We walked around the tall bronze Chiyou, and in the direction of Tian Ji's finger, we saw eleven statues carved side by side on the thick ice wall in the huge ice room.

Each statue is more than five meters tall, and each statue stands upright and evenly spaced, with hands crossed in front of his chest, and a golden mask on each statue's face, each with pale eyebrows and closed lips.

"This is the ancestral god of the Jiuli people?" The general looked at the gun for a long time and turned around and asked. "With such a large battle to build such a huge temple, these eleven statues are enshrined in the most important place?"

"It's carved with ice, and he said that there should be something in such a big temple that can be taken out, and all the hard work is for eleven ice lumps." Tian Ji touched the statue with his hand and shook his head in disappointment.

"It's not ice!" I took the torch in Ye Zhiqiu's hand, stood under the statue and looked at it for a long time, the quality of the statue was very fine, with a faint fluorescence in the firelight, and there was a texture of ice cubes touched by fingertips, giving people the feeling of ice and jade, three points warm, seven points cold, the appearance was like ice like water, refreshing and comfortable, ice through the heart, and there was a crisp echo when percussion. "This is the best ice jade!"

Ice is an extremely precious jade, its flesh characteristics, transparency, appearance is close to ice, the color is pure and bright, and the sound quality of striking jade is crisp, which is quite in line with the traditional saying of jade golden sound.

Identifying the color of jade is where I learned from Zhao Yan, I know the gold of ice jade, and I have not seen many good jade goods with Zhao Yan, but the portrait carved by the whole complete ice jade is more than five meters high, not to mention that there are eleven such statues!

It is not an exaggeration to describe each statue as priceless, although Yunnan does not produce jade, but it is the largest distribution center of jadeite, such a beautiful huge ice statue, if it is taken out to cause a great sensation, the most surprising thing to me is not the material used in these statues.

Each statue is exquisitely carved, and under the background of crystal clear ice, these statues that have stood in the temple for thousands of years are appropriately revealed, washing away the silence and mystery of lead.

"Ice Seed Jade!" Tian Ji's eyes lit up and he stretched out his hand to try to pull, but the statue did not move, as if embedded in the ice wall, Tian Ji hesitated for a long time and raised the butt of the gun.

"What do you want to do?" Ye Zhiqiu stepped in front of Tian Ji in one step.

"Ice seed, if you don't knock a few pieces and take them out, I'm sorry that I ran this trip for the rest of my life." Tian Ji replied seriously.

"These jade figurines are thousands of years old, and their artistic value goes far beyond the statues themselves, and they are priceless." Ye Zhiqiu glared at Tian Ji and said loudly. "You are destroying cultural relics, and they are extremely precious cultural relics, how many of your heads are not enough to lose?"

"Cheng, I'll leave this artifact to you." Tian Ji probably knew that Ye Zhiqiu didn't want to move the jade statue in him, so he put the gun behind him, and without saying a word, he climbed onto the statue and knocked the mask of the statue with his hand. "The statue is yours, and the mask must be given to me."

Tian Ji took it a few times, and found that the golden mask was already solid, and he happily told us on it that the mask turned out to be pure gold, Ye Zhiqiu looked nervous and worried below, as if he was afraid that the statue would be destroyed in Tian Ji's hands.

"It seems that these jade statues are the ancestral gods that the priests have been refusing to tell us, so the Miao people who follow the Jiuli religious legend are the source of their twelve ancient ancestral gods are these eleven statues." Wen Ru looked up at the statue with excitement on his face. "It's just that these ancestral gods are not totems endowed with divinity, but gods who really exist!"

"Why do you have to think that these are gods, can't they be ordinary people, also endowed with divinity by the Jiuli people?" Gong Jue asked disdainfully beside him.

"Do you think that with the skills and abilities of the Jiuli people at that time, this temple could be built? Do you think that the undead guards in the temple and the monsters we encounter are something that humans can control? For the first time, Wen Ru lost his usual calmness,-for-tat rhetorical question.

"Elder Wen, no matter what the eleven statues represent, since the priest said that the ancestral gods rested in the temple, it means that the ancestral gods should really exist, why are there only these statues?" Ye Zhiqiu asked suspiciously.

"Leave!" I looked at the bronze pillar in my hand and took a deep breath. "The priests said that their ancestral gods had awakened and left the temple."

"Rest should mean death, since the ancestral god who has died, how can he leave here." Ye Zhiqiu glanced at me.

I and Gong Jue and Tian Ji looked at each other, we can answer this question, after all, this kind of thing is not the first time we have encountered it, I think Gong Jue and Tian Ji are the same as me now, they also thought of the empty ice coffin in the Kunlun Golden Gate.

"Don't talk about anything else, whoever comes up to help, I can't take off this mask alone." The attention of the field chicken should be more on the pure gold mask. "It's enough to make such a big jade statue, if you have to get another gold mask, it is possible that Jiuli people also understand gold and jade."

I shook my head and smiled bitterly below, telling Tian Ji that he didn't know how to talk nonsense, the golden mask was a funerary product, which was made by imitating the face of the deceased, and the appearance of the golden mask on the statue showed that my previous inference was correct, and the temple of the ancestral god of Jiuli was actually a huge mausoleum.

These eleven statues should be the ancestral gods of Jiuli and the owners of this mausoleum.

"Only the deceased of the most noble status are eligible to wear a golden mask, which generally means that the deceased will have an immortal face, even if the soul of the deceased can find its own destiny after wandering in all directions." I usually laugh at Tian Ji and explain to him. "But the masks on these statues may not mean this, in the minds of the Jiuli people, these are gods, and the golden masks on the statues also prove this, gods are immortal."

"I didn't see it, my dad taught you so many things, I really didn't know that tomb robbers had to learn this." Ye Zhiqiu glanced at me with a strange yin and yang, and her voice was sour, I knew that she was jealous, and Ye Jiuqing would never teach her this.

"Tomb robbery is not as simple as you think, archaeological research is mostly based on the knowledge and theory of tomb robbery, but I have never really learned the essence of tomb robbery, and those secret books passed down by word of mouth are beyond the reach of archaeology." Wen Ru was moved.

"Elder Wen, how can you say such a thing, we are protecting cultural relics, and robbing tombs is destroying cultural relics, can it be the same?" Ye Zhiqiu snorted and refused to admit defeat.

"There are two sides to everything, you only see the disgraceful side of tomb robbery, but you don't know that tomb robbery has been inherited for thousands of years, how can archaeology be compared." Wen Ru didn't argue with Ye Zhiqiu, and replied with a smile. "To put it simply, you ask yourself, with the archaeological skills we have learned, can we find this temple? Can you discover this majestic ruin? ”

"That'...... Then we are also righteous, unlike tomb robbers, who do shady deeds, causing how many cultural relics to be lost and damaged, and at the same time making how much history can no longer be verified. Ye Zhiqiu didn't let an inch of land.

"Little girl, it's a shame that your father is not here, hearing you say this, your father may want to spit out old blood." The general took out some cigarettes and looked at Ye Zhiqiu, crying and laughing. "Don't forget, you were raised by your father for shady things."

"Justice, you go and ask if justice can save your life." I reached out and touched Ye Zhiqiu's severed hair. "You can still live until now, but you rely on the skills handed down by the tomb robber ancestors."

Syllable......

Tian Ji finally broke off the golden mask on the statue, waved it happily at us, and looked at Ye Zhiqiu with a smug smile: "Justice can't be eaten, it's better to make this thing, then."

The thick golden mask fell heavily on the ground, and no one reached out to catch it, and the field chicken on it complained bitterly that we couldn't catch the gold, and we didn't pay attention to him at all, and the others looked behind the field chicken in surprise like me.

Tian Ji probably also found that our expression was wrong, thinking that there was something behind him, his face was so pale that he almost didn't fall off the statue, turned his head to see that there was nothing behind him, and glared at us with a frightened face: "Don't be surprised, there is only half a life left, nothing, why do you react like this." ”

It is because there is nothing, under the golden mask taken off by Tian Ji, the jade statue is completely blank face, the essence of the statue lies in the facial features, and it can also reflect the content and meaning that the statue wants to convey, but there are no facial features on the face of this statue.

However, it is precisely because of the lack of face that the statue is quiet and noble, revealing a god-like silence, and when we look up below, the statue is solemn and vigorous, as if it really looks like a god who does not move like a mountain.

"Cutting corners?" Tian Ji touched the face of the statue on it. "The people of Jiuli respect these statues as gods, and they actually make a half-finished product and put them here, and they are not afraid that the gods will get angry."

"Yes, the Jiuli people have great reverence and devotion to the ancestral gods, so much so that they spare no effort to build a huge temple for worship, and also offer so many living sacrifices." Ye Zhiqiu was also a little surprised. "Why is the most important statue of the ancestral god incomplete?"

"The sacrifice of living people will only be used to worship the gods, which shows that in the minds of the Jiuli people, the ancestral gods are not people, but real gods." Wen Ru thought for a moment and said to Ye Zhiqiu. "God has ten thousand images, just like the Buddhists said the thirty-two dharmas, people see different gods are also different, it can be seen that these eleven ancestral gods are extremely awe-inspiring in the minds of Jiuli people."

"It's not that complicated." I shook my head and interrupted Wen Ru's words. "We once asked the priest who the Jiuli Ancestral God was, and he didn't tell us, but now that I think about it, I finally understand what it means."

"What do you mean?" Gong Jue asked.

"Because even the Jiuli people have never seen the appearance of the ancestral god!" I looked at the faceless statue. "It is precisely because of this that Jiuli people respect the ancestral gods and stay away."

"It doesn't make sense, they are all the ancestral gods of Jiuli, why don't you let them see their appearance?" Tian Ji looked at the statue and asked suspiciously.

"The most noble position in the history of Jiuli is Chi You, from before we found the descendants of Jiuli, we didn't know that Jiuli still had ancestral gods." I looked back at the jade statues carved side by side. "And so far, there is no record or mention in any literature, and the appearance of any god will not disappear into thin air with the lineage, unless ......"

"Unless these ancestral gods don't want the Jiuli people to inherit their secrets!" Gong Jue was smart and quickly thought the same as me.

I asked Tian Ji to try to remove the gold masks from the other statues, which was probably the happiest thing for Tian Ji, and sure enough, as I suspected, all the statues had no faces.

"Isn't it the Twelve Ancient Ancestor Gods?" After removing the golden mask of the last statue. "How come there are only eleven statues here?"

This is also the question that I have been wondering, since the discovery of these statues, I have been surprised why it is eleven, from the bronze plate at the entrance of the temple and the stone platform of the sacrificial room, the number that appears is twelve, according to these numbers, if this is the Jiuli Ancestral God, then there should be another one.

I looked around the ice chamber of Nuoda, and looked at the passage between the eleven statues of Silence, which seemed to lead to another place, and I listened intently, and the sound that had been lingering in my ears came from there, as if something was calling to me......