Volume 4 Chapter 14 The Gap (Part 2)
From the time I heard the oil bottle speak to the time I saw it disappear in front of me, it was definitely no more than five seconds. Even a mouse couldn’t disappear so quickly in front of me in this environment, let alone a person.
I suddenly I felt something was wrong, and subconsciously took a step back to take a closer look. In a flash, I saw the oil bottle appear in front of me again.
The fat man was right behind me, and he was startled by my step back and asked, “What’s going on?”
I was at a loss for a moment, and stammered, “Nothing… nothing.”
The oil bottle didn’t seem to know that something had happened to him. After a pause, he called out to us and began to crawl forward at a faster pace.
This This sudden appearance was so real that I felt it, but when I looked at the scene in front of me, I suddenly lost my confidence. I was very confused. Could it be that the air here was making me hallucinate?
The situation I couldn’t think about it for long, because the fat guy was pulling my leg and urging me to keep going. I followed him for a while, wondering why I was being pulled along. When we got to the point where the oil bottle had disappeared, I looked around carefully, but there was nothing that could have caused me to hallucinate.
After passing through this section, we continued for about ten minutes, when suddenly the oil bottle’s body became loose, and it stretched out its whole body. I saw that the front had become spacious, and I knew that we had reached the exit.
At the end of the At the end of the gap was a large amount of loose rocks. After climbing out, Mian Youbing took out a few fluorescent sticks and threw them around. The yellow light illuminated the entire place. I turned around and saw that this should be a relatively spacious place in the entire mountain crack, about the width of four or five gold-plated minibuses. It was about the size of a basketball court, and the bottom was full of large and small gravel, all torn off by geological activity when the crack formed.
Fatty enlarged the aperture of the flashlight and looked around. He said “It’s strange that there are murals here. It seems that we are not the first people to come here.”
We walked up and found that there were indeed large colorful murals on the cliff wall of the crack, but the murals were in very poor condition, the colors were dull, and the patterns on them could barely be distinguished as similar to the situation of heavenly maidens flying in the sky.
The entrance to this place was blocked by a huge sealing stone, and there were also murals inside. What exactly is this place? I was once again puzzled.
Back and forth walking back and forth, we found several small hot springs among the gravel. They were all very shallow, but the steam was so thick that it was irresistible. But we didn’t find any traces of other people’s activities.
Further inside, hot air blew out of the crevices from time to time. I walked over to the side and looked inside. It was bottomless, and I didn’t know where it led.
We exchanged opinions and decided that there was no need to go in. This was already a good place to escape the snowstorm. The fat man tested the air and found it to be fine. He lit a lantern for long-lasting illumination and climbed back through the narrow gap to notify the people outside.
After a while, Hua and Ye came in one after another, and Shunzi also pulled Pan in. I immediately went to check on him and found that because of the temperature here, his face had already begun to flush, but his hands and feet were still cold. I didn’t know if he would be able to survive.
He had led the way up He led the way up, and if he died, although it wouldn’t be so bad that we couldn’t go down, it would still be a lot of trouble. Plus, I really like this guy, and I really don’t want him to die so innocently because of us.
Hua Monk Hua checked his heartbeat and pulse, then told me to step aside. He soaked a towel in the hot spring water, placed it on a stone to cool it down a bit, then wiped Shunzi’s body with it. After the whole body was covered in blood red, he poured some hot water into it. Shunzi began to cough violently and his eyelids twitched.
We were slightly relieved, and Monk Hua said, “It’s okay, he won’t die.”
The atmosphere eased up, and Fat Man and Ye Cheng both took out cigarettes and lit them up. At this time Chen Pi A Si also came in with Pan Zi.
After this series of events, we were exhausted and had no strength to speak, so we each found a comfortable place to lean down.
The snow on our bodies melted into water due to the change in temperature, and our clothes and shoes began to get wet. Ye Cheng took out a compressed can and threw it into the hot spring water to heat it up for everyone.
I ate and looked at the murals with Hua. It was very obvious that they were naturally formed and the space was narrow. Why were murals painted here? The oil lamp suddenly disappeared in front of me, and the huge sealing stone at the entrance of the cave gave me an unnatural feeling.
People who deal with antiquities are always very interested in murals and reliefs, which convey a lot of information. Others saw us looking and gradually came over.
However There is not much information on the murals. The murals of heavenly maidens flying in the sky are mostly on magnificent palace or ritual vessels, just expressing a beautiful scene of peace and prosperity, and have no practical significance. Most of the fragments of murals here are like this. We have seen so many people crawling out of ancient tombs that we lost interest at first glance.
I was was about to go back and rub my toes, which had been frozen and sore from all the sweating on the way. At this time, I heard the fat guy “tut” and stick out his thumb, and began to peel the mural with his fingers.
I asked him what was going on. Although this thing has no value, it is also a relic of our ancestors, and you can’t destroy it.
The fat guy said, “What are you talking about? My fingernails have no value? I don’t usually I don’t even peel things off. Come and see for yourself, there are two layers of murals here!“
”Two layers?” I nodded and frowned, wondering what he meant.
The crowd They gathered around him again and went over to see what he was talking about. He showed us his fingers, which had been scraped with red cinnabar. Then he showed us the corner of the mural in front of him. Sure enough, there was a different composition in the corner of the mural than in the rest of it, and the things painted were different too.
This was obviously the result of someone repainting a layer of a mural, covering up the original mural.
The top exposed to the air gradually peeled off, revealing the mural behind it. This is a common occurrence in oil paintings.
The fat man continued to scrape the mural with his finger and found that this surface layer did not seem to have completed all the procedures, so the fat man could simply wipe off the color with a casual scrape. Otherwise, if the complete steps were followed, the Tang Dynasty mural would have been coated with a special clear material, which would protect the mural like varnish, making the color less prone to fade and peel off.
Chen Pi Ah Si’s brows were furrowed tightly. Soon, a large mural the size of a washbasin was peeled off. Behind the mural, a half-carriage painted with colorful pigments appeared. The owner of the carriage was a fat man, whose attire I had never seen before.
This is a narrative mural. I suddenly became nervous.
Apparently someone had first painted a narrative mural, but for some reason, it had been hastily replaced with another, and the time was probably very tight, so the final process of the outer mural had not been completed.
Chen Pi A Si looked at the entire mural and then looked at the surrounding environment, and said to us, “This… has something to do with the Heavenly Palace.
I had wanted to get started, so I joined the others and used my fingernails to delicately peel the fresco off the stone wall.
Large sections of the fresco came off, and soon a magnificent, colorful picture gradually began to unfold before us…