When night came, a crescent moon hung high in the dome.

The flow of people shuttling up and down inside and outside the royal city has dispersed, and the originally crowded squares, neighborhoods, gravel paths up the mountain, and mountain meadows on both sides of the path have suddenly become empty.

The native chieftain who was with us sent for freshly cooked food, and took away the dozen or so alpacas that had lent us wine.

The staple food of the Turen has never been seen, much like the taro in the Chuyue area and the diliang in the northern part of the Western Regions.

And those alpacas should be the most precious property of this tribe, and it is a great affection to be able to borrow them for free.

Now that they have reached their destination, it is only natural for them to take it back.

In return, we gave it a gift of potato wine, and Brother Lin personally came forward to demonstrate how to drink it to the benevolent indigenous elder.

It's a pity that there is not much left, and tomorrow the mutual market of the royal city will still count on exchanging this potato wine for some cold felts and tools.

Otherwise, with Brother Lin's bold temper, he will definitely invite all the natives with fine wine.

Hanjiang bitter shadow is a lonely guest at the end of the world, why should we have met before!

I was worried about how the alpacas would spend the night when they had nowhere to graze.

Now that all of them have been taken away by the original owner, we feel that nothing is light.

After dinner, I suggested that everyone take advantage of the night to walk around, enjoy the moonlight view of this royal city, and maybe meet a girl who is very attractive.

They are all young and curious ages, and some of them have endless strength.

So my proposal was approved by everyone, including Brother Lin.

Leaving Tian Bo and two old men to take care of the barrels, we walked up the stairs towards the peak where the royal city was located.

Wangcheng is only the size of a Dongtu village, and after about half an hour's effort, everyone came to the top of the stone mountain.

There are no guards, and there are no brightly lit and fragrant backyards of the palace.

In the huge Xuanshi Square, only a few lonely stone towers and stone gates stand there, like faint ghosts in the clear light of the moonlight.

"Wouldn't it? Is this the royal city? Where did the king and his queen concubines live? ”

"It seems that we guessed wrong, this is not the capital of this sea country, but just the sun temple of the local indigenous tribe, they are here to catch the temple fair!"

"If this is not a royal city but a temple, then the scale of this sea country cannot be underestimated! Maybe like the city-states of Herat and the Roman kingdom of Beroeia, these Gentiles liked to build cities out of big stones! You see, this stone gate is made of three large stones, how did they carry this stone up in the first place? It's incredible! ”

Everyone was wandering around the square at will, and Brother Lin couldn't help but sigh as he held on to a stone gate more than two feet high.

The entrance of the stone gate is facing east, and it stands alone and not connected to any wall, and it is not known what it is used for.

Could it be that in the country's sun worship, this is the gateway to this life and the afterlife?

Thinking of this, the original idea of passing under the stone gate suddenly stopped.

Qin Chong, Lin Qing, and the pot helmet didn't know why, and they went directly through it.

"Chong boy, pot boy! This is the gate of hell, go down to the underworld! Hahaha! ”

Sure enough, Lin He, who was accompanying him, was the most happy to coax and shouted.

"Crane boy! Are brothers in distress accumulating some virtue? This is the door to rebirth! We just

Just got out of hell and into heaven! ”

Qin Chong walked back and forth in the doorway several times in a row without care, and forced Lin He to go together two times, so he was satisfied.

There is no wine shop and song shop, so you can only find some fun at home.

"If I'm not mistaken, this gate should be the Sun Gate, and the stone pillar in front of it is the Sun Pillar. By measuring the length of the shadow of the stone pillar every day, you can determine the time of day and solar term! This sea country seems to know the astronomical calendar, and I don't know if it is the same as our summer calendar. ”

Brother Lin has traveled to many Southern Wilderness Islands where the sun is worshipped, and he knows a lot about the Sun Festival.

Only then did I discover that there was a tall stone pillar three zhang away from the east of the stone gate.

To the north of the stone pillar and the stone gate, there is a square megalithic altar.

This pattern is very similar to the Brahmin temple on the Daliluo River.

"I am still in the wild years of knotting ropes, but I can understand astronomy and geography and the things of the four seasons! Weird, weird! Could it be that they are really the queen of Xihe? ”

Listening to Brother Lin's words, I couldn't help but sigh repeatedly, and the ancient legend in the Great Wilderness Southern Classic once again surfaced in front of me.

"Brother Xian! Don't believe it, some of the mystical skills of this barbarian aboriginal are sometimes like things outside the sky. For example, this big stone is 10,000 catties, how to excavate? How to transport it up the mountain? Could it be that these natives are doing it? Hehe, you must know that they don't even have iron axes and copper chisels, and they still use stone axes and stone knives as tools! ”

"Tomorrow is the summer solstice, and whether this stone pillar is used to measure the sun or not will soon be seen. Let's go down, Amitabha! ”

I clasped my palms together and sang a Buddhist verse, and went down the mountain along the steps I had come.

It must have been a sacred place for the natives, so they preferred to sleep in the grass below than go up to disturb the gods.

And we, the foreigners, are here in the middle of the night making a loud noise.

It's really offensive and disrespectful, and it's better to leave quickly

The next morning, before the sun had risen, we followed the flow of people to the square at the top of the hill again.

Sunrise should be the most important moment in the sun festival of this sea country.

On the altar, a priest wearing a feathered hat recites the sacrificial scriptures.

His voice was hoarse, like the song of a bird in the mountains, and he didn't know what he meant.

As the red sun began to erupt in the east, the speed of the indigenous priests' chanting suddenly became abrupt.

The morning sun scattered the sun and sprinkled it on the misty four fields, and the priest's prayer reached its peak.

All the natives knelt and saluted in unison to the sun, welcoming the god of light who had returned from the clouds.

Just like the Christians in Rome, they would say "Amen" every time they finished praying.

It is also like the Buddha precept in the mouth of the Buddha, "Amitabha".

All the devotion and reverence are all in this sacrificial word.

The mountain wind is agitated, and the red glow fills the sky, as if all living beings in heaven and earth are waiting for this sacred moment.

But seeing the shadow of the Sun Pillar, it fell completely on the Sun Gate, without the slightest error.

It was as if a complete stone was split in half in an instant, and then the stone door opened, sending away the long winter days and ushering in the warm spring.

The winter solstice of the Southern Wilderness is the summer solstice of our northern soil, so the reversal of the four seasons is also as contained in the "Book of Shang", because our sun and moon goddess Xi and greedy for wine, misdeeds, waste time and chaos of the sun?

and then attracted the "Yin to the expedition".

The history of mountains and seas is unexaminable!

If this is the case, the Hanfa potato wine we bring today must not be offered as a sacrifice to the sun god.

The natives of this sea country know the astronomical calendar, and now it seems to be a foregone conclusion.

The winter solstice has the shortest daylight hours, so the shadow of the solar pillar is also the longest.

This reflection will then become shorter and shorter, until it will disappear completely on the summer solstice of the following year.

It's like pushing open a door of darkness, and the sun god, who symbolizes light and warmth, is on his way back.

Therefore, this sea country celebrates today as a sun festival to welcome the return of the sun god.

Unsurprisingly, the next time for the tribes to make offerings.

The natives would bring the alpaca as an offering to the priest who presided over the prayer to the messenger of the gods.

Sure enough, after the prayer service, from the high platform of the altar, several young people who looked like deacons came down.

One of them shouted something to the crowd, and the natives inside and outside the square, up and down the mountain, suddenly became noisy.

Then, in order of tribes, they marched slowly past the altar with alpacas, offerings, and hymns that we did not understand, as if they were being inspected by His Royal Highness.

The offerings offered by each of the pilgrimage tribes varied, and the priest's men did not care.

One person accepted the goods, and the other muttered two sentences as if reporting the account.

Presumably, it was the name of the goods received, the weight, or the tribal county where the tribute was located.

The other native must have been the scribe of the priest, and was tying ropes to take notes, exactly as we had seen earlier on the seashore.

Such a scene is not like a sacrificial puja, but more like the annual rent collection day of the Han Shi family.

These natives who came from all over the world were the treasurers of the priest.

More than 1,000 people, six or seven different tribes, the ceremony of delivering the sacrifices lasted for more than two hours.

Because we couldn't figure out the situation, we didn't rush forward.

After looking at the whole process, Brother Lin and I generally knew what was going on.

The amount of tribute is voluntary, just like giving alms in a Buddhist temple.

In this way, we were also relieved, because we were afraid that this was the royal city, and all the potato wine we brought was taxed.

The next scene was very surprising.

The Sun God Square, which was originally used for worship, has been transformed into a noisy open-air market in the blink of an eye.

People walk around the market with alpacas on their heads and shoulders carrying all kinds of goods, doing all kinds of simple and inefficient transactions.

One of the guys was right as he had guessed, and the medium of exchange, gold and silver, was useless here.

Two stone axes for an alpaca, or a piece of felt for a stone knife, or even a whole piece of gold ingots for a dozen catties of taro.

This kind of transaction makes us red-eyed and hot, pure gold ingots!

For all the guys, if they worked hard all their lives in their hometown, they would not be able to earn so much red gold.

Ignoring the dissuasion of others, Lin Qing took off the only robe on his upper body, and prepared to find a native who held gold to make a transaction.

As a result, I searched the entire market, but I didn't find the next one who was willing to make a deal.

In this southern wilderness market, stone and gold are equivalent.

And the cloth clothes woven from Tianzhu cotton are not as valuable as stone knives.

(End of chapter)

Shang and Buddha want to talk about "Shang and Buddha" with more like-minded people, " ", talk about life, find confidants~