The Great Qin Empire---Qin Li

On the twelfth day of the twelfth lunar month, at noon, Xi, the prison official of Anlu County, arrived with several county guards assigned to him by the county lieutenant, and found that he had actually made a wasted trip. Six tomb robbers were killed and five were captured, and even the prisoner who was guarding the tomb and stealing was caught in Huyang Pavilion.

Heifu's net was not only spread in time, but also spread beautifully, and all the criminals were caught in one net.

The prison officials who were ready to crack the big case were a little disappointed, but Xi was not unhappy at all. He praised Heifu and said that although the head of Huyang Pavilion had just taken office, he acted decisively and made the right judgment.

As a pavilion chief, he manages the public security of a region, and he must have a scale in his heart when to catch thieves and how to catch them. Although Heifu did not wait for the county's order and attacked overnight, this was his freedom within the scope of his power as a pavilion chief.

Although one tomb robber died during the arrest, he resisted arrest with a knife and deserved death. However, if the head of the tomb and Qiudao intentionally stabbed a minor criminal to death, they would also be held criminally responsible and serve as a city guard.

Xi finally said, "I will report your merits to the county magistrate and the county magistrate. With such merits, you, the trial head of the tomb, will soon be able to become a real head of the tomb."

In the Qin State, officials had a probation period of one year. If they performed well, they could be promoted to full-time officials in advance. After being promoted, they could add the word "real" in front of their official titles. Xi said that if everything went well, Heifu would no longer be a "trial head of the tomb" but a "real head of the tomb" from January.

"So, after the beginning of spring, Jing will be able to enter the county school as a disciple?"

Heifu was delighted and thanked the prison official.

After praising Heifu briefly, Xi began to check the stolen goods brought back by Heifu and his men.

"Yes, this is indeed Dou Xin's tomb artifact."

He repeatedly checked the tripods and gui taken out by the tomb robbers, washed off the dirt, and observed the inscriptions on them, confirming Li Xian's statement that this tomb was indeed the burial place of Dou Xin of the Ruo'ao clan.

"Are all the stolen goods here?" Xi put down the tripod and gui, and glanced at Hei Fu, Li Xian, Dongmen Bao and others, trying to find flaws from their faces.

Hei Fu said: "Report to the officials, one is missing, all here!"

Qin law has extremely severe punishments for privately hiding stolen goods, which is equivalent to theft. Even if Hei Fu and his men secretly hid a lacquerware, once they were found out, they would be immediately dismissed from their official positions. If the stolen goods are worth more than 110 coins, it is not a matter of losing office and being fined, but a fine of city life...

So Hei Fu kept a close eye on his subordinates, so that they would not ruin the big thing because of greed for money.

Finally, Hei Fu asked Xi curiously: "May I ask the prison official, how should these stolen goods be dealt with?"

After capturing several tomb robbers, Hei Fu had roughly interrogated them. It turned out that the tomb robbery cases in Nanjun were the most serious in Yidao where the tombs of the former kings of Chu were located, followed by Jiangling, and Anlu was rare...

But in recent years, these tomb robbers began to collude with each other. In Nanjun and the E and Jiangnan areas of Chu, a market specializing in purchasing bronze funerary objects and lacquerware for burials has also appeared. The open buying and selling of dead objects is extremely rampant.

He was immediately curious. Is there already antique trading in this day and age?

The answers of the tomb robbers surprised Hei Fu. It turned out that these people did not rob tombs for antiques. Those lacquerware are not easy to rot. They can be sold as new ones after a casual treatment. The bronze funerary objects can be melted back into the furnace to make new bronze objects to sell.

Hei Fu could not help but feel a little toothache. The tripods and gui in the tomb were exquisitely crafted. Even the tomb guardian beast would be a treasure that attracted everyone's attention if it was placed in a museum in the future.

As a result, the tomb robbers of this era actually sold them as copper materials and daily utensils.

"Sure enough, tomb robbers in any era are actually short-sighted guys. Such people have no use except destroying mausoleums and cultural relics."

Hei Fu remembered that many people in his previous life read some tomb-robbing novels and began to speak shamelessly, confusing archaeology with tomb-robbing, saying that "archaeology is tomb-robbing permitted by law" and so on.

This is the biggest slander against archaeologists!

It is true that some archaeology before and after the Cultural Revolution did have a great negative impact due to the special reasons of the times.

But real archaeology is completely opposite to tomb-robbing. Nowadays, there are very few active excavations. Most of them are rescue excavations for ancient tombs exposed by engineering and tomb-robbing. Therefore, archaeologists are always one step behind the tomb robbers. They sigh and groan at the tombs full of holes and mess. They can only bow down and clean up the evil deeds of the tomb robbers, but they still have to suffer the unjust accusations of some network trolls.

The purpose of tomb robbing is to steal the burial objects and resell them for money. Tomb robbers will use any means to destroy the tombs. For the cultural relics taken out, they will only choose according to the market value scale, and a large number of cultural relics with important historical value will be destroyed.

In his previous life, Hei Fu heard that some tomb robbers took out the gorgeous silk from the Chu tombs, but did not know how to protect it. As a result, in just a few days, the Chu silk clothes that could have become treasures and were carefully cared for by researchers were carbonized into a pile of black garbage and thrown into the stinking ditch.

Imagine again, what would happen if the Yunmeng Qin bamboo slips, which recorded the stories of Xi, Heifu, and Jing, as well as many Qin Dynasty laws and decrees, were handled by tomb robbers?

The bamboo slips buried underground for two thousand years are easily destroyed and not well protected. The text will become blurred and disappear, and the bamboo slips will carbonize and turn black. The Qin laws on more than a thousand slips will return to dust and be unknown to the world.

It's like they never appeared in this world.

But if it is a regular rescue archaeological excavation, the bamboo slips can be best protected and treasured in museums, becoming a window for us to understand the lives of our ancestors. They will become knowledge that everyone in the country can understand, rather than the private collection of a foreign tycoon. If historians want to study them, they have to humbly beg their new "owner" for permission.

It is true that the tomb owner certainly does not want to be disturbed by anyone, but over the past thousand years, most tombs have long been cut off from blood and food, and their descendants have migrated and moved around, forgetting their existence. At this time, the tomb was no longer a place for a person to rest, nor was it a private sacrifice for a family, but a common wealth of this nation and this country!

Confusing tomb robbing with archaeology is like confusing violence, rape and seeing a doctor for gynecological diseases.

So Heifu was very curious, how did the Qin Dynasty of this era deal with the stolen goods from tomb robbing?

Xi stroked his beard and said: "Although Dou Xin's tomb has been guarded by people, there are many burial objects. I am afraid that it will soon be spread and attract the covetousness of the surrounding people. Instead of leaving it alone and tempting people to commit crimes, it is better to take them all out, send the lacquerware and goldware to Jiangling, and let the county governor deal with it, and then bury the coffin on the spot. Without the burial objects, Dou Xin may not be disturbed..."

As for the fate of the bronzes sent to Jiangling City, Xi said that they would probably be melted down to cast weapons and farm tools.

Hei Fu was silent for a moment. It seemed that the Qin government and the tomb robbers did not use much different methods to deal with the stolen goods. After all, it was ancient times. Museums? They did not exist, unless they were brought to Xianyang and became decorations in the Qin King's palace.

These burial objects still did not catch up with the good times. In this world, the gorgeous and exquisite tripods and gui are no longer valuable, just like their owners, the noble blood...

From bells and tripods to swords and plows, perhaps this is the biggest difference between the Spring and Autumn Period and the Warring States Period! The troubled times are like a copper furnace. The heroes and common people all fill the charcoal and return everything to the furnace for recasting. The war forged and burned away the rich and elegant decorations, shattering the old era that Confucius longed for, but forging a new form of civilization.

The seven heroes and nine tripods, the various schools of thought, from the limbs to the core, slowly merged into one. Now the King of Qin is eyeing Shandong, the fire is burning more and more vigorously, the world is about to be unified, and the huge shape of the first Chinese empire is about to emerge!

…

When Xi had people load the stolen goods onto the carriages and prepare to transport them to the county, the prison guard Le also finished the first interrogation of the tomb robbers, and asked about their hometowns and identities one by one, and wrote them down on the bamboo slips and presented them to Xi for review.

"Prison official, the young man Xing claimed to be from Edi, Chu State, and was from the same hometown as the deceased tomb robber. He was deceived. The other four are Qin people, and their hometowns are all over Nanjun, one from Anlu, two from Xinshi, and one from Jingling..."

Xi glanced at Yuan Shu, and then went to find the thieves one by one to confirm. When he asked about the thief leader "Chang" who claimed to live in Xinshi and was a soldier, Xi seemed to sense something wrong. He frowned slightly, and began to observe Chang's appearance carefully, and his suspicion deepened.

Xi did not interrupt Chang's statement immediately, but pretended to be nothing. He walked to the backyard and said to Heifu: "Huyang Pavilion Chief, do you have a wanted order issued by the county in your pavilion?" Heifu hurriedly said: "Yes." "Go and get it quickly!" Not long after, Heifu took the wanted wooden slips that he had only read once from the office hall. After Xi took them, he examined them one by one, and finally his eyes fixed, and he held a piece in his hand! He asked Heifu and others not to make a sound, and followed him to the front yard slowly, standing behind the group of tomb robbers. Xi asked Le to continue asking the tomb robbers some irrelevant questions, while he put his hands behind his back, holding the wanted order, and suddenly shouted: "Gong Shixing!" Subconsciously, the tomb robber leader who claimed to be "Chang" turned his head blankly... But in just a moment, he realized that he had been tricked, his face changed drastically, and he lowered his head quickly!

Danxi's face was already filled with the smile of a cat catching a cunning mouse.

As for Heifu, he only stole a glance and saw that the reward for the grave robber wanted on the wanted list, Gong Shixing of Jiangling County, was...

"Twenty taels of gold!"

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