Paintings of Terror

Upon hearing this, Mu Yiran sat over and looked at the screen with Ke Xun.

Ke Xun pointed to an icon on the screen: "My first discovery was this guy. It is bigger than all the icons."

Mu Yiran stared at it for a while, nodded and said, "That's right, this icon is taller and burlier than other icons. According to the psychology and habits of the ancients, people with high status are usually drawn taller in paintings. Taller and more pronounced than secondary characters.

"So this icon probably represents a person who has the status of a leader, and this person often appears in the later scenes.

"You see, the combination of the pictures of the entire A-side rock wall seems to be a coherent and grand witch prayer scene, and the small part of the scene that we cleared out earlier is very similar to some people or The spirits, dead people, dead beasts, and spirits that look like dead are being arranged in a row in a certain order, which seems to be a preparation for a sacrificial or witchcraft act.

"And this tall and burly 'person' appears in every scene of the petroglyphs on side A, which probably shows that the entire process of witch prayer is presided over or guided by him, so the identity of this person may also be of high status Big witch."

Ke Xun made a comprehensible expression, and Mu Yiran motioned for him to continue talking. Ke Xun glanced at the people who came back to the tent after eating and crowded over to listen to him talking with Mu Yiran. The image of the petroglyph was shrunk down to fit the entire petroglyph, and then he circled the picture with his finger: "The second discovery, you may need to make up your own brain, the screen is too small, this ratio is completely invisible - the second discovery is In this sacrificial ceremony, all these dead people, dead beasts, and dead monsters who are suspected of being sacrificial offerings seem to be separated by category, and then arranged into a huge circle... Hey, hey!"

While Ke Xun was talking, everyone pushed their heads closer to the screen. Ke Xun and Mu Yiran squeezed two or three heads in at once. Looking forward.

It's a pity that the screen is too small, and the petroglyphs are too big. When reduced to this scale, the icons on the screen become blurry small black blocks, and nothing can be seen clearly.

But Mu Yiran obviously imagined the scene that Ke Xun said, pointed his fingertips towards the screen, drew a concentric circle with three rings in the air, and asked Ke Xun, "Is that what you mean?"

Ke Xun was pressed crookedly on the carpet, and responded with difficulty from Luo Kuo's armpit: "Yes, that's it. The whole scene of the sacrifice is grand, and it looks a bit messy at first glance, but you know, I have seen too many sacrifices since I was a child. There are many group queuing scenes, and I am especially good at finding out my teammates from the thousand or eight hundred athletes wearing all kinds of sportswear in the playground, so the subconscious habit of "searching" and "categorizing" has become my instinct up.

"There are a lot of strange icons mixed together in this sacrificial scene, but when I looked at it, I found that the positions of each type of sacrificial offering are connected to form a very regular big circle, and It spread out in circles, like water ripples.

"This is actually the same as the rock platform we saw at night. There are dead animal corpses around the rock platform, but the corpses around the rock platform are not arranged in a regular circle.

"What's very strange is that the dead bodies around the rock platform are at least spread out around the rock platform, but the center of these sacrifices on the rock paintings is nothing, it is a blank space, there is no altar, and there is no god statue or anything. Isn't that weird?"

"It's really strange." Shao Ling was squeezed out from the crowd. "Any kind of idol or belief worship should have an image or totem."

"Could it be that they sacrificed invisible people?" Luo Kuo said.

"Maybe it's really possible." Wu You nodded quickly, "Invisible people can't see, so to put it bluntly, they are gods, so what they worship is gods."

"Even if they are gods, people will give them an image," Shao Ling shook his head, "For example, the Buddha, the Sanqing, and even the black and white impermanence of a bull's head and a horse's face, they will all have a specific image as their sustenance, otherwise they will be less persuasive to the public Many, if you were asked to worship a piece of air every day and tell you that it is the god of wealth, would you have confidence in the divine power of this piece of air?"

"...No," Wu You shook his head, "Instead of asking me to worship the air, it is better for me to directly pay homage to Boss Mu. As soon as Boss Mu is happy to reward me with a big red envelope, I will send it out, and the money will come faster."

Mu Yiran: "..."

"So for the ancients who believed in the power of gods and ghosts, if the object of worship is a mass of nothingness, it obviously does not meet psychological expectations." Shao Ling said.

"I think we should carefully examine every detail of the petroglyphs," Hua Jiqiu said, "and the whole is equally important. The composition and layout of a painting often contain countless deeper contents that are invisible on the surface. Unfortunately, Computer screens are too small to fit the entire image at once."

"I have..." Mu Yiran said in the trunk.

"Okay!" Luo Kuo immediately jumped out of the tent to search the trunk.

Whatever it is, it's right.

Then got back a projector.

Fortunately, the tent provided by Luo Kuo was an army green camping tent, which was thick and strong, and there was basically no light in the tent after the curtain was drawn.So Zhu Haowen was responsible for connecting the projector to the computer and adjusting the clarity of the image.

The equipment brought by Mr. Mu is of course high-tech products. After the image is enlarged to cover the entire tent wall, it is still clear and delicate. In addition, these icons have been processed by Weidong for noise reduction. Drawing directly on the computer by hand is no different.

However, although these icons have been optimized to such an extreme level, it is still difficult for everyone to understand the images of these suspected human and animal creatures and most of their behaviors with their current cognition.

Although these creatures are only represented on a plane in the form of simple line icons, if we want to construct their appearance in reality based on this, it cannot be simulated in the brain only by human imagination .

Their images, even with the richest Chinese language, are hard to describe. Their behaviors are obscure and difficult to understand, but the atmosphere that fills their expressions, limbs, movements, and even emotions is extraordinarily weird. terrible.

And when the whole picture was magnified to the size of a whole wall, the unspeakable emotions and atmosphere revealed in the picture suddenly filled the airtight tent, and weighed heavily on everyone's heart as if it had substance. heart.

Everyone was feeling a little depressed, but Ke Xun suddenly said, his clear and comfortable voice let everyone relax a little: "The next step is my third discovery."

Everyone was startled, and hurriedly looked in the direction of his finger.

Ke Xun stretched out his arms, pointing his finger at the tall and burly icon on the screen: "It's still it. At first I found it because it was bigger than other icons, so I paid special attention to it, and then After observing it carefully for a while, apart from its body shape, what caught my attention the most was its head, or its face.

"Look carefully at its face—did you notice that on the part of the line that seems to represent its face, there is a small protrusion on the left and right.

"If it was a long time ago, I might not care about these two small protrusions at all, but the interesting thing is-you should have seen my WeChat profile picture-yes, it is the stick figure.

"I drew that little figure by myself. I am a drawing idiot, but many years of experience in watching cartoons and comics made me draw this stick figure with two strokes of heart. eyes.

"And those two eyes are almost exactly the same as the two small protrusions on the face of this icon. Mr. Shao said that the ancient murals and rock carvings have a very simple style. I think it is similar to our modern stick figures. There may also be similarities in painting methods, which is why this coincidence is caused.

"Of course, that's not the point. The point is that because of the stick figure on my WeChat avatar, I automatically imagined the two small bumps on this icon as its eyes, and then I found that, on the whole face In the petroglyphs, among all the symbols representing organisms, it is the only one with eyes on its face.

"It is the largest, and it is the only one with eyes, and it appears in various places throughout the petroglyphs, obviously, as Yiran said, it is a 'protagonist'.

"But I don't think the other symbols that represent organisms have eyes. The reason why it is the only one in the picture that has eyes, I think it just means that it is different, or that it can see other creatures see What do you think? What do you think?"

There was a bit of surprise and enlightenment on everyone's face.

If it wasn't for a coincidence that Ke Xun used a stick figure drawn by himself as the profile picture, I'm afraid he wouldn't have noticed such subtleties.

"Xiao Ke's discovery is very important," Hua Jiqiu said, "It is said that it may be able to see things that other creatures cannot see. I agree with this point. Does this explain the question that the center of the sacrificial scene is blank? What about it? ——Because the things they worship cannot be seen by the general public, and only the leader, or the great witch, can see it.”

"Then, the pair of eyes on its face probably represent what we called 'observation'." Zhu Haowen said, "It is most likely a 'person' with the power of 'observation' , or even gods, spirits, or ghosts.”

"Could it be that what it observes are... those things underground?" Wu You moved his butt sitting on the blanket uncomfortably.

"I think we still need to sort out the symbols on the other three rock walls and assemble them into a complete picture as shown on the rock wall before we can find more clues." Yue Cen said.

"Dongzi," Ke Xun said to Wei Dong, who was listening in a daze, "Hurry up and eat something, eat and drink enough, come to work, and put together the remaining three sets of BCD diagrams as they are."

Wei Dong wiped his mouth: "Don't eat, I will work hard now, and it will be done soon, let you see the hand speed of Tianxuan artist."

"It's the hand speed of a single dog." Ke Xun turned his head and whispered to Mu Yiran beside him.

Mu Yi nodded.

The author has something to say:

Ke Xun: I run fast.

Fang Fei: I swim fast.

Qingqing: I remember quickly.

Luo He: I'm crying so fast...

Weidong: I... my hands are fast...

Boss: I move fast.

Ke Xun: ...