The people beside Ye Qing looked puzzled. They stared down for a long while, and when they looked up, their expressions were still just as confused.
Ye Qing crouched down, her figure mostly hidden behind the tea bushes.
Liu Miao said, "Bring me a shovel."
"What?" The others' puzzled expressions turned blank.
Holding the DV camera, Liu Miao jogged over. The image shook as he went around a row of tea bushes and reached the path where Ye Qing was.
Ye Qing reached out and grasped the soil. It was clear that the dirt here was especially loose.
There was a little commotion off camera.
Manager Yang hurried over and asked what had happened.
Liu Miao's voice, Wu Ling's voice...
None of it affected Ye Qing's movements.
A moment later, Ye Qing abruptly stopped. She stopped digging and brushed away the dirt beneath her fingers instead. A dusty object emerged from the soil. It looked like a stone.
She paused for only an instant, then quickly continued digging. Following the stone, she gradually cleared away the surrounding dirt, revealing the object in its entirety.
When Ye Qing lifted the object out of the earth, the surrounding chatter stopped.
It was a Buddha head, a typical example with most of the features common to stone-carved Buddha heads: a topknot patterned like rippling water, a square face, large ears and earlobes, narrow eyes, a straight nose, slightly upturned lips, and a kind expression.
The Buddha head was intact. The cut at the neck was uneven, as if it had taken repeated blows from a sharp tool to remove it.
Though it was only a stone sculpture, the sight of the broken neck was still shocking.
The middle-aged man stammered, "Th-this... What is this?"
"It's a Buddha head," Wu Ling said.
The middle-aged