Our eyes fell on Wen Ru, who told us that the red wave that swept through Shenzhou twenty years ago almost brought archaeological work to a standstill for ten years, and a large number of outstanding archaeological experts were branded as black and wronged.

Wen Ru was still a researcher at the Institute of Archaeology at that time, and was sent to Jiangxi Miao Village for transformation, during the Great Leap Forward, the mountains and forests around Miao Village were cleared, and an ancient relic was inadvertently excavated.

However, at that time, it was impossible to organize large-scale rescue and excavation, and the destruction of the four old made archaeology always on the cusp, and those precious cultural relics and relics were classified as old culture and old customs were largely destroyed.

"I witnessed the burning and smashing of those representative cultural relics of Miaojiang, and I tried to rescue one or two cultural relics, but I was also beaten as a bad element who was stubborn and incomplete." Wen Ru bent over, and the bulging hunchback behind him was even more obvious. "It was at that time that my back was injured, and I was lucky enough to save my life, but my spine was severely damaged."

It turns out that Wen Ru is not born with a hunchback, and listening to his narration should also be a person who is obsessed with archaeology, but it is difficult for me to associate a person who sacrifices his life to protect cultural relics with Wen Ru who is mad at the underground altar and kills people in a tomb.

"Elder Wen, I haven't heard you talk about this past." Ye Zhiqiu's eyes were full of admiration. "What happened to me, has the ruins been preserved?"

"Nope." Wen Ru shook his head regretfully. "As far as I'm alone, how can I stop the fanatical red soldiers, that ruins should be a place of sacrifice in Miaojiang from the architectural shape, such a thing belonged to the restoration of feudal superstition at that time, and when I went back after I was injured, the ruins were already in ruins."

Wen Ru's appearance was heartbroken, and he could see that this time he did not pretend to be pretentious, and he was indeed sincerely sorry for the destruction of cultural relics.

"What does that relic have to do with the ancestral god of the Jiuli tribe?" I asked curiously.

"I sneaked into the ruins at night to see if I could find any surviving artifacts, and I found this in the midst of a mess of ruins."

Wen Ru took out a palm-sized stone from his backpack, and in the firelight, we saw that there were carved patterns on the stones, and the patterns on them were exactly the same as the bronze mask in Liao Kai's hand, the only difference was that the patterns on the stones were exactly the same two symmetrical on the left and right, and they were much more delicate than the bronze mask in terms of tattoos and craftsmanship.

"The carved ornaments on the stones are extremely rare in Miao culture, and it was the first time I saw them at that time, and these patterns were completely different from the patterns of Miao religious and cultural traditions, and for a while I couldn't tell the time of this relic and the object of sacrifice." Wen Ru told us unhurriedly. "I have always kept this stone by my side, and later visited many places, repeatedly compared the religious relics of Miaojiang, and finally determined that the time of the ruins should be in the Western Jin Dynasty."

"Western Jin Dynasty ......" Gong Jue thought thoughtfully. The bronze mask is an ancient artifact of the Chiyou period, and the pattern on it appears in the Miao ruins of the Western Jin Dynasty, indicating that this pattern has always been inherited. ”

"Jiangxi is thousands of kilometers away from here, if according to what the priest said, the ancestors of the Jiuli tribe built a temple for the ancestral god here, and waited for the ancestral god to wake up, then why did the three-eyed unicorn representing the ancestral god appear in the Western Jin Dynasty thousands of years later, and it is still thousands of miles away in Jiangxi?" The general flicked his cigarette ash and muttered to himself.

"I'm not done talking about this yet, and the real things that really make me unbelievable are still to come, which is why this time I'm here to find out the origin of the bronze mask." Wen Ru said calmly.

"Elder Wen, what's going on next?" Ye Zhiqiu asked.

Wen Ru sighed heavily and slowly told us that on the night he sneaked back to the ruins, he was discovered by the patrolling Red Guards and beat him indiscriminately, and it was at that time that his spine was seriously injured, and Wen Ru was rescued by Miao Hu when his life was hanging by a thread and dying.

Miao Hu is proficient in herbal medicine, and the chance creation actually held Wen Ru's life, but he was disabled for life, and when Wen Ru recovered, Miao Hu asked him why he didn't want to take care of those ruins, Wen Ru took out the stones he found and told him that this relic might fill the gap in the history of the Miao people.

Miao Hu saw that Wen Ru was so persistent, so he told Wen Ru a secret, what he never expected was that this Miao Hu turned out to be a priest, and his religion was greatly damaged and impacted during the Cultural Revolution, so Miao Hu concealed his identity as a priest.

Wen Ru's Miao language was also learned by Miao Hu at that time, and the priests served by Miao Hu have been passed down from generation to generation, so Wen Ru also learned too many unknown history and allusions of Miao Jiang from Miao Hu.

"That's when I became obsessed with the study of Miaojiang culture, but what really kept me persevering was another thing." Wen Ru's expression became serious. "In the process of studying the culture and history of Miao Xinjiang with Miao Hu after I recovered from my injury, Miao Hu told me a bizarre story."

"What's the matter?" Ye Zhiqiu asked.

"He told me that the Miao people believe in ghosts and gods, but the most noble of them is actually the ancestral gods, a long time ago, the priests were specifically responsible for worshiping the ancestral gods, and the priests who worshiped the ancestral gods had a special language before, but this sacrificial custom was suddenly interrupted thousands of years ago, and the advanced priestly language also disappeared."

"The ancestral god of the Miao people?" Ye Zhiqiu hesitated. "Elder Wen, the Miao people have a clear record of ancestral gods, but they are all totem culture caused by nature worship, so it should have nothing to do with the ancestral gods of the Jiuli tribe, right?"

"At that time, I didn't realize this problem, there are quite a lot of myths and legends in Miaojiang culture, but it is the first time I have heard of the sacrifice of the ancestral gods, and Miao Hu told me with certainty at that time that the ancestral gods are sleeping in the forest of Leishan in Jiangxi."

"Are you sure that the ancestral god mentioned by the Miao sacrifice is the same as the Jiuli ancestral god we know now?" Tian Ji asked disappreciatively.

"At that time, I didn't know that there was a tribe of descendants of Jiuli, according to the description of Miao Hu, the ancestral god was buried near Lei Mountain, regardless of the origin of the ancestral god, all myths and legends have roots, so it can be seen that this ancestral god should be a mythical person, in other words, there should be a mausoleum of the ancestors of the Miao people somewhere in Leishan, Jiangxi." The more Wen Ru spoke, the more excited he became. "But what Miado told me later made me feel confused and illusory about this rumor."

"What did Miaohu tell Mr. Wen?" Liao Kai asked.

"He said that the ancestral god is immortal, at the beginning the ancestral god did not appear in Jiangxi, but was resurrected once, the history of the priest's inheritance is clearly recorded, the ancestral god came from the west, and ......" Wen Ru took a deep breath and looked at the stone in his hand and hesitated. Moreover, Miao Hu said that the ancestral god suddenly appeared without warning, and stayed in the Thunder Mountain until he was put to sleep. ”

"There is a west...... I frowned, if what Wen Ru said is true, then this matter will become bizarre and complicated, but it coincides with the ancestral god of the Jiuli tribe told by the priest in front of us. All myths and legends have roots, assuming that the ancestral gods really exist, it is likely that the western region refers to the southwest region, and the ancestral gods have been resurrected ......"

I looked back at the priest sitting cross-legged on the ground with a proud face, he firmly believed that his ancestral god would awaken again, that the Miao were the evolution of the Jiuli ancestors, and that in fact, the Miao had inherited and retained some of the Jiuli things in their cultural history.

Maybe the ancestral god they are talking about is actually the same, if this is the case, is there really a so-called ancestral god temple in the deep mountains near Baiyan.

"Then this ancestral god is too unfading, why did he wake up from here and appear in Leishan in Jiangxi for thousands of miles for no reason?" The general asked after taking the last puff of his cigarette.

"I thought this rumor was too vague at the time to take it to heart, until Zhiqiu took back the bronze mask for me to identify, and I realized that the rumors that Miao Hu told me back then may not be groundless." Wen Ru looked at us very seriously and said. "There have been five major migrations of the Miao people in history, the fourth of which is from the southwest to the Jiangxi region, so I deduce that the Miao village where the ruins were discovered is likely to have migrated from here, and the priests who have been passed down from generation to generation still retain the rumors of the ancestral gods of the Jiuli people."