Chapter 1101 – The Devil’s Forbidden Zone
Zhuang Rui froze for a moment at his words and said with a laugh and a cry, “A temple? It’s normal for monks to go there, what’s a Taoist priest doing there?”
Zhuang Rui’s purpose of this trip is to excavate ancient valuable tombs, for these temples and whatnot there is not much interest, unless it is like the Famen Temple that housed the Sakyamuni Buddha finger bone relics special place, but it can be imagined that such a temple in the desert, I think there will not be such a treasure of Buddha.
“What’s so strange about this, isn’t Taoist Wang also a believer in Taoism? Isn’t he still practicing at the Mogao Caves in Dunhuang? Monks and Taoist priests are originally one family!”
Dr. Ren heard Zhuang Rui’s words, could not help but laugh, in the Chinese land, Buddhism is a foreign monk, while Taoism is originated in the country, both sects have their prosperity and decline of the dynasty, although the Buddha and Taoism two religions in the history is also a lot of bright struggle, but compared with the bloodshed between those foreign sects massacres, it is still considered to get along relatively well.
In ancient China, there are a lot of people who practiced both Buddhism and Taoism, and have very deep attainments, such as the Ming Dynasty great scholar Wang Yangming, not only proficient in Confucianism, Buddhism, Taoism, and will be the integration of the three ideas, known as the “true three immortal”, its academic thinking in China, Japan, the Korean Peninsula and Southeast Asia and even the world has an important and far-reaching influence. globally have an important and far-reaching influence.
“Taoist Wang?”
When Zhuang Rui heard this name, his heart couldn’t help but move, Taoist Wang built a Taoist temple in Mogao Grottoes at that time to cultivate in Taiqing Palace, why did he run to this remote temple in the middle of the desert? Even if the desertification was not so serious at that time, but it is estimated that not many people are willing to come here.
“Could it be that …… Daoist Wang went there for something else?”
Zhuang Rui always felt that that temple had something that attracted him, and after thinking about it for a while, he looked at Mangzi and said, “Brother Mangzi, have you been to that place? I want to go there to have a look ……”
“Zhuang old brother, that …… there I have not been there, just heard the old man talk about it, said that it is the place where the devil lives, very dangerous.”
The character of the brash Mangzi heard Zhuang Rui’s words, his face actually showed a trace of difficult color to, because it was his father, also once explained him, must not go to that place, where it has been occupied by the devil.
“Devil? You’re talking about Devil City, right? That’s just a geological phenomenon, it’s a type of wind eroded landform formed in an arid and windy environment, there’s nothing dangerous about it.”
Zhuang Rui smiled at his words, he estimated that the place that Mangzi was talking about was the Yadan landform area, this type of terrain was often strange and strange, as if it was fabricated by the devil, but in fact it was not harmful to people.
“Elder brother Zhuang, it’s not like that, you don’t know, when I was still very young, someone in the town had been there, and at that time, more than ten people went there, and just two came back, and one of them was scared out of his wits, saying that there were devils under the ground there, and ate them up even with their camels.”
Mangzi’s face turned a little white when he said these words, these stories were what he had heard repeated since he was a child, although Mangzi was bold, but when faced with these things with a bit of mysterious coloring, his heart would still produce fear.
“There are devils under the ground? Will eat people?”
Zhuang Rui froze for a moment, and then his face also became serious, turning his face to look at Dr. Ren, saying, “Senior brother, what Brother Mangzi is talking about, could it be the quicksand in the desert?”
Most of the people who live on the edge of the desert, most of them believe that in the middle of the desert, there are devils, in fact, the devils they are talking about are the quicksand in the desert, they can devour all the objects, and in the ancient times it was impossible to explain this phenomenon scientifically, so it has become a place where the devils live as people say.
Quicksand is actually rising groundwater, reducing the friction between the sand particles, so that the sand began to “flow”, thus forming quicksand, quicksand is quite harmful, in 1692 AD, Jamaica’s Royle port has occurred due to the earthquake caused by the liquefaction of the soil and the formation of quicksand, and finally caused one-third of the city disappeared, Two thousand people lost their lives.
As for these people living on the edge of the desert, the danger of quicksand is directly reflected in the camels and living people being swallowed by quicksand, which makes all the residents of the town to avoid the desert where there is quicksand, as the devil’s forbidden zone.
“It is the quicksand, the last time I came here with my teacher, I once heard the people in the town, but …… they didn’t say that there was a temple there!”
Dr. Ren nodded, he did know that in this desert near the North Gobi, there was an area of quicksand, it’s just that the last time he came here, he hadn’t heard that there was a place there to examine, so he didn’t have much of an understanding of the place either, bearing in mind that they were archaeologists and not geologists.
Mangzi interjected, “Brother Qiangzi, the people in the town, are generally reluctant to bring up that matter, and if it wasn’t for Elder Brother Zhuang asking today, I wouldn’t have said anything.”
Qiu Jiawu such a small town, a total of dozens of families, the shortest family also lived here for nearly a century, many families are related, in the last century in the seventies, where more than a dozen young adults died at once, this is the town’s biggest tragedy ever, so people who know about this matter, are not willing to mention.
Since he was young, Qiang Zi had been warned by the old man to stay away from that place, that’s why when Zhuang Rui proposed to go there just now, his face became so ugly.
“The fact that there is quicksand there only means that underneath that piece of sand, there must be underground water present, or even a former oasis that somehow sank underneath the sand, in that case, there should have been people living there before.”
Zhuang Rui deduced along the quicksand, the more he thought about it, the more excited he became, the quicksand is generally not too large, as long as he and the others are careful, it may not be impossible to bypass the quicksand area and enter the temple that Mangzi said to find out.
Zhuang Rui has a very strange feeling in his heart, the Taoist priest mentioned by Mangzi just now, he feels that it should be the Taoist priest Wang who has opened up the hidden scripture cave of Dunhuang Mogao Cave.
If that is the case, what is the motivation for Taoist Wang to go there? This was all something well worth discovering, so Zhuang Rui sprouted a strong desire to travel there from his initial disinterest.
“Of course there were people living there, I heard from the old generation that at the beginning of the Republic of China, from our town all the way to the North Gobi, there were people living there, and later on, I don’t know what happened, the desert area suddenly increased in size, and the people who lived there could only move out.”
When Mangzi said here, he suddenly looked at Zhuang Rui with alertness and said, “Zhuang old brother, this desert except that place, I can take you all there, but there, I really don’t go there, if Abba knows about it, he will break my legs.”
To make Mangzi such a bold person to say such words, it can be seen that the “Devil’s No Access Zone”, the impact on the people in the town is how big it is.
Zhuang Rui saw this appearance of Mangzi, know that if he forced him to go, it is estimated that this brother can directly hit the road back home, after thinking for a while, Zhuang Rui said: “Okay! Brother Mangzi, let’s not go there, first turn around the site!”
To go, is bound to go, but Zhuang Rui must first eliminate Mangzi’s fear of quicksand to become, although the desert quicksand is very difficult to judge with the naked eye, but as long as the distance will be pulled apart when walking, walking not too fast, even if the front of the people were caught in quicksand, there are ways to rescue.
And quicksand in the ground contains water, Zhuang Rui can also through the eyes of the aura to identify, so he still has quite a grasp of the heart ahead of time to find the quicksand area, so as to avoid the past.
See Zhuang Rui no longer insist on going to the “devil forbidden zone”, Mangzi could not help but let out a sigh of relief, and returned to the previous appearance, patted his chest and said: “Good, as long as you do not go there, you guys are going to the Great Gobi can be, if you are lucky, maybe you can also see the wild camels. ”
Zhuang Rui listened to some tears and laughter, these people if they run to the desert to find wild camels, that is really not business it, just want to open his mouth to speak when the distant ear suddenly came a “clanging sound”, but there are tourists came to this site.
Mangzi also heard the sound of camel bells, stood up to hand on the pergola to see a moment, to the distant camel on the people shouted: “Hey, two eggs, you can get up early enough ah! But still later than me, haha ……”
“Brother Mangzi, I’m not so bad either! Other than you, I’m the best guide in town.”
After the visitor heard Mangzi’s words, he yelled under his breath, and the camel caravan, which was originally slowly and leisurely moving forward, suddenly trotted, and in the twinkling of an eye, it came to the outskirts of the ruins, mixing with Zhuang Rui and the others’ camel caravan.
Mangzi greeted him and took a look at the other camel caravan, he couldn’t help but frown and asked: ”Erdan, why did you bring so many camels? Could it be that you are not going back today?”
Hearing Mangzi’s words, Zhuang Rui and the others realized that the other party’s camel caravan had a total of six camels, but only four people were sitting on them, the other two camels were carrying quite a lot of supplies just like them, it should be known that this site was not far away from Zhuangzi, so if they were not going to camp out in the desert, there was no need to carry any supplies at all.
“Brother Mangzi, the guests are going to the temple that our town is legendary for, so I brought two more camels, this desert is the only place I haven’t been to, hehehe, maybe I’ll be the best guide in the town from now on!”
The leader of the camel team, Erdan, jumped off the camel, and lifted the veil from his face, revealing a young and confident face, looking just twenty-two or twenty-three years old.
Two eggs words but let the fierce son was shocked, a pull two eggs, said loudly: “What? You …… you want to go there? Do not want to die?”