(The content of this article is based on authoritative sources, and there are literature citation sources at the end of the article)
In the middle of the last century, Li Runzhi, an extremely ambitious and greedy landlord, relied on his family's hereditary power and wealth to run rampant and vicious and brutal in the local area, causing the people's lives to fall into misery.
In 1951, with the arrival of the Communist People's Liberation Army, the former "overlord of the mountains and wilderness" was finally pulled down under the iron hooves and was brutally executed.
It is rumored that Li Runzhi hid a huge fortune in the mountains during his lifetime and left behind a password-like clue.
Since then, legends of the search for his hidden treasure have spread among the people, attracting countless adventurers to explore the treasure.
The foundation of the crony
Li Runzhi's ancestor was the "Cloud Cavalry Captain" in the Qing Dynasty, which was equivalent to a local official with military and political power.
Over the years, the family has grown in strength in this beautiful but isolated area, and has amassed a lot of money in the warlords' secession era.
The Li family relied on the power base of their ancestors and the wealth of their descendants to thrive in the local area.
Li Runzhi has lived the life of a wealthy man since he was a child, and he has neither hard work nor education.
When he entered his youth, he retained his abundant energy while not learning and not knowing, and learned the arrogance of the family, so he began to do evil in the surroundings, and did all kinds of evil.
The remoteness of the area, coupled with the warlord scuffle, made it difficult for the imperial court to garrison troops. The Li family took advantage of the situation and intensified their exploitation and oppression of the surrounding small villages and merchants.
As soon as the money falls, the top two buy and sell, and the three tyrants occupy the territory and the fourth wants to blackmail. At that time, Li Runzhi rode a horse and carried a gun, and soon drove a group of followers to act recklessly in the area of Ailao Mountain.
In 1926, when the warlords were in chaos, Li Runzhi opened the door to convenience and bribed relevant personnel to obtain the titles of "army commander" and "commander of the joint defense of the five counties".
Li Runzhi did a lot of evil and was a son of man in vain. After occupying the villagers' homestead land, he even ordered them to pay a high rent
In this way, the Li family has transformed from a nobleman into a bully with wolf ambitions in just a few decades by relying on hegemony and violence.
Li Runzhi intensified his efforts for power and money, spending all day long, lascivious, and living a life of eating and drinking spicy food.
There is no shortage of women of good families and boudoir daughters who have been tainted by his poison. In contrast, ordinary people are squeezed to the point where their families have no money to subsidize food and clothing, let alone enjoy life.
There is no way to resist
With the gradual deepening of the Liberation War, the Communist Party gradually advanced the recovery plan to the remote area of Yunnan. When the news reached Ailao Mountain, Li Runzhi was nervous, for fear that his status as a rich man would be deprived.
In order to protect his vested interests, this former evil landlord began to cunningly play duplicitous tricks.
On the one hand, Li Runzhi implemented some beneficial small favors to the people to ease their hatred of himself. On the other hand, he took advantage of the people's blind obedience and superstition, and trumpeted nonsense such as "I am a god in heaven, and whoever dares to kill me is against the will of heaven".
Soon, with the defeat of the Kuomintang-Communist War and the fall of the Kuomintang regime, Li Runzhi saw clearly that the general trend had gone.
As a result, this "overlord" who used to encompass the Ailao Mountain realm began to unite with other unliberated landlords and lords to conspire against the communist self-defense organization.
On October 20, 1949, Li Runzhi personally led his men to launch a sneak attack against the guerrillas and communists. Due to the disparity in force, the two sides were at a stalemate for a time.
In 1951, he was finally captured alive and convicted in public.
In that harsh era, Li Runzhi was sentenced to death in court and shot on the spot.
Clues
Although Li Runzhi, the former "overlord of Ailao Mountain", has been punished by justice, the shadow he left is far from dissipating.
A widely circulated rumor is that Lee Yun-zhi hid his astonishing savings somewhere in the mountains before his death, leaving behind a password-like clue.
The first to peek into this mystery was an old man who had served in the Li family. This old man named Xie Anlin is over ninety years old, and when he was young, he was forced by the homeless situation to go to Li Runzhi's mansion and serve as a bodyguard.
Fortunately, he did not witness too many evil deeds of his master during his tenure in the Li family, but he witnessed a team of horse gangs quietly taking away a large amount of the Li family's belongings at night.
Old Man Xie guessed that it should be Li Runzhi's move to transfer the money in advance in order to avoid being recovered.
After liberation, the old man Xie was also fortunate to escape the fate of being suppressed as a "lackey". When he got older, he was found out about this period of the past.
So many people flocked to the old man who was still alive, hoping to find out the whereabouts of the treasure from him.
For example, Old Man Xie once mentioned that there are some strange symbols carved on the floor tiles of the main hall of the Li family's mansion, which are likely related to the location of the treasure.
For a time, these few oral statements became the fuse that ignited the craze for treasure hunting. More and more treasure hunters flocked to the Li family's ancestral house and the hinterland of Ailao Mountain.
They found traces of strange shapes carved on the paving slabs in the halls of the mansion and in the surrounding area, as well as many strange traces of pentagonal and curvilinear shapes.
Today, this wave of treasure hunting has continued for more than 70 years.
Passion
For more than 70 years, the suspicious clouds left by Li Runzhi have lingered in the sky over the Ailao Mountain area, becoming a desirable legend in this mountain wilderness. Countless treasure hunters, large and small, have gone one after another, just to see for themselves and explore the truth of this treasure of the rich country.
The earliest group of treasure hunters took the old man who had served in the Li family as a clue and traced it down the canal. None of them let go of the old people who were alive like Lao Xie Anlin, and they repeatedly checked every inch of the Li family's mansion and its surroundings. For the strange patterns in the cracks of the floor tiles, they all carefully pondered.
Among these explorers are many scholars and experts with great backgrounds. For example, there is a group of professional cryptographers and archaeologists, who will report some strange figures like inferences and systematically analyze them one by one.
Although no substantive conclusions were drawn in the end, and it can only be suspected that they are some Buddhist symbols that have been circulating for a long time, this has not affected this frenzied treasure hunting craze.
For a time, there were traces of explorers everywhere in the mountain villages. People help each other, exchanging discoveries and guesses. Whether you're searching for hidden passages through cliffs or exploring visions deep in the forest, the slightest hint can cause a commotion.
What's more, in order to explore more efficiently, some people simply live in simple tents in the mountains and wilderness, and do not return for months.
In this way, the whole Ailao Mountain was eaten up by all kinds of treasure hunters, and it was found in every corner, and the traces of people stood in those desolate and dark places for a long time.
The pedestrians who drove by seemed to be a farce, only to see their heads poking out their brains, wielding tools, instruments, tents, and a mess.
For this treasure hunting frenzy, the villagers of Ailao Mountain were very warm and friendly at first. The elders of the village were also warmly invited to help explain all the clues that seemed to be clues.
But over time, they also felt very ashamed and tired of these foreign "adventurers", and refused to communicate with them for various reasons.
As time passed, these people continued to pursue it tirelessly. They live a life of day and night, wandering through the mountains and fields all day and night in search of them.
More than 70 years have passed, but the treasure hunting craze in the Ailao Mountains shows no signs of abating. Whenever someone gets even the slightest clue, even the smallest discovery, it will cause a commotion and uproar.
Resources:
1 Li Ruiming, Zhong Yingsheng. Ailao Mountain: A Beautiful Home of Harmony for All Things[N]. Yuxi Daily,2022-09-28(006). DOI:10.38270/n.cnki.nyxbr.2022.001889.
2. The criminal history of Li Runzhi, the "hegemon of southern Yunnan". Yuxi Historical Chronicles.2019-04-01 [Cited 2020-04-14]