The Turkey Historian
"What do you think made the writing on these stone tablets so blurry?" Xu Chen asked Professor Ding. He didn't believe they hadn't studied the question.
Professor Ding took pictures with his camera. "There are all sorts of reasons, and they're different for every tablet. But most of the time, it's natural erosion."
"Natural erosion?"
Xu Chen looked at the stone tablet on the ground and felt it wasn't that simple. If stone tablets could be eroded so easily by nature, why carve them at all? Wasn't the point of erecting a tablet instead of writing in a book that words carved in stone were easier to preserve for later generations to admire?
Besides, Xu Chen had examined this tablet. Even the finer polishing marks on its surface hadn't been worn away by natural erosion, much less the more deeply engraved characters themselves.
"That can't be right, can it? If it were erosion, everything should have been worn away. Look at these marks here..."
Professor Ding finished taking pictures and pulled out a magnifying glass. Hearing that, he coughed twice and called to his student. "Li Ze, I remember you've been studying the causes of erosion lately. Explain it to him."
"Okay," Li Ze answered, and explained it to Xu Chen.
Xu Chen would have been better off without the explanation. The more he heard, the more alarmed he became. Specifically, archaeologists believed that any cultural relic could suffer a kind of Special Corrosion. The factors varied, and the causes were quite complex, generally involving the combined action of multiple sources of corrosion. The result was that the older a relic was, the more susceptible it was to corrosion.
This stone tablet, for example, might have been affected by the combined action of moss, water, wind, and microbial erosion, among other things.
At first, it sounded reasonable enough, but Xu Chen understood that it definitely wasn't the case. After all, this so-called Special Corrosion never occurred in his original world.
Their archaeology was more like the scientist among the turkeys.
On a farm, there was a flock of turkeys. The farmer fed them every day at eleven o'clock sharp. One scientist among the turkeys had observed this phenomenon for almost a year, without a single exception, and concluded that he had found a great law of the universe. On Thanksgiving Day, he announced the great law he had discovered to all the turkeys: food arrived every morning at eleven. But no food arrived that day. Instead, the farmer came with his butcher's knife.
They might have dressed up the result of some unnatural intervention and taken it for a natural result, just like the theorem invented by the turkey scientist.
If Xu Chen hadn't seen the truth, he believed he too would have searched for all kinds of reasons to explain the various unreasonable phenomena.
Xu Chen spent the rest of the time in a daze, repeatedly searching his mind for holes in this Special Corrosion. Unexpectedly, though, its causes had been explained quite thoroughly. At least, Xu Chen couldn't find any holes.
The stone tablet at Taihao Mausoleum was a major discovery, and Professor Ding was more than satisfied to have found the Sleeping Palace Stele. He understood that he and his student couldn't possibly explore every location by themselves, so he reported the discovery.
After all, being the first to discover it was enough to give him a substantial say in the project.
While waiting for reinforcements, Professor Ding watched over the Sleeping Palace Stele as though it were a treasure, chuckling to himself from time to time.
"Professor, I found something over here."
Professor Ding and Xu Chen both came back to their senses and looked toward Ma Yuelong in the distance. He was waving something in the air. Professor Ding cast a couple of reluctant glances at the stone tablet, then called to Xu Chen, "Come on, let's see what my student found. He sounds so happy."
By the time Xu Chen arrived, Ma Yuelong was holding a Luoyang Shovel in one hand and pulling Professor Ding over to look at the ground with the other.
Long strips of soil lay side by side on the ground. Xu Chen had seen them before: they were samples brought up from deep underground with the Luoyang Shovel. The last section was a distinctly different color. Professor Ding poked it with his hand; it wasn't as soft as the soil above it.
"This is compacted earth. There's something man-made underneath!"
Compacted earth could only appear as a result of human construction. Compacted earth walls or roads, for example, were sturdier and more durable.
Xu Chen also recalled that Taihao Mausoleum wasn't just made up of stone tablets. It had quite a few buildings too, and more importantly...
He looked around. There really were a lot of trees, including some especially large, ancient ones, full of life. And there were ancient trees near Taihao Mausoleum!
If they dug here, they could definitely uncover the true location of Taihao Mausoleum.
After seeing the section of soil, Professor Ding could no longer spare his attention for the stone tablet. He took off his clothes and covered the tablet with them, afraid the sunlight would damage it. Then he personally fetched the bag containing the Luoyang Shovel. Along with directing his student to dig holes, he set to work himself.
By the time further support arrived from the university, Professor Ding excitedly went to meet them with a freshly drawn sketch of the underground structures in his hand.
Xu Chen had originally come to confirm the existence of Taihao Mausoleum, but they had found the Sleeping Palace Stele not long after arriving. Although they didn't know whose mausoleum this was, Xu Chen was certain that many stone tablets capable of revealing the truth lay underground here.
When the time came, historians would not only learn the identity of one of the Three Sovereigns among the Three Sovereigns and Five Emperors, but also obtain a large amount of other historical material. They could even trace many things back to their origins, allowing Xu Chen to learn all sorts of information about the two characters for Taihao that Grandpa Yang had asked him to look up.
Xu Chen felt something was wrong and tilted his head, thinking it over.
Then he seemed to work something out and called Professor Ding over.
Professor Ding came over to Xu Chen with a cheerful smile. After all, Xu Chen was responsible for bringing him such a major discovery, and the more he looked at him, the more pleased he was. If he'd had a daughter, he would have introduced the two of them.
"What is it, Xu Chen? I'll tell you anything I know."
"It's simple. I just want to ask, have you heard of Taihao?"
"Taihao?" Professor Ding scratched his head and racked his brains, then shook his head repeatedly.
An archaeologist racking his brains atop Taihao Mausoleum, trying to remember whether he'd ever heard of Taihao Mausoleum, was truly hellish.
"No, I haven't. What's Taihao?" Professor Ding finally gave up thinking and admitted, very reluctantly, that he hadn't been able to help Xu Chen.
Xu Chen was startled. "You mean you really haven't heard of Taihao? You've never even seen those two characters in your work?"
Professor Ding shook his head, then his eyes shifted. "How about this? Show me how those two characters are written. So many old colleagues have come here; I'll go ask them for you."
Eager for an answer, Xu Chen immediately typed the two characters on his phone and sent them over.
Professor Ding looked at them and muttered, "Tai, hao. So those are the two characters."
Then he gave Xu Chen a pat. "All right, I'll go ask now."
Professor Ding was a man of action, and theoretically he was also the first person to discover Taihao Mausoleum. He went around asking and got answers from everyone. He even enlisted his students, all to ask about the two characters for Xu Chen.
In the end, Xu Chen got the answer he wanted: no one knew what Taihao meant.
Xu Chen's expression changed. He looked at his phone's inbox, where the email Grandpa Yang had sent him was displayed.
If even historians didn't know the name, why did Grandpa Yang know it? If he knew those two characters couldn't be looked up, why had he asked Xu Chen to look into their meaning? What was Grandpa Yang asking him to do?