"That's what the young man said. If the young man says it, let's not stay here and fight in the ring. The most important thing is to find a way out quickly."
After Yu Bo finished speaking, Song Siyuan looked at Yue Guanchao. They both looked at the flashlight and stared at the stone path on the east cliff.
Most of these stone roads are recessed into the stone walls by three to four meters, and are less than two meters high. They do not look like they were formed by natural erosion. There are heavy traces of artificial chiseling. Some of the stone roads are steep and broken, making it impossible to carve the road at all, so you can only use stacks. The boards connect the two ends, as if dozens of wooden bridges were built on the cliff, connecting the originally disconnected caves into a plank road grotto that can be entered and exited.
From a distance, it looks like a withered old dragon hanging on the cliff, hiding its head and tail and blending into the chaos.
"Let's go. Since you two are talking about the same thing, let's stop bickering."
After Yue Guanchao finished speaking, he led everyone onto the stone road.
Walking on the stone road, they could hear the underground spring flowing under the cliff at any time. Song Siyuan shined a flashlight on the cave wall and said:
"It can be seen that the stone road here is not smooth. Even the gravel on the top of the cave has not been repaired. It remains as abrupt as a thorn. It can be seen that the construction of the grotto was very fast. I feel that this road should be built by Da Yin. The mausoleum was specially carved out for the craftsmen to enter and work on.”
"What I'm curious about is, for such a big project, could it be that only the 10,000 or 20,000 people who were buried in the river were killed? The rest of the craftsmen certainly couldn't have been released, but their whereabouts are still a mystery!"
"Okay, now I know where those craftsmen are, you can see for yourself~"
Song Siyuan looked in the direction that Yue Guanchao was pointing, and the doubts in her mind were immediately clear.
On the inner wall of the stone road in front of everyone, tens of thousands of withered mummies appeared in a tragic death state. They were like dried bacon hung on the eaves and cruelly nailed to the stone wall.
Song Siyuan approached one of the mummies and observed carefully!
Incandescent light spots hit the body, and the outline of the mummy stood out from the darkness. It was wearing short clothes, a bun on its head, and black leather boots. Its upper body was covered with half-arms made of linen. Its forehead, limbs, and joints They were all nailed to the stone wall, with their heads open, revealing their black teeth that had not yet decayed. The sunken eye sockets were covered with dark corpse moss that looked like long hair.
Although this man's skin, flesh, muscles and bones were underground and blown by the ambergris wind, they had not rotted. They had been completely air-dried, showing an amber brown color soaked in oil, as if they had been boiled in potion dozens of times. It was dry and dry, and there was an unpleasant smell of corpse odor, which was very unpleasant.
Song Siyuan stared at the mummy for a long time, sighed and explained:
"This image of wearing half-arms and no long robes is similar to the image of laborers in the Tang Dynasty. The laborers of Haidong Shengguo should also be dressed like this. If nothing else, these people are the laborers who built the tombs. They are even lower than the craftsmen. First level, not qualified to be buried with the king, so he was nailed to the stone wall by the officers and soldiers."
Before she finished speaking, a strange color suddenly flashed in her eyes, overturning the argument about sacrificial burial: "No, there are pigeons in front of them. I'm not sure whether they died for the tomb or for another purpose. Maybe Yin Zun nailed them. What kind of ceremony is required to die here?"
"Give me that red gold slip~"
Yue Guanchao didn't know why, but he couldn't stop what Song Qianjin wanted, so he simply handed it to her with the slip.
"What is painted here should not be Changbai Mountain. There will not be open-air caves everywhere here. However, the slaves depicted in the painting above are bound hands and feet, which is somewhat similar to the sacrificial ceremony we have seen. They may be tributes. And sacrifices!”
"As to what the purpose is, that's still up for debate."
Later, Song Siyuan returned the slips to Yue Guanchao and looked at the corpses: "Based on the same guess, I think it is very unlikely that they were buried in the mausoleum. It is more likely that they were involved in some evil sacrificial ritual."
She paused and continued to explain: "After returning from Wu Coffin Village, I read some information about the Sushen tribe. The Sushen tribe originated from the Xing'an Mountains, and branch groups spread throughout the north, even in the northwest and along the Hexi Corridor. The traces of the Sushen branch, regardless of their names or clans, can all be called the Northern tribe."
"The animism of the Sushen people originated from the Wuzhu culture. However, since the establishment of the Zhou Dynasty, the Wuzhu culture has been replaced by the worship of heaven and ancestors. Since then, the bloody history of human sacrifice has gradually receded and transformed into the use of six animals. Sacrifice to gods, I’m thinking that the Bei people are probably the origin of the life sacrifice culture. Perhaps as early as the Xia and Shang dynasties, their ethnic group has been in contact with the Central Plains civilization, which also made life sacrifices popular in the Xia and Shang Dynasties.”
"Why such an ethnic group would live in a bitter cold place like Xing'an Mountains, I really don't know."
"We have seen the bloody massacre of slaves by the Mohe people along the way. Judging from the content of this red gold slip, it is probably related to a certain sacrificial ceremony by Tang Dynasty officials."
"Tang Dynasty? How can you be so sure that it is the Tang Dynasty? Maybe it is another country with Tang Dynasty as its teacher!" Yue Guanchao learned wisely this time and did not believe what others said.
