This situation is not unexpected, this gourd-shaped cave, although the whole is natural, it is very likely that in ancient times, the geological environment has undergone strong changes and formed, but in the fossil forest in the gourd cave, there are many relics left by the ancients, with the ancient carvings revealed on the fossil altar, it can almost be concluded that as early as before the construction of the tomb of the king, this mysterious cave was regarded as an extremely important place by the local aborigines.

With the development of civilization, stone carvings and petroglyphs, reliefs and other intuitive forms of expression have become the most effective way of traditional civilization, and in some important places where important rituals are held, a large amount of graphic information will be left behind, giving the most direct inspiration to future generations.

The ancient ancestors used realistic or abstract artistic techniques to draw and carve graphics or symbols on the rocks for a long time, which recorded all aspects of ancient human social life, and the fossil altar we found in the gourd cave under the worm valley recorded the secret activities of the ancients to worship the mountain gods here.

The first thing that catches your eye is the most well-preserved one on this altar, which is said to be intact, but relatively speaking, thousands of years of erosion, a large part of the reliefs have been blurred, the stone carving pattern is polished by the grinding process, the grinding method is to chisel first and then grind, the lines are thicker and deeper, the grooves are smooth, and some places even retain the original color.

It can also be roughly seen that there is a tall black-faced deity in this stone carving, with big ears and a high nose, coarse hair on his face, and a skull in his mouth.

The fat man pointed to the black-faced god on the fossil altar and said, "Hey, this black face, doesn't it look like the idol enshrined in the mountain temple at the entrance?" It's just that there are two less yaksha demons who follow him, and it turns out that this gourd cave is his territory, and he doesn't know where this grandson comes from. ”

Shirley Yang said: "The image is slightly different, but it is the same in the bones, most of them are the same person, but the statues in the mountain temple have the style of Qin and Han stone tools, and the image looks elegant." It is quite influenced by the Han civilization circle in the mainland, and the stone carvings on this altar reveal the freehand color of primitive barbarism everywhere, which should be at least three or four thousand years ago as a primitive monument. It is about the remains left by the ancestors of southern Xinjiang before the Warring States Period, and the mountain temple at the entrance may be the image of the god created according to the legend of the surrounding area when the tomb of the king was built. In addition, it is not certain whether it is a mountain god or a wizard for the time being, and then look at the rest of the parts. ”

The fat man continued to clean up the rest of the stone carvings with a sapper shovel, he knew some of them, and Shirley Yang looked at some of them, but most of them were unrecognizable, and the order was reversed, which was incomprehensible, so he didn't find any valuable information after looking at it for a while.

I was also secretly anxious in my heart, and while holding a flashlight to illuminate the fat man and Shirley Yang, I was vigilant about the movements around me, and now I was parked in the middle of the cave inappropriately, and there were too many dangers lurking here. The elusive underwater corpse, the unusually large toad, and the huge flying insects, although we have not yet been subjected to any fatal attacks, we still have not yet figured out whether our bodies are getting smaller, whether they have changed by going deep into this gourd-shaped cave.

The continuous consumption of equipment and energy makes us have to do our best to cross this cave as soon as possible, but this strange cave is full of dangers, the deeper you go, the wider the cave becomes, and the plants and insects inside are much larger than the outside world, as Shirley Yang said, insects are the strongest vitality and lethal species in the world, the reason why they have not dominated the earth, is completely due to the limitation of too small size, if we go on like this in the cave, Those flying insects only need to be three more laps, if you are unlucky enough to be bitten by them, you will inevitably die, even if you are a Da Luo Jin Immortal, it will be difficult to live.

It can be said that the discovery of a fossil altar is of great significance, and we can only hope that if we can find some clues from the altar and evaluate our current situation in turn, then we can decide whether to continue to venture forward, or we must return the same way, and think of other ways to find a way to enter the tomb of the king.

I couldn't wait any longer, so I said to Shirley Yang: "I remember that the Tang Dynasty feng shui master Yuan Tiangang's "X Heavenly Treatise" (one six above, one brother character below), once described the situation of the ancients offering sacrifices to the mountain gods, and there are quite similarities here, there is probably more than one stone altar in this cave, we might as well look for it nearby, maybe there will be some gains." ”

Shirley Young showed me a stone carving that she and the fat man had just cleaned up, and said to me, "This is the last part, two pieces that are joined together, thank God, I can still see a rough idea, you can come and see it." ”

I saw that Shirley Yang's face was a little strange, and I couldn't tell whether it was joy or sorrow, but seemed to be more of a question, so I handed the wolf-eye flashlight and the sword power rifle to the fat man, and leaned down to see the polished stone carvings on the altar.

I settled down to look carefully, the picture art shape is rough and vigorous, the composition is simple, the posture is natural, but the freehand is strong, at that time a strange scene, in the water surface of the fossil forest, a group of natives with feathers on their heads, riding on a small boat, holding long poles in their hands, those poles and wooden boats, we have all seen after passing through the burial ditch, I don't know what they are used for.

I saw that there were a lot of large toads tied to those wooden boats, maybe the big toads were captured by these natives nearby, tied very strong with ropes, those big toads had big mouths, their expressions looked very frightened, as if they were extremely worried about the fate they were about to face, and they were struggling as much as they could, although the portrayal was simple, but extremely vivid, so that people could experience the scene conveyed in the stone carvings at a glance, which was full of a tragic atmosphere of large-scale sacrifice and killing in ancient times.

Under the command of a leader with horned helmets, several natives with feathers on their heads lifted a large toad from a long pole and lifted it into the air, stretching it out of a hole in the stone wall of the Stone Forest, and black gas came out of the hole.

There was another wooden boat behind it, and there were several smaller toads, showing a dead expression, and the round body had become shriveled, and the color of the dead toad stone carving was also different from those live toads, which looked lifeless, sad and terrifying, fully reflecting the gap between life and death.

When I saw this, I thought of all the things I had witnessed in the temple of the mountain god, and on the left and right of the black-faced mountain god, there was a mountain ghost serving on each side, one touching a fiery stone gourd, and the other holding a living toad, which turned out to indicate that the god who guarded the mountain lived in a gourd-shaped cave. And the local people, under the guidance of the shaman, caught a large number of toads to worship him.

I asked Shirley Yang: "So it's not that our bodies have become smaller, but this cave is indeed a gourd-shaped, trumpet-shaped, and we got into the cave as narrow as the gourd's mouth, and now we have walked to the first half of the gourd's belly?" ”

Shirley Yang nodded and said: "You are only half right, although the stone carvings in front are blurry, I found that there are some depictions of the terrain here, the entrance we came in is the bottom of the gourd, which is the entrance that was artificially hewn, and the history of the big gourd cave is much earlier than the tomb of the king of Xian, if we want to pass through this cave and arrive at the tomb of the king at the mouth of the gourd, we have to drill into the hole where the natives used a long pole to pick the big toad into, it is possible that the mountain god is still waiting for us inside." ”

I didn't react for a while, and I was completely stunned: "What is the mountain god waiting for us to do?" Could it be that you want to eat us as toads? ”

The fat man said to Shirley Yang: "You don't need to scare us, except for Chairman Mao, who have we served?" Lao Tzu carried a submachine gun into the slip, if he obediently made a way for us to go over, it would be fine, otherwise the master would be annoyed, not to mention the first to take the robbery to break through him, this gourd hole will be surnamed Wang not surnamed Hei in the future. ”

I came back to my senses and said to the fat man: "What nonsense are you talking about, the feudal superstition of the ancient people can also be taken seriously, I don't believe in any mountain gods, I have dug a hole in the earth in Kunlun Mountain for several years, and I have not dug out any mountain gods, I think it is just some kind of beast that lived in the cave back then, and the local ignorant and ignorant, deceived by the ruling class, and the industrious and brave working people who were oppressed by the three mountains, took that guy as a god, such precedents abound in Chinese history, and there are countless precedents. ”

The fat man said thoughtfully: "It's also the same truth, or how to say that knowledge is power, if it is really any animal that is regarded as a mountain god, it may be a python or something like that, this deep mountain and old forest belongs to that thing, we have seen a lot of snakes eating frogs, Bacheng is an old python or a big snake or something." ”

The fat man and I were suddenly full of ambition, and felt that there was no place for heroes, but we heard Shirley Young say: "Don't make a conclusion too early, you look at this last grinding painting, the female corpse under the water is what we have just seen with our own eyes, and the cave over there may not be nothing." ”

I just remembered, and finally there was a grinding stone carving, only to find that a black-faced and cold god, said to be a god, but there was no trace of anger on his face, but showed some imperceptible yin qi, surrounded by countless women, those women were obviously dead corpses, all lying flat on the ground with their backs facing the sky, their hands open, hanging on the left and right, their legs arched in an arc, as if crawling on the ground with anti-joints, the characteristics of the female corpse are exactly the same as the female corpse we just saw, floating up from the bottom of the water and suddenly disappearing, It's a corpse, it's better to say it's a dead soul, otherwise the moment we see her, how can we feel such a strong resentment, I asked, "Is it a corpse cave?" Thousands of years old zongzi have become fine and entrenched in it? ”