The Lost Tomb Vol. 7

Chapter 45: Tips from Guangxi

If the reliefs carved around the iron plate were expressed in a straight line, then the left side of this large relief was a "Hou", the middle had several people who were fleeing, and the right was a group of ethnic minorities wearing strange clothes. There were three holes at the bottom of the carving.

What interested me the most was the orientation of what was going on inside the picture. Based on the content, the Hou was still in pursuit even though it was locked on the iron plate.

The people in the middle didn't have any right hands and were facing away from the animal, but the group of ethnic minorities facing the fleeing people had to be an important detail. In other words, the ethnic militia and Hou had formed a front-to-back battle array against the people in the middle.

This could be interpreted any number of ways. My first instinct was that this was a fight between two parties: one animal and a group of people who were killing the people with missing right hands.

Based on the drawings, this seemed like the most reasonable interpretation, but what was the significance of such a thing? I really couldn't figure it out.

I was almost certain that such a specific relief sculpture was definitely conveying something and couldn't be pure decoration. Decorations were generally dragon and phoenix patterns that could be reproduced indefinitely and would easily give people a sense of unity.

But if this interpretation wasn't logical, then there were still some things to consider. For example, was this an ambush?

Ethnic swordsmen were lying in wait in front, while the men without right hands were responsible for being the bait. But if the other party was a Hou—I didn't believe this kind of creature really existed—then these swordsmen would all be burnt to ash if they couldn't kill it in a second.

Relief sculptures were generally exaggerated. It was possible they couldn't explain what they encountered at that time, so they applied a mythical image to it.

But speculating like this wouldn't get any results, so I took a closer look at the details on all the reliefs. They were very clear thanks to the professional SLR camera, but a closer look only led to more disappointment. The relief sculpture had no details at all.

If we assumed that they weren't continuous and each relief had its own meaning, then it was even more difficult to analyze.

I could only look at it and shake my head, unable to make anything of it. Xiao Hua leaned back and said, "This is a bit like a thousand-mile lock. It seems we may have to go back to the iron plate before we can get some answers."

I silently nodded. I had heard that a thousand-mile lock was a ruse and not a real lock, but it was still a very effective preventive measure. In order to multiply the operating cost of a thing, it was best to separate all the factors that made it successful. For example, the door was in the South Pole and the key was in the North Pole. In Norse mythology, slain demons were often cut into numerous pieces and scattered across the world. In this way, conspiracy theorists would have to travel for centuries to revive the fiend.

But since there was an opening mechanism, this ancient Zhang Jialou couldn't be a tomb. I figured it was more likely to be related to a system of mass graves, where every few generations, the Zhang family's dead would be moved into the ancient building in accordance with their ancestral teachings.

The only problem was that I didn't know how this matter was related to Yangshi Lei. The surname Lei and the royal surname Aisin Gioro were clearly written on the Yangshi Lei drawing, but there was no reason to pay for this mysterious "Zhang Jialou" to be built.