Chapter 53: The Truth About the Ancestral Tomb

Chapter 53: Chapter 53: The Truth About the Ancestral Tomb

"The t-truth? What truth?"

Zhang Yun noticed that Zhang Youcai was panicking. "Cut the crap! There were too many people around earlier, so I didn’t expose you. If I had, even if they hadn’t beaten you to death, you would have lost your foothold in the village."

As Zhang Yun spoke, he walked toward the ancestral tomb. Having just chased Zhang Youcai here, he hadn’t yet seen exactly what the older man had been doing.

Zhang Youcai hurriedly chased after him. He was already getting on in years and slightly frail. Having taken a few kicks and blows earlier, he let out a series of miserable yelps as he ran.

"Zhang Yun, Zhang Yun, listen to me! We can talk this over. I’ll buy softshell turtles from you again next time. I was very quick to pay last time, and I didn’t short you just now..."

Seeing that they had reached the front of the ancestral tomb, Zhang Youcai grabbed Zhang Yun’s arm. Gritting his teeth, he said, "I’ll give you another twenty thousand!"

Zhang Yun glanced back at him without saying a word.

For some reason, even in the dim light, Zhang Youcai felt as if he could see a radiant, piercing gaze that sent a wave of sheer panic through his heart. He recalled the rumors from a few days ago. Word had it that Li Bing, a hooligan from the neighboring village, had his leg broken by Zhang Yun. When Li Bing brought a group of thugs for revenge, Zhang Yun had taken them all down!

His back was burning with a fiery pain; the slap he had received earlier was incredibly heavy. If Zhang Yun were to actually make a move, he would be even more vicious than the previous four men combined!

"Don’t be like this... I’ll tell you, alright?" Zhang Youcai smiled bitterly.

He walked to the front of the ancestral tomb, picked up a flashlight from the ground, inspected it, and pointed at the main tombstone. "Come take a look at this!"

Zhang Yun walked closer and saw that the tombstone had been moved aside. The tool Zhang Youcai had prepared wasn’t a hoe, but a specially made iron shovel designed to be wedged into the cracks to pry things open.

"You’re grave robbing?" Zhang Yun furrowed his brows, wondering why anyone would rob their own village’s ancestral tomb. Although this was a genuine old tomb, the earliest ancestors who settled here were just ordinary people who cleared the wasteland to farm. They weren’t high officials, nobles, or part of some prominent wealthy family. What could possibly be worth stealing?

"You young people only know half the story about this ancestral tomb, don’t you?" Zhang Youcai sighed lamentably. He leaned against the tombstone, sat down, and patted the ground.

Zhang Yun sat down next to him.

"Actually, the graves at Old Tomb Ridge were only dug in the past few decades. Anything older than that was just a mound of dirt. In the past, the poor couldn’t afford coffins or proper tombs. They just wrapped the bodies in straw mats, buried them in a pit, and within a few decades, they completely decomposed.

"When I was young, everything was very primitive. This tomb and the surrounding graves of our forefathers were all renovated later on. Confirming that this specific one was the ancestral tomb for the entire village was based purely on the impressions of a few elders back then."

Zhang Youcai began to explain the whole story in full detail. With decades of chaos starting from the late Qing Dynasty, how could a tiny mountain village preserve its history perfectly? By the 1980s, this place was nothing more than an unmarked graveyard! In an era when people couldn’t even keep themselves well-fed, who had the time to care about ancestors they didn’t even know? It was only later, when everyone’s living conditions improved, that they started paying attention to this spiritual heritage—and even then, they only repaired the graves of their own great-grandfathers and grandfathers.

It was only after Zhang Youcai made money in the South and returned that he spearheaded the first major renovation of the ancestral tomb. Based on the elders’ memories and inspections, they confirmed that the central mound was the earliest ancestral tomb.

"At that time, this place was just a massive mound of dirt," Zhang Youcai sighed, a hint of pride in his voice. After all, this was his achievement!

When it was time to renovate the ancestral tomb, he originally offered to fund it, but no one else was willing to put in the physical labor. Everyone said that since Boss Zhang had made a fortune, the ancestors must have blessed him, so it was his duty to fulfill his vows and return home in glory. If he completed it, it would give him all the face. Why should they help him?

People were still quite superstitious back then. Masons and craftsmen were reluctant to take on jobs involving ancestral tombs or shrines, because any good fortune would go to the descendants of that family, while any misfortune might fall upon the workers. Zhang Youcai had to hire workers from out of town and intentionally kept the details vague just to complete the first major overhaul of the ancestral tomb.

"I won’t go into the specifics; you were probably born around that time anyway. That’s the gist of it. The later renovations were just to make the exterior look more luxurious."

Zhang Yun nodded. There was no way Zhang Youcai was telling him all this just to reminisce about fixing a tomb. And just because he paid to fix it didn’t mean he had the right to destroy it. "Get to the point!"

"Do you know what I discovered?" Zhang Youcai let out a faint sneer. "This isn’t the tomb of the Zhang Clan’s ancestors at all!"

Following Zhang Youcai’s logic about grave robbing, Zhang Yun had assumed there must be some treasure inside. He never expected to hear that it wasn’t their ancestral tomb! "Then whose is it? And why didn’t you say anything?"

As it turned out, since this place was far from the village and no one from the village contributed money or labor, no one bothered to come watch the spectacle. The out-of-town workers assumed it was the tomb of Zhang Youcai’s own ancestors and followed his arrangements completely.

When they leveled the original dirt mound to rebuild, they discovered numerous jars and pots buried around the coffin. Upon opening them, Zhang Youcai found they were completely filled with silver dollars! This proved it couldn’t possibly belong to their ancestors. After careful consideration and making the necessary preparations, he took the risk of opening the coffin alone at night!

To his shock, he found no skeletal remains inside the coffin. Instead, it was brimming with gold, silver, jewelry, and antique collections!

From a letter left inside, he learned the general backstory. During the wartime chaos years ago, a wealthy landlord fleeing the conflict had packed all his precious collections into a coffin and buried it in this unmarked graveyard, placing the lesser-valued silver dollars in jars outside. According to their plan, once they settled down, they could occasionally dig up some silver dollars to use. Then, once the world stabilized, they would retrieve the entire collection to revive their family.

It was unknown what happened afterward—perhaps they died at the hands of soldiers or bandits during the war, or perhaps the secret location was lost to time. Not a single cent had ever been retrieved!

At that time, Zhang Youcai took all the silver dollars home. The items inside the coffin were too valuable for him to fence easily, so he sealed it back up exactly as it was. Later, he altered the renovation design, constructing a secret chamber that resembled a small room. The front tombstone served as a movable entrance!

No one in the village knew. After the out-of-town workers left, it became Zhang Youcai’s solitary secret. He took the silver dollars to the southern coastal regions to sell, bringing back even more capital to set up a factory in his hometown. Because the ancestral tomb had been built so grandly, and seeing that Zhang Youcai had only grown richer since renovating it, coupled with shifting cultural attitudes, the villagers began to place great importance on ancestor worship during festivals.

There were subsequent renovations to the ancestral tomb, all spearheaded by Zhang Youcai. Everyone donated a little money as a token of participation, but these renovations were purely cosmetic and never affected the secret chamber at its core.

Listening to this legendary tale, Zhang Yun couldn’t help but voice his suspicion. "Are you saying... all these years, while it looked like your business was growing bigger and bigger, you were actually... money laundering?"

"That’s just how doing business works!" Zhang Youcai sighed. "There are always profits and losses. We have an advantage here in terms of labor costs, but we utterly fail when it comes to business channels, supply chain integration, and logistics. At best, you could say I fed a lot of workers and made a small profit, but the true pillar supporting my expansion was fencing the items hidden inside here."

"So you spent twenty years slowly liquidating it, little by little, like an ant moving a mountain?" Zhang Yun found it incredibly hard to believe.

Zhang Youcai stood up. "I know it’s hard to believe... The fresh air has circulated enough. Let me take you inside to have a look!"

The reason he had only moved the tombstone slightly and paused to tell the story was to allow the chamber to ventilate, preventing any risk of suffocation from oxygen deprivation once inside.

Watching Zhang Youcai skillfully and methodically slide the tombstone aside bit by bit to reveal a pitch-black cavity, Zhang Yun frowned inwardly, wondering if the older man was planning to trap and bury him alive inside.