Looking at the architectural styles in Milan City, they are indeed prosperous and varied, but they are all completely different styles. Just like the Hu people, Han people, Tubo people, Xianbei people, and Uighurs gathered in the city, they all blend in with each other but have clear boundaries. Such a large-scale cultural integration rarely occurs.
In other words, the fusion of buildings in front of us is no longer natural, but somewhat deliberate.
Keli looked up at the building in front of him and explained to everyone: "This thing is called the Temple of Prayer. It worships the local gods of the ancient Shanshan Kingdom, as well as the foreign gods believed by the Han, Tubo, Xianbei, and Uighur people. This architectural pattern It was deliberately created by Secret Orchid City to show the harmonious coexistence of all ethnic groups."
"Come on, let's go in and take a look."
After Keli finished speaking, he led them up the steps to the door of the main hall. After stepping inside, the internal layout of the Temple of Prayer was already in front of them.
Both the Hu people in the Western Regions and the Tubo people all regard Buddhist culture as a popular belief. The layout of the temple is similar to that of a Buddhist hall. In the middle of the north is a three-headed painted Buddha statue with a solemn appearance, wearing colorful clothes, holding dharma seals, and Sitting upright with divine power.
The four sides of the main hall are painted with mythological stories about Buddhas from the Western Regions and Tibetan Buddhas. The murals are rich in color and rich in color, blending the characteristics of Western Buddhism, Han Buddhism, and Tibetan Buddhism. The grotesqueness of Buddhism and the splendor of Chinese Buddhism mix with each other to form extremely splendid painting art on the four walls.
Looking further up, you can see the huge caisson on the top of the temple.
The caisson has always originated from the Han Dynasty. In order to emphasize integration, this prayer temple in Milan City borrowed the structure of the caisson and used it as a decorative component on the top of the temple.
If you look closely, you will see that the entire caisson occupies two-thirds of the area on the top of the palace. It is shaped like the word "Hui" and supports the top of the palace. The overall shape of the circular caisson in the middle is to hold a fire lotus. On top of a single lotus petal, it is made with utmost precision. , drawings of sacred deer and beasts, heavenly kings, gods, Buddhas, supporting ladies, goddesses and gods, eight tribes of people, eight treasures of Buddha, dragons, phoenixes and unicorns, etc., completely filling the caisson.
Looking further into the left and right side halls, you can see strange-looking statues of gods. They can only recognize the Han Taoist gods such as Sanqing, Taiyi, Taishanfu, etc., as well as the patron gods of the people through their shapes. As for the Tubo people, Due to the long history of the local gods of the Xianbei people and the Uighurs, they can no longer distinguish which gods they are.
What’s even more strange is that no matter what the gods are, no matter how brilliant the murals are, the outer skin of the paintings has gradually peeled off, making it difficult to recognize the appearance. Some gods have been cut off directly, leaving only the surface of the peeling statues.
"No, these things are obviously still intact, how could they peel off so badly?"
Xu Xiake looked carefully and found that some of the unpeeled murals had neither faded nor cracked. This showed that the damage to the murals was definitely not completely peeling off. In this case, some of the murals on the stone walls seemed to have been peeled off. The wall covering is missing, which means there is a big problem with the mural.
Song Siyuan looked at it for a moment and explained: "Steinhein's report did not mention this prayer temple, nor were there any photos of the prayer temple, but based on what we observed, it seems that a lot of things were stolen here. The frescoes and the heads of gods contribute to the damage we see now."
"Wait a minute, the mural is painted on the wall, can it be stolen directly?"
Yue Guanchao looked at the surrounding murals. The peeled off murals were indeed distributed in blocks, as if a square or rectangle was cut out of the mural and the paintings were completely removed, leaving a wall full of scars.
Song Siyuan nodded: "Indeed, in the West, there is a potion for paints and murals. As long as you apply the potion on which murals you like, you can use tape to tear off the murals and save them. I see that most of these torn off murals have residues. There are some traces of colloid, probably from the use of those potions.
Speaking of this, her face became serious: "This method of tearing apart murals is indeed convenient, but it does great harm to the murals and cultural relics. It is basically equivalent to destroying the murals. The cultural relics community does not advocate extracting them in this way. Most of the murals are used by some tomb robbers.”
"As for these statues, that's even easier!"
Song Siyuan continued: "In the West, they like to divide sculptures and statues into different components and then number and preserve them. After being transported back, they can be restored in the order of numbers. In this way, the cultural relics can be completely restored and are easy to use. Come to the exhibition, I guess that these statues were divided and numbered and shipped back like this."
The method they created, also called the cultural relic sequence method, has broken down many sculptural cultural relics for them. Using this method, cultural relics from ancient Egypt, ancient Maya, and ancient Aztec have been broken down into serial cultural relics and shipped back to China. .
The biggest thing they decomposed was a Chinese-style courtyard house:
A few years ago, a Western cultural relic dealer purchased a royal residence in the capital.
This royal residence was originally the private property of the former Ministry of Internal Affairs. At the end of the previous dynasty, the Queen Mother directly awarded part of the private property to the clans living in the palace.
From then on, these royal residences belonged to individuals rather than the Ministry of Internal Affairs. When the Republic of China was founded, the former clan lost power and lost the support of the court. They were still unwilling to increase revenue and reduce expenditure, and continued to live the previous luxurious life.
Seeing that money is being spent less and less, if they are self-aware at all, they should know that it is a pity to find a job to make money for themselves. Unfortunately, they are still unwilling to accept the reality and continue to squander their lives. When they have no money, they go to pawn off rings, bracelets, etc. No matter how bad the vase is, you can still sell it to a piece of private land or a private house. Anyway, I don't feel bad about selling my own land.
In the end, the only option was to sell the royal residences. Many of the royal residences in the capital were bought by wealthy businessmen for use as private residences.
Of course, this trend was noticed by these cultural relic dealers and foreign compradors. After they bought the mansion, people in the capital thought they were going to use it to live in. Who knew that they were transferring the royal palace land in accordance with the cultural relics sequence law? All components on board are numbered and then disassembled one by one and shipped back to the country.
At first, this matter even went to the Yamen Court. These cultural relic dealers took out the house purchase contract and successfully moved the huge palace back completely. When they returned to the West, they actually restored it according to the number. A whole palace was built and put on display in the museum area.
Song Siyuan said: "I think these statues and murals were taken away by Stein Hein. He did not record the matter of praying to the shrine in the inspection report because it was too unethical. He bought them at Thousand Buddha Cave The scriptures are considered a sale, but if he takes back the things here, it will be a complete act of theft."
When she mentioned this, her eyes lit up and her face was full of suspicion: "I suspect that Steinhein killed Uncle Guniz in order to cover up the fact that he stole the murals and statues."
Song Siyuan obviously attached great importance to this speculation and continued to explain: "Just now, as we walked along, we could see the marks left by Uncle Gunizi. When he made the marks, I am afraid that Steinhein was also fully aware of them. It is impossible for outsiders to know about the theft of cultural relics from the Shrine of Prayer, so Uncle Gunizi, who knew about it and left a mark, is certainly in danger."
"Or, there is another guess."
Yue Guanchao said: "When Steinhein hired Uncle Gunizi as a desert guide, he just told him that he wanted to inspect the ruins of the ancient Shanshan civilization..."
With this premise, Uncle Gunizi was willing to take them to the desert. Just now Keli said that he and Uncle Gunizi had been here before. Even if they had not entered Sal City, they at least knew about the existence of this place. However, This was not reflected in Steinhein's report - in his inspection report, the old bandit claimed that they came to Sal City by mistake.
When the two situations are combined, this at least shows that Uncle Guniz did not tell them about the existence of Sal City at all. It was Steinhein's team who discovered Sal City by chance, and Guniz took them in accordingly.
Gunizi may not have expected that Steinhein was a cultural relic dealer and left route marks as usual when walking. It was not until they found this prayer temple that this group of cultural relic dealers revealed their true colors and began to steal these exquisite murals and statues.
Yue Guanchao narrowed his eyes: "At this time, Gunizi had already come to his senses. Since he concealed the existence of Sha'er City at the beginning, he just didn't want Secret Orchid City to appear in front of people. It can be seen that he had the intention to protect the ruins. If at this time, What will he do if he finds out that Stan Hein’s purpose is to steal the exquisite cultural relics here?”
"Resist!"
After Keli said this, he began to pay attention to the marks near the mural. It was obvious that he could see the sword slash marks next to the mural.
