I untied the bow on the golden coffin, but I didn't dare to lift the lid.
In the past few days, I feel like I have walked through thousands of rivers and mountains. The difficulties and obstacles are self-evident, but it is always because of an obsession in my heart that I can grit my teeth and come here without hesitation.
At this moment, the black jade that all of us have been pursuing may be right in front of us. There is only this coffin between me and the truth, but I hesitate. Chen Mo's sentence "The truth in the ancient temple may be
"It's cruel" kept swirling in my mind, and I knew I was afraid. It was a fear that burst out from deep in my heart, from the cells of my bone marrow.
However, whether the golden coffin contains Buddha's relics or black jade, it must be opened, otherwise this matter will never end.
I took a deep breath and moved my hand to the lid of the golden coffin. The moment the lid was lifted, for some reason, the uneasiness in my heart quietly turned into a faint sense of belonging.
.
It felt like I went out to study when I was young, and then when the festival was approaching, I hurried back to my hometown with simple luggage to celebrate the festival. Before I got home, I met the sweet tofu pudding seller I used to frequent in the alley.
Like an old man, it feels like returning to a familiar environment.
Extraordinarily wonderful!
With this strange mood, I took out the thing wrapped in thick silk paintings from the golden coffin.
It's really done with a hand and carefully.
I opened the silk painting and found that it was actually a soul-drawing flag, but this soul-drawing flag was different from the ones in the willow forest. It had the shape of a flag and was painted with complicated patterns.
Wrapped in the soul-drawing flag is a thin oval-shaped stone flake about the size of an adult's palm. The texture of the stone flake is dull but slightly reddish, and is inlaid with bead-like gem-like things. There are many bead-like gems and the texture is hard.
It is bright and transparent, with different colors. It is dazzling under the illumination of the thorn-scaled snake oil lamp. There are black filaments like dust attached around the stone flakes, and the borders are extremely irregular.
It's not black jade. I have seen the black jade pieces in the hands of my father and the professor. They are completely different from the dark red stone pieces in the golden coffin. I can't tell what the dark red stone piece is made of, but I am sure it is not jade.
The bead-shaped gems inlaid on it look a bit like Buddha relics in appearance, but I am not sure, after all, I have only seen this thing in the information, and I have never touched the real thing.
Are we all wrong? There is no such thing as black jade.
I couldn't find any useful information on the dark red stone pieces, so I could only turn my attention to the rather large soul-drawing flag.
In ancient times, soul-drawing flags were generally used to attract the souls of the dead. The ancients believed that the soul attached to the human body would be separated from the body after death. After being separated, it would become a wild ghost and would not be able to enjoy the sacrifices of future generations, and would also disturb future generations. Therefore.
, it is necessary to enable the scattered soul to come back and attach itself to the corpse and be buried in the tomb. In the burial system, it is called soul-reviving.
To summon the soul is to make a soul-inducing flag, so that the soul can recognize the phenomenon of the tomb owner painted on the flag and return by itself. To revive the soul is to park the coffin at home for a few days before the funeral to attract the spirit to possess it. During the funeral, the soul-inducing flag will be lifted
In front of the coffin, the coffin is guided all the way to the burial place. After a farewell ceremony, it is placed on the coffin and then buried. In this way, the soul follows the flag and the soul follows the coffin, and enters the tomb together.
The soul-inducing banner in front of me has a T-shaped structure. The content of the silk painting generally shows the heaven and the human world. The picture is exquisite, and the details are complicated but very organized.
The heaven part of the silk painting is drawn at the widest part of the upper part. In the upper right corner is a red sun with a golden crow in the middle. There are eight suns among the hibiscus trees under the sun. In the upper left corner is a crescent moon with a toad on it.
And the Jade Rabbit. Between the sun and the moon, there sits a disheveled Heavenly Emperor with the head of a human and the body of a snake. Below the Emperor of Heaven is a group of dark red auspicious clouds, with bright starlight shining between the auspicious clouds.
The lower narrow part of the picture is the human world. The human world is divided into upper and lower layers with jade as the boundary. The upper layer is painted with an image of a woman with a mask on her face and a green cloth on her head. Judging from the woman's dress, she should be from an ancient temple.
The clan leader. What’s strange is that this soul-inducing flag is different from any image of the owner of the tomb’s ascension to heaven with any soul-inducing flag unearthed in the past. In the picture, the woman is flying down from the sky on auspicious clouds. It feels like she is flying on the dark red auspicious clouds.
The Emperor of Heaven looked like he was about to go home after having afternoon tea. The lower floor is a scene of sacrifices. The priest who presided over the sacrifices in the scene was dressed like a woman in a wedding dress in the corridor of an ancient temple. Under the altar
, the tribesmen of the ancient temple were lying naked on the ground.
I squatted on the ground, resting my elbows on my knees and supporting my face with my palms. I swept my fingers from bottom to top on the silk painting, but my head felt like paste: What on earth were they offering sacrifices to? What was the purpose of the sacrifices?
Since entering the ancient temple, I have seen two scenes of people from the ancient temple making sacrifices. The first time was on the relief on the gate of the ancient temple. The message conveyed by that scene was that they were worshiping the clan leader sitting on the altar.
The round object in the hand is probably the dark red stone piece in the golden coffin. But the picture depicted on the silk painting in front of me is incredible. They seem to have brought down the soul of the patriarch in the sky through sacrifice.
This has never happened before in the ancient sacrifices I have seen.
Suddenly, I discovered that the dark red auspicious cloud sitting at the top of the silk painting with the human head and snake body sitting on the sky and the earth seemed to be the same as the oval stone piece in my hand, whether it was shape or color, or even the words on it.
The positions where the beads are inlaid are basically the same.
After seeing the connection between the two sacrificial scenes, I immediately deduced the entire process of their sacrificial offerings. The two sacrificial scenes we saw in the ancient temple were at the same time.
The sacrificial scene was completed during the sacrificial ceremony. The relief carvings in the gate tower of the ancient ancestral temple show the sacrificial scene at the beginning of the sacrificial ceremony. The clan leader held up dark red stone pieces on the altar for the clan members to offer sacrifices to.
The dark red stone pieces should have some special function, which can attract the Emperor of Heaven. The clan leader also relied on the dark red stone pieces to ascend to heaven. However, I have not seen anything about this part of the activities in the ancient temple, so
It was impossible to know for the time being, but then the priest performed the final sacrifice and brought the patriarch back from the sky.
The medium through which the entire sacrificial activity was completed was this dark red stone piece.
Is it possible that this stone piece is what everyone is searching for, and is the ultimate goal to perform something like a sacrifice?
At this moment, my eyes suddenly flashed back to the scene at the Zhuyin Ancient Temple on the seaside eight years ago. At that time, the professor said that the ancient temple enshrined the Zhuyin mythical beast with a human head and a snake body. It seems that it also started from that time.
From the beginning, there will always be some messy and hallucinating things in my life. And coincidentally, in this ancient temple, the image of the ancient Zhuyin beast with the head of a human and the body of a snake has appeared many times. The Emperor of Heaven in the silk painting,
It also appears in the form of a human head with a snake body.
There must be some connection between this, but I don't know the cause and effect for the time being.
And the people who had gone to Zhuyin Ancient Temple to worship, this time, all appeared in the ancient temple. Except for the late Professor Chen, Zhang Jisheng, Wen Xiangyu, Chen Mo and me, everyone was involved.