When the piece of paper fell into the abyss, I stretched out my hand to grab it. Because I moved too much, the bridge tilted violently. I lost my grip with one hand and was about to slip into the abyss.
At this time, Chen Mo stepped onto the suspension bridge in one stride, grabbed my forearm, and then dragged me forward, dragging me off the bridge.
I panted and leaned tiredly on the stone lion at the entrance of the ancient temple. The suspension bridge was still shaking and making a "clucking" sound.
Seeing that I had crossed the bridge, the old man turned around and pushed open the gate of the ancient temple.
Chen Mo glanced at me, made sure I was okay, and followed him.
The door of the ancient temple opened slowly with a muffled sound.
At the same time, the suspension bridge behind us made a rumbling sound, and we all turned around in unison, only to see the suspension bridge rising slowly, and finally, it was attached to the roof of the cave.
At this time, the night light that had just been extinguished also turned on.
"There should be a very complicated mechanism in this cave. Maybe every time we encounter something, a mechanism will be activated." Zhang Jisheng said.
"Then enter the ancient temple. There is no way out anyway." The old man standing in front of the gate of the ancient temple turned around and said.
I thought of the piece of paper just now, and suddenly felt timid in my heart. But I saw everyone walking in, and then looked back at the abyss where there was no longer a suspension bridge. I had no choice but to follow them into the abyss.
Ancestral hall.
What we didn't expect was that the gate of the ancient ancestral temple just now was just a gate similar to the gate on the courtyard wall. The real gate of the ancient ancestral temple was a gate tower located on Yangcheng behind the gate.
The gatehouse is a brick-carved building with "two layers, three doors and four pillars". The reliefs on it are different from the traditional ancestral hall gatehouse carvings of dragons, phoenixes, lions and unicorns. Instead, they are carved with a group of little people.
I stepped forward and took a closer look at the group of villains. I was instantly shocked and took a few steps back.
The patterns carved on it are exactly the same as those small stone figures I saw on the observatory before.
The difference is that there are only small stone figures on the observatory, and what is depicted here seems to be a sacrificial scene.
"Are they sacrificing? But why do they seem to be sacrificing a person?" Xiangyu stood in front of the mural on the gate tower and asked. "Look, he is sitting on the altar, wearing a mask, and holding a round ball in his hand.
The person who looks like something is dressed like the leader of their clan."
I suddenly felt a little dizzy, and I immediately thought of the situation of being controlled by the masked stone man, and the weird smiling face behind the mask.
Could the masked man on the relief in front of me also have that weird ability?
Thinking of this, I immediately looked away.
"Look, the small bowls and haystacks placed next to the masked man are the same as the sacrificial scene we saw on the observatory this morning."
Xiangyu said, as if she thought of something, she took out her mobile phone, took pictures of all the relief pictures on the gate tower one by one, and then did some operations on her mobile phone.
"Look, these reliefs are telling a sacrificial scene," Xiangyu said.
We all came forward, including the old man.
Xiangyu was very smart and played the photos he just took in the form of a slide show. Due to the fast playback speed, the relief patterns seemed to be moving, demonstrating the entire sacrificial scene.
.
The sacrifice is performed at night because the sky is filled with stars.
The masked man held a round object in his hand, which was probably their totem, and then slowly walked up to the altar and sat on the altar. The tribesmen knelt under the altar, prostrate, and the priest began to perform sacrificial activities.
.
Halfway through the sacrifice, the round thing suddenly emitted a burst of light and shot straight into the sky.
The light lasted for a while, then suddenly came back, the sacrifice ended, and the tribesmen began to cheer.
"They are not worshiping the patriarch, but the disc in the patriarch's hand," Zhang Jisheng said.
"It's so strange, what can automatically light up in the dark night?" Xiangyu said, "Is it a night pearl?"
"I don't think so. If you look at the thing in the patriarch's hand, it looks a bit bumpy. It shouldn't be the Night Pearl." Zhang Jisheng said.
Suddenly, Xiangyu seemed to have thought of something, and her face turned pale. She kept enlarging the pictures on her phone until the head of the masked patriarch occupied the entire phone screen.
She raised her head and glanced at me, looking like she was hesitant to speak.
I was so frightened by her sight that I couldn't help but ask: "Xiangyu, what's wrong?"
"Zhou Cang, I don't know whether I should say it or not." As soon as she said these words, I felt even more anxious.
"You tell me," I pretended to be calm, but my voice was already trembling.
"Why do I feel that the headdress of the patriarch on this relief seems to be the same as that of your grandmother." Xiangyu said, handing over the mobile phone.
I looked at the pattern on my phone and couldn't help but take a breath. The patriarch sitting on the altar had the same piece of cloth wrapped around his head, and the way it was wrapped, was exactly the same as grandma's.
I finally understood where my feeling of being particularly awkward about the stone man on the observatory came from. It was because of the blue cloth-wrapped headdress.