The Sand-Sifting Chronicles: Memoirs of a Lingnan Tomb Raider

Name: The Sand-Sifting Chronicles: Memoirs of a Lingnan Tomb Raider
Author: Arctic Roasted Sweet Potato

淘沙鉴：一个岭南盗墓者的自述

by Arctic Roasted Sweet Potato (北极烤地瓜)

Status: Ongoing
Length: 344k Words
Genre: Mystery
Subgenre: Mystery & Supernatural
Updated: 3mo ago
English: Request a translation

Read on Fanqie

Synopsis

[Tomb Raiding + Suspense + Antique Appraisal + Feng Shui]

My name is He Shouyi. I’m a tomb raider sentenced to fifteen years in prison, and the fourth-generation appraiser of the Jiao Si lineage.

I’ve lost count of how many tombs I’ve entered in this lifetime.

Our lineage has five signature skills: reading thunder to locate tombs, identifying soil by its vegetation, dating it by its smell, pinpointing locations from traces, and spotting fakes to identify treasures. On a rainy day, stick a copper tube into the ground. The echo tells you whether there’s a hollow chamber or a water-filled one thirty meters below. Read the grass from a hundred meters away: Han tombs have thick mounds and dark green grass, while Ming tombs have thin soil and yellowing grass. Bring a handful of earth close and smell it: a charred scent means Han, a sour scent means Tang, and a camphorwood scent means Song. Fourth Master Jiao passed this craft down from the Qing dynasty, and my grandpa spent eight years teaching it to me.

Three brothers who would risk their lives for me have joined me on these tomb raids.

A Shui, fourth-generation Pearl River Tanka diver. He can hold his breath underwater for four and a half minutes, and date pottery by touch: Song porcelain has a thick glaze like eggshell, while Ming porcelain has a thin glaze that lets you feel the body beneath.

Old Lin, twenty-first-generation Yangjiang sea salvage diver. His family has a sharkskin nautical chart passed down from the Southern Song dynasty.

A Kun, fifth-generation Hakka feng shui master. Before entering a tomb, he burns talismans and chants incantations, saying he’s asking the things below for permission to pass.

The four of us have dug from the Nanyue King’s tomb on Baiyun Mountain to the Southern Han mausoleums on Xiaoguwei Island, and explored everything from the great Hakka tombs in Meizhou to shipwrecks off the coast of Yangjiang. This book contains the real secrets from the Jiao Si fragments: skills and rules bought with several lives.

There are also things I never figured out, even by the time I died. For instance, the four symbols on that jade seal, which my grandpa studied for thirty-four years without deciphering. And the whirlpool waters marked on Old Lin’s family chart: I went down there and saw them, but I couldn’t explain what I saw.

It’s all written down here in this journal, exactly as it happened.

Stats

109Chapters

2Reads · 30 days

1.6kReads · all time

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