In May 1857, Shi Dakai, one of the founders of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom, led his henchmen to flee for refuge in order to avoid Hong Xiuquan's suspicions.
However, on May 14, 1863, in the course of the battle with the Qing dynasty army, Shi Dakai led the army to delay the construction of the bridge and cross the river due to the incident, and was killed by the perfidious Qing army Ling Chi.
According to legend, Shi Dakai knew of this disaster, and specially hid the treasure accumulated over the years, leaving eight words as a clue to the treasure, and no one has found the treasure for many years, and no one has mentioned this matter for a long time.
(1) Liu Xiang discovered that Shi Dakai's treasure site had been prevented from being excavated by Chiang Kai-shek
Until 1937, Liu Xiang, then chairman of the Kuomintang Sichuan Province, was approached by a local squire in Anshunchang, who claimed to know the mystery of the treasure hidden treasure of the Wing King Shi Dakai and presented Liu Xiang with a treasure map.
Liu Xiang also heard the legend of Shi Dakai's treasure in his early years, and he was convinced of the words of the squire, in the era of war, marching and fighting required a lot of money, if he could find this wealth, he would be sure to take care of it in the future, Liu Xiang immediately sent sappers to Anshun field to dig for treasure.
More than a thousand sappers were ordered to come to Anshun Field, which was extremely dangerous and extremely difficult for ordinary people to climb, and Liu Xiang was more and more certain that Shi Da would hold a meeting to hide the treasure here, and the sappers did not find the treasure after professional excavation.
Liu Xiang was furious and ordered them to dig holes in the mountain wall, "If you can't open it by hand, you will blow it up with explosives, and I must know what treasure is inside!" ”
The sappers did not dare to be idle, and hurriedly dug a cave on the mountain wall, encountered a difficult place to really use explosives, and when they dug to a certain depth, they found three holes, and immediately someone reported it to Liu Xiang.
During the excavation, a poisonous gas gushed out of the cave entrance, apparently a mechanism specially set up by the people who buried the treasure at that time, to prevent other thieves from moving the treasure.
The sappers rushed to the front of the group of people who were attacked by poison gas, and the people in the back quickly evacuated, and when the gas dissipated, everyone entered the dug cave one by one.
The sappers found some flowing gold bronze ware from the mouth of the cave, a look at the cultural relics of hundreds of years ago, including jade frontal flowers, hand guards, silver buckles and other items, Liu Xiang was overjoyed after hearing it, and made sure that he did not find the wrong place, "Dig it out for me!" ”
These treasures were for Liu Xiang to march and fight in the future, to buy people's hearts and minds, and once exchanged for money, it was definitely a large amount, and the sappers immediately continued to excavate and remove cultural relics.
Liu Xiang was the most arrogant person, and after he discovered Shi Dakai's treasure, he did not want to cover it up, but instead publicized it everywhere, and the surrounding warlords wanted to share a piece of the pie after learning about it.
The fact that Liu Xiang found the treasure actually reached Chiang Kai-shek's ears, and Chiang Kai-shek was also moved by this batch of treasures, and did not want Liu Xiang to swallow it alone, so Chiang Kai-shek came up with a plan that could swallow the treasure alone but also not make Liu Xiang feel suspicious.
Chiang Kai-shek prevented Liu Xiang from continuing to excavate on the grounds of destroying ancient cultural relics with explosives, and in order to make this matter more reasonable, he also banned any individual or organization from continuing to excavate The Anshun Field under the banner of protecting ancient cultural relics in the name of the "Archaeological Protection Committee of the Forbidden City".
Liu Xiang naturally refused to give up the treasure at his fingertips because of the obstruction of the Archaeological Protection Committee, but Chiang Kai-shek was his immediate superior after all, and if he offended Chiang Kai-shek for the sake of gold and silver treasures, according to Chiang Kai-shek's wide-eyed nature, he would certainly not be easily spared.
Fortunately, at this time, Liu Xiang had already sent his men to dig out the treasures of the first two caves and hide them in his wife's residence, leaving only one cave unpicked and not painful.
Chiang Kai-shek also specially issued a military order to Liu Xiang, ordering him to take the Sichuan army to the anti-Japanese battlefield, Liu Xiang received enough benefits, and there was a reasonable reason to let himself leave Anshun Field, and he naturally had no objection.
Before leaving, Liu Xiang did not forget to let his men seal the third cave that had not had time to dig, and after Chiang Kai-shek forgot about it in the next day, he would bring sappers to take away the treasure inside.
After the Sichuan Army resisted Japan, Liu Xiang forgot about this matter and never mentioned the treasure to anyone, until 1942, when Chiang Kai-shek suddenly remembered that Liu Xiang had dug out the treasure of two caves.
He hurriedly found his confidant Dai Kasa, and Chiang Kai-shek asked Dai Kasa to lead the elite secretly to Sichuan to dig out the treasure left by Shi Dakai.
Dai Kasa was very excited after receiving this order, he had also heard that the amount of treasure left by Shi Dakai was amazing, and immediately led the people to set off on the same day.
However, after Liu Xiang dug the treasure in Anshun Field, Dai Kasa fell into a dilemma, at this time a full five years had passed since Liu Xiang dug the treasure, and in these five years, there were many flash floods because of changes in the environment, and there was no way to determine the location of the three caves that were blown out that year.
Liu Xiang was in a hurry to leave after accepting Chiang Kai-shek's orders, and did not make obvious marks, and the appearance of mudslides and flash floods made it impossible for these people in the arena to find traces of buried treasure.
Unwilling to give up, Dai Kasa first sent someone to write a telegram to Chiang Kai-shek about the situation in the area, and then ordered his sappers to search carefully around the mountain, but the result was the same, and no one found the treasure.
When Chiang Kai-shek learned of this, he had more important tasks to be sent to Dai Kasa to complete, so he recalled the group who had found nothing to find the treasure of Shi Dakai.
(2) The treasure left by Shi Dakai has been excavated several times
The squire who took the initiative to find Liu Xiang at the beginning also wanted to take this opportunity to climb up to Liu Xiang and keep the family stable, Liu Xiang was in a hurry to make quick gains, and after getting the treasure, he turned his face ruthlessly, and as for the end of the squire, it is unknown.
One of Liu Xiang's staff members was named Wang Yunshe, who had followed Liu Xiang on the battlefield for many years and was a witness to the digging of treasures in that year, and he had never been able to forget the treasures of that year.
In 1980, Wang Yunshe remembered the treasures of that year, and he took the initiative to find archaeologists and inform him of his identity.
"I have participated in the excavation of treasures, and I have witnessed the sappers digging out a lot of gold and silver jewelry, and Shi Dakai's treasure is indeed real."
After the Sichuan Provincial Museum learned of this news, it immediately sent archaeologists to the local surrounding area to investigate, and the results learned were very consistent with Wang Yunshe's confession.
The iconic object that Wang Yunshe can remember is still a large local banyan tree, but decades have passed, the building has been built flat, and the local terrain and landform have changed dramatically, and he does not know whether the banyan tree in his memory is still there.
Local archaeologists had also heard about the treasure of Shi Dakai, and after seeing hope, they took Wang Yunshe to AnshunChang, they did not find the big banyan tree, nor could they find any clues, and they could only return disappointed.
But archaeologists did not forget to express their gratitude to Wang Yunshe, and the search for Shi Dakai's treasure was once again shelved.
The treasure left by Shi Dakai is a legend that has attracted countless people, and no one can be sure whether Shi Dakai was trapped in the Dadu River in the first place for all the generals who later took advantage of the chaos, but the eight words "facing the water and relying on the mountain, during the treasure period" have been passed down from generation to generation.
(3) The whereabouts of Shi Dakai's treasure are unknown
Until 2021, the matter of Shi Dakai's treasure once again had an eyebrow, and a man named Wang Enyun in a village near Anshunchang in Sichuan Province took the initiative to contact the local archaeological department.
Wang Enyun was born in a peasant family, the family has been settled in Anshunchang for generations, he never thought that there would be some big people in his ancestors, as he grew older, Wang Enyun began to be interested in history.
When Wang Enyun was watching a TV series related to the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom at home, he was very envious of Shi Dakai, who was full of culture and martial arts, and accidentally found that his own firewood knife was not like the knife used by ordinary farmers to cut firewood, but was very similar to the knife used by soldiers in the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom in the TV series.
Wang Enyun thought that Anshun Field was not far from the place where Shi Dakai was defeated, and his grandparents were all right in age, so he took the initiative to contact the local archaeologists, hoping that archaeologists could help identify whether this chai knife was related to the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom.
"When I was a child, my grandparents often took this knife to chop wood, and I didn't think much about it, but because I was watching the TV series of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom recently, I found that this wood knife was likely to be the knife of that era."
Wang Enyun archaeologists explained the origin of this knife, archaeologists carefully took the wooden knife in their hands to observe, found that although this knife is old, the knife has mottled marks on the body, but it is very similar to the saber used by the soldiers of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom, and it is almost certain that it is genuine.
Archaeologists then asked why the Wang family had this knife, and Wang Enyun specially found his grandparents, at which time he learned that his grandmother had once been a female soldier in the yiwang Shi Dakai combat team.
Shi Dakai was an upright and generous man, and he never discriminated against him in the military, and his reputation was extremely high both in the imperial court and among the people.
Hundreds of people are willing to defect to Shi Dakai's command, Wang Enyun's grandmother's family is poor, in order to make a living, joined Shi Dakai's ranks, all the way to witness Shi Dakai and others to establish the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom to be suspected by Hong Xiuquan in order to alleviate the contradiction and lead the troops out.
In the Battle of Dadu River, Shi Dakai was defeated, and Shi Dakai, who failed to break through several times, saw the battle situation clearly, and he was unwilling to let the soldiers who fought alongside him die in vain, if he continued to fight with the Qing army, although it was a inevitable defeat, the Qing army would also suffer many losses.
Therefore, Shi Dakai made a deal with the qing commander, as long as he went to the other side's camp alone and let it be disposed of, the Qing army spared the remaining soldiers under his command.
But who knew that the Qing army did not intend to keep its promise, wanted to trick Shi Dakai to kill him and then wipe out his remaining army, after Shi Dakai entered the enemy camp alone, the Qing army immediately captured him in his residence to execute Ling Chi, during the period of being Ling Chi, the iron-boned Shi Dakai did not cry a word, and the atmosphere among his soldiers was unbearable.
Even if the soldiers who lost their main backbones resisted, they were also slaughtered by the Qing army, and only a very small part escaped from this massacre, and the Qing army won a great victory in this battle, no longer caring about some fish that slipped through the net and directly collected the troops.
Few soldiers survived, some soldiers were willing to settle their families on the banks of the Dadu River to guard the tomb for Shi Dakai in order to thank Shi Dakai for saving his life, and some soldiers who escaped by chance chose to hide their names and live an ordinary life.
Wang Enyun's grandmother was one of the soldiers who hid her name, in the chaotic world, she was a weak woman who had no place to live, and finally fled to the villages around Anshunchang, where the people did not reject the foreign displaced people, but found a job for Wang Enyun's grandmother so that she could support herself.
Wang Enyun's grandmother later married into the Wang family, and she never mentioned her past to anyone, but chose to live a very ordinary life with Wang Enyun's grandfather.
It was not until 2021 that grandson Wang Enyun accidentally discovered this chai knife to reveal his grandmother's past life.
Archaeologists believe that if Shi Dakai really hid a batch of treasures, he could only choose to be not far from the place of defeat in the critical situation at that time, and now that the wood knife has been found, it must be of great help for subsequent research and excavation.
After the archaeologists communicated with Wang Enyun's grandmother, the grandmother expressed her willingness to lead the archaeologists to the place where Shi Dakai was defeated in the war - on the south bank of the Dadu River.
"This is where The Wing King Shi Dakai was finally defeated, and I was just a small soldier in the team at the time, and I didn't know too many core secrets." Wang Enyun's grandmother looked at everything in front of her and seemed to fall into a deep memory.
Archaeologists immediately brought in state-of-the-art metal detection instruments and conducted a comprehensive inspection around the Anshun field.
After many days of investigation, archaeologists found an anomaly in an area of five square meters under an ancient banyan tree, and everyone carried out follow-up research.
The result of the metal detector was that there were some precious metal residues about ten meters under the tree, and archaeologists immediately determined that this was not the treasure buried in Shidakai.
Because at that time, in order to avoid the pursuit of the Qing army, Shi Dakai built a bridge overnight on the Dadu River, the situation was so urgent, naturally there would be no extra troops to dig a ten-meter-deep pit under the tree, and at that time, at that time, it was impossible to dig such a deep pit with the machetes in their hands alone.
There may be some ancient artifacts in this cave, but it is by no means a treasure of Shi Dakai.
To this day, no one has found out where Shi Dakai's treasure is, but many more people have gone to great lengths to find the rich fortune.
bibliography
Wang Yunshe,"Supplementary Materials on the History of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom Revolution"
Guangming Network "Mysterious Shi Da Kai Treasure Cellar"