Chapter 362: Prophecy

According to the mural's content, the resurrected prince returned to shore in a non-human form, used his overwhelming martial power to kill the traitors and their entire army, and reclaimed the throne.

He then promoted more advanced architectural techniques and bronze smelting technology within the kingdom, constructing grand ancestral temples and palace complexes.

In the final scene of the mural, the prince—or rather, the King of Cangze—wore a completely opaque yellow robe and sat upon his throne, gazing down at his subjects, tiny as ants beneath the palace, with eyes inlaid with pearls.

Sikong Lan suddenly shivered; the mural's artistic style was primitive and wild, and the subjects serving as background figures were merely a few lines, like those in Huashan rock art, yet the depiction of the King of Cangze was extraordinarily vivid.

His cold gaze seemed to pierce through a thousand years of time, fixed upon the three figures in the elliptical hall.

"The Dan people are descendants of the Baiyue; the Kingdom of Cangze belonged to the Baiyue."

Zhang Fuluang frowned, slowly piecing together the existing clues in his mind: "The Kingdom of Cangze did not survive for some reason, but the ancestors of the Tu family were 'pure Cangze people' hiding among the Dan,

or originally ordinary Dan people who accidentally acquired a Cangze inheritance such as divine molting, thereby becoming wealthy.

As for these rock murals—"

"According to mythological theory, all the content in the mural can be explained."

Li Cheng said: "Each ethnic group across the world, isolated geographically, spoke different languages and held different customs, yet all passed through stages of cave-dwelling, slash-and-burn agriculture, and feudal city-states, resulting in highly convergent mythological and religious stories.

The first scene of the mural—the court coup—symbolizes the hero's peaceful life being violently disrupted;

the second scene—the prince's family murdered and his body dismembered—symbolizes the hero enduring trials;

the third scene—the prince encountering the frog-shaped rock—symbolizes the hero meeting a prophet or ally and receiving aid;

the fourth scene—the prince reshaping his body—symbolizes the hero escaping the confines of mortal flesh, becoming a mythic being superior to humans—this is common in mythology: heroes often must die once and gain a new body to transcend humanity.

The fifth scene returns to shore and kills the enemies; the sixth scene rules the nation, revered and worshipped by the people, becoming a figure of myth."

Mythology, at its root, is a branch of anthropology; from Shakespeare's plays, to the Four Great Classical Novels, to real-world films, video games, manhua, and instant-noodle anime, all still follow the mythic hero's narrative framework—just as Optimus Prime's resurrection in Transformers 2 and Nezha's lotus-body rebirth follow the same pattern.

Sikong Lan didn't understand mythology, but he roughly grasped that Li Cheng did not believe the mural's content; he hesitated: "Then what about the king's non-human appearance?"

"Merely propaganda to maintain rule."

Li Cheng said casually: "Yu Shun had double pupils; Ji Chang had four breasts; Can Cong had vertical eyes; Liu Bei's arms reached past his knees. The more exaggerated the description of unusual physical traits, the more it proves one is not ordinary, and the greater the legitimacy of rule. Liu Bang even slew a white serpent—did he really? If he did."

Don't forget history is written by the victors; the mural naturally favors the new king who holds power.

Notice the second-to-last scene: the king promoted more advanced architectural and bronze smelting technologies in Cangze, didn't he?

In ancient times, the early relationship between the Baiyue and the Central Plains was built on trade: the Baiyue exchanged ivory, rhino horn, and tortoiseshell for silk and handicrafts from the Central Plains—infrequent exchanges.

Only during the Zhou and Spring and Autumn periods did interactions between them grow increasingly close.

The King of Cangze must have lived during the period when Central Plains bronze technology spread southward to Lingnan.

From this point, we can infer backward: the mural's resurrection scene was likely a glorification of the ruler—he did not die in human sacrifice and regain new life,

but fled to the Central Plains, acquiring advanced technology and military support from the Central Plains people.

As for the frog-shaped statue, I lean toward two parts truth, eight parts fiction, heavily embellished."

The myriad worlds contain too many bizarre phenomena—even the academicians serving as the Special Affairs Bureau's think tank had once bluntly said, "I once believed in science," yet reviving a corpse corroded by seawater and devoured by marine life is still too absurd.

Even the necromantic black magic of the Demon Scientist Alliance requires the corpse to be as fresh and intact as possible to resurrect the dead.

"If I'm not mistaken, this should be a sacred site or ancestral temple of the ancient Kingdom of Cangze. If we proceed further, we'll find more clues."

Li Cheng strode forward; Sikong Lan and Zhang Fuluang exchanged glances and had no choice but to follow.

At the end of the elliptical hall lay a corridor, wider and straighter than the tunnel they had emerged from.

The walls and ceiling of the corridor were painted with murals continuing the narrative of the elliptical hall, depicting the ancient Kingdom of Cangze's transition from the Neolithic Age into the Bronze Age.

Seeing Li Cheng silent, Sikong Lan asked in confusion: "Is something wrong?"

"There are no ritual vessels."

In the late primitive society, clan nobility emerged, and ritual vessels arose, rapidly developing during the Shang and Zhou dynasties.

Ding, yan, and fu for holding food; jiao, jue, and dou for holding wine; zhong and qing for musical performance, and so on.

Yet in Cangze, just entering the Bronze Age and supposedly fervently worshipping spirits, not a single bronze ritual vessel appears in the murals.

The entire kingdom resembled a cold, running arms factory,

slaves mining ore in mines, craftsmen casting bronze using the piece-mold and lost-wax methods,

soldiers armed with bronze weapons launching attacks against other Baiyue kingdoms and less civilized tribes, capturing vast numbers of slaves to send into the mines.

There were those who opposed the king, yet whether it was wars launched by enemy armies, assassinations plotted by domestic nobles, or rebellions sparked by slaves,

the king with pearl eyes and a yellow robe concealing his form always foresaw threats like he had divine sight, crushing them in their cradle.

The dim glow of the luminous pearls illuminated scene after scene of murals; the ancient Kingdom of Cangze exhausted its national strength, smelting vast quantities of extraordinarily precise parts from accumulated bronze—gears, cranks, connecting rods, bearings, among others.

The machining precision was so high it bridged a two-thousand-year technological gap, rivaling the underground black workshops of Peshawar in the modern world.

One couldn't help but wonder: where did the King of Cangze obtain these technologies, and what was he planning to build with them?

The mural's artist skillfully depicted the king's aging and the passage of time by gradually changing his hair color from black to white.

Until the king reached the end of life, the project finally took shape—a magnificent bronze vessel far beyond its time.

Sikong Lan and Zhang Fuluang stared, dumbfounded, at the entire wall occupied by the bronze ship, motionless in the cave, with no sails.

Li Cheng, however, strode forward, scanning the murals on both sides.

Until his final breath, the King of Cangze never saw the great vessel completed. His corpse was placed at the deepest part of the ship, and the kingdom was inherited jointly by his five sons, each inheriting one non-human organ from their father—such as gills, frog tongues.

Among them, the prince who possessed the pearl eyes was exceptionally unique; he took his wife, children, loyal soldiers, and vast numbers of slaves, fled the city, hid deep within a cave, and left the murals in the elliptical hall.

When the earthquake came and the entire Kingdom of Cangze sank beneath the sea, and the bronze vessel vanished, only this prince and those with him survived.

Further ahead, the corridor walls had large sections peeling away, rendering many murals unrecognizable,

only the last two murals remained relatively clear.

"Precognition Ability."

Li Cheng slowly exhaled a deep breath; the king evaded countless assassinations, the prince avoided the earthquake, the straw-cloaked man sent the prophecy painting to Longhu Mountain—all of these stemmed from the immense precognitive power granted by the pearl eyes.

Tap-tap-tap-tap.

Sikong Lan and Zhang Fuluang hurried forward; when they saw the last two murals, they both stopped abruptly, faces as pale as paper.

The mural on the left depicted two black-clothed figures with blurred faces standing in a corridor — one slender figure holding a luminous night pearl, the other with a short sword at his waist. Their poses perfectly matched the two of them at that moment.

The mural on the right, meanwhile, depicted a bloody case that had occurred at a birthday banquet in an imposing mansion.

(End of chapter)