Chapter 109: Mural Content (II)
After seeing the white sand in the coffin in the mural, I couldn't help but devote myself to the content of the mural, and the more I looked at it, the more I felt that the content of the mural was closely related to the Murong family's experiments.
I couldn't suppress my desire to explore the unknown and decided to take a closer look at the mural from beginning to end.
Although the old prostitute kept reminding me that my third son had gone farther and farther, I still had to insist on seeing the whole mural.
The information on the mural is too important to me, and I am eager to know the truth about the Murong family's experiments, not only because I have some kind of blood relationship with the Murong family, but also because of the little wolf. I knew he wanted to know the truth of the experiment more than I did, so I did everything I could to help him find the truth.
Of course, it is not clear whether he is dead or alive now, but I think what I can do at this moment is to memorize the content of the entire mural, and no matter what the situation is on the little wolf's side, even if he has left this world, I will help him find out the truth of the experiment.
In order to make it easier to remember, I connected all the contents of the mural as a story. I'm not good at rote memorization, and I prefer to memorize stories, and I can remember as long as someone else has told me a story since I was a child. I don't know if this counts as a trait that I was born with.
The content of the entire mural is roughly divided into three parts.
The first part reads: peace mutates into war, which is more like a record of hatred.
An ancient country in the Western Regions, it may be that this country is just a city-state, because it only depicts an ancient city with the style of the Western Regions. An old king with a crown was singing and dancing with his subjects on the grass outside the city, and everyone had a smile on their faces. All of them are eating meat, drinking wine, and living happily and comfortably.
Suddenly, one day, this comfortable life was shattered, and an army was killed out of nowhere, and many foreign soldiers in armor appeared under their ancient city.
These foreign soldiers fought valiantly, and it didn't take long for them to conquer their ancient city, capture the crowned king, and finally execute the king.
After the death of the king, the people of this country became enslaved by foreign peoples.
At first, many people rebelled to avenge the death of the king, but they all failed. However, they killed a foreign general in their last revolt. This made the invaders so angry that they decided to kill all the men in the ancient city. A large number of men were slaughtered, from babies to gray-haired old people, who were caught surely dying.
For a time, the corpses in the entire ancient city were all over the field, and the bright red blood stained a river outside the city, and all the corpses were transported to the outside of the city and piled up, allowing the birds and beasts to bite and devour, and the picture was terrible.
Although foreign soldiers searched through the night, some of them fled the ancient city. They fled into the mountains, hiding in a cave, where they did not know what was happening, and all of them were painted with expressions of great surprise, but the mural did not describe why they were surprised.
The picture that appears in the next mural is even more incomprehensible. All the people in the mural were still in the original cave, but their expressions changed, and their expressions were not surprised, but everyone showed a bright smile.
This is the end of the first part of the mural, and the content of the mural that is further down is incompatible with this part, and it is a completely different narrative.
It makes me feel a little weird and strange to see this.
From the extreme surprise to the smiling expression, what happened in between? If the mural pays so much attention to the details of the white sand and depicts it so realistically, why do you ignore what happens between the two contrasting expressions? What exactly did they see? Or did something happen? If you want to depict the two contrasting expressions one after the other, why not just paint what happened in them? Is there some secret in this?
I didn't dare to think deeply anymore, because I was afraid that too many questions would affect my memory, and I wanted to keep all the contents of the mural in my memory, so I didn't think about the problem during this period and continued to look at the mural.
The content of the mural in the second part is: the key points that the old prostitute asked me to see. From the moment the man steps out of the coffin to the end when he walks out of the mountain, this is the content of the second part. Since I have a deep memory of this paragraph, I just passed by and then looked down at the rest of the section.
The content of the mural in the third part is: the life of the person in the painting after he goes out.
The content of this part of the mural is extremely boring, and it describes the life scenes of the people in the painting after they go out, which can be summarized by eating, drinking, and sleeping.
Maybe my expectations were too high, I thought that the people in the painting would do something earth-shattering after they went out, but I didn't expect that after the people in the painting walked out of the mountains, they lived the same life as ordinary people. Still, I read the third part very carefully, for fear of missing some important details.
When I finished looking at the entire mural, a lot of questions came to my mind. First of all, the cohesion of the whole mural makes me wonder, it seems to be a complete narrative mural, but why can't the first part and the next two parts be connected? And what puzzles me the most is that the two completely different expressions at the end of the first part represent?
Before I knew it, I fell into contemplation again, and the old prostitute standing on the side saw that I was no longer looking at the mural, and immediately urged me to hurry inside, saying that San'er and Scar had gone away.
I glanced inside, and I couldn't see San'er and Scar, only the dim light of the flashlight in the distance was still shaking.
As I walked inside, I wanted to discuss the contents of the mural with the old prostitute. When I asked him what he thought of the mural on the expression, he didn't have any opinion, except that he thought it was strange too. Then he didn't discuss it with me again.
Although the old prostitute did not discuss the contents of the mural with me, I continued to speculate in my heart until I had a subtle answer in my heart. I don't know if I'm right, but I think it's the closest thing to what's in the mural.
I'm going to think of the content between two very different expressions as a secret that can't be disclosed, and this secret is probably the process of experimentation, and then I can speculate about what happened between surprise and smile from the perspective of experimentation, so that I can come to a conclusion.
Surprise means that what they found in the cave was most likely a successful experiment and that they had learned to use it. A smile is a sign of success.
If it is interpreted in this way, it is not difficult to understand. Because the process of experimentation must have been very complex and cannot be described by a simple mural. Of course, I have the most plausible explanation, which is that they don't want to disclose the secret of the experiment, they want to keep the secret for themselves, or to use the secret permanently to bring some kind of profit.
While my speculation seems reasonable, there is one thing that I never understand. Since they don't want to make this secret public, why do they paint two expressions? It is completely possible to remove these two expressions, so that the person who sees the mural may not even have a chance to speculate, wouldn't it be more secretive.
Maybe I spent so much time pondering this that I didn't even notice it when I walked up to San'er and Scar. If it weren't for the old prostitute shouting, I would definitely pass by them.
I didn't know how far I could go, and the moment I was stopped by the old prostitute, I looked up and saw what Scar's flashlight was looking at.
It was a colored coffin, no, not just a mouthful, and I immediately noticed that next to the stone wall, that is, under the mural, there was a row of colored coffins neatly arranged along the stone wall.
I was amazed to see the coffin, but I was even more amazed to see the repeated murals stretching all the way here.
There are many people who will think of Loulan as soon as they see the colored coffin, thinking that the colored coffin is the symbol of Loulan, and the appearance of the colored coffin must be related to Loulan. But in fact, this is a preconceived mistake, the color coffin was indeed very popular in the Loulan period, but it is not the patent of Loulan.
In the ancient Western Regions, there were many small countries that used colored coffins as a noble burial method. At that time, the magnates of the Western Regions believed that burying in a colored coffin could not only show their status, but also allow the deceased to be reincarnated in a colorful paradise and enjoy a life without troubles.
My understanding of the coffin is still a few years ago from a colleague to learn the details of the coffin, he is engaged in the Western Regions antique business, friends on the road call him "Western Regions Liu", as for his real name I have never inquired.
This person is very strange to say, and the way of doing business is also different, and he does business more out of interest. If he is interested in something, he will try every means to persuade you to sell it to him, even if it is at a price several times higher, and if he is not interested, he will not pay attention to what you are several times lower than the market price.
When I first met him, others told me that he was a master of the Western Regions, and that as long as he looked at the objects of the Western Regions, he could not recognize them. Not only can he identify objects, but he can also tell the history and details of them. I had the privilege of listening to him talk about the details of the coffin, which is why I know so much about the coffin in the Western Regions.
According to Liu of the Western Regions, not all people in the Western Regions can be buried in colored coffins after death. Criminals and slaves are not allowed to be buried in colored coffins, which symbolize not only the power but also the noble qualities of the ancient people of the Western Regions.
The cost of the coffin was not very high at that time, most of them were poplar wood, except for the high price of the coffin inlaid with gemstones, the cost of ordinary coffins was very low. Of course, that was only the value of the ancient times at that time, and for modern times, whether or not the coffin is inlaid with precious stones, it is a valuable collector's item. Its archaeological significance is much higher than its collection value.
If the conclusions I have come to through the mural are only speculation, then the colored coffin in front of me is a naked reality, which is enough to prove that the colored coffin described in the mural is real.