Chapter 7

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Translator: Anne

Editor: Lumist

Proofreader: Kakashi

Hai Lan stared at Qin Ge closely, she understood what he had just said!

Besides making use of Professor Ai Wei’s historical knowledge, the old bandit leader had murderous intentions for the others present. However, he was worried of possible traps or weird mechanisms inside the tomb. He was hesitant to leave them alive and for them to lead the way into unknown territory. As Qin Ge said, apart from the treasure, no one knew what else was inside! Qin Ge was the best at reading people, what he said made the old bandit decide to not kill anybody else.

She had heard that Qin Ge was good at shooting, but she was unaware if he had brought a gun with him. If only he and Xiao Xia were able to return to the 18th tomb, with the help of the terrain over there, they would be able to kill or injure the bandits. It was a pity that they were large in numbers and they weren’t able to resist. If a fight broke out, everyone would surely die!

She knew that Qin Ge must have been devising a plan to get everyone out unharmed. How could she be of help? At that critical moment of life and death, their past couldn’t matter less. If she could, she hoped to save everyone, but if it wasn’t possible, she wanted him, Ai Wei and Qin Fei to survive.

Several students, who were holding the professor, were the closest to the tomb’s door. The old bandit leader walked up to the professor and forced him to open the door. However, he refused, muttering, “the treasures inside belong to the country. You can’t do this.”

The young bandit sneered, lifted the muzzle of his gun, and fired a blank at him. Everyone was extremely frightened and the professor fell to the ground. The man grabbed a student and forced him to open the door instead. The boy was shaking too much. “The door is covered in organic materials, only the professor can open it…” he said.

The old bandit looked fiercely at Ai Wei, “if you speak one more time, the next bullet will go through your mouth.”

Hai Lan didn’t think about her actions. She ran to help the professor up and stood in front of him.

The professor squeezed her hand and looked at the tomb door with a tremor in his eyes. The criminals also looked at it. The door was made of jade with carved inscriptions similar to that of seal script (1). In the middle of the inscriptions, there was a huge copper compass with the heavenly stems and earthly branches engraved in it (2).

It was different from an ordinary compass as it had three pointers instead of one; and the notches of the heavenly stems together with the earthly branches had grooves in them. When the pointers rotate, they will become embedded in the grooves. At that moment, the pointers were overlapped at the six o’clock mark.

The bandits were so overjoyed to see how close they were to the emperor’s treasury that they started firing blanks one after the other. A scream was suddenly heard. A girl from the archaeological team had been shot in the shoulder by a stray bullet.

They were all frightened, but the old bandit didn’t pay any attention to them. He stroked the compass and said in a sharp voice, “I have robbed countless tombs in my life. I can’t be mistaken. This compass is the lock and the pointers are the keys. The ancients used the method of the Heavenly Stems and Earthly branches to record the time. The three needles correspond with the three units of time; years, months and days. They must all fall in the exact groove and point out the time accurately, that way, the door can be opened.”

Footnotes

(1) 篆体- seal script; a chinese calligraphy style

(2) The Heavenly Stems and Earthly Branches is a method of timekeeping (a counting system). The Earthly Branches are used in cycles of 12, or 60 if used in conjunction with the Heavenly Stems. It is used to record the exact year, month, day and hour.The Ten Heavenly Stems are Jia, Yi, Bing, Ding, Wu, Ji, Geng, Xin, Ren and Gui.The Twelve Earthly Branches are Zi, Chou, Yin, Mao, Chen, Si, Wu, Wei, Shen, You, Xu and Hai.The 10 stems, each is paired with an earthly branch forming a 60-Year Cycle which is a cycle of sixty terms and used for recording days, months and years. It starts with Jia-Zi and ends with Gui-Hai. Hereunder is the match of Stems and Branches. The rule is that the Yang Heavenly Stems match the Yang Earthly Branches, and the Yin Stems match the Yin Branches.On Chinese calendars and almanacs, you can see this kind of note: e.g. For May 1, 2015, the calendar shows – March 13, Yi Wei (Sheep) Year (2015), Ding Chou Day, Geng Chen Month. This is the use of the Heavenly Stems and Earthly Branches.The 12 earthly branches not only stand for 12 Chinese animals but also 12 hours. In the old times, there was no conception of 24-hour for a day. People divided a day into 12 Shichen.