can tell at a glance that they have a history. The large archway in front of the main gate of the Hengwang Mansion was formerly called the "Wuchao Gate". The Hengwang Mansion took this as the central axis and was symmetrical on the left and right. The momentum of the palace in those days can be seen from the archway.
About 180 years later, Feng Pu, the Grand Secretary of Wenhua Palace and the Prince's Tutor of the Qing Dynasty, presented his Wanliutang in Beijing to the Emperor before he retired and returned to his hometown. Emperor Kangxi then gave him the East Garden of the former Prince Heng's Palace. Feng Pu renovated and rebuilt the East Garden and named it "Ouyuan", which means "nothing is unique".
The most famous things in Ou Garden are the Three Peaks Rockery and the Four Strange Rocks. The Three Peaks Rockery was designed and supervised by Zhang Nanyuan, a famous stone stacker in the late Ming and early Qing dynasties. It is the only well-preserved man-made rockery in the Kangxi style in my country. It condenses the beautiful mountains and rivers of Kyushu, with jagged stone peaks, scattered pavilions, winding streams, high waterfalls and deep pools. It has extremely high artistic and historical value and is known as a national treasure.
In addition to the three-peak rockery, there are four ancient strange stones in the Ou Garden. These four ancient strange stones are all wrinkled, ugly, leaky, transparent, and thin. They are graceful, upright and beautiful, and contain the charm of calligraphy and seal carving. If you look at them from different positions, they are similar in both shape and spirit to the four traditional Chinese characters "福", "寿", "康", and "宁". You will never get tired of looking at them. There is a saying that "one ounce of stone is worth one ounce of silver". They are truly priceless treasures.
How could Pu Jianyilang, who was well versed in Chinese culture, not like such an exquisite Ou Garden? He even wanted to move the entire Ou Garden to Japan and make it his own.
When Zhu Guangwen arrived at Ouyuan, Pu Jianyilang was drinking tea in Songfeng Pavilion, one of the three pavilions in Ouyuan. Pu Jianyilang, dressed in a kimono and wearing a pair of gold-rimmed glasses, looked more like a scholar, making it difficult to associate him with a murderous demon.
Seeing Zhu Guangwen coming in, Pu Jianyilang, who was kneeling on the tatami, immediately waved to him and said with a smile in fluent Chinese: "Mr. Zhu, come here, I just made a pot of good tea, let's taste it together..." He was used to calling Zhu Guangwen "Mr. Zhu".
"Hai, thank you, Colonel."
Zhu Guangwen agreed, took off his big boots, then walked to the coffee table and sat cross-legged opposite Pu Jianyilang.
Pu Jianyilang picked up the teapot and poured tea into the tea bowl while saying, "Your Chinese tea culture is no longer popular. Our Japanese tea ceremony is the most authentic..."
"Yes... yes... the colonel is right..." Zhu Guangwen nodded and bowed in agreement. At the same time, he held up the tea bowl with both hands and took a sip. Before he could taste it, he kept saying, "Good tea, really good tea."
Pu Jianyilang also picked up the tea bowl and took a sip, then asked slowly, "What did Zhu-san come here for today?"
Zhu Guangwen leaned forward, with a mysterious expression on his face, and whispered, "Your Excellency the Colonel is quite knowledgeable about ancient music. I wonder if you have heard of the Four Wang Qin from the Ming Dynasty in China?"
Pu Jianyilang shook his head and said, "I have heard of the four great guqins of China, Haozhong, Raoliang, Luqi and Jiaowei, but I have never heard of the Four Wang Guqins of the Ming Dynasty."
Zhu Guangwen gave Pu Jianyilang a thumbs up and praised him, "Your Excellency is really knowledgeable. Even many Chinese people don't know about these four ancient guqins... In fact, these four ancient guqins are just more famous. In terms of sound quality, they are far inferior to the four Wang guqins of the Ming Dynasty..."
"Oh! Please tell me about Wang Qin of the Ming Dynasty as soon as possible, Mr. Zhu." Pu Jianyilang said with great interest.
"The Four Prince Qins of the Ming Dynasty are the Prince Heng Qin, the Prince Ning Qin, the Prince Yi Qin and the Prince Lu Qin. Among the four, the Prince Heng Qin is the most precious. It was made by Prince Heng Zhu Youji himself. To be honest, the value of the Prince Heng Qin is inestimable..."
Pu Jianyilang straightened up immediately, with a greedy look behind his glasses. He interrupted Zhu Guangwen before he finished speaking: "Mr. Zhu, tell me where Heng Wangqin is?"
Zhu Guangwen smiled and said mysteriously: "It is far away in the sky and close at hand."
"What do you mean?" Pu Jianyilang asked in confusion.
"Haha... The place where Your Excellency the Colonel lives now is the East Garden of the former Prince Heng's Mansion, so it is naturally not too far from Prince Heng's Qin."
Pu Jianyilang asked with surprise, "So the Hengwangqin is hidden in Qingzhou City?"
Zhu Guangwen waved his hand gently and said, "No, it's not in Qingzhou City, but it's not far from Qingzhou City. Have you heard of the king's tomb 50 kilometers southwest of the city?"
Pu Jianyilang immediately understood what Zhu Guangwen meant and asked with a smile, "Mr. Zhu, are you saying that the Hengwang Qin is in the Hengwang Mausoleum?"
Zhu Guangwen nodded repeatedly: "Yes, it is said that the Hengwang Mausoleum not only contains this priceless Hengwang Qin, but also contains many other good things. It can be said that it is no worse than the old emperor's mausoleum. There are many treasures and several carriages..."
"Oh! Is this true?" Pu Jianyilang immediately widened his eyes, as if his eyeballs were about to pop out.
"Of course it's true. The people in Qingzhou City all know that the Prince Heng's Palace was built based on the model of the Beijing Imperial Palace. Do you think the Prince Heng's mausoleum can be worse than the emperor's mausoleum? You know that the Chinese are most particular about lavish burials. It is said that the construction of the Prince Heng's mausoleum and the Prince Heng's Palace began at the same time, and it took more than ten years. How could there be few good things inside?"
Pu Jianyilang nodded and said thoughtfully: "Yes , Qingzhou Prefecture is a large county that governs seven states and thirty-eight counties. Its economic strength is similar to that of a small country. The burial objects of King Heng must be very rich..."
At this point, Pu Jianyilang suddenly stared at Zhu Guangwen and asked, "Mr. Zhu, why didn't you tell me such important news earlier?"
Zhu Guangwen was shocked, thinking that Pu Jianyilang was really an evil wolf that could never be satisfied, and he turned his face away from him. He quickly said with a smile, "I just thought of this recently. You have been asking us to collect antiques, but the brothers below have only found some worthless junk. A few days ago, I suddenly remembered that if we can dig up the Hengwang Mausoleum and take out the things inside for His Excellency the Colonel, wouldn't it save the brothers from being embarrassed?"
"Haha... Very good, Zhu Sang, you are a great friend. If this matter is accomplished, I will reward you greatly..." Pu Jianyilang paused for a moment, "Also... Regarding the Hengwang Mausoleum... Zhu Sang, do you know its exact location?"
"Yes, it's at the foot of a mountain called Sanyang Mountain near Wangfen. Many local people know about it. We can just take the engineers over there and blow up the tomb."
Pu Jianyilang felt that the matter was not as simple as Zhu Guangwen said. If it was true, the tomb must have been visited by tomb robbers. He shook his head and said, "Based on my research on the Chinese, the tomb you mentioned is most likely not the real Hengwang Tomb."
"Oh? How do you know, Colonel, that this is not the real tomb of King Heng?" Zhu Guangwen asked in surprise.
Pu Jianyilang waved his hand without explaining: "Let's go to Wangfen Town secretly tomorrow and investigate the situation there first."
Zhu Guangwen asked immediately, "Should we bring more troops? There are local Eighth Route Army soldiers active in the mountains over there."
"No, if we have too many people, it will be easy to be exposed. If the Tubalu know our purpose, it will be difficult to deal with. So we should take two people and disguise ourselves as vendors and go into the mountains."
"Okay, I'll get ready right away..."
Zhu Guangwen said this as he stood up and prepared to leave.
"Mr. Zhu, the fewer people who know about this, the better. Do you understand?" Pu Jianyilang reminded him again.
"Hayi, I understand!"
Zhu Guangwen stood at attention and agreed, then turned and walked to the door, put on his shiny black boots and left Ou Garden.