The ancestors of human beings had the tradition of knotting ropes in the Stone Age, when Hongmeng first opened. With the development of civilization, stone carvings, rock paintings, reliefs and other intuitive forms have become the most effective way to inherit civilization.

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

The first thing that catches your eye is the best-preserved one on this altar, which is said to be in good condition, but relatively speaking, a large part of the carvings have been blurred due to the erosion of thousands of years. The stone carving pattern adopts the polishing process, that is, the first chisel and then grind, the lines are thick and deep, 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, which is simple and strange, and it is unforgettable.

The fat man pointed to the black-faced deity on the fossil altar and said, "Hey, this black-faced statue doesn't look like the idol enshrined in the mountain temple at the entrance?" Only two followers of the Yaksha are missing. It turns out that this gourd cave is his territory, and I don't know where this grandson came from. ”

Shirley Yang said: "The image is slightly different, but in the bones it is the same, most of them are the same person. However, the statue in the mountain temple has the style of the Qin and Han dynasties, and the image seems to be elegant, which is quite influenced by the Han civilization circle in the mainland; The stone carvings on this altar reveal the freehand color of primitive wilderness everywhere, which should be at least three or four thousand years ago as primitive monuments, about the relics left by the ancestors of southern Xinjiang before the Warring States period. The mountain temple at the entrance may be an image of a deity created at the time of the construction of the tomb of the king based on the legend of the area. 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, and he cleared some of them, and Shirley Yang looked at some of them, but most of them were unrecognizable, and the order was reversed, which was unclear. After looking at it for a while, I didn't find any valuable information.

I was also secretly anxious in my heart, holding a flashlight to light the fat man and Shirley Yang, and at the same time watching the movement around me. Now I stopped in the middle of the cave inappropriately, and I don't know how to do it

As Shirley Young said, insects are the most vital and lethal species in the world, and the reason why they have not yet dominated the planet is entirely due to their small size. If we continue to walk like this in the cave, those flying insects will only have to grow three times larger, and if we are unlucky enough to be bitten by them, we will inevitably die, and it will be difficult for you to survive even if you are a Da Luo Jin Immortal.

We can only hope for this ancient altar now, and if we can find some clues from the altar, we can decide whether we should continue to venture forward, or if we must go back the way we came, and find another way to find a way to enter the tomb of King Xian.

I couldn't wait any longer, so I said to Shirley Yang: "I remember that the Tang Dynasty feng shui master Yuan Tiangang's "Yantian Treatise" once described the situation of the ancients offering sacrifices to the mountain gods, which is quite similar to this. There is probably more than one stone altar in this cave, so we might as well look for it nearby, and 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 see the rough idea, so you can take a look. ”

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 questioning, so I handed the wolf-eye flashlight and the "Jianwei" air rifle to the fat man, and bent down to look at the polished stone carvings on the altar.

I took a closer look at the strange scene, a group of natives with feathers on their heads in the water of a fossil forest, riding on small boats, each holding a long pole in their hands. The poles and the boats, we've all seen before, and we don't know what they're used for.

It's just that there are a lot of big toads tied to those wooden boats, and it is possible that the big toads were caught by these natives nearby, and they are tied very strongly with ropes. The big toads had their mouths wide open, and their expressions looked very frightened, as if they were struggling with the fear of their upcoming fate. Although the portrayal is simple, it is extremely vivid, and people can experience a tragic atmosphere of large-scale sacrifice and killing at a glance.

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

There was another wooden boat behind it, and there were a few smaller toads, showing a dead expression, and the round body had become shriveled, and the stone carvings of the dead toads 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 seen in the temple, where the black-faced mountain god had a mountain ghost on the left and right, one holding a fiery red stone gourd, and the other holding a live toad, which originally indicated that the god who guarded the mountain lived in a gourd-shaped cave, and the locals, under the guidance of the shaman, caught a large number of toads to feed 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 narrow cave like a gourd mouth, and now we have walked to the first half of the gourd's belly?" ”

Shirley Yang nodded, "You're 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 was the bottom of the gourd, which was the entrance that was dug out by man, and it was also built into the shape of an inverted gourd, which was connected with this natural big gourd cave, and the history of the big gourd cave was much earlier than the tomb of the king. If you want to pass through this hole and reach the tomb of the king at the mouth of the gourd, you have to go into the hole where the natives picked the toad into with a long pole, and 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 the Party Central Committee, who have we served?" Lao Tzu carried a submachine gun to go in for a walk, if he obediently made a way for us to pay it back, otherwise it would make the master angry, not to mention the first to take the gun to break 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 superstitious thoughts of the ancient people can be taken seriously, I don't believe in any mountain gods." I have been digging a hole in the earth in Kunlun Mountain for several years, and I have never dug up any mountain gods. It was just some kind of beast that lived in the cave back then, and the industrious and brave working people in the local area, who were ignorant, blinded by the ruling class, and oppressed by the three mountains, took that guy as a god, and such precedents abound in Chinese history, and there are countless precedents. ”

The fat man said thoughtfully: "That's the same reason, or it is said that knowledge is power." If there really is an animal that is regarded as a mountain god, it may be a python or something. This deep mountain and old forest belongs to that thing, we have seen a lot of snakes eating frogs, and Bacheng is an old python or a big snake or something. ”

I said to the fat man, "With the old beauty M1A1 in hand, it is a real dragon descending to earth, and we can shoot it into a sieve." But I'm afraid we don't have a chance to eliminate harm for the people this time, this altar is a relic of thousands of years ago, the king eight turtles can only live for a thousand years, how can animals like pythons live to this day, I estimate that the cave over there has been empty for many years. ”

The fat man and I were suddenly full of ambition, and felt that heroes were useless, but we heard Shirley Yang say: "Don't make a conclusion too early, you look at this final grinding painting, we have just seen the female corpse under the water, and the cave over there may not be nothing." ”

Only then did I remember, and at the end there was a polished stone carving: a black-faced and cold deity ——— said to be a god, but there was no trace of anger on his face, but there was some imperceptible gloomy aura——— surrounded by countless women. The women, apparently dead, were lying flat on their backs facing the sky, their hands outstretched, hanging to their left and right, their legs arched in an arc, as if crawling backwards. 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. I asked, "Is that a corpse cave?" Thousands of years old zongzi have become fine and entrenched in it? ”

The fat man said curiously: "Why are these female corpses facing the sky on their backs, but their limbs are folded into an incredible angle?" "But then I thought of the dead drift I had just seen in the water, could it be that there were more dead drifts in the hole ahead?

At this time, the nearby toads dived into the water one after another, and the water surface suddenly calmed down. All three of us were feeling a little tired after swimming in the water for a long time, so we decided to take a break here for a while, eat some food, and readjust our plan of action according to the current situation.

I hesitated a little, my past experience gave me a sense of foreboding, and I couldn't make a decision for a while, so I had to ask Shirley Yang and the fat man for advice.

Shirley Young said to me, "Actually, there's a lot more information conveyed in the mill, but you don't notice it. You can see that the natives in this painting are all with feathers on their heads, and only the leader is wearing a horned helmet, and the composition of the grinding painting is too simple, so it is easy to ignore this detail. We found a mask worn in a witchcraft ritual in the jade coffin of the high priest of the king, and I think the golden mask has something to do with it. ”

Is the head of the native leader wearing a helmet or a mask? Only the two long curved corners are very conspicuous, indicating that this person has a unique status, if not a high chief, but also a high priest in charge of important ceremonial activities.

I asked the fat man to take out the golden mask and take a look, and the fat man was never willing to leave the sacrificial vessels, and kept them in his own carrying bag. At this moment, take it out and take a look, the top of the head of the golden mask is two forked dragon horns, or deer antlers, lion eyes and tiger mouth, and the ears are in the shape of fish ears, which combines the characteristics of various animals, the shape is very strange, and many undulating eyeballs are cast, which is similar to the totem worshiped by the exquisite people in the ancient desert city at a glance. Looking at it this way, the horned helmet of the leader of the Nayi people in the grinding painting does look a bit like this golden mask.

Shirley Yang said: "The fossil altar was painted first, at least 3,000 years old, and the tomb of the king was only more than 2,000 years old, so I thought that maybe this secret cave underground is the only path that can lead to the king's tomb from the outside world." And the so-called mountain god entrenched in the cave, since ancient times is the object of worship and sacrifice of the local Yi people, so the subordinates of the king follow the ancient traditional sacrificial ritual of the Yi people here, after the king's tomb is closed, if you want to enter the Ming Tower to worship the king, you will act according to the law, you only need to worship a large enough number of big toads to the gods in the cave, you can go along the lì guò here. At the end of the burial ditch, there are some wooden boats shaped in the Qin and Han dynasties, as well as those decaying long poles, which can prove that at least the sacrificial rites were carried out after the closure of the king's tomb. ”

Shirley Young paused for a moment and continued, "In addition, according to what I know about animals, the large toads in the nearby waters should not live here, but gather in a wetland somewhere in the valley, and it is only because the insects in the ground are in the spawning period recently that they have attracted these large toads. ”

I listened to Shirley Yang's analysis, and it was really true, and I admired: "Chief of Staff Yang is far-sighted, and he has analyzed so much information just from a mask that has not attracted our attention in the slightest......

The fat man was quite unconvinced, and before I could finish speaking, he said to Shirley Yang: "This gourd cave leads to the tomb of King Xian, and I was the first to see it before we came in. Tell me what the mountain god and the female corpse are, and what kind of medicine is sold in this gourd? ”

Shirley Yang shook his head and said, "I'm not a prophet, how can I know that." I'm just making inferences based on the clues at hand, what is going on, how can I do it accurately without seeing it with my own eyes? But I think the information on this altar should be true, the mountain gods and those female corpses are all stored in zài, even if their original form is very different from the understanding of the ancients, but there must be something strange in the cave. ”

Shirley Yang asked me again: "Old Hu, you are a well-informed person, based on what you see, what will be the true face of this mountain god?" Are we sure we're going through this gourd hole? ”

I said to Shirley Yang and the fat man, "As far as I can see, the black-faced mountain god has stiff hairs on his face and a lifeless face, he must be a thousand-year-old zombie spirit who lives in a cave, and he has a lot of corpse poison on his body. The meaning of the grinding painting on the altar is very clear, the Yi people caught the big toad and hung it into the hole with a long rod, not because it was eaten by something, but because the toad itself has poisonous glands in its body, once it encounters a more vicious poisonous gas attack, it will release poison through the poisonous glands behind the guò to fight, and finally the essence and blood are exhausted by the corpse poison, so when it is taken out, it becomes a toad jerky. Only in this way can the old zombie be temporarily cleaned, and then use the golden mask to suppress it, it is possible to pass through the gourd hole. There have been such folklores in Yunnan in the past, and my inference is reasonable and well-founded, but I did not make it up. But that kind of dead and floating corpse, I really can't say it, I've never heard of it, I've never seen it, I don't know what those female corpses have to do with the thousand-year-old zongzi essence. ”

Although the fat man is not a strong outsider, he is also a little weak when I hear me say that there are ancient zombies from 3,000 years ago. After all, no one has ever seen those things, and who is sure that they can handle it with the hooves of a black donkey and glutinous rice? So the fat man said: "Political Commissar Hu, what did you just say that the strong dragon does not suppress the head snake, this is too good, it is reasonable." No matter what you say, the old zombie has lived here for so many years, and he has not violated the law and discipline, nor has he made trouble in society, what does this mean, it shows that he is a great good citizen, and he has never recruited anyone or provoked anyone. If we have to get along with others, we have to force our way from here, with our skills, it's not impossible, but it seems that we don't understand things. I think we might as well take a detour, give each other face, and we'll be safe and sound. ”

Shirley Yang said: "It is very possible to use toads to consume the poisonous gas in the cave, but I don't think there are any old zombies who have become spirits, how could the ancients regard zombies as mountain gods?" This is impossible. It's just that the naked corpse that appeared at the bottom of the water was faintly shrouded in a layer of ghostly aura, and as soon as it appeared, it would make people feel an inexplicable sadness, as if there was some kind of strong resentment. It seems that there will be more in the hole ahead, and I don't know what is famous in it, but this has to be guarded against. ”

The fat man and I heard Shirley Yang say the word "naked corpse", and exclaimed in unison: "Bare-ass female corpse!" I knew that I had lost my words, so I hurriedly covered my mouth with my hand, but it was too late, and I was very strange in my heart: "Why does this fat guy say the same thing to me?" And it's not even a word, this guy is really a hooligan. ”

Due to the suddenness of the incident, I didn't pay attention to see if the female corpse was naked**, but I just saw that the figure was very young, and there was a layer of cold and miserable white light on her body, and now in retrospect, it seems that she was indeed a naked corpse, but why didn't she wear clothes? Is it blistered? Even if it was a zombie, it was still beautiful, and my curiosity suddenly gave rise to the idea of taking a closer look.

I felt a little embarrassed to say the words of the bare-ass female corpse just now, so I pretended to cough twice, and said to Shirley Yang and the fat man: "I have come here, how can I not advance and retreat?" If you're brave enough, put on a gas mask with me, and go into the last part of this gourd hole, and kill any ghostly zombies with the hooves of a black donkey. Let's go straight into the lair of the king with a single knife. No matter what is in that hole, as long as we are not afraid of sacrifice and overcome all difficulties, we will definitely be able to win the final victory. ”

The fat man was a person who couldn't pretend to be something, and at this time he seemed a little excited, slapped his thigh and said, "That's it!" Professor Chen's old man's life is in the sky, and there is no room for delay. Let's save people to the end, send the Buddha to the west, the heavy responsibility is on our shoulders, so that we can't stop, the iron must be hot to succeed, this is the final struggle, Interna Xiongner will definitely be realized. The mountains and rivers are dangerous, and the ambition cannot be stopped, the sky is high and the clouds are light, and the eagle can not stand the sky. When the morning sun rises tomorrow morning, we will return to our long-lost homeland with the joy of victory. Looking back on the days and nights of the battle, the passion in our hearts is still unquenched, and we must solemnly report to the motherland that for the happiness of mankind......"

The fat man and I suddenly became positive, making Shirley Young a little baffled and looking at us with curious eyes. I saw that the fat man was chattering, so I hurriedly pulled him secretly, and whispered: "Dropping jars in the toilet is your stinky words flying around, pretending to be a grandson, don't you just want to see naked corpses?" Sensei nonsense, hurry up and copy the guy to open the way. ”