Chapter 995: Underground Gargoylecs

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Looking at the dark and gloomy stone cave revealed in front of him, without a trace of light, and sloping downward, Liu Dong's heart became even more interested!

First, he let the wind pass through the cave for a while, and after releasing the depression inside, he handed over the strong light flashlight taken out of the mustard seed space to his left hand, and took the lead in the front.

If he were alone, he wouldn't need a flashlight at all, but with a lion's head and a tiger's head, plus a small golden eagle, he couldn't help but use a flashlight to illuminate it.

The darkness of not being able to reach out is also extremely uncomfortable for them, and it can cause panic.

The stone cave is extremely tortuous, judging from the traces left on the surrounding stone walls, this stone cave should have been excavated in the original stone cave to form the underground stone cave with a width of two meters and a height of two meters that Liu Dong sees now.

However, the extension length of this stone cave is not as good as 'Astrand', and it is not as long as the dragon vein dark river that Liu Dong once went down in the capital, but even so, Liu Dong walked about 500 meters in a zigzag way before he really reached the core.

And this core is an extremely wide underground stone cave, covering an area of no less than 400 square meters, the height is nearly 5 meters, and the top of the cave and the surrounding cave walls are polished extremely flat, and there are four stone pillars between the entire cave that are supported by two people.

However, the most eye-catching thing in the entire vast underground stone cave is precisely the huge stone statues placed in it, although there are not as many as the Qinling Terracotta Warriors, nor the majesty of the Qin Terracotta Warriors, but these soldiers wearing one-piece armor, holding a shield in their left hand and a steel knife in their right hand are extremely finely carved, and the expressions of the characters and the ornamentation of their clothes can be seen at a glance. And each stone statue is more than two meters high!

Liu Dong simply counted, these tall gargoyles are exactly a hundred!

I saw Liu Dong looking left and right around these stone statues. The restless little gold, along with the lion's head and the tiger's head, followed Liu Dong around, but the lifeless stone statues quickly made them lose interest.

And Liu Dong, who admired it, because there was more attractive content behind him, so he also followed the center of the stone cave after a quarter of an hour. The stone road, which is about three meters wide, walked backwards, and after passing through a passage about 20 meters long, it reappeared in another huge cave similar to the previous one.

Moreover, there are also huge stone soldiers placed in this cave, but unlike the previous stone cave, the stone statuettes in this cave are not sword and shield soldiers, but archers common in ancient wars!

Behind each gargoyle is carved three quivers full of feathered arrows and a longbow that rises above the head!

However, Liu Dong felt a little regretful that although these stone statuettes were better than terracotta figurines such as terracotta warriors and horses in terms of fineness of carving, they were much inferior in artistry, because these warrior stone statues looked similar, and it could be seen that they were replicas!

But even so, Liu Dong felt very satisfied. Even in the 5,000-year history of Chinese civilization, there is only one Terracotta Army of Qin Shi Huang!

When Liu Dong appeared in the third cave, as expected, the image of the gargoyle changed again, and the stone statues of the axe soldiers holding long-handled battle axes were impressively listed, and they were also no more than a hundred!

As Liu Dong continued to walk back, pikemen, crossbowmen, and a type of armor wearing fish scales and holding steel forks appeared in the stone cave of almost the same size. Liu Dong judged it before he determined that these should be sailors!

It's just that Liu Dong is very strange that the Western Regions is an arid land, why there are still sculptures of sailors here. I don't know what the people who set up this place think!

The gargoyets in the six caves were all 100, but when Liu Dong reached the seventh cave, the situation changed, not only did the height and area of the cave double, but they were no longer infantry and sailors, but cavalry on war horses!

These cavalrymen wearing pointed helmets and only armor on their upper bodies knew that they were light cavalry.

What's more, the number of these cavalry has also changed. There were 200 of these light cavalry compared to the gargoyles in the caves in front of them, which was exactly double the number of gargoyles in front, and it was clear that the builders considered cavalry to be more important than infantry.

By the time the two hundred cavalry appeared in the eighth cave, the form changed again. It is no longer the light cavalry in the seventh cave in front of them, but the heavy cavalry with horses and knights wearing heavy armor similar to that of the West, holding spears and feather-style helmets!

When it came to the ninth cave, it was even more unexpected for Liu Dong, although the gargolews here were still cavalry, but the mounts were no longer war horses but camels known as the 'Ship of the Desert'.

The nine caves have different types of troops, including almost all the types of troops that often appear on ancient battlefields, and even the camel cavalry, which is exclusive to the northwest desert region, also exists, and a total of 1,200 warrior stone statues may not be of high value individually, but together they are a shocking archaeological discovery.

Moreover, Liu Dong found that the appearance of these soldiers obviously had the typical characteristics of the Central Asian race, with high noses and deep eyes, thick jaw beard, slightly hypertrophied noses, and long faces!

However, from the style of their armor and weapons, some characteristics of the Han Dynasty period in China can be seen. This is especially true for infantry such as sword and shield soldiers and archers.

Of course, Liu Dong is not too surprised by this, and it must be the powerful powers in Central Asia who can build such a magnificent project, and the countries in Central Asia have been more or less influenced by the Han civilization because of the relationship between the Silk Road.

In addition, Liu Dong also found that the aura on these cavalry was also different, for example, the aura emitted by the camel cavalry in the ninth stone cave showed a rich yellow aura.

According to Liu Dong's understanding of his relics Yuanguang, the cultural relics and antiques that appeared with yellow spiritual light must have appeared before 2,000 BC.

And the aura of the last sword and shield soldier stone statue is only red, and the range of red aura that will appear in the relics is 1000 A.D. ~ 1,000 B.C.!

In the end, Liu Dong judged the specific time from the degree of aura, and found that the stone statuettes in these nine stone caves spanned nearly 500 years!

In other words, these gargoylets took nearly five hundred years to form the scale that Liu Dong saw!

And there are only a handful of countries in Central Asia that have been able to survive 500 years after BC and have the capacity to build gargoylets of this size. Therefore, the scope of Liu Dong's speculation has suddenly shrunk a lot!

In order to verify his guess, Liu Dong's interest in exploring the existence behind him suddenly became stronger, so he subconsciously accelerated the pace of progress.

After passing through the ninth cave, and passing through a 20-meter-long stone path, an underground cave appeared again, although this cave was smaller than the previous nine caves, but it was more than six meters high. In addition, the surrounding walls are no longer simple stone walls, but are painted with red, yellow, blue, white, black and other pigments.

The mural depicts scenes of worship and warfare, as well as scenes of hunting and planting, and the faces that appear are clearly characterized by high noses and deep eyes, but they are not the current Westerners, but Central Asians with black hair and black eyes.

And the most wonderful and most surprising thing for Liu Dong is the mural on the top of the cave, which is completely painted with red and black paints, a huge phoenix that is the same as the phoenix in ancient Chinese legends!

Since it is a phoenix, it is naturally a total of two 'phoenixes' and 'phoenixes'!

More importantly, the phoenix pattern has delicate strokes and soft lines, which is very similar to the brushwork of traditional Chinese calligraphy and painting. As you can imagine, the forces that built this place were greatly influenced by the Chinese Han culture.

Otherwise, the phoenix, which represents the meaning of rebirth from the ashes, would not appear here.

In addition to these exquisite murals, in this stone cave that covers an area of about 150 square meters and seems relatively empty, only the huge stone monument in the middle is more than five meters high, which is the most eye-catching!

And this stele is carved extremely finely, the top is the common relief Ruyi cloud head in the style of the Chinese stele, and the base of the stele is two stone lions lying on the side, the stone lion's thick limbs are comparable to adult thighs, the broad back hunched the stele, and the front of the stele is deeply carved with a line of handwriting from top to bottom!

"This is Gu Yu Luwen?" Liu Dong said in surprise after identifying it.

Because of his penchant for collecting antiques, Liu Dong has studied the characters that have appeared in the history of various ancient civilizations very deeply, and this ancient Lu script, which first originated in India, is no exception.

Ancient Lulu script originated from ancient Gandhara, is the 3rd century B.C. Indian Mauryan Dynasty of Ashoka period of the text, the full name of 'Lulu lice text', the first in northwest India and present-day Pakistan, Afghanistan area, the 1st to 2nd century AD in Central Asia widely spread. At the same time, it is also an important commercial language and Buddhist language on the Silk Road.

At the end of the Eastern Han Dynasty, with the gradual collapse of the Kushan Dynasty, the Kushan refugees moved into the Tarim Basin, and Lu Wen began to spread in Khotan, Shanshan and other places. In the middle of the 4th century AD, with the fall of the Kushan Dynasty, the Luwen disappeared with it.

By the end of the 18th century, it had already become a kind of dead script that no one could recognize, and it was not until 1837 that the British scholar Prinshepp discovered the mystery of Luvin.

Since Gu Lu Wen appears on this stone tablet, it also means that the history of this magnificent underground building can be traced back to at least 1,600 years ago!

In such a long history, many valuable national treasure-level cultural relics can inevitably be formed.

As for the origin of this magnificent underground building, it has been recorded on this stone tablet written by Gu Lu Wen!

"The Tomb of the Kangju Crown!" (to be continued......)