One day in the early 80s of the last century, Uncle Yang, a farmer from Shanxi, came to the local bank with two tightly bandaged "bricks".
After arriving at the bank, the staff found that Uncle Yang had brought two gold bricks, but these gold bricks were a little different, with some jerky words engraved on them, and the staff immediately realized that things were not so simple.
The staff member found an excuse to stabilize Uncle Yang, and then left the counter to notify the police.
After a while, when Uncle Yang was full of joy and thought that he could exchange cash, he found that there were already police officers standing behind him.
Only then did Uncle Yang realize that the things he brought might not be just ordinary gold bricks.
Uncle Yang's family lives in Shanxi, in the 80s of the last century, it was still a very poor area, although there are many businessmen who have made a fortune with Shanxi's rich coal resources, but this has nothing to do with Uncle Yang, who has been a farmer all his life.
For more than 60 years, Uncle Yang's family has made a living from farming.
Uncle Yang, who is in the sixtieth year, is probably determined to live like this for the rest of his life, usually in addition to working in the field, Uncle Yang will also go up the mountain to chop wood, and live a poor and peaceful life, but this peace was completely broken because of a chance discovery.
On this day, Uncle Yang went up the mountain to chop firewood as usual, and on the way up the mountain, Uncle Yang found a cave on the side of the road. Uncle Yang thought that he had walked this road hundreds of times, and he didn't find any caves, could it be that this cave collapsed because of rain?
Driven by curiosity, Uncle Yang decided to enter the cave to find out, because of the black lights in the cave, Uncle Yang couldn't see anything clearly, and was about to turn around and leave when he was tripped by a stone under his feet.
In order to find out what was in the cave, Uncle Yang took out a box of matches from his arms and hesitantly wiped one.
Uncle Yang squatted down and saw the stones on the ground clearly with the help of the faint light of the match. In the faint light, these stones reflected a faint golden yellow, and Uncle Yang immediately thought that it seemed that only gold could have this golden yellow.
Thinking of this, Uncle Yang took advantage of the fact that the match was not extinguished, quickly grabbed two stones, and then walked out of the cave in the dark.
After coming to the outside of the cave, Uncle Yang found that the two stones he brought out were golden, and there were some words and symbols faintly engraved on them.
Uncle Yang looked over and over again, and felt more and more that these stones were gold bricks, and the excited Uncle Yang immediately copied the stones and ran home, and even the tools used to chop wood were thrown in place by him.
After returning home, Uncle Yang excitedly talked to his wife about the process of picking up the gold, and his wife couldn't help but get excited under his narration, only the son who was sitting next to him remained silent.
The son took the gold brick, looked at it carefully, and poured a basin of cold water on Uncle Yang. Uncle Yang's son thinks that these are just ores containing brass, not so-called gold bricks at all.
Uncle Yang naturally did not agree with his son's statement, so he decided to find an opportunity to go to the town to find someone who knows how to take a look.
The next day, Uncle Yang knocked down a few pieces from the gold bricks, came to the town with the pieces, found a person who was interested in mining, and asked the other party to help make an appraisal.
After a while, the other party told Uncle Yang that these fragments contained gold, but the content was not high, and there were many impurities...... Before the other party could finish speaking, Uncle Yang was already laughing so much that he couldn't close his mouth.
After returning home, Uncle Yang told his family the good news, and Uncle Yang's son immediately decided to explore the cave again, and if he found all the gold, he would transport it out and then exchange it for cash in batches.
That night, when the neighbors had turned off the lights and gone to sleep, Uncle Yang took action, pushing the cart usually used to hold firewood, preparing the torches for lighting, and then went up the mountain with his son.
About half an hour later, they came to the location of the cave. When the pitch-black cave was completely illuminated by torches, Uncle Yang and his son were shocked by the scene in front of them.
The cave was full of golden bricks, and Uncle Yang roughly estimated that there would be at least a few hundred catties of weight. In addition to the excitement, the two hurriedly loaded the cart with gold bricks, and soon filled a cart, and even if the cart was full, there were still many gold bricks in the cave that could not be transported.
Uncle Yang and his son pushed the car and prepared to go down the mountain, in order to hide people's eyes, they covered the car with a layer of cloth and returned home in the night.
After returning home, Uncle Yang happily counted the gold bricks, which were hundreds of pieces, and Uncle Yang realized that the value of these gold bricks was probably something he had never seen in his life.
But soon, a problem was placed in front of Uncle Yang, although the gold bricks were shipped out, but how to spend them? It is impossible to take the gold bricks to spend, so as soon as the news of his own treasure is not exposed?
This question stumped the honest Uncle Yang, but his "smart" son gave him a "good idea": take the gold bricks to the bank to exchange for cash.
Uncle Yang thought about it and felt that this was the only way to go, so he agreed with his son's idea. A few days later, Uncle Yang took two gold bricks and went to the bank in the town and decided to exchange the gold bricks in his hand for cash.
After walking into the bank, Uncle Yang sat down at a counter window, explained his intention to the staff, and then took out the gold brick and handed it in through the window.
The staff took the gold bricks, looked at them, and found that these gold bricks were a little different, because the two gold bricks of Uncle Yang were completely different from the gold bars issued by the state and banks.
The staff then asked Uncle Yang if he had a certificate issued by the relevant appraisal agency, and after receiving a negative reply, the staff immediately realized that the origin of the gold may be illegal.
The staff told Uncle Yang that he needed to wait on the grounds that the gold bricks needed to be identified, and Uncle Yang didn't think much about it and sat at the counter and waited with peace of mind.
When the bank's appraisers saw the gold bricks, they concluded that they were not issued by the state or the bank, and that the words engraved on them looked like ancient characters.
After making a preliminary judgment, the bank chose to call the police, and while waiting for the arrival of the police, the staff stabilized Uncle Yang on the grounds that it took time for gold identification.
It wasn't until the police arrived that Uncle Yang learned that he was in big trouble under the advice of the staff.
Under further questioning by the police, Uncle Yang told how he found the gold bricks and told his son about the gold bricks shipped out one by one.
In order to verify, several policemen followed Uncle Yang back to their home, and only after going up the mountain with Uncle Yang's son to check on the spot did they believe Uncle Yang's words.
Subsequently, the police brought all the remaining gold bricks from Uncle Yang's house and the cave back to the police station for further investigation.
The first thing the police should do is to determine the origin of these gold bricks, why they appeared in the cave, and who put them in, and what is the purpose of putting them in?
All of this requires a lot of evidence to corroborate.
The police sent some of the gold bricks to a professional appraisal agency for identification, and after identification, the gold content of these gold bricks is generally not high, and most of the workmanship is rough. The police thought that these gold bricks were most likely processed and made by some private private workshops.
In order to thoroughly investigate the origin of these gold bricks, the police set their sights on the words engraved on the gold suit, but after identification, few of these words can be clearly identified, and from the style of the text, these words should be ancient characters.
The police combined several clues, rough workmanship, blurred text, and appeared in the cave, all of which seemed to point to the nature of these gold bricks in one direction, which was the ancient cultural relics.
To this end, the police sent some of the gold bricks that were still well preserved to the cultural relics department, hoping to obtain some valuable clues from the cultural relics department.
After looking at the cultural relics experts to consult the historical materials and carefully identify, they finally succeeded in deciphering the words on the gold bricks, it turned out that these words were "Zhang Tong Rujin, the minister of the Wei State of Zhu". In this way, the owners of these gold bricks came to light, and they belonged to this person named "Zhang Tongru".
It is worth noting that judging from the title, this Zhang Tongru should be a famous figure, after all, the one who can be named the "Duke of Wei of the Pillar State", if it is not a meritorious figure, it is the royal family and nobles, and the gate lord clan.
For example, in the Western Wei Dynasty, there was the famous "Eight Pillars Kingdom", and Li Hu, the grandfather of Tang Gaozu Li Yuan, was one of the "Eight Pillars".
It stands to reason that such a famous big man should be recorded in the history books, but experts have searched through the historical materials of the first few hundred years of the Republic of China, and they have not found this person named "Zhang Tongru".
For this reason, experts first thought of a possibility, that is, Zhang Tongru's title of "Pillar State Wei Guogong" existed for a short time, and it may be recaptured a few days after being sealed.
Although there is some truth in this statement, if this is the case, the history books will not go unrecorded, and the seizure of Zhang Tongru should also be recorded.
After discussion, this possibility was ultimately dismissed. The experts expanded the scope of the search to a thousand years ago, and finally, they found traces of Zhang Tongru in the history books of the Tang Dynasty more than 1,300 years ago.
According to historical records, Zhang Tongru was a subordinate of An Lushan and was deeply valued by An Lushan. After An Lushan established the "Puppet Yan" regime, Zhang Tongru was ordered to stay in Xijing, and it was during this period that Zhang Tongru was awarded the title of "Emperor" by An Lushan to the Duke of Wei.
However, An Lushan was a rebel regime and was not recognized by the Li Tang royal family, so it is reasonable that Li Tang's history books do not record Zhang Tongru, the so-called "Pillar State of Wei".
The origin of the gold bricks is clear, but why these gold bricks appear in the cave has become the next difficult problem that the police and experts need to solve.
According to experts' research, the reason why these gold bricks are in the cave is likely to be because Zhang Tongru hid these gold bricks in the cave in order to preserve his family property when he was defeated and fled with the army of Shi Siming's son Shi Chaoyi.
Moreover, these gold bricks should have been originally planned by Zhang Tongru to be dedicated to An Lushan, so the words "Minister Zhang Tongru Jin" were engraved on them, but they could not be dedicated due to the war.
It seems that this problem has been solved, but the history books record that after Shi Chaoyi killed his father Shi Siming, he became the emperor in Luoyang, and then sent people to Fanyang to let Zhang Tongru kill Shi Chaoqing.
Zhang Tongru refused this request, and then the various factions fought in Youzhou City for more than two months, and Zhang Tongru and Shi Chaoqing were killed successively.
In other words, Zhang Tongru died in the area of Youzhou City, which is today's northern Hebei and Liaoning, but his gold bricks appeared in caves in Shanxi, why?
After careful review of historical materials, experts put forward the most likely explanation: after Zhang Tongru was killed, because he had firmly stood with Shi Chaoqing's faction, Shi Chaoyi was greatly annoyed and ordered to raid his home, and this batch of gold bricks was confiscated at this time.
Later, in September of the second year of Tang Zhide (757 AD), the Hui army helped the Tang army defeat the rebels in the Battle of Xindian, so that the coalition army recovered Luoyang in one fell swoop.
After entering the city, the Uighur army began to "collect compensation", which was to say that it was to receive remuneration at best, and to loot at worst.
Because when he was in Chang'an before, Li Yu came forward to stop Hui Hui's plan to loot Chang'an, which made the people in Chang'an City have a good impression of Li Yu. But when he arrived in Luoyang, Li Yu couldn't stop Hui anymore, so in Luoyang City, Hui Hui began a three-day loot.
According to the "Old Tang Book: The Biography of Hui Hui": and collected Tokyo, Hui Hui then entered the treasury to collect the wealth and silk, and plundered the village square in the market for three days. It is very likely that Zhang Tongru's batch of gold bricks was taken away in these three days.
Nearly 100 years after the captivity of these gold bricks, many of the old Hui tribes chose to return due to the internal political struggle within the Hui Dynasty. At this time, some Uighurs came to settle in Shanxi, and these gold bricks were also brought by them.
The reason why the gold bricks are hidden in the cave is probably because these people don't need them very much at this time, so they hide the gold bricks in the cave, and in case there are changes in the future, they will take them out for emergency use.
This statement is also the most convincing statement, but whether the truth of the year was true or not may be buried in the dust of history forever.
Back to Uncle Yang, after being taken away by the public security organs for investigation, he was arrested on suspicion of violating the "Cultural Relics Protection Law".
Because the law clearly stipulates that unexcavated cultural relics also belong to the state, any citizen should promptly report to the relevant departments and hand over them in accordance with the law after discovering cultural relics, and it is illegal to keep cultural relics privately.
However, not all cultural relics need to be handed over, if it is passed down from generation to generation, the cultural relics and antiques that are inherited in an orderly manner can be used as a personal collection.
It's a pity that these gold bricks found by Uncle Yang do not belong to the cultural relics that are inherited in an orderly manner, but the cultural relics found in the excavation, which belong to the state, which means that Uncle Yang transported the gold bricks home without permission is already a violation of the "Cultural Relics Protection Law".