The Informal Tomb Raiding Diary: She is the occupant of the tomb!-Chapter 270 - 257: She’s a Martian
But naming wasn’t even the strangest rule in their family. The strangest rule of the Dong Family was forbidding ancestor worship.
This was irrelevant to cultural rituals. Just two generations back, the younger family members already didn’t know where the graves were located.
His parents never took him to pay respects at his grandparents’ graves. He didn’t know where they were buried. When his grandfather passed away, he was just one year old, but when his grandmother passed away, he was already twelve, yet his parents still didn’t take him to his grandmother’s burial site.
His parents only went once during the burial and never visited again afterwards.
This ’estrangement’ from deceased ancestors had already become a habit in their family, or perhaps it was the effect of years of subtle influence and leading by example?
In any case, Dong Sanqi transitioned from childhood bewilderment to adult acceptance. He knew there must be some secret hidden in the family since it wasn’t due to a lack of familial affection. He knew his father would often look at the family photo taken when he was one month old.
I think he has the potential to be the protagonist of a suspenseful movie. Strange family rules, secrets hidden by parents, a mysterious box sealed within the old house’s walls, the brass key, and the sheepskin map—all these elements combined are easily enough to make a web movie with a score of 3.9.
Starting from their ancestors, everything has been shrouded in mystery. Where did they migrate from, why did they migrate, and how did they discover the location of the Different Space door? None of this is reflected in the murals.
The ancients built tombs within their means and had restrictions based on status. Judging by the scale and complexity of the Dong Family ancestors’ tomb, it seems their ancestors were neither short of money nor manpower, perhaps even nobility or royalty.
The Old Dong Family left behind too many mysteries, but we and Dong Sanqi were just chance acquaintances, simply chatting, with no intentions of delving deeper.
I asked him what the brass key was used for, whether it opened the stone platform, because the masked person only grabbed it after entering the ancient tomb, so it probably wasn’t the key to the tomb entrance.
"I’m just casually asking. If it involves any secret, you don’t have to answer." I realized that my current demeanor imposed a lot of pressure on them. Driven by fear and pressure, they might reveal secrets they intended to keep. While I wanted to know the reasons, it wasn’t absolutely necessary to find out.
"Oh, it’s nothing really, probably just rumors. The elders in our family believed that the family was guarding a treasure, and the key was to open the box containing the treasure," Dong Sanqi said nonchalantly.
The matter of the treasure was heard by everyone in the Dong Family, but according to rumors, a traitor within the family handed over the treasure chest key to the one in power at the time in exchange for his life.
Thus, everyone in the family believed the key was taken by someone else; they only knew what the key looked like and what it was made of.
The old house currently being renovated by Dong Sanqi was built by his great-grandfather during the final years of the feudal dynasty, and the traitor mentioned by the family referred to his great-grandfather.
He said that his family couldn’t clearly say who received the key; some said it was the Wang government’s, some said the Jiang government, and others said it was given to the puppet Manchurian government.
But looking at it now, regardless of who it was given to, what his great-grandfather gave was a counterfeit.
Yet this poses a problem: a fake key can’t open the treasure box. Wouldn’t people come back to settle scores with his great-grandfather?
Upon hearing my question, Dong Sanqi shook his head, "Who knows what happened? It’s all hearsay. Anyway, my grandpa mentioned once that his great-grandfather went on a trip with someone and never returned. My grandpa was nine at the time, and adults wouldn’t tell him about such things."
In this light, it was likely his great-grandfather who hid the box in the wall, but before he disappeared, he hadn’t confided anything to his son. This was normal because his great-grandfather probably didn’t anticipate going missing, so from his grandpa’s generation onwards, their family remained clueless about the truth regarding the key.
The fewer people who know a secret, the better, but doing so also carries great risks. Once knowledgeable people die, it becomes difficult for others to learn the hidden truths—what he hid would remain buried indefinitely.
On the road, boredom prompted me to listen to Dong Sanqi’s stories about their family; it was like listening to a storytelling session. A family old enough will always pass down some strange anecdotes, but when the younger generation listens, they consider them just stories. Seldom does anyone treat them seriously or try to verify their authenticity, and many things are difficult to verify for later generations.
For instance, if a granddaughter hears her father say, "When your grandpa was young, he encountered the bizarre phenomenon of talking koi fish," how could one verify such an event? It can only be listened to as a story.
