The so-called dragon and phoenix holes, as long as the time is right, the land is advantageous, and people are in harmony, they can exist. Dragons have different sizes, phoenixes have humble origins, a big pit can grow big radishes, a small coffin can't hold an eight-person sedan chair, everyone has their own suitable piece of land.

  Mao Cao Bay is what we locals call it, nobody knows how many graves are buried on this mountain slope the size of a palm, walking through the old grave pits has become somewhat habitual for me now, that piece of black soil where the shoe sole stands is currently our only clue.

  The land in northwest Zhejiang is mostly alkaline, with a yellowish-brown color, accompanied by small stones the size of fingernails. Occasionally there is sticky red soil, but no black soil at all, so it's not hard to find if you look for it.

  Sure, here is the translation:

  As expected, it was found on a small hillside that piece of black land, because it was too obvious and too eye-catching.

  Not a blade of grass grows. This idiom describes a forest that is full of contradictions, as it's all dense shrubs everywhere, and I even got scratched on the face by thorns on the way here. But when I arrived, suddenly there was a vast open space, charred black, which I could recognize.

  Zhebei is a place with seven mountains, two rivers and one field, extremely lacking in land. At that time, the labor intensity of the people was also very high, and the small amount of grain supplied by the food stamps was not enough to eat. So they had to open up some wasteland. Therefore, local people would choose some remote mountains with few visitors, set fire to burn away the shrubs, which could be used as fertilizer on the one hand, and also plant some grains, mainly corn.

  It seems that this place has been burned for some time, and it has not yet been sown. At present, it is the spring plowing season, so we infer that Gao Cheng should have come here before, and this land is very likely to be opened by him.

  These days haven't rained, the footprints on the ground can still be seen, it can be seen that someone has indeed come in the past two days. The footprints followed along to the middle of the ground and then turned back. The position in the middle is a bit special, the surface of the ground is slightly higher than the surrounding area. I went over to take a look, but I don't think it's a grave mound. What's strange is that there are two bowl-sized circular pits on the ground in front of the mound.

  "What?" Zhang Wenbin came over and asked me.

  "Look here, I feel a bit strange, how do you think it's someone who knelt down and left their knee prints." As I said this, I half squatted down to test it myself. Cha Wenbin grabbed my arm and lifted me up, saying: "Don't squat randomly, if there really is something, kneeling will only lower your status and make it easier for you to be taken advantage of."

  After a while, he went to the nearby woods and found a stick, sharpened one end and poked at the package several times. This thing is the simplest Luoyang shovel. The hollow bamboo will bring up the soil below, but it can't dig deep, just enough for inspection. Zhang Wenbin took some soil and sniffed it under his nose, saying to me: "Bring some people up the mountain this afternoon, preferably young and strong, I'm afraid there's something bad down here."

  "What's going on?" I asked.

  He stretched out his finger in front of me and said, "Look at the soil, it's brown, different from the black surface, and has a faint smell of fish sauce, like the result of blood drying up and solidifying."

  "Red burial?" I followed him and roughly understood that this funeral method has been around for a long time, mainly popular in the southwestern border areas, rarely seen in the Jiangnan region.

  Cha Wenbin was not very sure, but he was extremely careful about this burial method: "It's a bit like, Hongyan burial mostly uses cinnabar mixed with soil for backfilling, but this one looks more like it was soaked in liquid. To be honest, seeing this thing makes my heart feel a bit uneasy."

  Liu Lao Da had never seen such a professional, apart from being impressed and secretly sighing in relief that he hadn't taken on the task himself. He followed along, adding oil to the fire as they went down the mountain, bringing up all sorts of nonsense like "as soon as you poke the ground with a bamboo stick, blood will gush out". In the end, everyone was terrified, and even the people who had come to help were almost nowhere to be found.

  Around two o'clock in the afternoon, I bought two packs of cigarettes and scattered them around. There were about seven or eight young people gathered there, many of whom were my childhood playmates. With a few words, everyone went up together. As for the matter of Mao Cao Bay, our group basically all knew about it. I remember when we passed by there as children, we would always run away as fast as possible, and the leading child would often shout: "Mao Cao Bay has ghosts! Run quickly!" The one who fell behind would usually be crying while running back...

  Cha Wenbin drew a rectangular frame with lime on the black ground, about two meters long and less than half a meter wide. Within this range, we started digging with our arms. At first, everyone could still chat and joke, teasing each other, saying that if we dug up a beauty, we would give her to so-and-so to take home. After about half a meter in depth, not only did the laughter stop, but even those who didn't pant heavily or have trembling legs were considered tough guys.

  At that time, I was smoking, and the smell of blood really got to me. The soil looked like pig's blood after slaughtering a pig, and if you rubbed it with your hands, your palms would be stained red. Who could still laugh at such a scene?

  Someone was the first to climb out of the pit, then the second, and the third. Nobody else wanted to do this job anymore. I steeled myself and said: "After we're done, I'll take you all to the county town to dance disco tonight, on me!"

  That year, disco was just popular, and I went to Guangzhou with Fatso to check it out. The consumption wasn't low, and the young people in our small mountain village had only heard of it. This trick really worked, and under the heavy gold, there must be brave men. Several shovels later, a stone tablet was exposed, and after continuing to dig until it was completely exposed, several characters were written on it in small seal script. I couldn't read them, but Old Liu recited them: "Intruders will die!"

  "Scare tactic!" I shouted to the people in the pit: "This thing can't control anything, smash it! We'll make a counter-attack against these feudal die-hards. Tell them this is New China now, and all land belongs to the people. If we want to dig, we'll dig, to hell with it!"

  Among the people who came, there was one called Big Cow, who was also my elementary school classmate. From childhood, he was a bit of an airhead and did things in a muddled way. He raised his pickaxe and struck it down, taking the lead, which made it easier for others to follow, and with a burst of energy, they started to reveal the blue bricks.

  This green brick is different from the ordinary house covering, one piece can top four or five ordinary bricks in size, and now it has been dug for about one and a half meters. The green brick also has carvings of flowers, clouds, birds and beasts, if placed today, it would be an artifact, but at that time, no one cared about these things, using iron chisels to hit the green bricks downwards, two or three men took turns hitting with iron hammers could not smash them, showing its solidity.

  Lifting the blue bricks, it's a tomb chamber underneath. The area is not large, and through the dark opening, you can see that there are coffins inside. At that time, everyone was already excited and confused, some people jumped down immediately. Inside, except for the coffins, there was nothing else, empty and desolate. I thought this was just a commoner's tomb, and Wen Bin also thought so at the time. He suspected that this so-called "Red Intact Burial" might be just a coincidence.

  The coffin was taken out smoothly, it was a wooden coffin, but the weight exceeded our imagination. Eight men used ropes to hang on the wooden stick, four on each side, and after using all their strength, they barely pulled it out. According to Zhang Wenbin's usual practice, finding this thing would be done with just one fire, but when we finished all these things, the sun was about to set.

  What is this place? Maocao Bay burial mound, who doesn't have anything to do at night and set fire here? Besides, with just one coffin, you still need to chop a lot of firewood. At 6 or 7 pm, the Gao family will hold a funeral ceremony to send off Gao Cheng for the last time, and Cha Wenbin needs to rush down the mountain. So he used an ink stamp to add a grid pattern on the coffin, with seven lines horizontally and seven lines vertically. Even if it's left in this haunted place, no one would dare touch it. He planned to come back tomorrow morning to burn it.

  By the time we got to the foot of the mountain, it was already very dark. My group of friends immediately shouted that they wanted to go into town to have some fun, and each went home to take a bath and change clothes. One friend also followed us in the afternoon, he drove a black car, had a big van, I said goodbye to Cha Wenbin and pulled a group of people towards the city.

  That night was indeed an omen of something going wrong. We left at around six, and the rural area didn't have streetlights back then. The highway ran along the river, but for some reason, there was a thick fog that night. The driver, Lin Baobao, whispered to me as I sat in the passenger seat, "Xiaoyi, why don't we head back? The fog is too heavy, it's not safe to drive."

  The crowd behind the car immediately shouted: "Baby, you're just a killjoy, are you afraid that your wife will go back and fix you?"

  I think the fog is quite serious, the car lights are not much stronger than a flashlight, and it's dazzling to shine out. I turned around and said to the people in the back of the car: "If it's really not possible, don't force it, or else let's change days?"

  "Can't do that, Boss Xia is hardly seen all year round, we don't know when you'll leave again. Better to seize the day than wait for a good day, let's go to town today."

  "It's all... gone with the wind!"

  I'm too lazy to bother with those people, so I just asked Baby: "Is it okay?"

  "Alright, I'm quite familiar with the road. Why don't we just drive slowly and maybe after passing Huangling Mountain it'll be better? That place isn't along the river." The Huangling that Lin Baobao mentioned was a must-pass route from Hong Village to the county town, a four-kilometer long slope. Seeing him wanting to try, I reminded him to slow down: "There are nine people in the car and they're all in your hands, so go slowly."

  "It's okay, don't worry." He gripped the steering wheel and stared at the road ahead, saying: "You're wrong, there are not just nine, but ten."

  When he said that, I didn't take it to heart and leaned against the car window smoking, the fog on the ground seemed to be rising from the ground up, not falling from above. But this still didn't catch my attention, I think if I had persisted a little bit at that time, maybe that thing wouldn't have happened...