An old hand who has worked the tomb-raiding circle most of his life, Shen Zhaoye's partner. Black markets, smuggling routes, local powers—he knows them cold; cowardly, slippery, foul-mouthed, but his judgment in a pinch is sharper than anyone's.
Background / motivation / observation stance
An old hand in the tomb-robbing circle, alive thirty-eight years; the black market of this trade, the flow of artifacts, smuggling routes, local powers—there's nothing he isn't familiar with.
He's foul-mouthed, afraid of death, and knows how to weasel; in a crisis he can even spin a bit of gossip to settle everyone's nerves. Don't be fooled by that mouth of his—he's survived in this trade this long on a sense for danger sharper than anyone else's.
It was he who brought this job to Shen Zhaoye. Through his uncle—a middleman dealer of artifacts in Shanghai—he uncovered an unsettling fact: before this client, who put out the contract through an anonymous channel, had come to Shen Zhaoye, they had already sought out at least 3 spot-diviners.
Those 3 people—not one of them could be reached now.
This wasn't the only job he'd worked alongside Shen Zhaoye. The most recent was in 2025, a Western Xia tomb in Zhangye, Gansu—and in his own words about what they ran into in that tomb: that wasn't a living creature, it was something being kept.
He said this very softly, as if he didn't want to think about it again.
What is worth anything in this trade is not the skill of the hands. It is who you know, and he has spent most of a lifetime on that.
The middleman uncle in Shanghai, several antique dealers in Xi'an, a haulier in Lanzhou, the man who handles the last stretch out through Shenzhen—none of their names are in his phone, only a handful of codes that mean nothing to anyone else, with the numbers kept in his head.
With each of them he holds the same middle distance: greetings at the festivals, help given halfway on any piece of business, never owing a favour and never letting anyone owe him too much. Owe too much and it has to be repaid, and there comes a point where it is repaid with your life.
He is thirty-eight and still alive in this trade on the strength of that web. If a single point on it moves, he knows the same night.
He has no filter, and inside a tomb passage he talks more, not less—the worse the feeling, the more he talks, and none of it about anything relevant. The people he works with have learned: once he starts on the gossip, he thinks the place is wrong.
When it is genuinely dangerous he goes quiet instead. He stops, steps back half a pace, and rests a hand on his pack strap. That sequence has appeared a few times, and every time something followed.
He is afraid of dying and has never hidden it or felt any shame about it. His account: everyone in this trade who wasn't afraid is already gone.
Before taking a job he checks the client. How closely depends on the money—the more freely it is offered, the harder he looks.
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