Professor Sun finished speaking, stood up, and started pushing us toward the door. I thought to myself, this old man is really strange. He was so friendly when we first came in, but now he’s suddenly turned hostile. At first, it seemed like he was ready to tell us something, but then he must have figured out who we really were, and his tone changed. Maybe he thinks we’re con artists trying to pull a fast one on him.
Normally, if someone talked to me like that, I’d just get up and leave without needing to be pushed. But this was different; it could be a matter of life and death. Besides Fatty and me, it might also involve Professor Chen and Shirley Yang’s lives.
I said to Professor Sun, “Professor, can you just let me say one last thing? I don’t know how you figured out we have the smell of the earth on us, but I assure you, I’m with this guy with the gold tooth, and we’re not dealing in antiques. We’ve actually worked for an archaeological team for a long time. Have you heard of Professor Chen Jiuren from Beijing? We worked with him.”
When Professor Sun heard the name Chen Jiuren, he paused for a moment and asked, “Old Chen? Are you saying you two worked in his archaeological team?”
I nodded eagerly, “Yes! I thought you two were big names in the archaeology field. When people mention your names, everyone pays attention…”
Professor Sun’s expression softened a bit, and he waved his hand, “Don’t flatter me. I know my own worth. Since you know Old Chen, you can stay, but let the others leave.”
Hearing this, I felt like I had a chance, so I asked Big Gold Tooth and Old Liu to step out, leaving me alone with Professor Sun for a private talk.
Once the others were out, Professor Sun locked the door and asked me some questions about Professor Chen. I briefly explained how I had gone with Professor Chen and others to the desert in Xinjiang to search for the ancient city of Jingjue.
After listening, Professor Sun sighed and said, “I’ve known Old Chen for a long time. I’ve heard about the accident in the desert. It’s a miracle he wasn’t buried in the sand. I wanted to visit him in Beijing, but I heard he went to the U.S. for treatment. I wonder if I’ll ever see him again. He did me a great favor back in the day, so since you’re familiar with him, I won’t hide some things from you.”
I had been waiting for Professor Sun to say that, so I quickly asked, “I feel like this bruise that suddenly appeared on my back looks like an eyeball, and I think it’s related to what we saw in the ancient city of Jingjue. The Ghost Cave People worship the power of the eyeball, and I feel like I’m under some kind of curse. But I also heard it’s not an eyeball, but a character. Can you tell me what this character means? I’d like to be prepared mentally. Of course, I’ve died a few times already, so I don’t care much about my own safety, but I’m really worried about Professor Chen.”
Professor Sun said to me, “It’s not that I don’t want to tell you, but some things just can’t be said. Knowing them would do you more harm than good. However, I can assure you that the mark on your back is definitely not some kind of curse or anything like that. It won’t affect your health, so don’t worry.”
The more I listened, the more anxious I became. Wasn’t that basically saying nothing? But hearing that it wasn’t a curse did ease my mind a bit. Still, the more he held back, the more I wanted to know. What could be so secretive about ancient texts from thousands of years ago, especially since this character had appeared on my body?
After I pressed him repeatedly, Professor Sun finally revealed a bit more.
He had spent years studying ancient cultural sites in the Yellow River basin and was an expert in ancient scripts, skilled at deciphering and translating ancient codes.
In ancient times, Cangjie created characters, marking the end of humanity’s primitive history of knotting ropes to record events. Written language contained vast amounts of information, holding the secrets of nature, and today, there are four tones for reading in chinese.
However, in the earliest times, there were actually eight tones, and the amount of information contained was unimaginable to ordinary people. Unfortunately, this extra information was monopolized by the ruling class, and the other four tones became a secret language used to record significant events that ordinary people couldn’t know about.
Some ancient texts found on tortoise shells and bamboo slips resemble ancient characters, but no one has been able to decipher them. Some say that “heavenly scripts” have no words, and words have no heavenly scripts, which is a distortion. Heavenly scripts are a form of encrypted information; they have literal meanings, but if you can’t decode them, you won’t understand them even if they’re right in front of you. Professor Sun had spent his life dealing with these unreadable heavenly scripts, but progress had been slow, and he had achieved little.
Until 1978, when archaeologists excavated an ancient tomb from the Tang Dynasty in the Mi Cang Mountain area. This tomb had been robbed multiple times, with six or seven holes dug by tomb raiders. The body had long been destroyed, and the tomb had decayed and collapsed, with most of the burial items stolen and the remaining ones severely corroded.
All signs indicated that the tomb belonged to Li Chunfeng, the Grand Historian in charge of astronomy, calendars, and Yin-Yang numerology in the royal palace. The Tang Dynasty was a peak in Chinese civilization in terms of technology, culture, and economy. As a highly respected “scientist” of the Tang era, Li Chunfeng’s tomb should have contained many important artifacts and materials of great research value. Unfortunately, they were all destroyed, which was a significant loss, and all the archaeologists present felt immense regret.
However, the cleanup work had to continue. As the work progressed, a huge surprise emerged from the decayed coffin: the archaeologists discovered a hidden compartment in the coffin lid above the tomb owner’s head.
No one had expected a hidden compartment in the coffin lid, not even the most experienced experts, who had never seen such a thing before. Everyone carefully opened the compartment, revealing a leather bag. Inside, wrapped in oilcloth and red lacquer, was a flawless white jade box. The jade box was adorned with gold and silver, and the lid featured a design of a winged spirit beast, with a pure gold lock.
Because it was hidden in the coffin lid’s compartment, it had escaped the tomb raiders’ grasp time and time again, allowing it to be preserved to this day.
Experienced experts immediately recognized it as a royal item from the Tang Dynasty, likely a gift from the emperor to Li Chunfeng. The fact that it was placed in such a secret compartment indicated its immense importance, and they promptly sent the jade box back to the archaeological team’s headquarters.
Inside the box made of pure sheep fat jade, many important items were discovered, including a piece of dragon bone (a type of tortoise shell) covered in heavenly scripts, which was named the “Dragon Bone Anomalous Text.” There was also a small gold plate, shaped like beast heads at the corners, densely inscribed with many characters on both sides, resembling a table. Some of the characters were recognizable, while others were not, and it was named the “Beast Horn Cryptic Gold Plate.”
Experts in ancient scripts, including Professor Sun, were called in to decipher the secrets of the dragon bone and the gold plate. Once assigned this task, Professor Sun locked himself in his study and began working tirelessly.
Professor Sun had seen this “Dragon Bone Anomalous Text” many times before; he could remember the ancient characters even with his eyes closed. However, he had never been able to analyze what these characters were or what they meant. The so-called “heavenly scripts” posed a significant challenge for researchers of ancient Chinese writing. If they couldn’t overcome this hurdle, there would be no progress. But once a breakthrough was made, the other difficulties would likely fall into place. Unfortunately, this obstacle was immense.
Some scholars believed that the heavenly scripts were remnants of a lost civilization, but this theory fell apart because some ancient characters unearthed alongside the heavenly scripts could be easily interpreted. Carbon-14 dating showed they belonged to the Shang Dynasty, indicating they were products of the same era, not remnants of a prehistoric civilization.
After more than a month of repeated study and contemplation, Professor Sun finally unraveled the mystery of the heavenly scripts. By comparing the “Beast Horn Cryptic Gold Plate” unearthed from Li Chunfeng’s tomb, he discovered that the ancient people used heavenly scripts on the dragon bone as a form of encrypted writing.
As early as the Tang Dynasty, Li Chunfeng had already deciphered this ancient encrypted writing. To honor his achievement, the emperor had a gold medal minted to reward Li Chunfeng, commemorating this event. The characters and symbols on this gold medal were a reference chart for the heavenly scripts that Li Chunfeng had decoded.
In fact, the heavenly scripts were quite simple; they were annotated using the phonetics of the other four secret tones, rather than being inscribed as characters on the dragon bone. However, only a few people who could read these secret pronunciations could understand the content of the writing.
Li Chunfeng had drawn inspiration from the “Commentaries on the Eight Classics” to find a method to unlock the secrets of the heavenly scripts. Professor Sun, inspired by the “Beast Horn Cryptic Gold Plate,” realized how to interpret the heavenly scripts, causing a revolutionary stir in the archaeological community. A large number of ancient secret texts were deciphered, revealing astonishing information, and many established historical conclusions would need to be rewritten.
Considering various factors, the higher-ups instructed that Professor Sun’s decrypted information should be treated with caution and not disclosed to the public until there were definitive conclusions.
Professor Sun said to me, “The mark on your back is not exactly an ancient encrypted character. This symbol is not from the heavenly scripts; I only saw it on a tortoise shell unearthed in Gulan. It represents something special, and the people of that time didn’t have an accurate term to describe it. I think it’s more appropriate to call it a pictogram, which is a symbolic representation. However, I’m still unclear about its meaning; it appears mixed in with the encrypted heavenly scripts. One of the heavenly script texts found in Gulan seems to be a record of a disaster. Since it was just unearthed and time was tight, I only had a brief look and haven’t had the chance to analyze this symbol in detail. Unfortunately, on the way back, the military plane crashed, and those secrets may never be known.”
I asked Professor Sun, “Such an important item—didn’t you make any records, like rubbings? Even if you think the mark on my back isn’t a curse, I still find this situation too strange. I can’t feel at ease without knowing the details. Can you tell me what the text on the bone armor was about? Does it relate to the Ghost Cave in Xinjiang? I promise I won’t leak a word.”
Suddenly, Professor Sun stood up nervously, “I can’t say! If I do, it will shake the world!”