Zheng Anhe snorted and marched off with a scowl towards Director Yang.
It was clear he looked down upon the situation and no longer wished to engage.
Tang Shu glanced at him indifferently, her eyes briefly lingering on the pattern at the center of the burial site before withdrawing her gaze.
Taking out her notebook, she started to focus on recording all of the Stone tablet inscriptions within the chamber, whether on the walls or the natural wooden burial objects.
On Zheng Anhe’s side, a fourth-year from the same major came over, patted his shoulder, and consoled him:
"Forget it, Junior Sister Tang is a reinforcement invited by Director Yang. Since she’s just a reinforcement, her presence is, after all, optional, so let’s not take it too seriously."
The status of reinforcement typically falls into two categories.
The first is truly skilled individuals, specially hired as senior consultants, whom everyone respects for their professionalism.
And the other kind, well... is merely filling a position to bulk up their resume.
When Tang Shu first appeared before everyone, and Yan Jiajia proudly announced that her main profession was an actress, nobody said anything, but they all had a good idea in their minds.
Oh, that’s the kind of reinforcement she is.
Today was the first time the students followed the professors into the ancient tomb, and they didn’t have high hopes for Tang Shu to begin with. Now, seeing her standing in the center as if nothing was amiss, they found nothing odd about it.
Zheng Anhe, as the person in charge of managing everyone’s basic needs, felt not at all comforted by his junior’s soothing words.
"If she were to act like an invisible person, that’d be one thing, but she’s been wasting my energy since day one!"
This was simply intolerable!
"Oh well, maybe she’ll find it boring and leave after a few days. We still need to save Director Yang’s face."
In order to successfully carry out archaeological work, the first step is to understand the basic information of the ancient tomb.
This includes the identity of the tomb owner, the living environment at the time, the ritual standard of the funeral goods, and so on. And this information is to be extracted from the texts within the tomb.
This is why the Stone tablet writings are so crucial.
As one of the oldest scripts, apart from Tang Shu, the veteran professors naturally understood it, and even several graduate assistants had some knowledge of it, but since this script is even rarer than oracle bone inscriptions, they seldom encountered it.
The professors, together with their assistants, analyzed the texts while conducting basic archaeological work with their tools.
"Xiao Zheng, take a rubbing of the text here, and we’ll discuss it in our meeting later."
"Okay, Director Yang."
"Professor Cao, is this a dining vessel used by the tribe at that time?"
"It’s hard to say, it looks more like it was specifically used to store things. Is there a record on it?"
"Here... there are some scratches, is this Stone tablet script?"
Fang Yining carefully brushed the dust from the vessel, revealing a few intrinsic scratches.
Complex and entangled, at first glance they appeared like some sort of prank.
Professor Cao scrutinized them for a long moment, his face breaking into a smile, "Indeed, it’s Stone tablet writing, this is the character ’鹵’ (brine)."
"Brine... what does it mean?"
Could it be that thousands of years ago in the matriarchal society, someone knew how to make brined foods?
Emma, that’s quite a leap of imagination.
Fang Yining pulled back his runaway thoughts just to hear the all-knowing Professor Cao provide the answer.
"’鹵’ in ancient times stood for salt."
That’s... quite a big difference.