Sun Daqiao stared at the cauldron carefully for a while, and explained in mysterious words: "This cauldron is probably the incense burner for sacrifices. As for the three ghost-faced Taotie copper pillars in front of us, they represent the incense offering. Then, the Taotie's eyes will be red and light. There is also smoke floating out, which means the incense is burning to worship the heroic souls of Beifu who have been brought back!"
Song Siyuan looked at the copper pillar and said: "No matter how luxurious this tomb is, it is essentially no different from a tomb. These are all tricks for building underground palaces and tombs. But, what is the smell we smell?"
Just now, after the smoke dissipated, the smell in everyone's noses became a little stronger, as if they smelled some medicine, with a strange fragrance.
"It's raw rhinoceros horn."
Yue Qingshan sniffed his nose carefully and said decisively.
"Rhinoceros horn?"
Yue Guanchao remembered the incense of raw rhinoceros horn that he smelled at Su Shen's ancestral land last time. They almost fell into a lucid dream and immediately covered their noses.
Lao Yuetou waved his hand and said: "Don't worry, raw rhinoceros horns can only make people fall into the hallucination of lucid dreaming after being ignited. These are just powders of raw rhinoceros horns and are not ignited at all. For us, they are the same as ordinary medicinal materials." No difference."
Song Siyuan asked: "Then what does this mean? There is clearly a hallucinogenic rhinoceros horn, but it is not ignited but is emitted like powder. What is the reason?"
"Talking to ghosts!"
Yue Qingshan's eyes became serious, and he glanced at the white smoke that continued to float out of the incense head: "In the understanding of the old generation, raw rhinoceros is not flammable, and burning it can communicate with ghosts. Although unburned raw rhinoceros cannot see ghosts, it can still see ghosts." It can be regarded as a good ingredient for summoning spirits. As long as the ghost smells the smell of raw rhinoceros, it will be attracted by the smell and linger around the person. It only takes the final step to ignite it to see them."
The old man continued to explain: "I guess that the raw rhinoceros powder here is actually to continuously recruit heroic souls, and to attract heroic souls from all over the world by offering incense, so as to enter this heroic soul tomb, this furnace tripod and copper pillars. The meaning of shaping into incense burners and incense sticks is here.”
"I feel that this place is not only offering sacrifices to heroic souls, but also recruiting other heroic souls here. As for the bright and dim red light of the Taotie head, it is probably due to some structures in the eyes. They cannot guarantee that the incense burner can burn for thousands of years. It can be processed, but It can make certain mechanical structures operate for thousands of years."
After that, Yue Guanchao climbed up Taotie's back and climbed directly onto the cauldron's ear. What appeared in the cauldron shocked his back.
"Second uncle, there are bones inside!"
Song Siyuan and Yue Qingshan also climbed onto the Taotie. In the bronze cauldron, which was larger than the house, what caught their eyes were particles as small as fingernails. These particles filled the cauldron to the brim, with only half a meter left before the cauldron was full.
At first, Yue Guanchao thought these were strange-shaped stones and gravel. It was not until he discovered that the particles were full of pores and found clothes and finger bones mixed in the particles that he realized that these gravels might be the remains of corpses.
Song Siyuan knelt down, carefully observed the gravel, and nodded to him: "It is basically certain that these are human bones that have been weathered and eroded. The bones are full of dense holes, which are traces left by weathering and erosion."
"Then, this is too broken."
Yue Guanchao had never seen such broken bones before. It felt like something had cut it into hundreds of pieces.
Song Siyuan nodded: "It is indeed a bit broken. It is not like this due to weathering and erosion. Probably their killed bodies had been chopped into pieces back then."
Yue Qingshan looked at the pits full of broken bones, and his face became more and more solemn: "Using flesh and blood as gravel, I feel more and more evil. If you use a furnace cauldron as a sacrificial array, I can still understand. Killing animals so cruelly and chopping the bodies into pieces is somewhat evil. Could it be that besides attracting the souls of the dead, does it have any other purpose?"
As for what the purpose is, they are not very clear yet.
After searching to no avail, they bypassed the furnace and began to work together separately. Under the assignment, Yue Qingshan took them, his relatives and friends, and planned to go to the pagoda on the right, while Gui Fangzong took his own people to the high tower on the left. After exploring the pagoda, the two groups met directly in front of the main hall along the verandah.
Afterwards, the two teams began to take action. Yue Guanchao and the others turned to the right and came to the pagoda building. They saw a bronze lock directly locking the door of the pagoda.
Fortunately, the bronze lock was already rusty. Yue Guanchao picked up the engineer shovel and shoveled violently. The chain fell to the ground with a crash. Everyone dispersed on both sides. After the door was wide open and the mechanism was not activated, they walked into the pagoda.
The pagoda is about eight stories high, basically similar to a five or six-story building. The exterior has complex carved windows and exquisite corridors, but the interior is a different structure.
To be precise, the pagoda they saw outside was only half a tower. It was like cutting the entire pagoda horizontally and tightly fitting the mountain walls on both sides. At the same time, using the outside pagoda as an outline, facing inward By digging ten meters deep, almost an entire pagoda can be placed inside, forming a half-tower and half-cave structure.
The difference in the structure of the pagoda also makes the load-bearing core different from the complete tower - the pagoda abandons the load-bearing core column, and uses grooves and beams to directly connect half of the pagoda and the stone wall in series, forming a stable frame attached to the stone wall.
Looking upward, I can see countless beams and frames passing through each other, grafted and interlocked to support each other, forming a "meter" structure on each floor. The eight-story frame is not arranged straight up and down, and the angle of each floor is slightly offset, forming a An extremely complicated flower-shaped caisson.
In order to be beautiful, these frames are all painted with lacquer and gold borders. The layers of patterns are stacked, and it actually feels like a giant mandala flower above the head. The three-dimensional beams bloom with each other, filled with countless charms. Tumi is gorgeous!
After talking about this side of the half tower, let’s talk about this side of the half cave.
The pagoda is recessed into the stone wall, forming a space within the mountain that is ten meters deep. There is nothing else in the space but a huge stone statue carved out of the stone wall.
This statue is sitting in a lotus position, with the top of its head close to the waist of the pagoda. Further up, relying on the halo patterns carved by the statue, it directly fills the stone trough space in the pagoda.
If you look closely, you will see that the statue has a serious face, with vicissitudes in its brows and eyes, and has the aura of a martial arts practitioner. It wears a wide-sleeved Taoist robe with hand seals, and wears a lotus hair crown on its head. The hair slants down to the back, shining in the chaotic light Below, half of the face of the statue is hidden in the darkness, and its temperament is particularly gloomy. The entire statue has a strong sense of oppression, making people look extremely small, as if the statue will clap their hands at any time and crush them to death.
Song Siyuan looked above her head, dappled sunlight shone in from the windows on each floor, and even the caissons began to light up. She only felt that they were standing under the giant mandala flower: "It seems that, as I guessed, there are still things in these buildings." There is quite a lot of space for the building to be carved out, and the semi-inserted beam structure is used.”
"It's just that I'm not sure which Taoist god this statue is like. Brother Xu, what do you think?"
Song Siyuan looked at Xu Xiake. The little Taoist priest glanced at the statue here, and his eyes became confused: "I don't know, it's neither the ordinary Sanqing, Taiyi, nor the Dharma Protector Star King. I can't tell what this stone statue is made of." Which Taoist deity is he?"
"What's even more strange is that if this face is shaped like a military commander's armor, it would be more suitable than the current Taoist robe. His face has the aura of a military commander, but his clothes are of immortal style and Taoism. They don't match at all. It’s as if it was deliberately put together.”
"General...deliberately approached..."
Song Siyuan murmured to herself, and her eyes lit up: "Could it be that this statue is not a Taoist statue, but a statue of a certain person?"
"Do you mean?"
Yue Guanchao had already guessed who it was and blurted out: "Liu Yu."
"right!"
Song Siyuan continued to explain: "The integrity of the statue must be taken into consideration. It is impossible to use the head of a military commander to create the image of a Taoist immortal, unless the statue itself is not to worship a certain god, but to worship a certain person. In this case, Liu Yu is the only one who fits the situation."
"When Liu Yiqing was building momentum for Liu Yu, he also mentioned in his chapter that Liu Yu wanted to bury his coffin in the tomb. Although we now know that all this is just a theory, it at least proves that Liu Yu attaches great importance to this place. Otherwise, we would not have stationed troops here in the city, so the shape in the tomb is most likely made by Liu Yu in order to fulfill his promise to the Beifu soldiers."
"Then why not just create a full image? Instead of just carving the head?"
Xu Xiake asked.
Song Siyuan thought for a moment, paused and explained: "I think that when the craftsman was making the statue, he must have made it in the shape of a certain Taoist deity. Only later, when the body was completed and the head needed to be carved, Liu Yu gave the order. Based on the requirements for making a statue in his image, the craftsman would probably directly create Liu Yu's head, and at the same time, weaken the image of his general to make the whole statue look more coordinated."
"However, due to the excessive temperament of the military commanders, even after fine-tuning, there will still be the sense of disharmony we see."
She glanced around: "In my opinion, the pagoda is like a shrine. The giant statue is imprisoned in it just to prevent the statue from being blown by wind and rain. The other things are not important. How about we set off to the verandah."
Afterwards, the group of people came out of the pagoda and walked forward along the corridor on the side of the pagoda. When they passed through the arm-like corridor, Gui Fangzong and the others had already arrived in front of the main hall.
Yue Guanchao asked: "How is it? What's going on in that pagoda?"
Ghost Fangzong shook his head: "There is a statue shrine inside. The shape is similar to that of a Taoist, but the face is that of a martial artist..."
After the old ghost introduced it, Yue Guanchao was basically sure that it was exactly the same as the interior of the pagoda they saw. He also followed this topic and told them everything they saw.
After everyone looked at it together, they were sure that the pagoda was just a shrine, and they all focused on the luxurious palace in front of them!
…
