Paintings of Terror

Shao Ling's statement gave everyone another way of thinking, but it also made the source of the incident in the painting more complicated and confusing.

Gu Qingqing summed it up in his notebook:

The first possibility is that "The Classic of Mountains and Seas" is a painting, which is also the origin of the event of entering the painting, and the first painting entered by the person entering the painting. The reason may be that during the witchcraft activities, a different world was triggered for some reason, thus It also led to the dark power, and since then, the dark power has been looking for an opportunity to break through the barrier and enter the world in an attractive form.

The second possibility is that "The Classic of Mountains and Seas" is a witchcraft symbol, or a witchcraft, and it is used together with Jiuding and Diwei to suppress the dark forces that originally existed. For some reason, the dark forces set up attractive paintings. form, looking for an opportunity to break through the barrier and enter the world.

These two possibilities, everyone couldn't determine which one they belonged to for the time being, and they all fell into thinking. After a while, they heard Ke Xun say: "Actually, we don't have to fight with these two questions for the time being, because no matter which possibility it is, we They all need to find Jiuding, so the current investigation direction can be slightly changed, which is to collect information about Jiuding and investigate whether there is anything worth noticing that happened in Dayu's era."

Shao Ling looked at him with some amusement when he heard the words: "Investigating the materials of that era may be very difficult, because there is no written evidence handed down from the Xia Dynasty, and even the Shang Dynasty that followed closely, there are no oracle bone inscriptions unearthed. There are only a few words about the existence of the Xia Dynasty, so some historians believe that the Xia Dynasty may never have even existed.

"Of course, some cultural relics were unearthed in our country later to prove that they existed in the Xia Dynasty, but the history of the entire Xia Dynasty, except for some records in historical books such as "Historical Records" and "Book of Zhou", is mostly blank .

"However, on the pottery of the Xia Dynasty unearthed at the Erlitou site, there are dozens of characters-like symbols. Some people speculate that this is the predecessor of oracle bone inscriptions, but some scholars say that people in the Xia Dynasty used more wood carvings and knotted ropes to record events. , against treating these symbols as words..."

"—Symbol?!" Ke Xun suddenly raised his eyebrows, "Comrades, maybe all the coordinates of the art museum are not a signature, but a——symbol?"

"Haowen, have the results of the simulator come out?" Mu Yiran asked Zhu Haowen almost as soon as Ke Xun finished speaking.

Zhu Haowen's reaction was not slow, and he immediately showed his laptop screen to everyone. If the fourteen coordinates plus the coordinates of the next art museum are connected, there may be tens of thousands of graphics that can be formed, "I Exclude the results of English letters and traditional and simplified Chinese characters, and then import the oracle bone inscriptions, bronze inscriptions, and seal scripts, and images that match the glyphs of the fonts will be screened out."

Everyone stared at the fast-running screening program on the screen with bated breath, waiting for the establishment of an important inference that might come true.

The screen switched rapidly, flashing comparison images of various fonts and coordinate points non-stop, but after 3 minutes, the screen suddenly stopped, a gold inscription and the coordinate point map overlapped together, and the screen displayed: coincidence degree 90 %.

This is the word with the highest degree of coincidence with the coordinate map in the font library.

Saying it is a character, it is more like a pictograph. In the center of the character is a cross. The two ends of a horizontal line are slightly upturned. There is a dot on the left and right. The font of the word "bow".

The whole word looks like a person kneeling there piously, raising his arms and holding a flame.

"This word is..." Everyone looked at the comparison table between ancient characters and modern characters that Zhu Haowen had called up——

"Light!"

"—Light! The white and black in "Shadow"—+ and - positive and negative poles—additive color mixing is the mixing of all colors of 'light', and what is mixed is 'white' color 'light'!— - Matched!" Wei Dong was so excited that he was incoherent.

"What is the bronze inscription?" Fang Fei asked Shao Ling from the side.

"Bronze was called gold in the Xia, Shang and Zhou dynasties," Shao Ling answered her in a steady voice, suppressing his excitement, "Bronze ritual vessels are represented by tripods, and the inscriptions engraved on tripods are called Zhong Ding Wen, also known as Zhong Ding Wen." Bronze inscriptions."

"—Ding! Bronze inscriptions! Light!" Luo Kuo clenched his fists and shouted.

"What's the difference between bronze inscriptions and oracle bone inscriptions?" Zhu Haowen asked Shao Ling from the side.

"Bronze inscriptions were born out of oracle bone inscriptions, and it is said that they began at the end of the Shang Dynasty," Shao Ling said while thinking, "Although there are no records of written characters in the Xia Dynasty, the absence of unearthed does not mean that there really are none.

"You must know that the oracle bone inscriptions already had a fairly mature writing system in the Shang Dynasty, which proves that the oracle bone inscriptions before the Shang Dynasty must have a process of gradually becoming mature.

"Before the Shang was Xia. In a sense, the Xia Dynasty probably already had the prototype of the early oracle bone inscriptions. The bronze inscriptions were born out of the oracle bone inscriptions, and the oracle bone inscriptions were probably born out of—let's call it 'Xia Wen' for the time being. Then It is not unreasonable to say that the word 'light' is a 'Xiawen'!"

"I didn't realize until now," said Ke Xun, "it turned out that the hint of the painting "Bai Shi" may not only be a witch, but - words, this oracle bone inscription composed of the coordinate points of the museum is "Bai Shi" Give us a hint!"

"Oh my god, I've got goosebumps!" Wu You exclaimed and rubbed his arms.

"Then the word 'light' is here, is it a signature or a symbol?" Qin Ci asked.

"...It feels like it's possible." Wei Dong said.

"If it's a signature, I'm afraid it's really scary to think about it carefully," Zhu Haowen said, "Just like Ke Xun suspected before, the real world we live in is probably a painting, and the word 'light' , perhaps the signature of the author of the painting."

"Brother Wen'er——you scared me to death—" Luo Kuo was particularly afraid of hearing this, so he grabbed the down jacket that someone had thrown on the sofa, crumpled it into a ball, and hugged it tightly in his arms.

Shao Ling: "..." Mine.let it go.

"And if it's a symbol," Mu Yiran, who hadn't spoken for a long time, took Zhu Haowen's words, "it's very likely to be a witch talisman, then maybe it confirms our other guess: the map of mountains and seas on the Jiuding, In fact, they are all graphics related to witchcraft, including witch dances, witch clothes, methods of performing witchcraft, and symbols representing the content of witchcraft.”

"Actually... the most incredible thing is the scale of the word 'light'," Gu Qingqing said with awe and a little bewilderment in his eyes, "If it is a witch talisman, then who can 'depict' this symbol on such a large span?" What about the ground? People in the Xia Dynasty would have spent their entire lives walking through these places on foot..."

"... So, in fact, the word 'light' is still a signature?" Wei Dong swallowed, "So this world is still a painting, and people outside the 'painting' sign their names on the painting, Of course there is no difficulty…”

Luo Kuo: "Oh..."

"Just now the program shows that the coincidence rate is 90%, that is to say, the coordinate points that have already appeared are connected to complete 90% of the word 'light'." Ke Xun rubbed his chin and thought, "Brother Qin said that the painting "Lingshu" It hints at the relationship between each art museum and the whole painting incident. I think this is just one of them. It also implies that every time we conquer a painting, it is like opening a acupuncture point on Ren Du’s second vein. Similarly, now we have opened up 90% of the acupoints. When we open up all the acupoints, we will complete a complete signature. Maybe at that time, we will find the signature like every painting we have conquered. You can leave the world of painting.”

Luo He: "Brother...Brother, what do you mean, we may leave this world and go to the world outside that we have never seen before? But we...we were born in this world Yes, what can you do outside? There is no home, no relatives and friends outside, and the creatures in the outside world are not sure what they look like, we... paper people, going outside will not be blown by the wind Has it disappeared without a trace?"

Everyone: "..."

Ke Xun: "You have a rich imagination."

Luo Kuo: "Now is not the time to praise me, bro."

"Silly boy, do you think we have other choices?" Ke Xun looked at him, "We only have two choices, either we all die in the painting, or we can only try our best to reach the end, even if we wait for the end of the painting." It may be something unimaginable to us. Anyway, I am not willing to die halfway, which one do you want to choose?"

Luo Kuo rubbed his eyes: "Of course I follow you guys."

"Then let's talk about the word 'light'," Ke Xun looked at everyone, "If it is a signature, then we can only continue to enter the painting to break through the level, try to 'write' the word completely, and then see what happens And if it is a witch talisman, it is likely to have some kind of witchcraft power. According to Yiran's previous speculation, maybe the word "light" is a talisman used to seal the dark power under the ground. What do you think? Woolen cloth?"

"Then, what's the use of our bones of Jiuding and Diwei?" Wei Dong asked.

"Maybe it's for 'blessing'." Wu You said, "My great-grandmother would write a lot of amulets with cinnabar and yellow paper every New Year's Eve, and give them to relatives and friends who come to ask for them. Take the paper directly to the person, but sew it into a small red bag, or wrap it in red paper and fold it into a triangle. I feel that this red cloth bag or paper bag is a kind of yellow paper talisman inside. Blessing, maybe Jiuding and Diwei also have this effect."

"It makes sense." Everyone nodded in agreement with this guess.

"So to sum it up," Zhu Haowen said, "the word 'light', which uses landmarks as nodes and connects to form a huge witch talisman, was produced in the Xia Dynasty. If it is used to suppress the dark force under the ground, it means This force arose during the Xia Dynasty, and it had a bad influence—otherwise there is no need to suppress it, so here lies the question: What major events occurred during the Xia Dynasty?"

"But Mr. Shao said that the historical records of the Xia Dynasty are almost blank. Where can I check this?" Wei Dong worried.

"If such a miraculous and bizarre thing can happen, I don't believe that there will be no relevant records left at that time." Ke Xun said, "Even if there are few or no words, images can always be drawn, right? The Book of Mountains and Seas can be drawn. Can’t draw a major event related to witchcraft? Mr. Shao, think again, have there been any cultural relics with paintings unearthed in the Xia Dynasty?”

Shao Ling shook his head helplessly: "Let me tell you this-the historical period before the Xia Dynasty had no written records, only oral legends, so it is called the age of legends or the age of myths. However, there are written or unearthed cultural relics records The era of social conditions at that time is called the era of trustworthy history, which began at the end of the Shang Dynasty.

"The period between the era of legends and the era of reliable history is called the era of half-belief in history. This "half-belief" does not mean half-belief, but during this period, some historical events have been confirmed through unearthed cultural relics, and some, Such as those half-human and half-god heroes, weird and bizarre spirits and monsters still appear in the oral history of this period. Therefore, the half-belief history era is the real and proven historical events, and the history of myths and legends and oral traditions The era of coexistence of events.

"The semi-reliable history period can be regarded as a transition period from the legendary period to the reliable history period. This transition period is very long, lasting more than 500 years. And it has a very prominent feature, that is, the blank period.

"If the semi-reliable historical period is compared to a long white banner, then the real historical events that have been proven to exist are like a few ink blots that appear every tens or hundreds of meters on this white banner. This Most of the places on the banner are blank.

"This blank period of nothingness has appeared many times, and sometimes it is blank for hundreds of years. There is no historical record, nor any myths and legends. It was eerily quiet, and posterity had no idea what had happened over such a long period of time.

"The entire Xia Dynasty and the early stage of the Shang Dynasty were in a period of half-belief in history, and the historical blank time was too long. It's not that it is difficult for us to check the information, but there is no information to check at all..."

"...This period of semi-reliable history is so mysterious..." Wu You exclaimed, "I feel that there is a kind of... weird and deliberate quietness in those completely blank time periods, as if a long text was deliberately used It's like the eraser erased a few words in it."

"—Wait," Ke Xun opened his eyes wide, looking at Mu Yiran and Shao Ling, "Wu You's words make sense—could those blank periods be erased from history by some force? 'What about it?"

Everyone was shocked by this statement, Shao Ling's breathing was a little short, and he frowned and said: "It's not impossible...but we must also consider whether there was really a written word at that time, and if there was no written text , of course, no historical records can be left... It's not true... There are still historical facts confirmed by unearthed cultural relics. ...It's really not normal..."

Mu Yiran was calmer than him, after thinking about it, he said: "Perhaps, this is the real reason why Dayu cast Jiuding?"

The author has something to say:

This is the end of this painting, welcome everyone to join me in the next one, which is also the penultimate one~

These chapters have caused trouble for everyone, and I bow again to apologize!