The second version of the story is completely different. It is said that gold sand was once found in the rivers here, and much of the gold sand was shaped like melon seeds. Because of this, many people came here for its fame, gathered to pan for gold, and many eventually settled down, building ancestral halls and temples. As generations passed and the area flourished, people named this place Guazi Temple because of the origin of the golden melon seeds from long ago.

According to my research, the first legendary general was most likely John Adams, but the same folk legend is very famous in Liyang, Jiangsu. Why a similar legend would appear in Shandong is unknown. Generally, it is speculated that a significant portion of the immigrants here came from Jiangsu, bringing Jiangsu’s folk legends to Shandong.

John Adams and Jane Smith

In the 500s BC, at the end of the Spring and Autumn period, King Ping of Chu unjustly killed John Adams’s father and brother. John Adams escaped from Zhaoguan, crossed the Yangtze River, and fled to the state of Wu. Later, he was pursued, so he traveled by day and hid by night, journeying for seven days until he reached the banks of the Lai River in the Huangshan area of Liyang (the river flows from Gucheng Lake in Gaochun, passing through Nandu, Liyang, Xushe, West Lake, Yicheng, East Lake, and into Taihu Lake; the Yixing section is also called Nanxi River). There, he met Jane Smith, who was washing yarn by the river, and begged her for food. Jane Smith gave him the paste used for sizing yarn to eat. After eating, John Adams urged Jane Smith not to tell anyone he had been there, lest his pursuers discover his whereabouts. To put John Adams at ease as he fled and to preserve her own chastity, Jane Smith picked up a large stone and drowned herself in the Lai River. Later, John Adams led the Wu army to defeat Chu and avenge his father and brother. On his way back to Wu, he stopped by the Lai River to pay respects to Jane Smith, throwing a hundred pieces of gold into the river. According to folklore, John Adams cast three dou and three sheng of golden melon seeds and scattered them in the Lai River as thanks.

I do not wish to judge the heroes of the past with the worst assumptions, but this historical story still reveals a cruel possibility. When King Goujian of Yue sought peace, John Adams advised the new King of Wu, Fuchai, to seize the opportunity to destroy Yue and unify Jiangnan. This shows that John Adams was a man of decisive action, leaving no room for mercy. Such a person, who could endure humiliation for decades, return to his homeland for revenge, and even exhume and mutilate corpses, clearly had a certain character. Just like many of the so-called “sacrifices” in modern Chinese history, we do not know how many martyrs truly died at the hands of the enemy.

You wash yarn, I beg for food; I am full, you drown; ten years later, a thousand pieces of gold to repay your kindness.

Alas, boatwoman who washed yarn, were you forced to die under the sword for the sake of a beautiful lie? In the end, John Adams must have felt some pangs of conscience, but could the scattered gold ever ease your long-standing unease?

Or perhaps things were not so simple. John Adams was a general famous for tomb-robbing. The golden melon seeds scattered here may have had another purpose. Or perhaps these golden melon seeds were washed down from ancient tombs upstream, or maybe, when someone was secretly burying treasures, gold sand spilled into the river. For now, we can only speculate.

003 Topographical Map Translated from the Warring States Silk Manuscript (with Google Earth reconstructed map attached)

The key to translating the Warring States silk manuscript is to break down each character into a matrix, with all the details forming a vast matrix, and the matrix itself divided into dimensions, searching for the appropriate points within. These symbols, when connected, represent certain meanings through their lines. This system of symbols is extremely complex, but with modern computers, the map can be reconstructed in a very short time.

This method was later widely used in the design of “Yangshi Lei” (the Lei family of architects). It is unknown whether the inspiration also came from the Warring States silk manuscript.

004 Floor Plan of the Seven-Star Lu King’s Palace (with hand-drawn map of the Seven-Star Lu King’s Palace provided by “Blue Alcohol”)

According to my analysis, there may be an ancient tomb complex in the Guazi Temple area. The corpse cave is clearly a tunnel that was opened through the mountain. It is unclear how the hollow inside the mountain was formed, but the passageways on both sides must have been tomb-robbing tunnels dug during the time when King Xiang of Lu robbed tombs. We do not know the direction of the underground water system in the mountains, but based on the current situation, the water-robbing tunnel diverts the stream through the mountain, most likely to facilitate the transport of burial goods from the ancient tomb by water.

The Seven-Star Lu King’s Palace has a burial passage about one kilometer long, connecting the sacrificial tombs to the actual ancient tomb. The maze-like embedded passages all eventually lead to the underground palace where the snake cypress is located, and the real coffin is buried inside a hollowed-out ancient tree. This tree must have been planted here by the ancients long ago, and with such a diameter, it must be at least a thousand years old.

Most ancient tombs from the Western Zhou dynasty are relatively small in structure due to the nation’s strength at the time. True fortress-style tombs were reserved for only a few emperors. The structure of this tomb is not particularly grand either. Upon careful analysis, it appears to be formed by linking three ancient tombs together: the sacrificial tomb as an accompanying burial mound, the Seven-Star Coffin as a suspected tomb, and the huge cave reached by the embedded passage as the real burial chamber.

So, what were those embedded passages for? Judging by the degree of damage, they were likely built at the same time as the ancient tomb. If they were secret escape routes for craftsmen, these passages would be far too complex. If they were a maze to prevent outsiders from entering the tomb, I think simply destroying the entrance would have been much more efficient.