Volume 7 Chapter 29: Heading for the Oasis (Part 2)

In the moss, there was a stone carving of a human-faced bird-bodied deity, and the style of carving was the same as the one on the pottery jar we found in the ancient sunken ship. After thousands of years of corrosion, the surface of the stone carving was covered with stone fungus, making it appear blurred.

After I removed all the stone fungus on it, the overall carving emerged. It was a standing statue, carved directly into the cliff face. The bird’s head was a strange female face that looked neither human nor animal, with two pairs of eyes, an expressionless face, and an extremely cold look. Five skulls were carved at its feet, and the bird stood on the top of two of them, as if the skulls were all the bones it had eaten.

The fat man looked down and exclaimed, “Oh my god, Xiao Wu, isn’t this…”

I jumped down and saw the whole stone sculpture, and I gasped in shock.

It turned out that the stone statue of a human-faced bird in the grotto of the cliff was almost exactly the same as the strange bird I saw in the underground fissure of Changbai Mountain.

The carving is extremely vivid. Looking at the surface of the rock, it should have been painted when it was carved. If it weren’t for the moss covering it, seeing it in this dark jungle, one would think that the strange bird had flown here from Changbai Mountain.

Everyone was surprised, even the oil lamp looked surprised. Everyone here had been to Changbai Mountain, and seeing these stone carvings, they couldn’t help but recall the terrible situation at the time.

The fat man and I got busy again, scraping away the carvings in the other grottoes one by one, and found that they were all the same stone carvings of human-faced birds, large and small, in various forms.

A-Ning took a deep breath and said, “It seems that our previous inference was correct. The human-faced birds in Changbai Mountain are the original form of the three blue birds, the totem of the Queen Mother of the West. The Queen Mother of the West may have some ancient techniques that we don’t know about, and can tame these strange birds. The underground tombs in Changbai Mountain should be related to the disappearance of the Xiwangmu’s country and the mysterious eastward migration of the remnants. Those strange birds may have originally inhabited this oasis, and later were brought to the east by the remnants who split off, serving as guardians of the tombs.

I said, “That’s right. I’ve always felt that the terrain here is so similar to the terrain of the underground imperial tombs in Changbai Mountain. They are both in a huge crater-shaped basin. It seems that it may be a replica of the palace of the Queen Mother of the West. Our experience in Changbai Mountain can only be considered an exercise. This is where the real nest is.”

The fat man wiped his sweat and said, “Damn it, according to what you said, is this the home of those ghost birds? Then if we go in like this, aren’t we just going to die?”

It’s hard to say. I smiled wryly. “That’s not the case. It’s been so many years. The climate here has changed drastically. Large swaths of grassland have been concentrated into this oasis. There is too little food. This kind of bird may have already become extinct here. The ones we saw in Changbai Mountain may be the only ones left. However, no matter what, the Xiwangmu country has the blue bird as its guardian deity. The fact that there is such a totem here shows that we have entered the territory of the Xiwangmu Palace. This kind of grotto totem is carved here as a sign for outsiders, as well as a warning. We have to be extra careful behind it.”

We all nodded. The fat man said, ”Damn it, I agree with you. It would be better if these ghost birds were really extinct, otherwise they would get me into trouble and the Touching Gold School Marshal would be extinct.”

The fat man’s worries were also our worries. We looked at each other, speechless, our expressions very complicated.

After another moment of delay, Ning took pictures of the stone statues and looked around. There was nothing to be found except the stones. The stuffy oil bottle let us set off.

We took one last look at the grottoes, braced ourselves, and left the cliff, continuing on toward the depths of the canyon. Perhaps because of the influence of the stone statues in the grottoes, at that moment I felt a sense of unease beginning to envelop the jungle. We seemed to be walking into a strange world that no one understood.