Daomu Biji

Chapter 25 The Third Night: Relief

We moved almost everything we could use and prepared several buckets of mud. He didn't dare to light a big bonfire anymore, so he made a small charcoal pile. Fatty didn't dare to cook canned food in it for dinner, so he set up the stove outside the ruins.

We estimated that the snakes would definitely start to move after the fog filled the air, so we didn’t panic at dusk. I helped the fat man cook, and the oil bottle was on top to help us look out for the wind.

But the fat man moved very quickly, and I couldn't really help him. I just stood there in a daze after opening the can.

The fat man annoys me the most. He says that I am just like Lin Daiyu. I don’t know what I am thinking about all day long. There are so many things in this world that are easy to ponder. Living heartlessly is just like kicking to death. Even if you use all your mechanisms, you will die. Kick your legs to death, the ending is the same anyway, what do you care about the fetter in the middle?

I was a little surprised when I heard that the fat man would use the formal word "bond". After thinking about it, I realized that he meant "dick balls" and couldn't help but smile bitterly.

While I was thinking about it, I heard the fat man call me: "What do you think I am doing?"

I took my mind back, looked up and saw the stuffy oil bottle in the temple using something to wipe the stone wall above, and shouted, "What's wrong?"

Menyouping ignored me and continued working, maybe he didn't hear me.

I've almost done the work here, and I'm interested. I put down the can knife and climbed up. Walking around him from the corridor of the temple, you can see that he is wiping the wall with charcoal from the bonfire, as if he wants to rub something. I asked him what he was doing, and he pointed to the stone beside him: "I just found it."

A large area of ​​the wall was painted black. I blew on it with my mouth and found that there were reliefs on these stone walls that were almost flattened.

"It's basically invisible in the sunlight. Only by applying charcoal powder can the shadow appear. You can still distinguish it." He said, picking another piece from the campfire and applying it.

Black carbon black was smeared on the rock, and the light and shadow changed. I shook it and found a suitable position, and the relief on the stone appeared. At first glance, I saw a large number of snakes. It was difficult to distinguish them. There were so many lights and shadows. The snake's shadow seemed to be alive.

The oil bottle continued to smear, and we saw ancient reliefs appearing on the rocks here. After so many years, they are still there in form and spirit, and they appeared like magic under the oil bottle's smearing.

After he finished applying it, he was unsteady on his feet, so I immediately supported him. After reading it again, he said: "This is about those snakes."

"What are you talking about?" I asked. Because I can't see clearly.

“I can’t understand it all at once,” he said, “I have to think about it slowly.

"

I am very interested in these, and I really didn’t see much historical relics here along the way. Not knowing anything about this is the most direct reason for our current situation. So I moved around to find the best angle and took a closer look.

I looked at each one one by one, and I was completely incomprehensible. I had no idea what it meant. There were many things expressed in the reliefs. Some seem to be sacrifices. Some of them seem to be a ritual, and I really can’t say much about it.

Watching half-guessingly. It feels like several of the paintings are talking about the ancestors here, enshrining these venomous snakes with cock combs. They threw the clay pots into some holes one by one, like the stone towers with square holes seen on the road, and a large number of poisonous snakes began to get into the broken clay pots. There were priests presiding over the ceremony, and many people were kneeling around.

It turns out that these sacrifices were made to the snakes here. Do the people here regard these poisonous snakes as gods? However, this is not surprising. The worship of poisonous snakes is very common. The ancients did not know the toxicity of poisonous snakes. They only knew that they would die after being bitten. When they saw such a small wound causing death, they would think it was caused by magic power. Many ethnic minorities in China worship snakes.

These cockscomb snakes may like to eat the eggs of the corpse king, but the eggs of the corpse king should be highly poisonous. Which one is more poisonous, this snake or the corpse?

Mengyou Ping moved his figure, and the relief on the side showed many figures holding spears, fighting with the ancestors in costumes. Many people's bodies were pierced by spears, it seemed like a war.

The war situation seems to be unfavorable to the side of the Queen Mother of the West, because the number of Queen Mother of the West is obviously much smaller than that of the other side. The Western Queen's Mother Kingdom is all infantry, and cavalry can also be seen in the opponent's team. The enemy commander was at the rear of the column, sitting on a chariot drawn by eight horses. The Queen Mother of the West is missing from the relief. All the reliefs are exquisite in shape, and even the facial features are carefully considered and lifelike, obviously produced by the work of top craftsmen.

"This is war..." Menyou Ping murmured.

"It seems that the Western Queen Mother Kingdom has been invaded, and the other party is a relatively powerful civilization, possibly Loulan or the Northern Huns." I said, "These people can't tell the style of their clothes, but the weapons look like those from the Central Plains. They should be Loulan's army. This one on the chariot should be Loulan

After saying that, I felt it made sense, but Menyouping didn't pay attention to my words. Instead, he touched the commander on the chariot with his hand and frowned.

My heart said: What's wrong? He suddenly raised his finger and pointed at the enemy leader and said to me, "I know this person."

Chapter 26 The Third Night: Deja Vu

"Huh?" I was stunned for a moment. Xin said: Do you know him? He is your second uncle?

Menyouping then said something, and I immediately realized that I had misunderstood. He said: "These eight horses... this person is Zhou Mu

"King Mu of Zhou? Is he the one who wrote "The Biography of Emperor Mu"?"

I am also very familiar with the legend of Emperor Mu. The group of people who came here often mentioned that the legend of Emperor Mu mainly records that King Mu of Zhou led seven soldiers and drove Chiji, Pirates, Baiyi, Yuolun, Shanzi and Quhuang. , Hualiu, Lu'er and other steeds, driven by Zaofu and Boyao as guide, set out from Zongzhou, crossed the Zhang River, passed through Hezong, Yangquzhi Mountain, Qunyu Mountain and other places, and went west to the Kingdom of the Queen Mother of the West and the Queen Mother of the West. Things like banquets and entertainment.

In other words, he came to the Palace of the Queen Mother of the West on an eight-horse horse and was warmly entertained by the Queen Mother of the West.

However, judging from the relief, Emperor Mu does not look like he is here for tourism. Could it be that the legend is wrong? King Mu of Zhou did come to the mother country of the Western Queen that year. But are you here to fight?

I immediately continued to look at the reliefs, and the next painting made me take a breath. I saw King Zhou Mu's army entering a palace. There were many snake-headed women on the screen. They poured something into the palace. From the holes in the tower, countless cockscomb snakes crawled out of the tower and bitten together with King Zhou Mu's army.

Seeing this, I immediately understood the meaning of these stone towers in the rain forest: "It seems. King Zhou Mu did attack here, but was defeated by the poisonous snakes here. Maybe in order to cover up his failure, he made up that story. These poisonous snakes Having protected the Mother Kingdom of the West, no wonder they would raise this kind of snake as a god. This is like the Manchus not killing crows."

After thinking about it, I realized it was more than that. It seemed that the bottoms of these stone towers must be connected. Snakes lived in the passages under the city and were fed by people with human heads. When encountering danger, use something to lure the snake out to meet the enemy. This is a designed defense method. This snake is so poisonous and fast that no one can stop it.

That is to say. People live in cities. Snakes live underground in cities, and now people are dead. The snake came to the ground. The civilization of the Queen Mother of the West is more similar to that of the Amazons, where piranhas are used to defend against enemies and beasts. They also sacrificed piranhas, using living people and live animals, here human heads.

Looking further back, the more we look at it, the more consistent it is with our inference. The concept here gradually became clearer in my mind.

In the dark moment, Menyou Ping's eyes stopped and saw the central part of the stone wall. The relief here was a huge circular pattern, which was obviously the center of the composition of the entire rock carving. It is carved with a scene of a huge earth snake surrounded by many small cockscomb snakes fighting with each other. One of the huge snakes was wrapped around a huge tree, and the cockscomb snakes were wrapped around it like decorative patterns.

"This is the kind of double-scaled python fighting with the cockscomb snake here. It seems that during the Queen Mother of the West, there were already two kinds of snakes here. This kind of double-scaled python may be the natural enemy of the cockscomb snake here." I said.

Menyouping touched the stone carving, shook his head and said, "No, this is mating."

"Mating?" I was stunned for a moment, a little incomprehensible. After thinking about it, I finally understood what he meant. "You mean, the cockscomb snake and this double-scaled python are interbreeding? But, these are two completely different species. Snakes, and their shapes are so different, how can they mate?"

"Do you know what a madam is?" Menyouping suddenly asked me.

"Madam?" I was confused, thinking why he suddenly asked this, "Madam runs a brothel."

"That's a joking name. The old bustard is actually a kind of bird. In ancient times, someone discovered that the old bustard only has female birds and no male birds. They want to reproduce and can mate with any other species of birds, creating the basis for thousands of birds. The wife of the old bustard, so people use the word old bustard to refer to a prostitute who can do whatever she wants." Menyou Ping said lightly, "However, in fact, the ancients' statement about the old bustard was completely wrong. The old bustard actually has a male bird, but, this The male and female individuals of these birds are too different, with the male bird being several times larger than the female bird, so they are mistaken for two different birds."

I understood what he said and immediately understood what he meant: "So, you think these two kinds of snakes are actually one kind of snake, just two genders with two body shapes, then which one do you think is the male snake? Which one is the female snake?”

"According to the quantitative analysis, the smaller one should be a male snake and the larger one a female snake. However, it may be the other way around." He touched the surface of the rock and suddenly stretched out his unusually long fingers to touch the snake wrapped around the double-scaled python. The pattern of the giant tree, "weird."

"What's wrong?" I also touched it, but couldn't figure out why, so I just looked at him. He frowned, suddenly took a few steps back, picked up the charcoal and painted the unpainted parts above and below the relief.

Soon the entire relief on the stone wall was revealed, and I took a step back to take a look. The moment I saw the panoramic view, I opened my mouth wide and was stunned.

On the relief, the giant tree entwined with the double-scaled snake appeared. From a distance, it turned out that it was not a tree at all, but an even bigger snake coiled into a circle. Because this snake is so big, the double-scaled giant snake is like chopsticks and rolling pins compared to it, and those cockscomb snakes are like toothpicks, so when you look at the part, you can't tell that they are snakes at all.

"This... what is this? A dragon?" I said dumbly. That double-scaled giant snake is already huge. This snake is so much bigger than it. It is almost the same diameter as a Jiefang truck. Can this kind of thing be considered a snake?

Menyouping stared blankly without saying a word, while touching the patterns of the cockscomb snakes one by one with his hands. After touching for a long time, he said: "Look, these little snakes are not coiled around this brocade python. They are not coiled around this brocade python." They just crowd around the brocade python to help it not slide down. What is really mating is this double-scaled python and this giant snake..."

I immediately followed the coiled lines of the small snakes, and sure enough I found that the small snakes were only entangled with each other, not coiled around the double-scaled python, but the double-scaled python was tightly coiled around the giant snake. I was surprised, Suddenly he realized something, took a breath and said: "Oh my God, the fat man is right!"