When I heard this, I asked him what he had in mind, and he scratched his hair and said, "I just guess that this copper tree may not be the key, but it may be these ravines above the tree that work at the time of sacrifice, and this thing may have been used to collect some liquids, such as rain, blood, or dew." ”

The old itch asked him, "Is it like the emperor used to collect dew to make tea?" What's that called, rootless water? ”

Master Liang used his pen to hang some black dirt in those ravines, and after thousands of years, it was impossible to tell whether these were the dried blood of his ancestors or the sediment in the rainwater. He looked at the branches again and said, "You see, there is something like a bayonet bloodletting groove under these branches, which leads to the cloud and thunder pattern, and this branch must also have a function in the sacrifice. Possibly, it really has something to do with the blood sacrifice. ”

We threw Uncle Qin's corpse off the branches, stayed for a while, and when there was nothing else, the old itch impatiently urged us to hurry up.

I climbed up and asked Master Liang what he thought of these ravines. Why are these ravines related to the sacrifices of the year, and how are these sacrifices carried out?

Master Liang said to me that although the sacrifices in the Western Zhou Dynasty were not as brutal as those in the Shang Dynasty, human sacrifices were inevitable, and the so-called different sacrificial methods were just different in how to kill people and animals. For example, if you sacrifice to the land, you bury people alive, if you sacrifice to the god of fire, you will burn people to death, and if you sacrifice to the god of the river, you will throw them into the river.

There is such a giant bronze tree like the sky, and the place of worship may be a sacred tree such as Fuso Wakaki. It may also be the god of Simu, usually this kind of god uses blood sacrifices.

Just now, Uncle Qin's blood flowed along the bronze branches, into the cloud and thunder patterns on the bronze tree, all the way down, such a line, if it was not designed in advance, would not have run so smoothly at all, plus the traces like those bayonet bloodletting grooves on the bronze branches, the matter is very clear, this must be used for blood sacrifice and earth sacrifice.

The so-called blood sacrifice is most of the time with blood into the ground, and when the sacrifice is received, the sacrifice must be set to death on these bronze branches, and the blood of the corpse is drawn out. If the blood does not congaze halfway, it will inevitably flow to the roots of the bronze tree, which is buried deep under the rock, symbolizing the meaning of offering blood to the gods.

To put it mildly, the texture of the whole tree is like the blood drainage groove in the hospital dissection room, the blood on several corpse beds, no matter how much, finally flows into the blood drainage groove from these ravines, and then flows into the sewer pipe, but the blood drainage groove here is made into a pattern that seems to be used for decoration, which can just explain why the ravines between these cloud and thunder patterns are so deep and outrageous.

Such cruel and large-scale sacrifices, obviously even in a powerful country, can not be held for a long time, so there are only sporadic records in ancient books, as for the process of the specific ceremony, how many people and animals are needed, everything is unknown.

I listened to Master Liang's words, on the one hand, I sighed at the command of the ancients, and on the other hand, I also felt a little chill, such a huge project, it was really stupid to use it as a tool to kill people. Thinking of the countless slaves being stuck upside down on these branches, and the blood flowing down these bronze ravines into a single pillar of blood, I felt as if a bone-chilling chill seeped out of those ravines.

Thinking about it a little weak, I said to the old itch: "Let's go faster, otherwise wait for Uncle Qin's blood to flow down, maybe the god of Simu thinks that someone has come to sacrifice again, and the old man comes out for a walk, maybe he can use us as sacrifices." ”

Lao Itch didn't take Master Liang's words to heart at all, and said to me: "Don't believe him, where would there be so many people in China at that time to kill and play for you, I see that the bloodletting here may be a pig's head or a sheep's head, let's climb up again, maybe you can see thousands of years of pork jerky, and even if it is a person, after a person dies, the blood will soon coagulate, and people can't look down on it, how natural people used to be, eating pesticide-free food, drinking non-polluted water, and the whole one is the blood of the farmer - It's kind of sweet, so it's just a fool. ”

I heard that the tendons on my head burst out, and I couldn't help but scold: "I'm cāo, you egg, what's the matter, why is my blood poisonous?" Can you stop your mouth......"

Master Liang was really angry, and he hurriedly said: "Two, this is judging the situation, now in this situation, don't say witty words, don't you think, why are these branches getting denser and denser, and if it goes on like this, it will be difficult to climb up?" ”

Lao Itch said: "There is a sparse and dense here, and it is easy to climb if it is dense, is it possible that you still want to be as sparse as possible, the best results are more than two meters apart, and we are stacking Arhats here dozens of meters in the air?" ”

I said to the old itch: "Don't jump to conclusions, I think something is wrong, you turn on the flashlight." ”

When we came up, the lighting was still a torch, because the power supply of the flashlight in Uncle Qin's bag was not very sufficient, and we didn't want to waste it, but now I want to see things in the distance clearly, and I can't do it with a torch.

Lao Itch turned on the flashlight, concentrated the light beam, and shone it up, only to see that above our heads, the bronze branches have a tendency to gradually dense and increase, seven or eight meters up, they are already dense like thorns, to continue to go up, only hang upside down first, and then step on the tips of these branches to climb up, and this is much more dangerous than we climb with the copper tree.

Now, even if there is a tiger's den in Longtan in front of us, we are going to break in, Lao Itch told us to stay where we are and not move, we first climbed to the outside of the branches, and then found the rope from Uncle Qin from above and threw it down, Master Liang and I grabbed the rope with one hand and climbed up.

Looking up again, the situation here is no longer like we stuck below, the bronze branches have been densed to the point of no initial intervention, I climbed for a while, and said in my heart that it is no wonder that Uncle Qin will fall, and then go up, I am afraid that it is difficult to find a place to step on, as long as one is not careful, or blows the wind above, he may go down to accompany Uncle Qin.

The old itch was crawling very fast at this time, and I didn't have the strength to stop him, so I could only restrain the jīng god, on the one hand, not to let myself fall behind, and on the other hand, to remind myself to be careful of stumbling. At the same time, the torch could not be used at this time, because there was no extra hand to hold it, so I had to extinguish it and stick it into my waist.

Soon, under the light of the flashlight, I found that the rock walls around the bronze tree also began to change, and there were natural bell cones and some dissolved rock curtains.

When passing through this section, the rock wall began to shrink, and I also found that on the rock wall on both sides, some caves of different sizes began to appear, not deep, I could see the bottom, there seemed to be something in a few caves, and a certain reflection would occur when I gave the flashlight, these phenomena made me gradually feel uneasy, but the rock wall was dozens of meters away from us, and I didn't believe that there were any variables that could directly affect us from the opposite side.

I drew attention to the cave on the side, and I didn't notice that the old itch and Master Liang who were climbing in front of me had stopped, and I didn't react until I hit Master Liang's buttocks, and when I looked up, I saw that there were many monkeys with masks above, exactly like the ones we had just encountered below.

When I looked closely, I found that the monkeys were dead, and the corpses were blown into corpses by the hot wind blowing down from above, twisting strangely, and their hands and feet were stuck in the dense branches, so that they did not fall below. There were dozens of such dried corpses, and the strange mask did not fall off as the corpses dried up, still staring at us silently, as if they would be resurrected at any moment.

We slowed down and took a closer look at these strange things.

The monkey's body seems to have a skin disease, most of the hair has fallen out, showing a gray face, which looks a little similar to human skin, but when I look at it myself, I find that there are very obvious lesions, from the body shape, these monkeys are about the height of a child of ten or six (not Yao Ming, of course), maybe a little taller, in this case, my sense of height is almost out of order.

The mask on the monkey's face looks like a stone texture, polished perfectly, and I even suspect that it may be made of porcelain, judging from the combination of the mask and the monkey's head, this mask seems to have been burned into the flesh, or by some bloody means, directly with the face.

Most of the dried corpses were intact, with only a few remaining one limb left, probably due to the fact that the corpses were too old and dried out too much, causing them to naturally shatter.

Master Liang asked us not to climb for now, pointed to a dried corpse and said, "Wait a minute, I think the posture of these monkeys is a little strange, I seem to have seen it somewhere, wait for me to take a closer look." ”

Old Itch said to him: "You are in trouble, you have to watch everything, be careful, wait a minute, the monkey below thinks your posture is strange." ”

Master Liang ignored the old itch, carefully crawled close to the nearest dried corpse, and installed its mask, the skin of the dry cang's face immediately cracked, Master Liang easily tore off the mask, he approached the face of the dried corpse and looked at it, turned his head to us and said: "; Two...... bits, this ...... It doesn't seem to be a monkey, this is Zhang ...... Faces. ”