Daomu Biji: Wu Xie’s Private Notes - Chapter 2: The Mystic Nine Leaders

My grandfather and even my generation’s affairs originated in old Changsha. From Dart Summit (1) to Qiu Dekao, the seeds planted back then seemed to have finally grown into my generation.

In order to have a general understanding of the customs in Changsha at that time, I had sorted out some of the things about the Mystic Nine leaders from my grandfather’s notes, along with all the interesting things he had told me before. When I looked back at them now, I felt a lot of things.

All the people in the underworld had known or heard about The Mystic Nine. These families of tomb robbers were so powerful that they covered all aspects of cultural relic smuggling. Almost all the grave goods flowing out of Changsha had to pass through one of the families.

There were many explanations as to why they were called The Mystic Nine. The most recognized one was that the ancient big city had nine gates, and merchants who entered or left the city had to choose one of them. That was how the name “The Mystic Nine” came to be. In Changsha City, you could only choose one of these nine powers to do business with, and there was no other way to go.

I didn’t know much about these powerful people’s stories, because my grandfather didn’t want me to know too much about their past. What these people did sounded glorious to those in the underworld, but their stories were all misdeeds to normal people.

The new Mystic Nine was nothing compared to the old Mystic Nine. Most of the new Mystic Nine were self-sufficient, but the achievements of the old Mystic Nine had been spread by word of mouth because they had worked so diligently.

In an era of information obscurity, it was necessary to have extremely special experiences so that their reputations could be passed on. One could only try to imagine how powerful they had to be to get such ranks among that kind of society.

The Mystic Nine was divided into three parts.

The upper three clans were all well-established old families, and their official status had been largely honest. They had legitimate businesses on the surface, and were powerful in officialdom, so they mainly relied on their own underlings when they went grave robbing. There were some extremely skilled and loyal underlings in the upper three clans, but because of this, their gradual aging resulted in the upper clans’ gradual decline.

The middle three clans were the main grave robbing forces. They were all courageous heroes who had a few apprentices, and usually worked in the mountains all day. These people were relatively young, but they were very greedy and did everything, from murdering to stealing goods. Their reputations were made from killing people, so they had nothing to be afraid of. The big cases after the founding of the country all had something to do with them.

The lower three clans were businessmen who specialized in antique dealing. Even though they had skills, they didn’t go grave robbing often. The lower three clans worked closely with the middle three clans. Since the upper three clans were on such a large scale, they had no profits left over for the lower three clans. As a result, the upper three clans had almost no interactions with the lower three clans.

If we were to use one word to describe them, the upper three clans would be “officials”, the middle three clans were “thieves”, and the lower three clans were “businessmen”.

Since ancient times, there had been collusion among officials, thieves, and businessmen, so it wasn’t surprising that the Mystic Nine had this sort of structure as well.

The Upper Three Clans

The founders of the upper three clans were all extremely famous grave robbers. These three families were people of their own word.

It wasn’t really fair to say that they were grave robbers, because their family power was already similar to that of some of the small warlords at that time.

Since the Autumn Harvest Uprising (2), most of these three families joined the revolution. One of them was even the hero of the founding of the country. But this matter was quite secretive, so it wasn’t convenient for people to tell me more about it, and I only learned a few names.

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TN Notes:

(1) Pinyin is Biaoziling (镖子岭). It’s the first place mentioned in Vol 1 “Cavern of Blood Zombies”, where Wu Xie’s grandfather encountered the zombie. They called it “Dart Summit” in Vol. 5 “Deadly Desert Winds”.

(2) It was an insurrection that took place in Hunan and Jiangxi provinces, China, on September 7, 1927. It was led by Mao Zedong, who established a short-lived Hunan Soviet. Wiki link