As an irreversible natural law, "birth, old age, illness and death" has always been regarded as the last "fairness" in the world, especially the ultimate destination of mankind - death, no matter how powerful you are before you die, after death, it is just a bunch of yellow earth, from the princes and generals to the common people, nothing more!
The last "stubbornness" of the ancient emperors - the mausoleum project of laboring the people and hurting the money
Although death is doomed and difficult to escape, for thousands of years there have been countless princes who have made unremitting efforts to "jump out of the six reincarnations and seek eternal life", such as the "alchemy" that Qin Shi Huang was obsessed with, and even left the legend of "Xu Fudongdu".
But when the emperors found that "seeking immortals and refining Dan" did not work, they began to seek things after death, and the "highlight" of them was the construction of the mausoleum, compared to the palace where they lived before they died, they paid more attention to the residence behind them, after all, life was hurried, just a few decades, and after death, they would sleep underground for thousands of years!
Therefore, the first thing the ancient emperor did after succeeding to the throne was to build the mausoleum behind him, the imperial tomb project was huge, the people were hurting money, and they often spent millions of taels of silver and recruited tens of thousands of craftsmen, which took decades!
Because the project is huge, labor and wealth, need to do a lot of preparatory work in advance, the first is the site selection, there was no large construction machinery in ancient times, everything depends on manpower, once "breaking the ground" is "opening the bow and there is no turning back".
Therefore, when the ancient emperor built the mausoleum, he was most afraid of digging out the "stone mother", and once the "stone mother" appeared, it meant that the previous preparation work was all in vain!
So what is a "stone mother"?
According to the "Hanyu Da Dictionary", the "stone mother" is the "stone girl", and the second poem of the "Songyang Palace Gubai" written by Yuan Hongdao in the Ming Dynasty is written: "How much do you know about strange things in the mountains, and whether the stone mother will have children or not."
However, the "stone mother" we are talking about here is not a "stone girl", but exists in the legendary "water essence stone", or can be called "spring eye", when Xu Zheng starred in the TV series "Spring Brilliant Pig Eight Commandments" mentioned, you can make a little reference.
The cause of "stone mother" is that a stone has been soaked in groundwater for thousands of years and absorbed the "aura of water" and formed, so once the "stone mother" appears, it is bound to be "water vapor", and there must be groundwater nearby!
Therefore, when the ancient emperor built the mausoleum, he was most afraid of digging up the "stone mother", "stone mother" hidden deep in the ground, and when the excavation arrived, the mausoleum project was close to the end, in order to avoid the mausoleum being flooded by groundwater, he could only start all over again, and the manpower and material resources expended before were all in vain!
So has there been any unlucky emperor in history who has dug up the "stone mother"?
Needless to say, there is really one, he is the eighth emperor of the Qing Dynasty, Ai Xinjueluo Minning, which is what we often call the "Daoguang Emperor". According to the "Draft History of the Qing Dynasty", the Daoguang Emperor died on the fourteenth day of the first month of 1850 and was buried in the Muling Tomb of the Qing Dynasty.
However, the Qianlong Emperor once fixed the "Zhaomu system", requiring successive emperors to "divide things according to the order of Zhaomu and Mu", according to this regulation, the Daoguang Emperor should be buried in the Qing Dongling Tombs, buried in The Muling is already a violation of the ancestral precepts, and the reason why there is a situation of violating the ancestral precepts is not that the Daoguang Emperor is rebellious, it is really "unavoidable"!
The tomb of the Daoguang Emperor was indeed originally selected in the Qing Dynasty, but because the "stone mother" was finally excavated, the groundwater was inverted, and the entire mausoleum was abandoned, and finally had to be selected in another site in the QingXi Mausoleum.
Here's what happened:
In 1821, soon after succeeding to the throne, the Daoguang Emperor issued an edict: ordering the two princes to "choose to establish a jidi around Douyu in Tanglin", in 1827, the 6-year-old Tanglin Baohuayu was completed, and in September of the same year, the Daoguang Emperor buried the late Empress Xiaomucheng in The Tanglin, but before long, there was a big problem in The Tanglin Baohuayu: the groundwater was poured, and the coffin of Empress Xiaomucheng was soaked in groundwater!
When the Daoguang Emperor learned of this, he was furious and sent a "special team" to investigate the matter, and finally came to the conclusion that Tanglin Baohuayu was close to the underground water source, and the groundwater backfill was inevitable, and it could only be abandoned and another site could be abandoned!
Moreover, the "special case team" found that Tanglin had dug up the "stone mother" when the construction began, which meant that there was groundwater nearby, but the two princes did not think so, nor did they "report" to the Daoguang Emperor, and after hastily treating it, they ordered the construction to continue, and finally caused the entire mausoleum to be abandoned.
The Daoguang Emperor, who learned the truth, ordered severe punishment of the person in charge of the construction of the Tanglin Tombs, and ordered people to relocate the site, and the "engineering team" was not even satisfied with the selection of several pieces of Jidao Daoguang Emperor in The Tanglin, and finally heeded Mu Zhang'a's suggestion to build the mausoleum in the Xiling, which is the Muling tomb of the Qingxi Tombs we see now.
The Daoguang Emperor "cut the door" all his life, but unexpectedly planted a big heel in the construction of the mausoleum, according to the "Records of Emperor Xuanzong of the Qing Dynasty": The Daoguang Emperor spent a total of 2.4 million taels of silver to build two mausoleums in a row, surpassing the Qianlong Emperor and Empress Dowager Cixi, ranking the most of the Emperors of the Qing Dynasty!
And all this is because of a small "stone mother", if the two princes could be responsible for some and choose another site, they would not have lost so much!
brief summary:
Whether the "stone mother" really exists is still an unknown mystery, after all, so far we have not found the actual object of the "stone mother", but the change of the Daoguang Emperor's mausoleum is true.
In fact, "after death, the Yuan knows that everything is empty", the ancient emperor labored the people and hurt the money to build a mausoleum is a bad habit, rather than caring so much about the things behind him, it is better to "struggle" and "strive" for the qingshi to stay famous, as Sima Qian said in the "History": "People are inherently dead, or heavier than Mount Tai, or lighter than Hong Mao."
References: "History", "Records of Emperor Xuanzong of the Qing Dynasty", "Draft History of the Qing Dynasty"