Chapter 268: Third Night: Relief Carving

We moved over almost everything we could use and also brought several buckets of mud. We didn't dare light a big bonfire, so we made a small pile of charcoal, and Fatty wouldn't even cook the canned food inside when making dinner—he set up the stove outside the ruins.

We figured those snakes would definitely start moving after the fog thickened, so we weren't in a hurry at dusk. I helped Fatty cook, and Poker-face kept watch from above.

But Fatty was quick, and I couldn't really help much. After opening the cans, I just stood there spacing out.

Fatty hated me looking like that the most. He said I was like a Lin Daiyu, always lost in thought about who knows what. How could there be so much in this world to ponder? Whether you live carefree or scheme your whole life, you still kick the bucket in the end. Since the outcome is the same, why bother with all the "entanglements" in between?

I was a bit surprised—Fatty actually used the fancy word "entanglements." Then I realized he'd said "eggs" instead, and I couldn't help but wryly smile.

Just as I was pondering, I heard Fatty call out: "Hey, what's little brother doing?"

I snapped back to attention, looked up, and saw Poker-face inside the temple rubbing something on the stone wall. I shouted, "What's up?"

Poker-face ignored me and kept working—maybe he didn't hear.

I was about done with my tasks anyway and got curious. I put down the can opener and climbed up. Going around the temple's corridor to his side, I saw he was smearing the wall with charcoal from the bonfire, as if trying to make a rubbing of something. I asked what he was doing. He pointed at the stone beside him: "I just found it."

A large patch of the wall had been blackened. I blew on it and saw that the stone surface had almost worn-away relief carvings.

"In daylight they're practically invisible. Only by coating them with charcoal dust can you get shadows to make them out," he said. Then he picked up another piece of charcoal from the fire and kept smearing.

As the black charcoal coated the rock, the interplay of light and shadow shifted. I moved around, found the right angle, and the relief on the stone emerged. The first thing I saw was a mass of snakes—hard to distinguish. The flickering light made the snake shadows waver as if they were alive.

Poker-face continued smearing, and we saw one ancient relief after another appear on the rock. After so many years, they still retained their form and spirit, emerging like magic under Poker-face's charcoal.

When he finished, he staggered, and I immediately steadied him. After looking over the whole thing, he said, "This tells the story of those snakes."

"What does it say?" I asked, since I couldn't see clearly.

"Can't make it out all at once," he said. "Need to study it slowly."

I was very interested in this, and besides, we hadn't seen much historical evidence about this place along the way. Not knowing anything about this place was the most direct cause of our current predicament, so I shifted position to find the best angle and focused hard on examining it.

I looked at them one by one, but none of them made sense—I had no idea what they meant. The reliefs depicted many things: some seemed to be sacrifices, others appeared to be rituals, but I couldn't really explain any of it.

Guessing and pondering, I felt a few panels seemed to show the ancient people of this place worshipping these crested poisonous snakes. They were throwing clay pots into holes—which looked like those stone towers with square openings we'd seen along the way—and large numbers of venomous snakes began crawling into the broken pots. A priest presided over the ceremony, with many people kneeling around.

So these offerings were for the snakes here? Did these people regard these venomous snakes as gods? That wasn't unusual—snake worship is very common. The ancients didn't understand venom; they only knew that a bite meant death. Seeing such a small wound kill a person, they thought it was due to magical power. Many ethnic minorities in China worship snakes.

These crested snakes might like to eat the eggs of the Corpse King, but those eggs should be extremely toxic. Which is more poisonous, the snake or the Corpse King? Poker-face shifted his position. The adjacent relief showed many figures wielding spears, fighting fiercely with people dressed like the ancient inhabitants. Many bodies were pierced by spears—it seemed to be a war.

The battle seemed unfavorable for the Kingdom of the Queen Mother of the West, since their numbers were clearly far smaller than the enemy's. The Queen Mother's side was all infantry, while the enemy force included cavalry. The enemy commander sat in a chariot pulled by eight horses at the rear. The Queen Mother herself did not appear in the relief. All the carvings were exquisitely detailed, even the facial features meticulously rendered, lifelike—clearly the work of master artisans.

"This is… war…" Poker-face murmured.

"Looks like the Kingdom of the Queen Mother was invaded by a more advanced civilization—maybe Loulan or the Northern Xiongnu," I said. "I can't make out their clothing styles, but the weapons look Central Plains-style. Probably Loulan's army. The one in the chariot should be the King of Loulan."

I felt pretty confident about that, but Poker-face wasn't paying attention to my words. Instead, he touched the figure of the commander on the chariot and frowned.

I thought, "What's wrong?" Suddenly he raised his hand, pointed at the enemy leader, and said to me, "I know this person." — Chapter 26, Third Night: Déjà Vu.

"Huh?" I was stunned. I thought to myself, "You know him? Is he your second uncle?" But then Poker-face added something, and I immediately realized I'd misunderstood. He said, "Eight horses… This man is King Mu of Zhou."

"King Mu of Zhou? The one who wrote the 'Travels of Emperor Mu'?"

I was also very familiar with the legend of Emperor Mu—the group had often mentioned it before we came. The legend mainly records how King Mu of Zhou led seven elite soldiers, driving the eight fine horses—Red Steed, Black Steed, White Righteousness, Leap Wheel, Mountai, Canal Yellow, Chestnut, and Green Ear—with Zaofu as charioteer and Bo Yao as guide. Starting from Zongzhou, they crossed the Zhang River, passed through Hezong, Yangxu Mountain, Unicorn Jade Mountain, and other places, finally reaching the land of the Queen Mother of the West, where they feasted and exchanged pleasantries.

In other words, he came to the Queen Mother's palace on eight horses as a tourist and was warmly entertained by the Queen Mother.

But from the relief, Emperor Mu didn't seem like a tourist. Could the legend be wrong? Did King Mu really come to the Kingdom of the Queen Mother that year, but to fight? I immediately looked at the next panel, and it made me gasp. The relief showed King Mu's army storming into a palace. Many snake-headed, human-bodied women appeared, pouring something into the openings of those towers. Then countless crested snakes crawled out of the towers and engaged King Mu's army in a fierce struggle.

Seeing this, I immediately understood the meaning of those stone towers in the rainforest: "Looks like King Mu did attack this place back then, but was defeated by the poisonous snakes. To cover up his failure, he probably made up that story. These snakes protected the Kingdom of the Queen Mother—no wonder they worshiped them like gods. It's like how the Manchus don't kill crows."

Thinking further, I felt it was more than that. Those stone towers must be connected underground. The snakes lived in the tunnels beneath the city and were fed human heads by the people. When danger came, something was used to lure the snakes out to fight. It was a designed defense system. These snakes were so venomous and fast that nobody could stop them.

In other words, people lived in the city, and snakes lived under the city. Now that all the people were dead, the snakes came to the surface. The Queen Mother's civilization was similar to the Amazonians', who used piranhas to defend against enemies and beasts. They also offered sacrifices to piranhas with live humans and animals—here they used human heads.

Looking further, everything matched our deductions. My understanding of this place gradually became clearer.

Just as I was feeling smug, Poker-face's gaze stopped at the very center of this stone wall. The relief there was a huge circular pattern, clearly the central composition of the entire rock carving. It depicted a scene of a giant snake surrounded by many small crested snakes, all battling each other. The giant snake was coiled around a huge tree, while the crested snakes wrapped around it like decorative patterns.

"That's that double-scaled python fighting these crested snakes. Looks like there were already two kinds of snakes here during the Queen Mother's time. This double-scaled python might be a natural predator of the crested snakes," I said.

Poker-face felt the carving and shook his head: "No, that's mating."

"Mating?" I was stunned, a bit confused. After thinking for a moment, I understood what he meant. "Are you saying the crested snakes and this double-scaled python are crossbreeding? But these are two completely different snakes, and their sizes are so different—how could they mate?"

"Do you know what a 'madam' is?" Poker-face suddenly asked me.

"Madam?" I was baffled, wondering why he suddenly asked about that. "A madam is a woman who runs a brothel."

"That's a sort of nickname. A madam is actually a kind of bird. In ancient times, people discovered that this bird only had females, no males. To reproduce, they could mate with any other species of bird, becoming the wife of all birds. So people used 'old madam' to refer to a prostitute who is available to anyone," Poker-face said calmly. "However, in reality, the ancient understanding of the madam bird was completely wrong. Madam birds actually have males, but the male and female individuals of this species are too different in size—the male is several times larger than the female—so they were mistakenly thought to be two different species."

I understood what he meant and immediately grasped the implication: "So you're saying these two types of snakes are actually the same species, just different sexes with different body sizes. Then which one is the male and which is the female?"

"Based on the numbers, the smaller ones should be male and the larger ones female. But it could be the other way around." He touched the surface of the rock, then suddenly extended his unusually long fingers to feel the pattern of the huge tree entwined by the double-scaled giant python. "Strange."

"What's wrong?" I also touched it but couldn't tell anything, so I looked at him. He frowned, then suddenly stepped back a few paces, picked up the charcoal, and began coating the uncolored parts above and below the relief.

Soon the entire relief on the stone wall was revealed. I also stepped back to look. The moment I saw the full scene, my mouth fell open and I stood frozen.

In the relief, the huge tree entwined by the double-scaled giant snake—when viewed from a distance—wasn't a tree at all, but an even larger snake coiled into a circle. This snake was so enormous that compared to it, the double-scaled giant snake was like a chopstick next to a rolling pin, and the cockscomb snakes were like toothpicks. So when looking at just a part, you couldn't tell it was a snake.

"This... what is this thing? A dragon?" I gasped. The double-scaled giant snake was already huge, and this one was so much larger—its diameter was like that of a liberation truck. Could this even be considered a snake anymore? Poker-face stared blankly, not speaking, as he ran his fingers one by one over the patterns of the cockscomb snakes. After feeling them for a while, he said, "Look, these small snakes aren't coiled around this brocade python. They're just clustered on it, helping it not to slip down. What's actually mating is this double-scaled giant python and this giant snake..."

I immediately traced the patterns where the small snakes coiled, and indeed found that they were only intertwined with each other and not wrapped around the double-scaled python. The double-scaled giant python, however, was tightly coiled around the giant snake. Stunned, I suddenly realized something and took a cold breath, saying, "My god, Fatty was right!"