Chapter 228: Queen Mother of the West Pot

For over an hour just now, we had been listening to that signal of venomous laughter-like sound all the way, my brain almost got used to it. When it suddenly went quiet in the boat, I already felt a bit unaccustomed. For no apparent reason, now I heard the same sound again in the darkness around me. I had always felt that sound was ominous; hearing it now, my heart felt very strange.

Although I felt it might be an auditory hallucination, it's better not to take things for granted in a place like this. I zipped up my jacket, turned on my flashlight, and walked toward the back of that rock to check.

The rock was very irregular, and I had no idea what type it was. The area was all dirt mounds; I didn't know where these scattered rocks came from. They couldn't have grown out of the ground.

Behind the rock was pitch black, a dead angle where the flashlight couldn't reach. I went around and shone the light, but saw nothing. The crevice behind the rock was very small, unlikely to hide anything. I kicked the rock and found it unstable. I shone around again, saw nothing, everything was calm, so I thought to myself that maybe I really had misheard. I shook my head and walked back. A Ning asked me what was wrong. I told her I might be a little jumpy, thinking there was something there.

I sat back by the campfire to warm up. Neither of us spoke. I leaned against the rock, originally intending only to close my eyes and rest, in case something else required our help. But exhaustion hit me, and I soon felt drowsy, and I don't know when I fell asleep.

When I woke up, it was already light, but not very bright, like early morning. The wind had completely stopped. I heard Zhaxi's voice. Getting up, I saw that everyone had come in, as if the outside camp had been moved inside. Tents had been set up and campfires lit. The Caucasian had already been moved into a tent. A Ning was still resting in a sleeping bag nearby. People were bustling around.

I had an extra blanket on me; I didn't know who had covered me. I struggled to get up, yawned, and looked around. At first glance, I was captivated by the scenery of the wind-eroded rocks around me, and I couldn't help but freeze.

In the daytime, the view of the Devil's City was extremely vast. The wind-eroded rocks around us were far more spectacular than they had seemed at night. Towering giant rock formations stood around us like pyramids. The rocks that had looked pitch black at night now revealed all kinds of strange shapes. Against the infinite desolation of the Gobi, this magnificent feeling was beyond words.

This wasn't even fully developed Yadan landform yet. If it were subjected to another million years of wind and sand erosion, how spectacular would the scenery be? I stared blankly for a while before snapping back to reality and noticing the people around me. They were transporting things from the sunken ship on the mound. The mound from last night was even taller than I had seen. They had driven nails and ropes into it for climbing, and set up a basket hoist. Some were excavating up top, while Wu Laosi was receiving and sorting below, with items sent down directly via the basket.

Dingzhu Zhuoma and her daughter-in-law had cooked breakfast and butter tea. Seeing me awake, she gestured for me to eat. I went over, drank a bowl of tea, took a piece of bread, and while eating, walked over to Wu Laosi and asked what they were doing.

Wu Laosi was said to be a professional in the field, recruited by Jude Kao. He seemed to like me a bit. Seeing me approach, he nodded and told me that the Caucasian's injuries were quite serious. The team doctor was still examining the wound on his abdomen—there were signs of infection—so the team might have to go back to regroup and reassess. They didn't want to return empty-handed; this sunken ship was a major discovery. They wanted to document it and bring some items back to report to the company.

I sat down next to him and looked up at the sunken ship overhead. It was huge! It hadn't seemed that big at night. The ship looked like a proper merchant vessel. Its bow had probably been exposed due to a previous collapse of the mound, and it was propped up in the air with support beams underneath.

Then I looked down at the things they had cleaned out from inside. Those pottery jars were each as big as a toilet bowl. Surprisingly, none of them were damaged, indicating that the sinking process had been very slow. The jars had patterns unique to the Western Regions,

"However, these ancient pottery pieces are quite old. Usually, our trade with the Western Regions involves porcelain. These pottery jars are the pinnacle of pottery development, likely from before the Tang Dynasty. I'm not sure if they were transported from the Central Plains to the Western Regions, or from the Western Regions to the Arab world. This area should already be within the territory of the Queen Mother of the West's kingdom. I wonder if it has anything to do with the Queen Mother of the West." Another man with glasses said beside him.

Wu Laosi nodded in agreement and said, "I also think it's very possible. Look." He pointed at a pattern on one of the pottery jars—it was the design of a bird. "This is one of the legendary totems of the Queen Mother of the West, the Three-Legged Green Bird. Of course, we can't rule out that people from other countries also used it. At the time, the Queen Mother of the West's kingdom was still the spiritual center of the Western Regions. Because of its strangeness and mystery, even though it was no longer as powerful as during the Zhou period, other nations still feared the legendary magic of the Queen Mother of the West and came to pay tribute or show reverence in form." I was completely uninterested in this—it fell into the realm of archaeology—so I interrupted them and asked, "Then what's inside these jars? They can't be empty, that would be such a waste."

The mouths of the jars were sealed with a special kind of clay—greenish, blackish, a bit like the clay seal on a wine jar. I smelled it; it had a pungent, spicy scent that felt familiar. I moved the jar; it had some weight, so there was definitely something inside, but it wasn't liquid.

I asked them why they didn't open them. Wu Laosi said they tried not to damage intact ones; they'd wait and see if there were any broken ones so they wouldn't have to open them. In case the contents were valuable and couldn't withstand oxidation, this would help preserve them and prevent archaeological waste. I laughed to myself, thinking that Third Uncle and his crew wouldn't bother with that—if Fatty were here, he'd smash them open without a second thought.

But we had to respect other people's methods. After I finished my last bite of bread, I told them to go ahead and handle it themselves, and to call me when they found a jar to open. Then I walked over to the Caucasian's tent to check on him.

Entering the tent, I found it cramped. Looking more closely, I saw that the other two bodies had also been moved down and were lying to one side, covered with thermal blankets. The team medic hadn't slept all night; the dark circles under his eyes were obvious. He was taking the Caucasian's temperature.

I asked him about the situation. He told me that the man was very dazed and talking nonsense, but he was better than before. The suffocation and lack of oxygen should no longer be a problem. However, that strange wound on his stomach... He had me look at the two bodies; they had similar wounds—one on the chest, one on the inner thigh. There was a small amount of blood, but no holes in their outer clothing. No one knew how they had appeared.

I walked over to the Caucasian. His face was pale, he was sweating profusely, but he was no longer using the respirator, which clearly meant he had stabilized. I saw his lips moving, as if he were saying something. I leaned in close to listen—it wasn't Chinese, it sounded like English.

"What is he saying?" I asked the medic. My English wasn't that good, anyway. I could manage business conversations, but I couldn't understand rambling like that.

The medic also shook his head, saying he couldn't hear clearly either. His English wasn't good, either. But after his consciousness had recovered a bit, the Caucasian had been muttering this nonstop.

I bent down to try to listen more closely, but still couldn't make it out. I gave up. I walked out of the tent, intending to go back and sleep more, since there was nothing for me to do here anyway.

I went to the sleeping area, lay down, and mulled over the events of last night. Soon I dozed off. I don't know how long I slept, but suddenly I heard someone calling my name. I sat up groggily and looked around, seeing a crowd gathered around Wu Laosi. He was waving at me, as if something was up.

I got up and walked over. As I approached them, I smelled an extremely strange odor—not exactly foul, but inhaling it made my throat burn as if I had breathed in sulfuric acid. It was very uncomfortable. I covered my nose and leaned in to look. Apparently they had found a few damaged jars and were smashing them open. Wu Laosi wanted me to see.

More than a dozen jars had already been broken. Wu Laosi was pouring out the contents one by one. The first thing I saw was clay fragments—the jars were full of dry black clay crumbs. Among these crumbs were some dirt balls, all covered in mud, very disgusting. Strangely, I noticed that the surfaces of these balls were covered in many black hairs, which looked very off.

There were already more than a dozen dirt balls piled to one side. I had no idea what they were. I thought to myself, could they be watermelons from back in the day that had turned to stone?

I moved closer and took a better look. I felt my breath catch. I realized that those dirt balls were actually human heads wrapped in dry mud, and those black hairs were the hair of the heads.