Chapter 15: The Taihao Mausoleum

After driving to the location, they found an open spot to park. Xu Chen compared the map from different angles and finally confirmed that this should be the place, though he couldn’t recall the exact position.

Looking around, he noticed the terrain was gentle and covered with trees, not at all a barren wasteland. It seemed suitable for city development.

It was important to remember that the area of Zhoukou Huaiyang was once a confluence of three rivers, offering tremendous convenience in transportation and water resources, not to mention vast land—ideal conditions for urban growth. Historically, someone had even established a city and capital here.

So why was it now a desolate land?

This world also suffered from population crises; it made no sense to leave such prime conditions undeveloped.

However, Xu Chen hadn’t studied sociology or urban planning deeply, so he could only note down his questions and focus on finding the Taihao Mausoleum, which was the real priority.

“Is it really here?” Professor Ding asked, unloading equipment from the car with a puzzled look.

“Yes,” Xu Chen replied, glancing at him. “But it’s not like the mausoleum you imagined. It’s probably just a mound of earth.”

To be honest, the Taihao Mausoleum wasn’t as grand as imperial tombs. Even if it dated back to ancient times, given the era’s limited productivity, there wouldn’t be many valuable burial items accompanying Taihao. Besides, it was established during the Spring and Autumn period and mostly held symbolic significance.

Professor Ding wasn’t disappointed and smiled. “That’s okay. Any discovery is a discovery.”

He then instructed his students to start mapping the terrain.

In this world, archaeology used surveying techniques to estimate the mausoleum’s location based on terrain features. It relied entirely on science, unlike the “feng shui” and folklore of the previous world. Xu Chen suspected this was evidence that feng shui’s tradition had completely died out.

Unfortunately, Xu Chen himself didn’t know feng shui. He had glanced at books on it as a child but had long since forgotten everything.

He watched as Professor Ding’s team launched a drone to survey the surrounding area. The drone looked like a used agricultural model but had all the necessary functions. Xu Chen scratched his head; with such archaeological resources, there was no reason they couldn’t find the tomb’s location.

After watching for a while, Xu Chen’s eyes fell on a black stone at the professor’s feet. He picked it up.

The stone was remarkably dense and heavy, made of solid granite.

Professor Ding’s two students were busy with the survey, while the professor himself was idle. Seeing Xu Chen pick up the stone, he leaned over to have a look.

“This stone doesn’t seem special—just an ordinary piece of granite,” Ding said.

“Look again,” Xu Chen flipped it over. The reverse side appeared to be polished.

Professor Ding was surprised and quickly took it, brushing off the dirt with his sleeve. It was just a plain polished surface, which left him somewhat disappointed.

“This isn’t useful. It doesn’t look like something from a tomb—at most, it’s a man-made object.”

“Exactly. It’s not from inside the tomb,” Xu Chen agreed. “It was originally outside.”

“Outside?” Ding frowned, thinking it over. “That can’t be. If they used granite to build the tomb, that would be a huge, pointless effort.”

“Who said it was for the tomb? This looks like the blank part beside a stone stele.”

The Taihao Mausoleum was known more for its inscriptions than anything else. Every emperor left a memorial stele after their rites, along with inscription steles, merit steles, incense offering steles, and other monuments erected on the grounds.

These inscriptions alone constituted a rich historical record, sufficient to uncover the mausoleum’s entire legacy.

Carved in stone, they were among the most durable records for posterity. After all, no one would bother to polish away the characters on stone steles, and natural erosion took a very long time.

Professor Ding became excited. He understood the value of these steles; to archaeologists, they were far more precious than unmarked artifacts. He had simply been fixated on the tomb itself and hadn’t considered the steles.

If this was part of a stele, then other inscribed fragments should be nearby. He called his students back from the drone and began a scattered search for steles or debris.

Soon, Xu Chen witnessed Ding’s enduring vigor as he emptied a basket and started a meticulous ground search, almost like scavenging.

Before long, a shout of excitement came from senior student Li Ze, who had discovered a stone stele fragment.

Everyone rushed over and passed it around. To their delight, it was an inscribed fragment.

The three were cheerful, but Xu Chen frowned, tracing the faint characters with his fingers.

The inscriptions were too shallow—most were hard to make out, as if polished down, but upon closer inspection, there were no signs of deliberate abrasion. The characters themselves must have been carved so faintly.

Xu Chen considered that perhaps this faint engraving was an isolated case.

To confirm, all they needed was to find other steles.

Not long after, Xu Chen found a half-broken stele. He struggled to lift it, exposing the inscribed side, and cleared away the soil to examine the text.

“According to the records of the ancient capital of the Imperial Zhou...”

Xu Chen’s heart sank. Straightening, he stepped back to view the stele from a distance and estimated its original size. Immediately, he matched it to a stele in his memory.

This was the burial hall stele erected by Zhu Yuanzhang. Such a historically significant stele had suffered severe damage.

He reexamined it, unable to discern why the inscriptions were so difficult to read, the grooves so shallow.

Who on earth would wantonly damage such an artifact?

Professor Ding had also come over. Spotting the massive stele fragment in front of Xu Chen, he wanted to help but was reluctant to carry his own basket of fragments, so he walked over leisurely.

Glancing briefly at the stele on the ground, Ding’s face flushed with excitement.

“This is an incredibly well-preserved memorial inscription! Our archaeology department is really making a breakthrough.”

“Wait,” Xu Chen questioned, nodding toward the half-broken stele. “This counts as well-preserved?”

“Of course,” Ding set down his basket, eyes never leaving the stone. “Such inscriptions are rare. Many steles are so damaged by the time they’re protected that the characters are barely legible.”

Xu Chen wondered if those other steles were made from inferior stone, making them prone to erosion and wear.

Ding knelt and caressed the stele with fascination.

“It’s remarkably intact. Tianjing University has an instrument that can non-destructively reconstruct the original inscription from damaged steles. It’s expensive to use—just a few seconds of operation cost a lot—but using it on this stele isn’t unreasonable.”

Xu Chen heard this and marveled at the advanced technology.

It seemed this world wasn’t entirely without progress. Before traveling here, Xu Chen had never heard of such a device that could restore worn-away stone inscriptions.

What he didn’t realize was that this technology had been driven by the desperate need to preserve and study fragile cultural relics, underscoring just how precarious the fate of these artifacts truly was.