Under the illumination of the flashlight beam, in a pile of carbon ash, some small reflective metal-like light spots were found. Ordinary carbon ash is certainly not reflective, which is enough to prove that there must be something in the carbon ash.

As soon as he thought of this, the little monkey became excited, patted his chest and said, "I'll just say, it's impossible to clean up no matter how you clean it up, there's nothing." As the saying goes, snakes leave traces, geese leave sounds. Although Liu Xiaoge was also a little surprised, he thought about it, what good things could be in the carbon ash.

So he said: "Don't get too much hope, it's not good to say that it's even some broken stones." The little monkey angrily compared his middle finger to Liu Xiaoge and said, "Don't crow's mouth, if it's really a stone, I'll stone you to death." ”

With that, the little monkey took out the folding sapper shovel from his bag and began to clean it up from the soot of the stove little by little. At first, the sapper shovel did produce some jet-black soot, but as the cleanup progressed.

Liu Xiaoge gradually found that the color of the carbon gray began to change, gradually turning gray, getting whiter and whiter. The temperature of the outer furnace is not high, so there is no way for the charcoal to burn fully, so it is normal for the color to be black.

But the more white it is, the more abnormal it is, and the whiteness has exceeded the color of the carbon gray after normal full combustion, which means that the material of the fuel in this layer has changed. Li Xinwen was standing aside with her hands on her hips, watching coldly.

But after seeing that the color of the soot was getting whiter and whiter, her face began to feel a little wrong, and she also paused, pinched some of the whiter soot with her hand, and then sniffed it with her nose. Shen Sheng said: "This is not carbon ash, this is ashes." ”

Li Xinwen has rich experience in tomb robbing, and she is more cautious, so she will not jump to conclusions without full certainty. Hearing her say this, Liu Xiaoge's head turned a little bit, and he confirmed again: "Are you sure?" Is this the ashes? ”

Li Xinwen took out a dagger and kept fiddling with the carbon ash cleaned up by the little monkey, carefully observed it for a long time, and then nodded very certainly. The little monkey patted his head and said, "No, I'm messy when you say this, isn't this a smelting furnace?" How, according to you, this has become a crematorium. ”

Li Xinwen also wondered: "I also think it's strange, you continue to clean up." The little monkey nodded and continued to clean up, the internal space of this furnace was not small, and soon the little monkey cleaned up a large pile of snow-white powder, Liu Xiaoge looked at these powders and thought of Li Xinwen's conclusion.

The more I think about it, the more terrible it becomes, and if you look at it this way, almost all of them are ashes. Seeing that the ashes that had been piled up into a small sand pit were more than half a meter high, and there could be several sacks to be packed, Liu Xiaoge almost didn't dare to imagine how many people were burned in this furnace.

The little monkey was not as panicked as Liu Xiaoge at all, his family is in the funeral business, and he is no stranger to ashes or something. I didn't recognize it before, but I didn't think about it at all, and I couldn't think of it as ashes because I couldn't see the white powder.

Now after Li Xinwen's reminder, the little monkey also recognized it, and looked at the few bags of ashes that were cleaned up. The little monkey estimated that with so many ashes, at least ten people's corpses would have to be burned. But as a rule of thumb, the number of bones burned here must have been far more than ten people.

So he frowned and said: "If you really look at this as a crematorium, you see that the ashes are burned very thoroughly, with our current crematorium, it is almost impossible to burn so cleanly." Like a skull, a thicker thigh bone that only burns, but it is difficult to completely burn to ashes. ”

The more Liu Xiaoge listened, the more panicked he became, and hurriedly interrupted: "Let's talk about the point, don't talk nonsense here." The little monkey's originally serious expression collapsed suddenly, and he returned to his grin-grit appearance and continued: "Okay, okay, that is to say, the ashes burned very cleanly like this, and the structure of this stove, I don't think it's a crematorium." ”

Speaking of which, let's briefly popularize the general structure of the crematorium, first of all, the furnace can be sealed, which can form a high-pressure space and increase the temperature of the furnace. Then there must be a shelf for the corpses, and generally such shelves are made of steel.

And the reason why the little monkey thinks that this is not a crematorium is mainly judged for these two reasons, generally speaking, the ashes must be collected to burn the corpse. There are so many ashes left here, and if it is to collect the ashes, this work is too sloppy.

Moreover, the shelves where the bodies were parked were not seen here, and even if they were taken afterwards, there must have been grooves or traces of the shelves in the stove, but there were none here. The structure here is exactly what a normal steelmaking furnace would be.

The second reason is that the bones here must have been cleaned, otherwise there would definitely be unclean burning residues. However, these are all ashes, and there is no residue left, which means that the residue in this furnace must have been cleaned. As for the remaining ashes, they must have been burned repeatedly to burn so thoroughly, and the fact that so many ashes can be left shows that the cleaning of this furnace is very sloppy.

Hearing this, Liu Xiaoge was even more puzzled, at this moment. Li Xinwen exclaimed: "Come and see, what is this?" It turned out that when Liu Xiaoge and the little monkey were discussing, Li Xinwen had been fiddling with the ashes. The rummaging revealed a burnt and almost deformed piece of bronze among the ashes.

If you look closely, you can see that although the thing is a little deformed, the basic appearance is still retained. The bronze piece is not large, and it looks like a fragment of armor. Naturally, it is unlikely that this armor will be worn by animals, it must be humans.

With the discovery of the armor fragments, they were even more certain that this was a smelting furnace that burned human corpses. The little monkey asked very puzzled: "Damn, it seems that I made a mistake in judgment, this is really a cremation oven." ”

Li Xinwen said with a cold face: "Your judgment is not wrong, this is definitely not a cremation furnace, but a genuine smelting furnace." As for the bones of so many people here, and they were burned very cleanly. This reminds me of the legend that in the Spring and Autumn Period, among the bronze smelting techniques of the Yue Kingdom, there was a secret technique, the sacrificial sword. ”

As soon as Liu Xiaoge heard the word sacrificial sword, he asked thoughtfully: "This living sacrificial sword is only a legendary thing, and it has not been confirmed. Just because there are ashes in the furnace doesn't mean that such a murderous smelting technique as a sacrificial sword has taken place here. ”

Li Xinwen replied, "Do you know what the purpose of this sacrificial sword is? If you put aside the so-called witchcraft and strange arts, the sacrificial sword itself also has a certain scientific basis. The Bronze Age and the Iron Age, the reason why there are two different eras. The main explanation is the difference in smelting technology, and the biggest difference between bronze smelting and iron smelting is that the melting point is different, and the temperature required for iron is much higher than that of bronze. This means that the process of making the furnace is completely different. ”

"This bronze is actually a special alloy, the melting point of normal copper is 1038.4 degrees, while the melting point of bronze is only more than 800 degrees. Whereas, the melting point of iron is as high as 1534.8 degrees. It is almost twice the melting point of bronze, and such a melting point is destined to make it difficult to produce iron tools in the bronze civilization.

At that time, the ancient craftsmen could not make the temperature of the furnace fire reach the melting point of iron, so the brilliant bronze civilization appeared. In the period of the Bronze Civilization, there was a very powerful smelting master, called Ou Yezi, who is said to be able to create bronze weapons that are stronger and more powerful than ordinary bronze weapons, the most famous of which are Yue Wujian and Chu Sanjian. These bronze swords are undoubtedly very powerful, and even make many of the bronze swords more powerful than the current iron swords.

According to archaeological research, and scientific speculation. It was found that although Ou Yezi had mastered such a technology, it seemed that it could not be mass-produced, and Ou Yezi was a master smelter in the Yue Kingdom at that time, and he was supported by the state. If it can be mass-produced, you think that with such a weapon, it is very likely that the Vietnamese country will have a way to unify the whole of China.

After all, in any era, the degree of sophistication of weapons and equipment has a direct impact on the trend of war. After scientific analysis, several conjectures were made, which may be the reason why mass production could not be made, the first is that the bronze he used is different from ordinary bronze, and it is likely to be meteorite iron or meteorite copper brought from meteorites.

The second reason is that this living sacrifice sword, according to scientific speculation, may not really use a living person to sacrifice the sword, but use bones to support combustion and increase the temperature of the furnace. Only when the furnace temperature goes up, can you create a famous sword in the world, otherwise, no matter how good your skills are, you can't melt the ore in vain. “

Hearing this, Liu Xiaoge clapped his hands and said, "I understand, you mean that the tools here have inherited Ou Yezi's technology." Therefore, the skeleton is used to support combustion, and the phosphorus in the skeleton is used to increase the temperature of the furnace fire, making it easier to forge bronze. ”

Thinking about it, there is only this possibility, because in the entire underground palace, the proportion of bronze used is very high. After this trip, Liu Xiaoge and his entourage did not go through the complete underground palace, and the amount of bronze and bronze organs they encountered was not small, and it was at least dozens of tons when it was full. Without a unique process, there would be no way to forge so much bronze.

The little monkey was not interested in these historical mysteries at all, and he saw the bronze armor piece that Li Xinwen had dug out of the ashes, and his eyes were a little hot. immediately joined the ranks of digging ashes, and after a while of Liu Xiaoge and Li Xinwen's communication, the little monkey had already shaved more than half of the ashes.

Not to mention, he really didn't find nothing now, and he dug out several pieces of bronze armor among the ashes. It's a pity that these bronze armor pieces are not as well preserved as the one Li Xinwen just had, if it weren't for the previous piece as a reference, it would almost be impossible to see that it was a bronze armor piece.

Looking at the dozens of armor-breaking pieces the size of a coin, the little monkey was a little annoyed, he wasted so much energy, but it was not for the purpose of digging up these broken copper and iron. So the actions of his subordinates became even more impatient, originally cautious as if they were panning for gold, but now their actions are completely rats digging up the soil.

Soon, a large pile of ashes had been turned over, and there was still no decent harvest, just when the little monkey was already a little disheartened. From the ashes appeared, a hard object was about twenty centimeters long and about two or three centimeters wide, and the silhouette looked a bit like a short sword.