Chapter two 1
Mu Linfeng's decisive answer made Professor Dongfang very happy. The professor knew that he had not misjudged the person and a satisfied smile appeared on his face.
Professor Dongfang looked at his watch and found that it was already past six in the morning. He had been talking all night without realizing it, so he said to Mu Linfeng, "All personnel matters are handled by Director Wang Zhao. Director Wang will make detailed arrangements for your specific work. It's already daybreak outside. We are all tired. It's time to take a break. Let's have breakfast first, and then take a nap."
After hearing what the professor said, Ling Xiao walked to the window and pulled open the light-proof curtains. The dazzling light immediately shone in, making the people in the conference room feel a little uncomfortable.
Seeing that it was already dawn, Mu Linfeng hurriedly took out his cell phone and said anxiously: "Oh no, oh no, I have to go to work before six o'clock, I have to ask for leave quickly, otherwise it will be considered as absenteeism, and I will lose this month's performance-based salary..."
Mu Linfeng's words made Professor Dongfang and Wang Zhao laugh again. They looked at each other at the same time. Mu Linfeng's honesty made them feel at ease.
After a few people went to the cafeteria to have breakfast, Ling Xiao took Mu Linfeng to a guest room on the third floor to rest. The two were only a few years apart in age and quickly became familiar with each other. Mu Linfeng also learned some information about the research group from Ling Xiao.
The research team has less than ten people in total, and they have been traveling around the country. They only came to Qingdao half a year ago after the research results came out. Ling Xiao also told Mu Linfeng that the research results of the research team are still confidential because they found that strangers were following the research team and wanted to steal the research results. That's why they moved into the navy barracks, and the National Security Bureau sent personnel to be responsible for the safety of the research team.
After Ling Xiao left, Mu Linfeng tossed and turned in bed, unable to sleep. The things the professor had said kept appearing in his mind. He never dreamed that the "Emperor's Burial Mountain Map" handed down in his family would be connected with so many stories. However, he had no idea whether he could find the "Emperor's Burial Mountain Map".
The Mu family's tomb-viewing skills were very strict, not only were they passed down to males but not females, but they were also passed down only to the eldest son, which meant that only one person in a generation could master the tomb-viewing skills and the "Emperor's Burial Mountain Map". From the great-grandfather to Mu Linfeng, four generations had been passed down by a single person, there was only one male in the family, and the previous three generations had mysteriously disappeared.
Mu Linfeng's great-grandfather, grandfather, and his father disappeared one after another. People in the village said that the Mu family had become immortals, so they left home. Of course, some people said very ugly things. The disappearance of his great-grandfather was widely spread in the village and even in Qingzhou City. People still often talk about his great-grandfather's story because his great-grandfather disappeared with a group of Japanese soldiers. The people regarded his great-grandfather as a hero.
Mu Linfeng fell asleep in a daze while daydreaming, and he didn't know how long he slept. In his dream, Mu Linfeng felt someone calling him. He jumped up and saw Ling Xiao standing in front of the bed, looking at him with a smile.
The light in the room was a little dim, and he didn't know what time it was. Mu Linfeng asked blankly, "What time is it?"
"It's time for dinner. You've been sleeping for almost a whole day. I didn't wake you up because you were sleeping so soundly."
Mu Linfeng hurriedly got out of bed, went to the bathroom to wash his face, and took care of his personal problems. After coming out, Ling Xiao said to him, "I will accompany you for dinner first, and then Director Wang and Director Li will talk to you about work. In addition, we will send you back to Qingzhou tonight."
"Oh, who is Director Li?" Mu Linfeng asked while putting on his coat.
"It's Li Jianping who came to pick you up. He's the director of a department in the National Security Bureau and is specifically responsible for the security of the research team."
"The National Security Bureau mainly targets espionage cases. Could it be that foreign spy organizations are really eyeing the research results of the research team?" Mu Linfeng asked with some disbelief. In the minds of ordinary people, spies seem to be something very far away from them.
Ling Xiao nodded: "Director Li will introduce the details to you, let's go eat first."
It's pretty good to live in the army. Food and accommodation are very convenient. After having dinner in the cafeteria, Ling Xiao took Mu Linfeng to the small meeting room where they had talked last night.
Mu Linfeng waited in the conference room for a few minutes, and Wang Zhao and Li Jianping walked in together. Wang Zhao greeted Mu Linfeng with a smile: "How was your rest?"
Mu Linfeng smiled and said, "It was just like being at home. I felt very at home in the military camp, so I slept very soundly."
"Haha... everyone who has served in the army has this feeling when they return to the barracks." Li Jianping also said with a smile.
Wang Zhao continued, "Comrade Lin Feng, I have to send you back tonight, so I won't waste time on small talk. Let's focus on discussing the work ahead. What do you think?"
Mu Linfeng nodded without saying anything. He wanted to hear how the research team would arrange his work.
Li Jianping spoke first: "According to the information we have, a research institute controlled by a Western country has joined forces with a notorious cultural relic smuggling group in the world to find You Houxi's tomb before us. There are many world-class tomb robbers in this cultural relic smuggling group, one of whom is Chinese. We only know that this person's surname is Ma, and he comes from a tomb-robbing family. Before liberation, his family moved abroad. According to intelligence, this person has sneaked into the country, and his target is your Mu family's "Imperial Burial Mountain Map"..."
In order to make Mu Linfeng realize the seriousness of the problem, Li Jianping paused for a moment before continuing, "That's why we brought you here secretly. We've studied it beforehand and we must not let the other party know that we have been in contact with you. This will make it easier for you to carry out your work later and it's also for your safety. We think it's best to search secretly in the early stages, so that you are in the light and we are in the dark, and it's also easier to understand the situation around you."
Wang Zhao then said to Mu Linfeng: "We have reported your situation to our superiors. It is up to you to decide how to find the "Emperor Burial Mountain Map". The organization will arrange your identity, salary and other issues, so please rest assured. Because your task is not only to find the "Emperor Burial Mountain Map", but also to participate in the search for the tomb of Youhou Xi. The research team will need your participation in many future tasks. Finally, if you have any personal requirements, please feel free to raise them. We will report to the superior organization and satisfy you to the greatest extent..."
Mu Linfeng waved his hand and said softly, "I don't have any requests. I will follow the organization's arrangements. I have already thought about how to find the "Emperor's Burial Mountain Map". Yesterday morning, I happened to encounter a very strange thing. A colleague dragged me to preside over the funeral of his fellow villager. After I came back, I thought about inheriting the family business and becoming a 'Geda'. When I was thinking about this, Director Li came to find me. I thought that as long as I inherited the family business, no one would doubt my behavior."
Li Jianping and Wang Zhao looked at each other and exchanged opinions. It seemed that they both agreed with Mu Linfeng's idea. Using the identity of a funeral deacon to search for the "Emperor's Burial Mountain Map" would definitely not arouse people's suspicion.
Wang Zhao then said to Mu Linfeng, "Sure. It's reasonable for you to inherit your family business and become 'Geda'. This identity is a good cover for finding the 'Emperor's Burial Mountain Map'. Also, you must remember my and Director Li's phone numbers, keep in touch with us at any time, and report anything in time. From now on, you are a member of our team."
The last sentence gave Mu Linfeng a special feeling. Humans are social animals and they feel safe only when they gather together. Therefore, everyone subconsciously wants to join an organization. This is why most people do not want to start a business alone. Joining a team makes people feel secure and it is easier to achieve results.
Afterwards, Li Jianping talked about the things that needed attention, and the three of them discussed together the situations that might be encountered later.
At ten o'clock in the evening, Li Jianping and Xiao Cao sent Mu Linfeng back to Qingzhou.
It was already twelve o'clock when Mu Linfeng returned home. Because he had slept all day, he was not sleepy at all and felt full of energy.
The first thing he did after entering the house was to plug in the kettle to boil water. Mu Linfeng has a hobby of drinking tea. He drinks three pots of tea a day, a habit that he cannot change. Today, he didn't drink a sip of tea all day. His mouth was dry and his heart was burning with discomfort.
Make a pot of strong Tieguanyin tea, and a faint fragrance will float into your nostrils, making you feel refreshed instantly.
Mu Linfeng was drinking tea while thinking about what happened. To be honest, what happened in the past two days seemed like a dream. Until now, he still felt a little surprised and didn't quite believe that all this was true.
Fate is really hard to predict. He was a chef yesterday, but now he has become a national civil servant with a secret mission. I have only seen such strange things in movies, but I didn't expect Mu Linfeng to really encounter it.
Thinking of his mission, Mu Linfeng immediately pulled his thoughts back to reality and began to think about how to find the "Emperor Burial Mountain Map". Although the "Emperor Burial Mountain Map" is a family heirloom of their Mu family, Mu Linfeng vaguely feels that it will not be an easy task to find the "Emperor Burial Mountain Map". Mu Linfeng did not take the tomb robbers from abroad mentioned by Li Jianping to heart, because he knew that his ancestors often dealt with tomb robbers, and no tomb robber had ever received anything from their Mu family.
Mu Linfeng felt that the most important thing should be to learn how to be a "knot" and the ancestral art of tomb selection, because in the Mu family only by being a "knot" can one access the "Emperor's Burial Mountain Map". Thinking of this, Mu Linfeng got up and walked into the study, and placed the family tree he took out last night on the desk in its original state.
Mu Linfeng sat down and looked at the names of his ancestors in the family tree. His soul seemed to have traveled through the long river of time and returned to hundreds of years ago. All kinds of magical legends about his ancestors emerged in his mind.
The Mu family has been making "Geda" since the first generation ancestor who moved to Mujiaying in Qingzhou. This profession was very respected and awe-inspiring in the past, and the income was quite lucrative, so the people who were engaged in "Geda" were all from very well-off families.
The Mu family was very famous in the area because of their unique skills in tomb selection. If someone in a family got old, it would be a great honor to invite the ancestors of the Mu family to be the deacon of the funeral. And to have the ancestors of the Mu family choose the cemetery for the deceased was even more valuable.
According to historians, the earliest funeral deacons were presided over by witches in the tribe. Later, funeral rites developed into a very standardized and strict ritual system, and funeral deacons gradually formed a specialized profession.
The funeral rites before the Shang Dynasty cannot be verified. According to historical records, there has been a very complete set of funeral rites since the Zhou Dynasty, which are called "Xiangli" and are one of the five rites of Zhouli. It has played a regulatory role in Chinese funerals for thousands of years. Since the Zhou Dynasty, there has been a profession specialized in rites, called "Ru".
Confucius was a Confucianist when he was young. He was familiar with the Zhou rituals and various etiquettes for keeping healthy and sending off the dead. Therefore, people who engage in the business of "Geda" also regard Confucius as their master. This is also the habit of the Chinese. Every industry must find a master. If there is no master, they will try every means to get close to an ancient celebrity. It seems that only in this way can their business appear legitimate.
Ever since Mu Linfeng could remember, there had been a portrait of Confucius enshrined in his grandfather's little house. Although he no longer made a "lump", he followed this custom and kept the portrait of his ancestor in his study.
The key to measuring a good "Geda" does not lie in whether he can preside over a funeral. What really shows his skill is whether this "Geda" can find a good burial place for the deceased, which is the so-called "Xiangmu".
The founder of tomb-viewing is Guo Pu in the Jin Dynasty, who wrote the Book of Burial. There are many schools of tomb-viewing, such as fortune-telling, feng shui, and dragon veins. However, the tomb-viewing technique handed down by the Mu family is different from other schools, integrating the essence of several schools into one.
Because the ancestors of the Mu family were very strict about passing on their unique skills, not only were they passed down to males but not females, but they were also passed down only to the eldest son and grandson. Even the children of the Mu family, if they were not direct descendants of the eldest son, had no chance of inheriting the skill. Therefore, there were very few people who truly mastered this skill, and Mu Linfeng had only heard about the content of it.
"Mountains stand tall and high, waters surround them, and peaks overlap one after another, offering wonders behind. Dragon veins embrace and protect them, and sand and water gather. Once the shape of the cave is formed, the mountains and rivers will be beautiful..." These contents are the basis of Feng Shui, Dragon Vein and other schools of tomb selection. However, the tomb selection technique of the ancestors of the Mu family is completely different from them.
Relevant data show that in previous generations, those who used "feng shui" to select tombs all considered "backed by mountains and facing the plains" as the best, which means that the tomb should be buried on the hillside surrounded by two mountains and facing the open plains. There are also tomb selection books that say that a pond in front, hills behind, flowing water in the east, and a long road in the west is called a correct tomb, which is the best place for a tomb. However, it is difficult to find a pond in the mountains, and it is difficult to find a hill by the water. Even if there are both mountains and water, it is difficult to have all four. In fact, such a "correct tomb" almost does not exist.
Therefore, most of the tomb-selection techniques are deceptive, and the real tomb-selection has nothing to do with the landscape, and there are still very good tombs on the plain. The tomb-selection technique of the Mu family ancestors has nothing to do with feng shui or dragon veins, and is completely based on the yin and yang and five elements of the deceased and the region.
The unique tomb-viewing technique can not only select a good burial site for the deceased, but also tell where important tombs are hidden. Whether it is an endless plain or a hilly mountain, as long as there is an ancient tomb below, the five elements of energy emitted above will be different from the surrounding area. Using the Mu family's tomb-viewing technique, one can also judge the size and scale of the tomb below, and even the shape of the tomb.
Mu Linfeng heard from his mother that his ancestors not only had the unique skill of tomb selection, but also had an ancient map, which was the "Emperor's Burial Mountain Map" mentioned by Professor Dongfang. The contents of the map were unknown to anyone except the eldest son who had inherited the true skill of tomb selection.
The Mu family's unique tomb-viewing skills and this ancient map are both treasures that tomb robbers dream of. If they get one of them, it would be great, as all the ancient tombs in the world would be open to them to rob. This naturally attracts tomb robbers.
For hundreds of years, many tomb robbers have paid large sums of money to learn the skills of tomb selection from the ancestors of the Mu family, or to purchase the "Emperor's Burial Mountain Map", but in the end no tomb robber has succeeded.
Every industry has its own professional ethics, and this is especially true for the most mysterious "lump". No amount of money can make it betray its professional ethics, especially in our nation that worships our ancestors.
Chinese people attach great importance to their ancestors and ancestral tombs. To rob other people's ancestral tombs is a very immoral and treasonous act. Sima Qian once said: "Robbing a person's house is a treacherous act."
Ancient epigraphers knew that there were a large number of bronze and stone artifacts hidden in tombs, but no epigrapher dared to excavate them, let alone even think about it. As a result, ancient Chinese epigraphy was slow to develop in the direction of archaeological excavations in the wild.
For the above reasons, tomb robbers in China are also a very secretive group of people. They never dare to let anyone know their identities and hide themselves very deeply. Some tomb robbers don't even know their wives and children about their actions. To be honest, people who engage in tomb robbery are not even as good as bandits.
By the time of Mu Linfeng's great-grandfather, a group of tomb robbers came from Nanjing. It was said that they were a very powerful sect. They also wanted to get the "Emperor's Burial Mountain Map" from the Mu family, but they knew that they couldn't impress the Mu family with gold and silver, so they used the beauty trap.
The details of the plot are unknown. It is said that the woman who was arranged by the tomb robber to be with Mu Linfeng's great-grandfather was attracted to him and lived with him sincerely. Later, she became his great-grandmother and gave birth to Mu Linfeng's grandfather.
Mu Linfeng's great-grandmother died of tuberculosis in her thirties. Before she died, she told her great-grandfather the truth, hoping that he would forgive her. Unexpectedly, Mu Linfeng's great-grandfather told her that he had known the truth for a long time, but he just didn't want to break the window paper. In the end, the woman died contentedly in astonishment.
After his great-grandmother passed away, Mu Linfeng's great-grandfather, although only in his thirties, never remarried, which shows how deeply he loved his great-grandmother.
When the tomb robbers failed in their plan, they resorted to a more vicious trick. After Mu Linfeng's great-grandmother passed away, their great-grandfather was in a low mood, so they induced him to smoke opium, which resulted in all the family fortune left by their ancestors being taken away by his great-grandfather.
Mu Linfeng heard from his mother that his ancestors had earned a fortune as "geda". They had hundreds of acres of forests alone, more than ten tall horses at home, and seven or eight guard dogs. They were considered a wealthy family within a hundred miles. In the end, all the wealth was gone due to his great-grandfather's smoking of opium.
My great-grandfather knew that he had been tricked, but he couldn't give up smoking opium. He smoked a wealthy family and left them with nothing, but he never sold his tomb-viewing skills and the "Imperial Burial Mountain Map". My great-grandfather knew very well that if he violated the ancestral teachings and passed on the tomb-viewing skills to tomb robbers, he would not be able to face his ancestors in the underworld...
Just a few years after Mu Linfeng's great-grandmother passed away, in early 1938, the Japanese Itagaki Division landed in Qingdao, then advanced westward along the Jiaoji Line, and quickly occupied the area along the railway. The ancient city of Qingzhou was also trampled under the iron hoof of the Japanese devils.
One day, two years after the Japanese occupied Qingzhou, Mu Linfeng's great grandfather received a message that a Japanese officer guarding the city sent people to inquire about his situation. The great grandfather seemed to have guessed the purpose of the Japanese looking for him, secretly sent Mu Linfeng's grandfather away, and arranged his own funeral as soon as possible.
Shortly thereafter, Mu Linfeng's great-grandfather was captured by the Japanese devils. The Japanese devils captured him because of the famous Hengwang Mausoleum. The Japanese wanted to dig out the treasures in the Hengwang Mausoleum.
Zhu Youji, the seventh son of Emperor Xianzong of the Ming Dynasty, was named Prince Henggong. He was enfeoffed in Qingzhou in the 12th year of Hongzhi and died in the 17th year of Jiajing. It is said that he was buried at the foot of Sanyang Mountain. The current Wangfen Town in Qingzhou got its name from this.
