Chapter 66

he fire isn't very strong, but it's making a lot of smoke.I covered my nose with a cloth and said, "Alright, Third Brother There was quite a big fire just now."">After half an hour, most of the clay p...Ahead was a bend in the road. I pricked up my ears and listened carefully. Sure enough, I heard squeaking noises coming from ahead.

Those are those things.

Peeking cautiously around the corner, we glanced inside.

Only then did I see that those little things were chattering away.

There was a circular stone platform before them, and the dead body lay on it.

Soon, they stopped chattering, as if they had come to a consensus.

Suddenly, one of them jumped onto the stone platform. It fumbled around on itself for a while and pulled out a pale green object that resembled a small axe.

Chen Jian-sheng's eyes widened, forcing down his excitement and saying: "Look quickly, do you see it That's what I was talking about before! They really stole this from us! It's theyue! This proves I didn't lie to you, look!"

"Crack!" With a swing, that thing raised the heavy axe high and brought it down.

tap tap tapping.

The scene was gruesome, the head of the victim smashed to pieces in just a few blows. Yellowish-white substance oozed all over the stone platform.

Seeing this, the rest rushed forward and all scrambled onto the stone platform, their hats forgotten. They began frantically licking those yellowish-white objects.

This scene isn't just scary, it's also disgusting.

The air was thick with the stench of blood, and I felt a wave of nausea rise in my stomach. I wanted to vomit.

Even Hong Jie isn't any better.

I felt so disgusted, but then I heard Chen Jian Sheng whisper: "What the heck are they doing Are they eating tofu pudding"

“

After licking them clean, these things one after another, accompanied each other forward, disappearing into the darkness.

They left, and the three of us naturally came out.

On the rock platform, that thing's head was already a mess, eaten clean by his accomplices.

There are still some yellowish-white things remaining.

Chen Jian-sheng was the first to discover it. He found traces of carved characters on this stone platform.

The script should be Bird Seal, but because it's too old, some of the radicals in the characters are unclear. Gritting our teeth, we pushed the corpse down and now the line of bird seal script below is the clearest.

"Red Sister, do you know her" I asked.

She shook her head. "This passage of several dozen characters, I can only recognize one," she said, pointing to one of the bird-seal script characters. "This one, I saw it on other bronze artifacts before. This should be a character for 'sacrifice'."

“

" Let me know if you have any other text you'd like me to translate!

"Sacrifice" I asked curiously, "A religious sacrifice"

"Yes," she nodded gravely.

"Looking around like this, I think this must be the altar," Chen Jian-sheng said after looking around.

The culture of sacrifice has existed since ancient times and is still present today. Burning paper during Qingming Festival and burning incense in temples are also a type of sacrifice.

However, during the Shang and early Western Zhou dynasties, the term "sacrifice" represented blood and death.

Due to the prevalence of slavery during the Shang and Zhou dynasties, sacrifices of livestock were rare. Instead, human sacrifice was very popular.

Slaves would be beheaded on the sacrificial altar. Afterward, their heads would be placed in a bronze vessel called a lian. Inside the lian, the officiating priest would use tools to pierce a small circular hole in the top of the skull.

The reason why a round hole was made is because at that time, people believed the sky was round.

This act signifies offering tribute, releasing the soul of the tribute, and dedicating it to the celestial deities.

This is just one use of a Shang and Zhou sacrificial altar. There are many other kinds, ultimately all kinds of painful and cruel magic.

In Western Zhou tombs, there is often a rule that once a sacrificial altar is discovered, within a five-meter range of the front, back, and sides of the altar, there will inevitably be a human head sacrifice pit or a human bone sacrifice pit.

And we did indeed discover this burial pit.

...Just to the northwest of the altar.he person responsible for finding graves down south is called "zhi guo", and before the Qing dynasty, they were called "yuan liang". This job is similar in nature to the "yan ba tou" of our northern...