The Lost Tomb Vol. 7

Chapter 47: Completion of the Relief

The alcoves in the three cave walls in front of me were suddenly filled up, and the three walls became a single one, while the things protruding from them looked like part of some relief sculpture.

The whole process happened so fast that we could do nothing but silently and cautiously watch as the changes around us took place. In a single moment, all the holes grew "things", which immediately formed into a strange picture. The whole process was extremely shocking.

I even had a vague impression that something was going to rush out of the wall.

After using a flashlight to shine on the things sticking out of the alcoves, we found that they had all been carved out of the same stone as the wall, and each carving was different. At first glance, I could see that they were all part of a relief sculpture.

When I stepped back to the entrance of the cave and looked at it as a whole, I immediately understood what was going on. Originally, this cave wall had been carved with a relief sculpture, but it had been knocked out until there was nothing left.

And these alcoves were holes that had been dug in the relief sculpture, just like puzzle pieces. One piece was dug here, one there, and all the excavated parts were actually embedded in the depths of the holes. When activated by the mechanism, the holes would be pushed up by the machine inside and filled in, causing the whole picture to appear.

It was truly ingenious. With such a setup, there should be some information concealed in the relief, but the most critical parts were hidden and could only be seen after the relief was restored.

But I was speechless as I stared at the cave wall. Except for the key parts, the rest of the relief had been knocked out, and it was easy to see why the cave wall appeared so rough.

At almost the exact same time, Xiao Hua and his buddy came to the same conclusion. No one paid any attention to the pig anymore. We all walked towards the wall and looked at the parts that had been pushed out.

After a difficult analysis, we found that the relief sculptures on the iron plate were different from the carvings. The most obvious ones were the carvings of human hands. They were all very small and indistinct, and were obviously the hands of the troops from the panoramic view of the iron plate. Some of the carved lines were difficult to make out, but there were still some clear details. I could see a part at the top where an eye was engraved, and figured it had to be part of a face. But the eye wasn't human and I didn't know what kind of face it was.

Since there was a panoramic view and a carved face, it had to be a relief sculpture of either a narrative or a scene. As soon as I thought this, I suddenly remembered the photos that had been sent from Guangxi. Those reliefs and the ones here seemed to be somewhat similar in detail.

I immediately wanted to ask Xiao Hua, but saw that he had already taken out the photos for a comparison. After comparing several details, we found that we were on the right track. Among the three reliefs around the disc pattern in the Guangxi photos, we found the same details in the reliefs right before us.

Those hands were the right hands of the people facing the ethnic minorities in the photo I saw before. And the eye was exactly the same as the "Hou's" eye in the photo.

It appeared that the relief on the Guangxi mountain wall in the photo was the original relief on the cave wall here. The two were exactly the same.

So that's what happened, I said to myself. Although the reliefs here had been carved one by one, the carving techniques were very superb and the knife edges were very round. It was obviously a fine work of meticulous carving. I had already determined that the relief from the Guangxi photos seemed to be the perfunctory work of an expert, so it was very likely that the Guangxi relief was a copy or imitation of the prototype here.

But what was the significance of such a setup? If it was as Xiao Hua had said and the relief sculpture on the other side of Guangxi was actually a clue meant for here, then what was it?

I tried to figure it out by comparing the photos with everything around me, hoping to find something strange. But after looking at it for half a day, I found nothing inspiring.

I looked around again, and found that if I turned my back to the hole, then the "Hou" was on the wall to my left. If those reliefs hadn't been knocked out, then the shape of the "Hou" must have been quite spectacular. On the cave wall in front of me, there were those figures missing their right hands, while the ethnic minorities lying in wait were on the cave wall to my right.

The three holes in the photo seemed to represent the holes behind me, since they were in the exact same order.

None of us spoke as we all looked between the photos and the whole cave wall very carefully. I sat down and took a sip of wine, feeling like something was off.

I found that the patterns in the photos were very simple and not at all complicated. It obviously wasn't a kind of very fine relief sculpture, but simple carvings made it difficult to see if any special information was there.

I turned my attention to the iron plate and immediately understood the problem.

There were numerous complicated patterns on the iron plate, but there were also two large patterns that formed a cross on it. The top of the cross had a nipple-shaped protrusion at the twelve o'clock position that was very large.

The pictures of the iron disc had this protrusion at the Hou's position, while the one in front of me was at the hole's position. If this projection represented the direction of the iron plate, then that meant the iron plate was pointing in the wrong direction.

When I called Xiao Hua over to take a look, he also frowned. "It seems that the one in this photo is a schematic diagram, which tells us how to place everything here. This iron plate can rotate, so if it's pushed to the same position as the photo, it will probably trigger the next mechanism." I said.

Xiao Hua touched the iron plate, looked at the photo, and seemed to think it was a very reasonable conclusion. "Is it clockwise or counterclockwise?"

"Generally speaking, it should be counter-clockwise. But we started the mechanism with pig's blood just now, so its direction may also change. We'll have to test it out." I started to go up, but Xiao Hua grabbed me this time and said, "It's better not to turn it again."