Volume 3 Chapter 25: Sacrifice

When Lao Yang and I heard this, we asked him what he thought. He scratched scratching his head, he said, “I’m just guessing, but this bronze tree may not be the key. It may be the grooves on the tree that are the key. When the ritual was performed, this thing may have been used to collect some liquid, such as rainwater, blood, or dew.”

Lao Yang asked him, “Is it like the emperor collecting dew to make tea in the past? What is it called, rootless water?”

Liang Shi used his pen to scrape out some black deposits from the grooves. After thousands of years, it was impossible to tell whether these were dried blood from the ancestors or precipitation from the rain. He looked at the branches again and said, “You see, there are also things like bayonet blood drains under these branches, which lead all the way to the double-body snake road. This branch must also have a function in the altar. There may be, it really has something to do with blood sacrifice.”

I didn’t quite understand, so I asked the old master to explain in detail why these grooves were related to the blood sacrifice of that year and how this blood sacrifice was carried out.

The old master Master Liang told me that although the sacrifices of the Western Zhou Dynasty were not as brutal as those of the Shang Dynasty, human sacrifices were inevitable. The so-called different sacrificial methods were just different ways of killing human sacrifices. For example, when sacrificing to the land, people were buried alive; when sacrificing to the god of fire, people were burned to death; when sacrificing to the river god, people were thrown into the river.

Here there is such a bronze tree that reaches the sky, it is possible that it is used to sacrifice a sacred tree like the Fusan Wakagi, or it could be used to sacrifice the god of wood, Kuman. Usually, this type of god is sacrificed with blood.

Just now, Tai Shu’s blood flowed down the bronze branches into the two-body snake on the bronze tree, all the way down. If this route had not been designed in advance, it would not have worked so smoothly. In addition the traces of the bayonets on the bronze branches, it is clear that this must have been a sacrificial vessel for blood sacrifice.

Most of the time, blood sacrifice is performed by pouring blood into the ground. When the sacrifice was performed, the victim was nailed to these bronze branches, and the blood from the body was drawn out and collected in the double-body snake path on the tree. If If the blood does not coagulate halfway, it will inevitably flow to the roots of the bronze tree, which are deeply buried under the rock, symbolizing the meaning of offering blood to the gods.

To put it more figuratively, the veins of the entire tree are like the blood channels in the autopsy room of a hospital. No matter how much blood is on the several mortuary beds, it will eventually flow into the blood channels and then into the sewer. Only The blood troughs here are made to look like decorative grooves, which also explains why the grooves between the two snakes are so deep.

Such cruel and large-scale sacrifices could obviously not be held for a long time even by the most powerful countries, so they are only sporadically recorded in ancient books. As for the specific process of the ritual, how many people were sacrificed, everything is unknown.

I heard I heard what the old master said, and on the one hand I was amazed at the wisdom of the ancients, but on the other hand I felt a chill. I thought of the countless slaves who were impaled on these branches, and the blood flowing down the bronze grooves turned the entire tree into a pillar of blood. I felt as if a bone-chilling chill was seeping out of those grooves.

Thinking I felt a little guilty, so I said to Lao Yang, “Let’s go faster, or else if Tai’s blood flows down later, maybe the god of wood will think that someone else is offering a sacrifice, and the old man will come out to take a walk, and he might mistake us for a sacrifice.”

Lao Yang didn’t take the words of the cool counselor seriously at all, and said to me, “Don’t believe him either. There weren’t that many people in China at that time for you to kill and play with. I think the ones here with blood spilling out are probably all pig heads or sheep heads. Let’s climb up a little higher, and maybe we can see a few thousand-year-old pork jerky sticks. Besides Even if it is a human, after a person dies, the blood will quickly coagulate. Don’t worry, it’s so high up here that the blood will dry up before it reaches the bottom. Besides, people won’t even look at your blood. In the past, people were more natural, eating pesticide-free food and drinking unpolluted water. That whole thing was the blood of farmers—a little sweet. Now you’re fine, but when your blood comes out, the old people will definitely get food poisoning, so this is a trick.

I heard I heard it and my forehead muscles bulged out. I couldn’t help but start cursing: “Fuck, what’s mine is mine, how is my blood poisonous? Can you shut the fuck up…”

Liang Shiyi saw that I was really angry and quickly tried to smooth things over: “Guys, this is a critical situation. In this situation, don’t say anything funny. Don’t you think that these branches are getting denser and denser? If this continues, it will be difficult to climb higher?”

Lao Yao He said, “There are naturally some gaps here. The gaps are good for climbing. Do you want it to be even sparser? It would be best if there were gaps of more than two meters between each tree, and we were climbing on top of each other at a height of several dozen meters?”

I said to Lao Yang, “Don’t jump to conclusions. I think something is wrong. Turn on your flashlight.”

When we When we came up, we were still using torches for lighting because the flashlight in Uncle Tai’s bag was not very powerful. We didn’t want to waste it, but I wanted to see things clearly in the distance, and that was impossible with a torch.

Lao Yang He turned on the flashlight and focused the beam upwards. We saw that the bronze branches above our heads were gradually growing denser and denser. At a height of seven or eight meters, they were already as dense as thorns. To continue climbing, we had to hang upside down and climb up on the tips of these branches, which was much more dangerous than climbing up the copper tree.

Now now, even if it is a tiger’s den in front of us, we have to break through. Lao Yang told us to stay put and not move, and he climbed out on the branch first, then threw down the rope that he had found from above.

Looking up again, the situation here was no longer like what we had seen from below, the bronze branches were almost so dense that there was nowhere to put your hands. I climbed for a while, I thought to myself, no wonder Uncle Tai fell. Judging from the trend, it would be difficult to find a place to step on if we went up any further. If we weren’t careful, or if the wind blew from above, we might end up joining Uncle Tai.

At this time, Lao Yang was climbing very quickly. I had no strength to stop him, so I had to concentrate on not falling behind and reminding myself to be careful not to slip. At the same time I couldn’t use the torch at this time because I didn’t have any spare hands to hold it. I could only extinguish it and put it at my waist.

Because this section was too dangerous, almost no one spoke. Soon, under the light of the flashlight, I noticed that the rock walls around the bronze tree had also begun to change, with natural stalactites and some dissolved rock curtains appearing. It was clear that this was already beyond the scope of artificial excavation, and the upper section was already a naturally formed cave.

When passing This section, the rock wall began to shrink, I also found that the two sides of the rock wall, began to appear some different sizes of the cave, are not deep, can see the bottom, there are several caves seem to be something, to the flashlight will have a certain reaction. These phenomena, let me gradually feel uneasy, but the rock wall from us in the end there are dozens of meters away, I do not believe that there are variables, can directly affect us from the opposite.

I gave attracted my attention to the cave on the side. I didn’t notice that Lao Yi and Liang Shiyi, who were climbing ahead of me, had stopped climbing. I didn’t react until I bumped into Liang Shiyi’s butt. I looked up and saw that above us, there were many monkeys with masks, just like the ones we had encountered below.

I looked again looked closely, but found that these monkeys were already dead. The bodies had been blown into mummies by the hot wind blowing down from above, and were strangely twisted, with their hands and feet stuck in the dense branches, so that they had not fallen to the ground. There were dozens of such mummies, and the strange masks had not fallen off with the drying up of the bodies, but still stared at us silently, as if they would come to life at any moment.

We slowed down and carefully observed these strange things.

The monkey seemed to have contracted a skin disease, with most of the hair falling out, leaving a grayish color that looked somewhat similar to human skin. But upon closer inspection, we discovered very obvious patches of disease. Judging from their body shape, these monkeys were about the height of a 15- or 16-year-old child (not Yao Ming, of course), maybe a little taller.

The masks on the monkeys The mask on the monkey’s face looked like stone, perfectly polished. I even suspected that it might be porcelain. Judging from the way the mask was attached to the monkey’s head, it seemed to have been burned into the flesh, or attached directly to the face by some bloody means.

Most of the mummies were intact, with only a few left with only one limb. This was probably because the bodies had dried out too much over the course of time, causing them to break apart naturally.

Liangshi Master Liang told us to stop climbing, pointing to a mummy and saying, “Wait a minute, I think these monkeys are in a strange position. I think I’ve seen it somewhere before. Let me take a closer look.”

Old Itch said to him, “You’re so troublesome, always looking at everything. Be careful, wait a minute, the monkey below will think you’re in a strange position.”

Master Liang Master Liang ignored Lao Yang and carefully climbed closer to the nearest mummy, grabbed its mask, and the dry facial skin immediately cracked. Master Liang easily tore off the mask. He leaned in to look at the mummy’s face and turned to us and said, “Two… two, this… doesn’t look like a monkey. This is a… human face.”