Volume 4: Spacetime Singularity Introduction: The First Year of Tianbao
On the first day of the first lunar month in the 30th year of Kaiyuan, which was February 10th in 742 AD, the powerful Tang Dynasty issued an edict to change the era name, and the wheel of history officially moved from Kaiyuan to Tianbao.
Many major events happened that year, such as Emperor Xuanzong of Tang appointing An Lushan as the governor of Pinglu, and the sage issuing an edict to change all the states in the world into counties.
But none of this had anything to do with Wu San, who was waving a shovel under the mound.
The autumn during the Tianbao period was not much warmer than it is now, and ordinary people were trying their best to prepare for the winter after the autumn harvest. Although the average temperature was a few degrees higher than it is now, the winter was still very difficult in that era without cotton and heating.
But the good news is that the harvest in the entire Zhuo County is pretty good this year. Coupled with the accumulation of the prosperous years in the past few years, ordinary people will have no problem filling their stomachs.
However, this cannot eliminate Wu San's desire to get some silver from the tomb to improve his life.
"Uncle San, I heard from the villagers around here that there is a sea eye buried underground in Zhuo County. If it is disturbed, the sea will surge and the world will be in turmoil."
Wu San's nephew Wu Xie said facing the cave entrance. He was now stamping his feet to dispel the coldness in his body.
The night was dotted with dark clouds, with few stars shining brightly. The biting autumn wind made his nose run, and his hands, which were pulling the hemp rope, had turned purple.
"Don't listen to what people say. We are just ordinary people. What can we do to make a living by digging graves?"
While he was speaking, Wu San had already completely dug up the tomb's covering, and the narrow tomb passage appeared before his eyes.
"Uncle San, should I go down?"
"No need! You just keep an eye on the rope up there."
This was the first time Wu Xie followed his uncle out to rob tombs, and he didn’t know the rules yet.
Wu San held the oil lamp tightly, held on to the wall with one hand and groped forward. The tomb was not large, and the tomb passage and corridor were extremely narrow. There were no valuable items scattered on the ground.
After walking along the corridor for a while, a wooden door appeared . There were corridors on both sides of the door that led to the depths. Those were the corridors surrounding the tomb.
Wu San placed the oil lamp in his hand close to the wall, and the colorful patterns on it were still faintly visible.
It looks like a tomb from the Han Dynasty. If it is real, then we have found a treasure this time.
Wu San tried to push the wooden door gently, and the door loosened a little.
Out of experience and instinct, he stepped back suddenly, but there didn't seem to be any danger in front of him, and the oil lamp in his hand was still bright.
He tried to walk into the wooden door. The coffin in the center of the tomb was clearly visible, surrounded by a variety of funerary objects.
Scattered around were antique treasures, including jade, bronze, amber and agate pendants, and a large number of various pottery.
Wu San placed the oil lamp close to the wall inside the tomb. On the wall were neatly arranged cypress wood hearts, stacked together tightly.
It's a Han tomb, and a very well-regulated one.
He couldn't move all the pearls on the floor in front of him by himself. This was just the front room. There might be larger items like carved bows and swords in the back. The best thing to do now was to call his nephew down.
At the call of his uncle, Wu Xie tied the rope firmly to a big tree nearby, grabbed two sacks that had been prepared long ago from the ground, and slid down the narrow slope that had been dug earlier to the bottom of the cave.
After the two met up, they didn't say much and walked straight through the explored passage to the door of the front room. When Wu San was about to go in, he was stopped by his nephew.
"Uncle San, look what this is!"
"What are you dawdling for? Go in and pack your things. The rooster will crow soon..."
Wu San was about to scold his nephew, but his attention was attracted by the dark hole in front of him.
He was so focused when he came in just now that he didn't notice the hole flashing with faint silver light not far from his feet.
The entrance to the cave was about two feet wide, just enough for one person to go down.
"What should I do, Uncle San... should I go down or not..."
Wu San was also undecided at this time. His intuition told him that this kind of secret passage usually contained great treasures, but it also often posed dangers.
There are too few people here today, and my nephew is still a newbie. It seems a bit reckless to rush into the cave, so let's go first.
"Uncle San, there seems to be a big silver ball underneath." Wu lay on the ground at an angle, staring at the color inside the hole.
"What? Did you look carefully?"
"Look at Uncle San. The egg inside is flickering. It looks like silver."
Now I had to go in.
Wu San told his nephew to get another bundle of hemp rope from the ground, and after wrapping it tightly around his body, he asked him to hold the other end tightly while he went down to the cave entrance to explore first.
With the support of the rope, he approached the edge of the dome little by little. The surface of the large silver ball in front of him was extremely smooth, and the white halo it emitted made his eyes, which had already adapted to the darkness, feel a little stinging.
Wu San reached out his hand and gently touched the surface of the giant dome. The cool, smooth touch felt like touching flowing water, which made him feel a little addicted.
This silver ball is too big. Who buried it here? It is impossible to transport it to the surface by myself.
Wu San was silent for a while, then he took out the shovel in his hand and smashed it hard towards the surface of the ball.
In a flash, Wu Xie, who was pulling the rope outside, suddenly felt the force in his hands loosen.
"Uncle San, what do you think?"
No one responded, and he could only hear his own voice echoing in the empty tomb.
"Uncle San? Can you hear me? Uncle San?"
Wu Xie felt something was wrong. The fear rising in his heart drove him to pull the rope upwards with all his strength. After a few seconds, he saw the neat cross-section at the end of the hemp rope.
"The storage room on Planet Four has been compromised."
Observer No. 1 said this suddenly while searching the asteroid belt.
"Hmm? What exactly happened? Has it been resolved?"
"I didn't feel anything special. Maybe it was just a bug crawling up there. It's a common thing. Now the foreign object has been disposed of by itself."
As the only self-defense system, the outer wall of the storage room is covered with micro black holes constrained by the surface electromagnetic field. Their diameters are about the order of molecules and they are usually shielded by the dark energy shell tightly covering the outside.
Whenever the storage room feels threatened, the dark energy shield on the surface of the superfluid will open for a split second and then close. The time scale of this opening is only four or five orders of magnitude larger than the Planck time, which is simply impossible for the human eye to capture.
However, for the micro black hole whose shielding has been removed, since the person or object that comes into close contact with it is already completely within its horizon of event, ten to the negative forty seconds is enough for it to complete the swallowing.
Except for the areas shielded by dark energy, it will completely absorb all matter within a spherical range: humans, soil, air, and even light.
All the information carried by the absorbed matter will be completely swallowed up by the black hole at that moment, as if it had never existed.
