This matter has to start with the construction of Ganling. Ganling is located on Liangshan Mountain, 6 kilometers north of Ganxian County, Shaanxi Province, and 76 kilometers away from the ancient city of Xi 'an. It was built in 684 AD, and it took 23 years for the project to be basically completed. Liangshan is a naturally formed limestone mountain peak, with three peaks towering, the northern peak is the highest, with an altitude of 147.3 meters, and the southern peak is lower, facing east and west. At that time, the masses called it "Nitou Mountain". Looking from the east of Ganling to the west, Liangshan looks like a woman's body lying on her back, with the north peak as her head and the south two peaks as her chest. People often say that it is a wonderful symbol of Empress Wu Zetian. In the Tang Dynasty, the geomantic scholar, Mr. Feng Shui, thought that Liangshan was very beneficial to the hostess. So Empress Wu Zetian chose Liangshan as her husband Tang Gaozong and her "eternal life domain" after a hundred years. After Tang Gaozong's death, Wu Zetian told Yuan Tiangang and Li Chunfeng, the great magicians who were famous in the ruling and opposition parties at that time, to choose a location for the emperor. They traveled around Kyushu respectively, and when they came back, they all said that they had chosen Liangshan in Haoqi County, Jingan County. Wu Zetian sent envoys to inspect it. When he reached the top of Liangshan Mountain, Yuan Tiangang said that he had buried a copper coin here, and Li Chunfeng said that he had ordered an iron nail here. Digging the ground, Li's nails were right in the copper square hole buried by Yuan, and everyone present applauded in surprise. Therefore, Wu Zetian chose the mausoleum site in Liangshan, which is now the dry mausoleum. In terms of geomantic omen alone, Ganling surpassed all the imperial tombs in the Tang Dynasty.
When Ganling was built, it was in the heyday of the Tang Dynasty, full of national strength, large-scale cemetery and magnificent buildings, which was called "the crown of all the imperial tombs in previous dynasties". At the beginning of the Tang Dynasty, Li Shimin, Emperor Taizong, learned from the historical lesson that there is no country that never dies, and there is no tomb that can be dug. Starting from Zhaoling, he and his eldest grandson, he created a burial system of "taking mountains as tombs", which was designed by famous artists Yan Lide and Yan Liben brothers at that time. The tombs were combined by buildings and sculptures, and were staggered on the mountains with the trend of "dragon plate and phoenix". The dry tombs of Tang Gaozong and Wu Zetian have developed and perfected the shape of Zhaoling. The cemetery is modeled after Chang 'an City in Tang Dou, and is divided into Imperial City, Miyagi City and Outer Guo Cheng, with a north-south main axis of 4.9 kilometers. According to the literature, the "Eight Miles in a Week" in Ganling Mausoleum has two original city walls, with four gates in the inner city, namely Qinglong Gate in the east, Zhuquemen in the south, Baihumen in the west and Xuanwu Gate in the north. According to the investigation by archaeologists, the inner city of the cemetery is about square, with its north and south walls of 1,45 meters long, the east wall of 1,582 meters long and the west wall of 1,438 meters long, with a total area of about 2.3 million square meters. There are many splendid buildings in the city, such as offering halls, wing rooms, cloisters, Quelou, Di Renjie and other 6 courtiers, such as ancestral temples and Xiagong. As for the treasure inside, after years of exploration and investigation, a cultural relic worker estimated that it was at least 5 tons! On both sides of the front and rear passages, there are four caves, which are filled with the most valuable treasures in the Tang Dynasty. On both sides of the nearly 1-meter corridor leading to the King Kong Wall, there are all kinds of gold and silver sacrificial vessels. What interests the world most is the top national treasure-Preface to the Lanting Pavilion. According to historical records, the Preface to the Lanting Pavilion was said in Li Shimin's testamentary edict to be placed under his head. That is to say, this treasure should be in Zhaoling, not Ganling. However, Wen Tao, the secretariat of Yaozhou in the Five Dynasties, stole Zhaoling, but there is no Preface to Lanting in his list of unearthed treasures, so nine times out of ten, the Preface to Lanting is hidden in Ganling. Among the folk rumors around Ganling, there has long been a saying that the preface to Lanting was buried with Wu Zetian.
With such a rich treasure, Ganling attracts professional grave robbers, government officials, bandits, warlords and even peasant rebels like pollen, and they come to dig with shovels and hoes one after another. From the moment Wu Zetian lay in Ganling, Liangshan never stopped. The first person who visited Ganling was Huang Chao, the leader of the rebel army in the late Tang Dynasty. Among all the leaders of peasant rebel armies in the past dynasties, his reactionary degree was second only to that of Zhang Xianzhong in the late Ming Dynasty. After the salt dealer led an army of 6, troops to attack Chang 'an, he first burned, killed and looted. When the bandits were addicted enough, he suddenly found that he had nothing to do. In fact, the emperor of the Tang Dynasty was gathering his strength to prepare for a counterattack. At this time, someone told him one thing, a lot of gravel was buried under the loess on the west side of Liangshan. The news is suggesting that Huang Chao, the entrance of the richest dry mausoleum in the Tang tombs, is likely to be on the west side of Liangshan, and the gravel is probably the remaining raw materials after the dry mausoleum is built. Huang Chao exultation, immediately bring up 4 soldiers, ran to the west of liangshan began to dig. These people are all farmers, and they are very skilled in the use of shovels. Soon, they leveled half of Liangshan, leaving a 4-meter-deep "Huang Chao ditch". However, Ganling seems to have no entrance at all. Later, the troops of the Tang Dynasty assembled to launch a counterattack against Chang 'an, and Huang Chao was unwilling to flee empty-handed. Huang Chao, a self-proclaimed scholar, is so stupid that he simply knows that Ganling faces south. The emperor of the Tang Dynasty deliberately buried the gravel produced by the construction more than 3 meters away from the entrance of the tomb. In other words, he digs in the wrong direction, which shows that uneducated people must never become nouveau riche, because money or soldiers are not resources that benefit one side, but poisons that waste people's money and harm the world.
The second person who extended a sinful hand to Ganling was Wen Tao, the governor of Yaozhou in the Five Dynasties. It seems that this person was born to make trouble for the mausoleum of the Emperor of the Li and Tang Dynasties. Before Ganling, 17 Tang tombs had been excavated, leaving only Ganling. But his ideal was shattered here. Like Huang Chao, he also wanted tens of thousands of troops to dig Ganling in broad daylight, only to find that three times he went up the mountain and was blown by wind and rain. When the troops withdrew, the weather cleared up immediately. Wen Tao really couldn't understand what was going on, but he still didn't continue digging, so he gave up the idea. Ganling escaped the second robbery at this point.
The most dangerous thing is the third time. This time, instead of 4, troops, it was a modern reorganization division, and the tools used to rob the tomb were no longer hoes and shovels, but machine guns and cannons that cut stones like vegetables. The mastermind was Sun Lianzhong, a Kuomintang general in the Republic of China. He led his men to learn the way Sun Dianying bombed the tombs of Cixi and Qianlong, buried pots and cooked rice in Liangshan, and set up a camp. Under the guise of military exercises, black dynamite blasted the three layers of stone slabs in the pyramid-shaped mound. When he was about to enter, suddenly a thick smoke came out, spiraling up and becoming a tornado. Suddenly, it was dark, and seven soldiers from Shanxi Province were the first to vomit blood and die. Where did others dare to go forward again and let out a loud shout? It is said that there are few survivors of one regiment of General Sun. Local people say, "Because Wu Zetian is from Shanxi, he hates people from his hometown to dig her grave, so the seven Shanxi soldiers will die." In this way, Ganling finally escaped the last bullet.
After the founding of the People's Republic of China, by chance, several farmers discovered the tomb of Ganling. In 196, the Ganling Excavation Committee was established in Shaanxi Province, and on April 3, the excavation of Ganling underground palace was started. The excavation shows that the tomb of Ganling Underground Palace is located at the southeast mountainside of Liangshan main peak, which consists of trench and cave. The trench is 17 meters deep, and all of them are filled with stone strips with a length of 1.25 meters and a width of .4 to .6 meters. The pyramid-shaped mound is 63.1 meters long, wide in the south and narrow in the north, with an average width of 3.9 meters. Stone strips are stacked and buckled along the slope from south to north, with 39 floors, 41 exposed planes and about 8 stone strips for 39 floors. The stone strips are fastened by dovetail-shaped thin waist iron bolt plates, and the holes between the upper and lower parts are penetrated by iron bars, which are poured with molten tin-iron juice and fused with the stone strips. The excavation situation is the same as that recorded in "Biography of Yan Shansi in Old Tang Dynasty", "Xuanque in Ganling, its door is blocked by stone, and its stone gap is fixed by cast iron". In addition, archaeologists have not found any signs of stealing holes or being disturbed around Lingshan, which proves that Ganling is the only imperial tomb of the Tang Dynasty that has not been stolen.
Wu Zetian is a person who is good at defeating everything with time. When she entered the palace at the age of 14, it took her 18 years to become a queen, then 35 years to become an emperor, and 12 years after her death to prove the firmness of her tomb and the immortality of its charm. Even before Mr. Guo Moruo's death, he was still obsessed with the central government's approval to excavate Ganling. It can be said that Wu Zetian conquered the world before her death and history after her death.