Chapter Fourteen: Tongtian Hall

  We went down the stairs, and the road ahead was pitch black, unknown where it led. It just got colder and colder as we went down. Even breathing out white air. My jacket had been burned when I drove away the bats before, and I was shivering with cold.

  Ma Si Zhe was walking behind me, occasionally letting out a loud sneeze, and he was also frozen stiff. As soon as I turned my head back, Ma Si Zhe gave me a fright. He looked like he had been poisoned, his cheeks were pitch black, and his lips were purple.

  "Ah, Ma Si Zhe, what's wrong with you?" I subconsciously shone the flashlight on him. Ma Si Zhe was dazzled by the light and covered his eyes with his hand, which was also pitch black.

  I quickly picked up his hand, just as I did, the black stuff rubbed all over my hand. It turned out to be dirt that had been rubbed off onto me. I let out a sigh of relief.

  Ma Si Zhe withdrew his hand and said 'Stop always finding opportunities to touch me'

  I'm still annoyed with you

  Ma Si Zhe looked at his hands and said, "Oh no, how did this happen?" He quickly wiped them on the walls on both sides of the stairs. Strangely, the more he wiped, the dirtier they became. It turned out that it was something on the wall, probably left there when Ma Si Zhe had sneezed and leaned against the wall to wipe his nose.

  As for the face, I imagined it myself, and it's possible that it was rubbed on while wiping my nose.

  "What's on this wall?" Ma Si Zhe brought his hand to his nose and sniffed, "How come there's a smell?" After saying that, he handed me his hand for me to take a whiff. I pushed his hand away in disgust, refusing to smell it.

  "It's not a stinky smell, it's a fragrant one. Jiang Liu, take a sniff."

  Jiang Liu took a sniff and nodded at me in agreement.

  "Really, it smells great!"

  I sniffed carefully and found a sandalwood scent. How could there be a sandalwood scent in this earthen wall?

  I know that in ancient times, there was a method of building walls by burning a section of white sandalwood into ash and mixing it with mud to keep the house safe. White sandalwood is a plant that grows extremely slowly, generally taking ten years to mature. Therefore, only wealthy families could afford to use it. Some people also used crushed white sandalwood as a material for building tomb walls when constructing mausoleums.

  Sandalwood is also called fragrant wood, belonging to the sandalwood family of plants, generally with a pungent smell. After being stored for a period of time, it becomes high-quality incense. Some are stored for decades or even hundreds of years.

  We walked down hundreds of meters of stairs all the way, and such a large scale is really not something that small and medium-sized nobles can afford.

  "I smell something," said Marx with a raised eyebrow.

  What flavor?

  "The taste of funerary objects" Funerary objects are another name for these people's burial goods.

  Ma Si had previously thought of robbing the tomb, but was disappointed when he read in his grandfather's diary that a monk said the tombs below Maoer Mountain were those of bookish families from the Eastern Zhou Dynasty. However, everything they discovered from then on reinvigorated Ma Si.

  "We're here on official business, not to rob tombs."

  "Save the world and satisfy yourself at the same time" Ma Si Zhe had a lecherous look on his face, as if there were countless steel pipe beauties waiting for him below.

  The footsteps under our feet accelerated significantly, and we quickly walked down. Jiang Liu and I also followed closely behind.

  I just kept walking forward, not even lifting my head to look. Suddenly I bumped into Ma Si's back, and he was standing there stupidly. I was about to ask him what he was doing standing there when I followed his gaze and looked forward, and I also froze.

  So when Jiang Liu came over, he saw two people standing there stupidly.

  I am speechless with shock at this moment, I have an urge to stab myself with a knife to see if I bleed.

  I have accepted the fact that this is not the tomb of the Eastern Zhou and Warring States periods as my grandfather said. I also accept that this was once a place where various cruel human sacrifices were held. But what I still can't accept is that, under the Hat Mountain, about 100 meters deep, there stands a temple.

  But it just stands in front of me, solemn and stern, with a strange shape.

  "Let me curse for a moment, okay?"

  Ma Si Zhe looked at the building and muttered to himself. I nodded in agreement.

  "My god!"

  Ma Si Zhe these two words are used perfectly, now except for these two words I also can't think of other ways to express my mood.

  The temple is about four stories high, with a four-cornered roof and eaves that slope inward. It looks very oppressive and somewhat awkward.

  "Let's go, after we get there, let's apply for this World Cultural Heritage thing, I've already thought of a name, just call it 'High-rise Buildings Under the Black Soil', how about that?"

  I really admire Ma Si Zhe for being able to joke around in this situation, but after I calmed down, I realized that my mental quality is actually quite poor. It's easy to get scared and lose the ability to think. But I still feel like it's not entirely my fault - who can withstand these things? I'm no match for Ma Si Zhe, who has been exposed to this kind of thing since he was young, and even made a career out of it after graduation. As for me? I'm just a good youth, growing up in a straightforward way, working diligently after graduation, being filial to my parents at home, and following traffic rules when going out. Suddenly experiencing something like this is really a bit too much for me to handle.

  The building in front of me, which looks like a temple, is enough to shock me into speechlessness for a while.

  The introduction of Buddhism was after the Han Dynasty, and the construction of temples began to rise after the Northern Wei. The general temple buildings have a certain specification, and most of the layouts are symmetrical with the mountain gate in the middle, and the bell tower and drum tower on both sides. The distribution of the main halls also has its own rules, the front is the Heavenly King Hall, inside which are usually placed the four great golden statues. Behind it is the Mahavira Hall and the Scripture Pavilion. Among them, the Mahavira Hall is the central building of each temple. Inside is placed the Buddha, Sakyamuni.

  This building is different from the general temple, without so many deliberations and fixed patterns. Only one stands here. Moreover, I haven't seen any decorations of general Buddhist architecture here.

  The four corners of the roof where wind chimes should be hung, I walked closer and found that they were actually hanging bone products similar to cow horns. The windows were all covered with cyan-gray window paper. Possibly due to the long years, the window paper was already tattered and torn, hanging in strips on the window frames.

  The main gate was painted vermilion red, and I saw the words "Tongtian Temple" written clearly on it.

  Ma Si Zhe walked closer and touched the pillar at the entrance 'warm but not cold, with a fragrance, this is golden nanmu wood!'

  "Good stuff, good stuff!" Jiang Liu exclaimed, stroking the door frame.

  There are many existing large buildings made of nanmu wood, such as the Dacizhenruo Hall in Beihai Park, Beijing, and the Rong'en Hall in Ming Xiaoling Mausoleum, which is one of the largest existing nanmu wood halls in China. Nanmu wood is resistant to rot and can be buried underground for thousands of years without decaying, it is not easy to deform and has a dense texture, so it was favored by royal families. It is generally used to make palaces and coffins, and many precious books are also made with nanmu wood boxes.

  It's just that I never thought that there would be a golden nanmu temple of such scale underground.

  I looked up and saw that the ridge of this Tongtian Hall has quite a few animal carvings, with three on each ridge, totaling twelve. Because it was not close enough, I didn't see clearly what animals they were, but I felt that the shape was strange and different from usual ones.

  In a daze, I saw that the windows of Tongtian Hall were faintly shining with a bright light, and there was also a shadowy figure flickering about. There was actually someone here!

  "As I said 'someone is here', I pulled out the gun that I had stuffed into my bag and held it up, nervously staring at the figure in the window."

  A figure flashed by and disappeared without a trace, and then the bright light also vanished.

  Ma Si Zhe gave me and Jiang Liu a look, indicating that we should follow him. The three of us crept in like thieves, tiptoeing along the doorway, and slipped inside.

  We entered through the front door, and Jiang Liu forgot about the step under his foot. He tripped on it and fell heavily into the house. Ma Si Zhe and I stood stiffly at the entrance, not daring to move. Jiang Liu also lay still on the ground. After a while, when we were sure there was no sound inside, we pulled Jiang Liu up from the ground.

  We didn't dare turn on our flashlights, fearing we would disturb the people upstairs, so we continued to grope in the dark.

  "It's not going to work like this, can't even see the road" In a situation like this, never mind being on guard against others, you could easily get yourself killed. After crashing into an unknown object for the third time, I had no choice but to suggest turning on the flashlight.

  With a snap, flashlights were turned on one after another, and in the bright light, I was frightened by what was right in front of me, my hair standing on end.

  That was a desiccated corpse placed on the Buddhist altar. Wearing clothes with strong ethnic characteristics, with high hair buns, eyeballs already shriveled up, sparse hair hanging down in front of the forehead, the whole body is grayish black. Standing upright like being hung from the beam, arms naturally hanging down, barefoot, stepping on a lotus-shaped thing underneath. Incense burner was placed in front, obviously prepared for someone to worship.

  Judging from the ornaments on the mummy, it should be a female corpse. And she was a woman of high social status when she was alive.

  "Go take a look at what's going on." I said to Ma Si Zhe.

  "I won't go, you go." Ma Si Zhe poked Jiang Liu. Jiang Liu immediately shook his head like a rattle drum.

  Ma Si Zhe had no choice but to go himself. He adjusted his collar, and with a resolute expression, he walked towards Jiang Liu's corpse. I followed closely behind him, tiptoeing quietly.

  Ma Si Zhe laboriously climbed onto the Buddhist altar and squatted in front of the dry corpse.

  "This is Yunjinxiu," Ma Sichao said, touching the clothes on the dry corpse. Yunjinxiu is a unique embroidery technique that only exists among ethnic minorities in Yunnan Province. Due to its intricate craftsmanship and high requirements for fabric, it has not been popularized among the people, but is only used by local wealthy families.

  It is said that during the Han Dynasty, Emperor Wu of Han Liu Che sent his men to search for a woman who could weave cloud brocade in the Jiangnan region to please Empress Li. After a long time of searching, they finally found two sisters in a remote village.

  The two sisters were ordered to follow the officials and soldiers back to the imperial palace to weave cloud brocade, with only one requirement: the process of making cloud brocade was ancestral and could not be seen by others. Liu Che agreed.

  Strange things gradually happened in the palace, and many palace maids mysteriously disappeared without anyone knowing where they went. In such a large imperial palace, losing a few palace maids wouldn't make anyone pay attention, probably because some princess was temporarily unhappy and had them killed, so no one said much about it.

  The day the cloud brocade was completed, Mrs. Li couldn't bear to part with it, and Emperor Wu of Han was overjoyed, ordering a reward for the two sisters. The eunuch brought the emperor's gifts of gold, silver, and jewels to the room where the two had previously stayed, but there was no sign of them in the house.

  The eunuchs searched the entire house and only found a hidden compartment in the room. Inside the compartment was a large vat, filled with bright red water, with clumps of hair floating on top. The red water emitted wave after wave of foul odor. After pouring out the bloody water, the bottom of the vat surprisingly had the emperor's birthdate written on it.

  The emperor was furious after hearing this and burned all the cloud brocades. He also issued a decree that no one in the country was allowed to weave cloud brocade again.

  This is just a folk legend, and its authenticity cannot be verified. But since then, Yun Jinxiu has been associated with witchcraft in some way. I just think it's absurd that two sisters from a village in Yunnan would have such deep hatred for the emperor, risking their lives to cast spells on him.

  Since Yun brocade was banned after the Han Dynasty, it means that this mummy must have existed before the Han Dynasty. I see that the clothes worn by the mummy have a very obvious national characteristic, but for a moment, I couldn't think of what nationality's costume it is.

  The female corpse had a silver belt around her waist, with the character "You" engraved on it. I rarely see decorations with words engraved on them, usually they are just patterns of flowers, birds, fish or insects. But here, there was actually a single Chinese character 'You' engraved on it.

  What is this for? Is it used to bless something?

  Looking at this mummy, its face is ferocious. I find it hard to compare her with the benevolent Buddha. If someone really worships such a bizarre thing, then the wishes they pray for will not be anything good either.

  Take another close look at the mummy's attire, with a headscarf on its head, a silver waistband around its waist, and leg wraps on its legs. The more I looked, the more familiar it seemed - this was clearly traditional Hani ethnic clothing!