Chapter 38 Section 37: The Golden Mask of the Weird Laugh

"Is this the hidden treasure of the Da Yue Clan?" Chu Feng and the others were already dazzled by the gold in their eyes.After Chu Feng's eyes finally got used to the shining golden light, looking at these handicrafts made of pure gold, he first thought of that nation that was famous for loving gold in history—Dayue clan. As soon as he set foot on this sandy land, Chu Feng almost thought he had come to an ancient abandoned kiln: there were broken pottery fragments everywhere—broken pottery fragments with different green glazes.Although most of these pottery pieces were buried in the sand, many of them were exposed on the ground.

Chu Feng picked up some of them and put them together. It was strange that these broken pottery fragments were obviously split from a whole, and the assembled container was so huge that it could hold two or three people without any problem.What is this for? "Is this a tank for holding water?" William Lin picked up a broken pottery shard the size of a washbasin and gestured for it. "Maybe it's a rice vat!" Da Qi interjected beside him. "Come on! Look at this—" Wang Cong picked up the bottom of the tank, "The bottom is full of holes the size of fingers, can it hold water or rice?"

When he said this, everyone became curious and examined the fragment carefully!It is indeed the bottom of the tank, but why is there a hole in the bottom of the tank?What exactly is this thing for? Chu Feng walked all the way, observing carefully all the way.These broken pottery fragments are everywhere, scattered around the entire ancient city. On this side of the ancient city, the city walls have collapsed, but the outlines can still be seen on the other three sides. The ancient city was once completely buried by yellow sand, and it may not be until the recent earthquake that the sand covering it was shaken down, so the tops of many large buildings collapsed.Only a small minaret with a height of seven or eight meters in the northwest corner of the city still stands there.Near the minaret, there are some buildings made of colored bricks. Even today, there are still walls four or five meters high, shining in the sun, and the original majesty can be vaguely seen.

Chu Feng and others separated after entering the castle area: Wang Cong took two soldiers to measure the city wall in order to obtain the most basic data of the city; Chu Feng, Sang Bu and Da Qi headed for the steeple; William was arranged to take the other four fighters to scout around to see if there was anything to gain. Chu Feng and others made a major discovery when they reached the ground about 100 meters away from the minaret.It was a piece of scattered gold items, including gold ornaments, gold pots, gold basins, gold cups and so on.The golden piece is really dazzling. Chu Feng hurriedly dug out the treasures half buried in the sand by the others.While digging for gold, some ancient coins popped up from time to time.

"This is the Han two-body coin." This kind of coin has been unearthed in the Tarim Basin, Loulan area and Luoyang. "Look, I picked up half a tael." It was William Lin who was so excited.Following the golden cups, cups, lampstands and other ornaments scattered along the road, Chu Feng and others came to the gleaming colorful brick wall seen in the distance.There are two similar buildings on the left and right sides of this circular building, but smaller, but they both cover an area of ​​about 2,000 square meters.The remaining walls are less than 5 meters high, and the bricks used are large glazed colored bricks, each of which is 30 centimeters high, 90 centimeters long, and 50 centimeters behind.This kind of colored brick building has never appeared in the Loulan area. It is only said that there were similar colored bricks in the palace buildings unearthed from the ancient city of Babylon.

Chu Feng searched around deliberately, but found no inscriptions, documents, etc. with written records.He carefully walked around the ruins of a royal palace, but he didn't find any of them. Sang Bu directed the soldiers to continue excavating the ruins of the palace, while Chu Feng and Da Qi came under the steeple.The steeple is very tall but occupies a small area. Chu Feng explored it and found that the inside is solid, as if it was carved out of a huge stone. The whole tower is a hexahedron triangle, and the body of the tower is carved with little angels with wings.The facial expressions of this group of little angels are also the same as those on the mural in the tower on the opposite bank. They are vivid, with excitement and happiness outside the painting. Standing under the tower, it seems as if you can hear their chuckles.

"One, two, three, four..." Chu Feng counted one by one, and there were 600 little angels engraved on the body of the pagoda, and half of them were boys and girls.Unfortunately, his wish to find the inscriptions failed again, and there was no writing on the entire tower. "What does this mean?" Chu Feng thought to himself, could this pagoda be used for sacrifices?Then what do so many winged children look like carved on it? Moreover, these winged children look familiar like this. "Hey, Xiaofeng, tell me, why do these children look like they are alive?" Da Qi, who has always been fearless, was caught in the eyes of these children when he faced these lifelike statues of children. Hairy.

"It's a bit evil here!" Chu Feng also nodded.These children's statues are not like ordinary religious images. Winged angel images in religions always give people a sense of peace and holiness.The winged angels on the murals in the tower on the other side give people the feeling that the expression is very homely, yes, it is "homely"!Unprocessed, the expressions of the characters in normal life are like this! Also, Chu Feng remembered, the box in his home, the four little angel statues on the four sides of the base with their hands up, don't they also have this expression?

Over there, Sambu has already re-divided the staff: Wang Cong took people to find out if there was anything that could indicate the identity of the city; William was responsible for finding it along the road scattered with gold ornaments and ancient coins. direction, because the source of this "golden road" obviously comes from this palace building; Sangbu himself took the remaining two warriors to investigate along the ruins of these five palaces, expecting to find more things . So far no human skeleton has been found in this city, which means that there is no one in the city, and the ancient coins in the city are not later than the Wei and Jin Dynasties, which means that she was probably abandoned before the Sui and Tang Dynasties, and The abandoned person walked in a hurry, which can be seen from the scattered gold ornaments all over the floor.What is the reason that the residents here are in such a hurry that they leave without even having time to pick up the gold?

Chu Feng couldn't figure it out, but this was nothing unusual in the Loulan area.Because, as early as more than 100 years ago, when the Swedish explorer Sven Hedin first visited Loulan City more than 1,500 years ago, the ancient city of Loulan was also in such a state of being abandoned in a panic, so Loulan was also called "Pompeii of the East". ".And the subsidiary country of ancient Loulan—Jingjue Kingdom, when its capital was found in Niya City, it was the same. There was even half-cooked corn in the pot, all of which caused the mystery of Loulan and the mystery of the ages .

Sure enough, soon Wang Cong came to report that in a house similar to an ordinary dwelling, they found half-cooked corn in a pot.And there was a complete pottery urn in that room. After receiving the news, Chu Feng and others rushed to the house in the east of the city, which looked relatively complete with an earthen embryo structure.As soon as everyone walked in, what caught their eyes was a huge pottery urn, which took up almost half of the room. Among them, Sangbu, who was the tallest and most burly, was a little short when he walked up to it, and its color was similar to that of the outside. The broken pottery shards scattered here and there were of the same color.This pottery urn has a round belly and a narrow mouth. Everyone looked at this green glazed pottery urn in a daze. What is such a big thing used for? Wang Cong and the soldiers stepped forward and put the pottery urn down.The pottery urn was empty, with nothing in it.What's more, after putting it down, I discovered that the bottom of the pottery urn also has many small finger-sized holes, densely packed, covering the entire bottom of the urn. Beside this pottery urn, there is something that looks like a stove, and there is a pottery pot on it, and there is half a pot of corn in it. Chu Feng walked over, opened the mouth of the jar, took out the corn inside and squeezed it with two fingers. The corn should have been half ripe when it was discarded.What is the reason that people here can't even care about the food that is about to come to their mouths? Searched around the house, but found nothing special. When Chu Feng came out, he saw Wang Cong and others muttering around something. This was something hanging on the wall outside the back of this room. , which appears to be a wooden wheel. "What is this? What is it for?" A soldier couldn't bear it.Unfortunately, facing this thing that even Chu Feng couldn't explain why, no one answered for a while. Just when everyone was disappointed, Sangbu came over to have a closer look, and then observed the ground carefully, and said with certainty: "This is an ancient water press!" "Pressed water machine?" Everyone wondered, is the ancient water press just such a wheel? ! Sang Bu seemed to know everyone's doubts, he picked up a piece of chain from the ground: "Look, this is it, if I guessed correctly, there is a water room on the basement floor here, and there must be many wooden barrels in the water room. Actually this The principle of use of the tool is the same as the chain pump that we still use in southern rural areas today. It connects several buckets to a chain belt and connects to this wheel. When the wheel rotates once, the buckets rotate accordingly to complete the water lifting and pouring. The work of water. If you don’t believe me, look, there are traces of water tanks on the ground!” He said, pulling away the sand on the ground, revealing a groove-shaped opening. Hearing what he said, "Skinny Monkey" rummaged in the nearby sand, and as expected he found a broken wooden barrel: "Uh, really! Brother Sang, you know this, you are so talented!" Sangbu gave him a blank look. Is the word "talented" a compliment now? !Just when he was about to continue speaking, William exclaimed from a distance: "Wow! MA GOD! God! God! Help! I'm dying!" Everyone was taken aback when they heard this, did he encounter any danger? When I rushed to the ground, everyone's eyes were dazzled. That's right, it was all spent in gold! Here it is at the base of the western wall, which is half-collapsed.There was a box under the wall just dug out by William Lin and the others. The kid led two soldiers to follow Captain Sangbu's orders, and searched along the road full of gold and ancient coins until they came to the bottom of the wall.Here, William, who had been digging and picking, discovered something that seemed to be buried under the loess of the collapsed city wall.He walked over and pulled it, and a corner of a large wooden box was exposed.The fine carvings and exquisite patterns of this box are breathtaking, not to mention that the curious William Lin opened it immediately after digging it out. It doesn't matter if it is opened, the next second, the two soldiers saw William, who was stunned for a moment, immediately screamed and jumped up like crazy. The box was long and full of gold ornaments, and the craftsmanship was much more exquisite than the ones they just picked up from the ground.Right in the middle of the box, there is a huge golden mask with deep eyes and high nose, lying there face up, facing the crowd, with an inexplicable strange smile in the corner of its mouth. Everyone seemed to be sneering at everyone. The size of this mask can cover the faces of two Sambu more than enough. Who has such a big face?This is not worn by people, is it worn on the face of a god?Haven't heard of any civilization that has a tradition of wearing golden masks on gods? ! "This should be the hidden treasure of the Dayue clan!" Chu Feng expressed his judgment at this time, but he was corrected by himself immediately: "To be precise, it should be the treasure they abandoned!" This place is next to the city wall. Maybe the people at that time abandoned these treasures for unknown reasons when they fled the city in a hurry.The gold ornaments they picked up and lost on the road before can fully demonstrate how hurried the owner of the city was.Something happened here again, and it is very possible that this box of treasures will be lost. Suddenly thought of something, Chu Feng hurriedly ordered: "Quick! Quickly dig around and see if you find anything else!" Hearing his reminder, everyone also remembered that this lost treasure may not be the only one in this box, so hurry up and look for it again to see if you can find anything else! Unfortunately, it seems that the person who left these things in the first place dropped it for some reason. In the 15 meters around it, everyone turned it upside down, except for one or two gold earrings and a few Other than copper coins, nothing of value was found. The slightly disappointed crowd slumped on the ground exhausted.After resting for a while, I ate some dry naan and drank the mineral water I brought with me for lunch.After eating and drinking, everyone's hearts warmed up again when they saw the open gold jewelry in the box. Since the original purpose of this small expedition team was not here, but at the stone monument on the edge of the Taklimakan Desert deep in Lop Nur, all the food and supplies they brought were arranged according to that journey.According to the provisions that everyone brought, it is not impossible to stay here for a few more days, but the stele is impossible to go.Moreover, such a large ancient city site here is not something that these few people can finish investigating in a short time. The most important thing is that the harvest of this investigation has greatly exceeded everyone's imagination, and it has also exceeded everyone's ability to carry it.The most important thing at the moment is to quickly bring these things back safely and quickly, or even transfer them to a safe place.This is a typical landlord thinking. If you have money and food, you are afraid of thieves thinking about it!What's more, the thief didn't think about it once or twice. Moreover, the large number of these treasures and the exquisite craftsmanship are rare in the archaeological history of the Western Regions. How did these things be transported across the single-plank bridge.After transporting it, where to store it is also a problem. After many discussions, Chu Feng decided to listen to Da Qi's opinion.Store things in their base and replenish supplies before going to the stele. This plan was unanimously approved by everyone, but in this way, there is not much time to stay here. Everyone decided that Wang Cong would register the things first, and then break them into parts. Everyone distributed these things and brought them in batches. Go across the single-plank bridge and gather there.If it gets late, stay in the underground hall on the other side for another night, and then set off tomorrow.