Chapter 124 – The Mountain God’s Secret

This situation was not unexpected, this gourd shaped cave, on the whole, although it was natural, it was very likely that it was formed in the ancient times when the geological environment changed strongly, but in the fossilized forest inside the gourd cave, there were many relics left behind by the ancients, and with the ancient carvings revealed on the fossilized altar, it could be almost concluded that as early as before the construction of the “Tomb of the King of Consecration”, this mysterious cave had been regarded as an extremely important place by the local aborigines. Before the construction of the “Tomb of King Dedication”, this mysterious cave was regarded as an extremely important place by the local aborigines.

The ancestors of mankind, in the Stone Age when the Hongmu first opened, had the tradition of knotting a rope to keep track of things. With the development of civilization, stone carvings and petroglyphs, relief sculptures and other intuitive forms of expression have become the most effective way to pass on civilization, and in some places where important rituals are held, a large amount of graphic information is left behind to give the descendants the most direct revelation.

Ancient ancestors in the long years using realistic or abstract artistic techniques, drawing and chiseling graphics or symbols on the rocks, which recorded all aspects of social life of ancient mankind, and the fossilized altar found in the gourd cave under the “Valley of the Worms” records the secret activities of the ancients to worship the mountain gods in this place.

First into the eyes of the convergence of this altar on the best-preserved one, said is intact, only relatively speaking, thousands of years of erosion, a large part of the carving has been blurred, stone carving patterns using the grinding process, grinding method is the first chisel and then grinding, the lines are thicker and deeper, the groove is smooth, and in some places, even still retain the original color.

At most, it can still be seen, this stone carving graphic there is a tall black-faced deity, big ears and high nose, face with coarse hair, mouth holding a skull, simple and strange face, it is easy to be unforgettable.

Fatty pointed at the black-faced deity on the fossilized altar and said: ”Hey, this black-faced one, does it look like the idol enshrined in the entrance out of the mountain temple? Only two less followers of the night fork evil spirits, it turns out that this gourd hole is his territory, I do not know what this grandson is from.”

Shirley Yang said, “The image is slightly different, but the bones are the same, most likely the same person, but the statue in the Mountain God Temple, has the style of the Qin and Han Dynasties, the image appears to be floating and dusty, quite influenced by the mainland Han civilization circle, while the stone carvings on this altar reveals primitive and barbaric writing colors everywhere, it should be at least three to four thousand years ago Primitive monuments, about before the Warring States era, the remains left by the ancestors of the southern border, may be the entrance of the mountain god temple, is the construction of the dedication of the tomb of the king, according to the legends of this neighborhood separately shaped the image of God’s clan, in addition to the temporary can not be sure whether it is a mountain god or sorcerer, and then look at the rest of the part.”

Fatty continued to clear the rest of the stone carvings with an engineer’s shovel, as he cleared part of it, Shirley Yang looked at part of it, but most of it was already unrecognizable, and the order of it was reversed, which made it unclear, and after looking at it for a while, he didn’t even find any more valuable information.

My heart is also secretly anxious, while holding a flashlight for the fat man and Shirley Yang lighting, while alert to the surrounding movements, now improperly parked in the middle of the cave, this is not a place of leisure, lurking danger is too much, that the ghost of the underwater female corpse, the size of the toad is too large to be normal, as well as those large flying insects, although we have not yet been subjected to any fatal attack, but We still haven’t figured out if our bodies are getting smaller, and if there’s some kind of change due to going deeper into this gourd-shaped cave.

The constant depletion of equipment and energy made us have to do our best to cross this cave as quickly as possible, but this weird cave was full of crises, the deeper we went, the wider the cave became, and the plants and insects inside were also much bigger than the outside world, just as Shirley Yang had said, insects were the species with the strongest vitality and lethality in the world, and the reason why they hadn’t yet dominated the planet was solely Because of the small size of the limitations, if we go on in the cave, those flying insects only need to be three circles, if you are unlucky to be dinged by them, it is bound to be a life of death, any you are the Golden Immortal is also difficult to live.

It can be said that in this wandering between the indecision, the discovery of a fossilized altar, it is very significant, we can only hope, if we can find out some clues from the altar, on our current situation for an assessment, it can be decided to continue to venture forward, or we must return to the original way, and then think of other ways to find a way to enter ” King Sacrifice’s Tomb”.

I couldn’t wait any longer, so I said to Shirley Yang: “I remember that in the Tang Dynasty Feng Shui master Yuan Tiangang’s 兗天論, there was a description of ancient people offering sacrifices to the mountain gods, which is quite similar to this place, and it’s very likely that there’s more than one stone altar in the cave, so we might as well look for it in the neighborhood, and we might still get something.”

Shirley Yang showed me one side of the stone carvings that she and Fatty had just cleared out, and said to me, “This is the last part, it’s two pieces that are connected together, thank God, it’s still possible to see a clear picture, come and take a look too.”

I saw Shirley Yang’s face look a bit odd, I couldn’t tell whether she was happy or sad, but seemed to be more in doubt, so I handed my Wolf Eyes flashlight and Jianwei air rifle to Fatty, and crouched down to look at the stone carvings on the altar.

I set my mind to look carefully, the picture art modeling rough and thick, simple composition, gesture natural, but the writing is stronger, that is a scene of bizarre and incomparable scene, in the water of the fossil forest, a group of head in the feathers of the natives, riding in the boat above, holding a long pole, those poles and wooden boat, we passed the “martyrdom ditch Those poles and wooden boats, which we had seen before after passing through the “Martyr’s Ditch,” were of unknown use at that time.

Just see those wooden boat tied a lot of big toads, may be big toads are captured by these natives in the vicinity, with the rope tied very strong, those big toads open their mouths, the expression looks very frightened, seems to be extremely worried about their own upcoming destiny, are trying to struggle, carving, although simple, but extremely vivid, so that people only look down, can appreciate the scene conveyed in the stone carving, which is full of a kind of ancient time mass sacrifice. which was filled with a tragic atmosphere of mass sacrifice and killing in ancient times.

Several natives with feathers on their heads, under the command of a leader with a helmet with a bull’s horn on his head, simultaneously lifted a large toad with a long pole, lifted it into the air, and extended it into a hole in the stone wall of the fossilized forest, where a rolling black gas came out of the hole.

Behind another wooden boat, placed a few smaller toads, showing a dead look, round body has become dry and suffocated, and those dead toads carved in stone color, and those living toads also have a difference, looks lifeless, sad and horrible, fully embodies the difference between life and death.

I only looked at these, then associated with the temple in the mountain god witnessed all sorts of things, the black-faced mountain god left and right, each served by a mountain ghosts, one holding a fire-red stone gourd, the other grasping a living toad, the original is to show that the town of the mountain gods, living in a gourd-shaped cave, and local people, under the guidance of the sorcerer, to capture a large number of toads to be worshipped in him.

I asked Shirley Yang: “Then we are not the body becomes smaller, but this cave, is indeed a gourd shape, flared, we drilled in from the gourd mouth like a narrow cave, is now walking to the first half of the gourd belly place?”

Shirley Yang nodded and said, “You’re only half right, although the stone carvings in front are blurred, I found that there are some depictions about the topography here, the entrance we came in, is the bottom of the gourd, that is an artificially chiseled entrance, which is also artificially repaired into the shape of an inverted gourd, and this natural gourd hole is connected to each other, and the history of the big gourd hole is much earlier than the tomb of the King of Hian, but we have to go much earlier than that. If we want to pass through this hole to reach the Tomb of King Xian at the mouth of the gourd, we have to drill into the hole where the natives picked the big toad with a long pole, and it’s possible that the God of the Mountain is still waiting for us inside.”

I did not react for a moment, completely stunned: “What is the mountain god waiting for us? Is it possible that he wants to take us as a toad and eat us?”

Fatty said to Shirley Yang, “You don’t have to scare us. Besides Chairman Mao, who have we ever served? I carry a submachine gun to slip in, if he obediently make a way for us to go just, otherwise the master annoyed up, without saying a word, the first gun assaulted him, this gourd hole in the future will be the name of the king is not the name of the black.”

I tasted back to the fat man said: “you nonsense what, the ancient feudal superstitious ideas can also be taken seriously, I do not believe that there is what the mountain god, I dug in the Kunlun Mountains for a number of years in the big hole in the ground, but also did not dig out what the god of the mountain, I think that is the survival of some kind of beasts in the cave, the local those who are ignorant, by the ruling class blinded, as well as by the three mountains by the oppressed The hardworking and brave laboring people just took that guy as a god, and such precedents abound in Chinese history, too numerous to count.”

Fatty said thoughtfully, “This is also a reason, or not say knowledge is power it, if really what animals are treated as a mountain god, may be a python class of work, this deep forest belongs to that thing is powerful, the snake ate frogs we have seen a lot of things, eighty percent of the old python or a big snake or so on.”

I said to the fat man: “There are old American M1A1 in hand, is a real dragon down to earth, we can also shoot it into a sieve, but I am afraid that this time we do not have the opportunity to do harm to the people, this altar is a few thousand years ago the remains of a tortoise can only live for a thousand years, that python and snake life expectancy and how can they live to this day, that side of the cave I estimate that it has been empty for many years. ”

I and the fat man two people immediately hesitant, rather feel hero useless, but heard Shirley Yang said: “first do not make too early conclusion, you look at this last mill painting, underwater female corpse we have just seen with our own eyes, that side of the cave may not have been nothing.”

I just remembered, the last there is a piece of grinding painted stone carving, which found that a black-faced cold deity, said the deity, the face can not see a trace of anger, but instead revealed some not easy to poorly perceived Yin Qi, around him around countless women, those women are obviously dead bodies, are lying flat on the ground on their backs, hands open, hanging on the left and right, legs bowed up in an arc, it seems to be in the counter-knuckles ground Crawling, the characteristics of the female corpse and we just saw, floating up from the bottom of the water, and suddenly hidden female corpse is exactly the same, that is, the corpse, rather than the dead souls, otherwise see her moment, how could we feel so strong resentment, I asked: “Is there a corpse hole? There are thousands of years of the old dumplings into the essence, coiled living within it?”