TAMW CH63

Recently, Baicheng has been overhauling its old railway lines.

Major provincial capitals nearby had long since upgraded to subways and expanded high-speed rail networks. Baicheng was the sole exception, having only submitted the proposal for renovations this year.

The reason was simple: Baicheng’s existing railway, built during the Republican era, was of exceptionally high quality. Meticulously maintained and scientifically routed, travel times on this line were barely distinguishable from modern high-speed trains, rendering an overhaul unnecessary for decades.

It was only recently, with plans to expand the port and construct a subway system, that the city finally decided to renovate the old tracks.

However, shortly after breaking ground, the Baicheng engineering crew unearthed a tomb.

The site lay on a mountain on the outskirts of Baicheng. The crew had intended to blast a tunnel through the peak, never expecting to breach a burial chamber instead. A closer look at the inscription revealed the words: Zhou Clan of Baizhou.

In Baicheng, the Zhou family was a household name.

After the Republican era and the ensuing wars, the city once known as Baizhou had been renamed Baicheng.

The historic Zhou estate was now a permanent tourist attraction. Though it remained private property, throngs of visitors flocked outside its gates every day to snap photos and check in on social media.

[Oh my god, they dug up a Zhou family tomb! There were still tombs like this in the Republican era? Wasn’t it already modernizing? They even had burial goods? I heard the mountain the crew was blasting is actually Zhou family private property.]

[Isn’t the Zhou family a single-lineage descent? How could they not have an ancestral graveyard…]

[Fake news. The Zhou descendants have already arranged to relocate the remains to the ancestral graveyard. Word is, the people in this specific tomb had a rather… unique status~]

[What’s so unique about it?]

[It’s two men inside!! And the burial goods are apparently massive. There’s leaked interview footage from the site. My brother does relic restoration, and just looking at the footage, there were several trunks of silk robes…]

[I heard it wasn’t just two men; the stuff they dug up is absolutely wild…]

[Given how famous the Zhou family is in Baicheng, is it really two men? No way, is it actually that legendary couple from the rumors?! So it was true!!?]

[What is the commenter above screaming about????]

[If you’re not from Baicheng, you wouldn’t know. The Zhou family is legendary here. Even today, over half the real estate in Baicheng belongs to them. The descendants just keep a very low profile. The rumor was always that the family empire was built by a same-sex couple…]

[Such juicy gossip exists?!]

[The inventory of burial goods just dropped online. Apparently, the Zhou descendants are donating part of it to a museum and keeping the rest. But what on earth is this? [Image Attached]]

[A beaded bracelet? Is that some kind of jade? Any experts here? After being buried underground for so many years, it still has such an incredible luster! Could it be some ultra-premium jade?]

[I heard there were tons of these inside the tomb. The Zhou descendants generously donated one bead to the museum. Experts are preparing to test it now; apparently, the material isn’t standard jade! It might be some incredibly rare substance. Even jade experts say they’ve never seen anything like it. Truly the flex of the obscenely wealthy, hohoho—]

[Does anyone have the full story on this gay couple? Begging the Baicheng locals to spill the tea!]

[I do, I do! This pair must be the legendary Zhou Young Masters. The story goes that one was adopted, and the other was the biological heir. The two of them ruled Baicheng back in the day, and supposedly, neither ever married! My grandma said that even in her grandmother’s time, people gossiped that their relationship was anything but simple~ Now they’re in the same tomb, what’s left to guess?~]

[Wait, I just found a plot hole. If neither ever married, where did the single-lineage descendants come from…?]

[One was the adopted son, one was the real heir. If they wanted to pass down the lineage, the child had to belong to the real heir. They probably paid someone to have a baby and brought it back? Guess their love wasn’t that pure after all…]

[Some say one of them gave birth to it. Word is, there was a medicine for it back then.]

[That sounds a bit too fake. If a man could really give birth, why would the other guy only let him have one?! A male mother should obviously be a male mother full-time! Breed ruthlessly! Big-bellied beauty (just kidding)]

[If it’s true love, how could he bear to make him suffer through that, hahahaha—]

[Or maybe they adopted? Either way, the older generation always said they were incredibly deeply in love. Heard the older one was a stunning beauty, and they were inseparable wherever they went. Does it really matter where the kid came from?]

[Yeah, yeah, just looking at the two of them in the tomb says it all. They were buried holding each other—definitely super in love!]

[The burial goods are a bit bizarre, though. What is all this? Why bury a pile of clothes and socks? And this fabric that looks like it was soaked in something and dried… what is that?]

[And a pile of dried flowers—probably fresh when buried. A smoking pipe… Did the experts figure out what that ‘jade’ material was?]

[I’m dying of laughter. Last night everyone thought it was some undiscovered material, but today they ran it through specialized equipment, and it turns out it’s just DATE PITS HAHAHAHAHAHA—Who gets buried with a hoard of date pits, hahahaha? Were they afraid of getting hungry in the coffin and needing a snack?]

[Wait, those don’t look like date pits at all. There are zero ridges on them; were they deliberately polished?]

[Experts say there are no tool marks or signs of polishing.]

[What kind of dates have pits that look like that?]

[I have a bold theory… What if they weren’t polished, but rubbed every single day? Like how people roll walnuts in their hands until the ridges wear smooth? Like, maybe the wife gave him the date, and he loved it so much he couldn’t stop rolling the pit in his hands?]

[I feel like the commenter above just cracked the case.]

[He must have really loved his wife, playing with his wife’s date pits every day, hahahaha—]

[Bringing date pits into the tomb is legendary behavior. But who was the top? Why does the skeleton nestled in the other’s arms look like it has a larger frame?]

[The one holding the larger frame has long hair! There’s a hairpin at the back of the skull.]

[My god, the live broadcast only panned over them for a split second—how did you guys spot all that?!]

[Isn’t this all a bit disrespectful?]

[If they were that deeply in love, letting future generations know how obsessed they were… they might actually enjoy the attention. Who else would bring their wife’s date pits into the grave as burial goods…]

[So feudal. Didn’t cremation and sea burials already exist in the Republican era? Such a prominent family still doing traditional tomb burials… they were both very traditional, it seems.]

[I heard that during the wars, the Zhou family hauled out actual artillery cannons and blasted away. Baizhou was one of the few places that rarely saw serious fighting. Being near the coast, their weapons supply was top-tier, always ahead of the times. Never seen ‘feudal’ traditionalists playing with heavy artillery…]

[True. Baicheng has been stable from the Republican era to this day. When war raged outside, they used the railways to ship weapons everywhere to support the front. The people here are great; our ancestors were badasses.]

[The museum just announced that the Zhou descendants donated two letters! They’ll be published tomorrow!]

[I’m actually really looking forward to this, hahahaha. What an absurdly amazing couple—a traditional, feudal patriarch and his male wife buried together, hahaha. What could possibly be in those letters?]

The next day, the letters were published.

[To my wife Qingqing: To know you and be known by you—my only regret is that our time together was too brief for endless passion. Now buried together, I pray that in the next life I may rest in your embrace day and night, leaving this life with no regrets. — Zezhi]

[To my husband Zezhi: If there is a next life, pray we meet sooner. Yuqing harbors no regrets in this life. You love to act spoiled; it is fortunate we are buried together, so that even in the underworld, you may continue to roam freely in Yuqing’s embrace. — Yuqing]

[So the top really is the one holding the other?]

[Oh my god… The Zhou descendants just dropped their ancestors’ romance on us, ahhhh! They really were a couple!]

[Heavens above, a long-haired wife and a clingy husband? Are there any novels with this dynamic…]

[Begging for recs too…]

[Why is there no dramatic backstory in the letters? It sounds so mundane, like they just casually penned notes to each other, deeply in love, and then passed away together? Such a peaceful, blissfully happy vibe…]

[I don’t know why, but seeing our ancestors have a love like this is so touching, waaaah!]

[An indulgent wife, a clingy husband, falling in love during turbulent times, leaving a single-lineage heir behind. With such a solid foundation and an empire built by their ancestors, their descendants won’t have to worry about food or clothes for countless lifetimes, right?]

[All I can say is, for that era, they had incredible foresight…]

[It just sounds so happy! Wealth and love. Even now, Baicheng has to ask for their permission just to dig a subway, hahaha. It shows how high the Zhou family’s status truly is in Baizhou, hoho.]

[Where did the two ancestors go now? Does anyone with insider info know?]

[The ancestors have already been laid to rest in the ancestral graveyard. The two were deeply devoted spouses and have been re-interred together as they wished. They are the founding ancestors of the Zhou clan, named Zhou Yuqing and Zhou Xiao.] — A statement from the Zhou descendants.