Chapter 97: Sacrifice

When Lao Yang and I heard this, we both asked him what he had thought of. He scratched his head and said, "I'm just making a rough guess. This bronze tree might not be the key; what matters could be the grooves on it. During the sacrifices back then, this thing might have been used to collect liquids, such as rainwater, blood, or dew."

Lao Yang asked him, "Like when ancient emperors collected dew to brew tea? That stuff, what was it called, 'rootless water'?"

Liang Shiye used his fountain pen to scrape out some black residue from those grooves. After thousands of years, it was impossible to tell if it was dried blood from ancestors or sediment from rainwater. He looked at the branches again and said, "Look, there are also bayonet-style blood grooves underneath these branches, all the way to the cloud-and-thunder patterns. These branches must have had a function during the rituals. It's very possible that it has something to do with blood sacrifice."

We threw Uncle Tai's corpse off the branches. After a moment of stillness, nothing else happened. Lao Yang grew impatient and urged us to hurry up and leave.

I climbed up, asking Liang Shiye about his views on those grooves. Why did he think these grooves were related to the ancient sacrifice, and how was such a sacrifice carried out?

Liang Shiye told me that although the Western Zhou Dynasty's sacrifices were not as brutal as the Shang Dynasty's, human sacrifice was unavoidable. The so-called different methods of sacrifice were just different ways of killing the human victims. For example, sacrificing to the earth meant burying people alive, sacrificing to the fire god meant burning people to death, and sacrificing to the river god meant throwing people into the river.

Here, with a giant bronze tree that seemed to reach the sky, the sacrifice might have been directed at a divine tree like Fusang or Ruomu, or perhaps at the wood god, Goumang. Typically, such deities were worshipped with blood sacrifices.

Just now, Uncle Tai's blood flowed along the bronze branches into the cloud-and-thunder patterns on the bronze tree, all the way down. Such a pathway, if not pre-designed, could not have run so smoothly. Coupled with the traces of bayonet-style blood grooves on the branches, it was very clear that this place was definitely an altar used for blood sacrifices.

In what is called blood sacrifice, most of the time blood is poured into the ground. During the sacrifice, the victim was surely fixed to these bronze branches, the blood drawn from the body and channeled into the cloud-and-thunder patterns on the tree trunk. If the blood did not coagulate halfway, it would flow all the way to the roots of this bronze tree, deeply buried beneath the rock, symbolizing the offering of blood to the god.

To put it more vividly, the patterns on the whole tree were like the drainage gutters in an autopsy room. No matter how much blood came from several dissection tables, it would all eventually be collected by these grooves into the drainage gutter and then flow into the sewer. Only here, the drainage gutters were made to look like decorative patterns, which also perfectly explains why the grooves between these cloud-and-thunder patterns were so abnormally deep.

Such a cruel and large-scale sacrifice, obviously, even for the most powerful state, could not be sustained for long. Therefore, ancient records only contain sporadic accounts. As for the specific ritual process and how many human victims were needed, everything remains unknown.

Hearing Liang Shiye's words, I felt both admiration for the wisdom of the ancients and a chill of fear. Such a massive project, built solely as a tool for killing, was utterly foolish. Thinking of countless slaves impaled upside down on these branches, their blood flowing through the bronze grooves, turning the entire tree into a pillar of blood, I felt as if a bone-chilling cold was seeping from those grooves.

Feeling a bit uneasy, I said to Lao Yang, "Let's move faster. Otherwise, if Uncle Tai's blood flows down, the wood god might think someone is offering a sacrifice again. The old man might come out for a stroll and take us as offerings."

Lao Yang dismissed Liang Shiye's words entirely, saying to me, "Don't believe everything he says. Where would China have had so many people to kill for fun back then? I think what's stuck here for bloodletting might be pig heads or sheep heads. If we climb a bit higher, we might even see some thousand-year-old pig jerky stuck up there. Besides, even if it were humans, what of it? After a person dies, blood coagulates quickly. Don't worry. It's high up here; the blood will dry before it reaches the bottom. And even if it did, your blood wouldn't be good enough for the god. Back then, people were natural—ate pesticide-free food, drank unpolluted water. That was real farmer's blood—a little sweet. Now look at you: if your blood flowed out, the old god would get food poisoning for sure. So this is all just a trick."

I was so furious that veins bulged on my forehead. I couldn't help but curse, "Fuck you! What the hell are you talking about? How is my blood poisonous? Can't you shut your damn mouth for once..."

Seeing I was really angry, Liang Shiye quickly mediated, saying, "Gentlemen, read the situation! Under these circumstances, let's not make jokes. Don't you think these branches are getting denser and denser? If this continues, climbing up will become even harder."

Lao Yang said, "They've always been sparse in some places and dense in others. Denser makes it easier to climb. Or would you rather they be sparse, with two meters between each branch, and we do a human pyramid up here dozens of meters high?"

I said to Lao Yang, "Don't jump to conclusions. Something feels off. Turn on your flashlight."

When we came up, we were still using torches for light, because the flashlight in Uncle Tai's bag didn't have much battery left and we didn't want to waste it. But now I wanted to see something in the distance, and a torch couldn't do that. Lao Yang turned on the flashlight, focused the beam, and shone it upward. I saw that above our heads, the bronze branches were gradually becoming denser and more numerous. Seven or eight meters up, they were already as dense as thorns. To continue upward, we would have to hang out from the tree first, then step on the tips of these branches to climb. That would be much more dangerous than climbing while hugging the bronze tree.

At this point, even if there was a dragon's den or a tiger's pit ahead, we had to brave it. Lao Yang told us to stay where we were. He climbed out to the branches first, then dropped down the rope he had found from Uncle Tai. Liang Shiye and I grabbed the rope and followed him up.

Looking further up, the situation was no longer what we had seen from below. The bronze branches were so dense that there was almost no place to put a hand. I climbed a bit and thought to myself, no wonder Uncle Tai fell. Going further up, it would be hard to even find a foothold. With one misstep or a gust of the crosswind from above, it would be certain death.

At this moment, Lao Yang was climbing very fast. I had no energy left to call out to him. I could only focus, making sure I didn't fall behind while constantly reminding myself to watch my step. I couldn't use the torch anymore because I didn't have a free hand, so I extinguished it and tucked it into my waistband.

This section was so treacherous that almost no one spoke. Soon, under the flashlight's beam, I noticed the rock walls around the bronze tree were also changing. Natural stalactite cones and dissolved rock curtains appeared, indicating that we had left the artificially carved area. The section above was a naturally formed cave.

As we passed through this area, the rock walls began to narrow. I also noticed that on both sides, there were rock caves of various sizes, none very deep, with bottoms visible. A few caves seemed to contain something that reflected the flashlight. These phenomena gradually made me uneasy. But the rock walls were still dozens of meters away from us, so I doubted that anything from the opposite wall could directly affect us.

I was so distracted by the caves on the side that I didn't notice Lao Yang and Liang Shiye ahead had stopped until I bumped into Liang Shiye's butt. I looked up and saw above us many of those masked monkeys, exactly like the ones we had encountered earlier.

Looking more carefully, I saw the monkeys were already dead. The hot wind blowing from above had dried their bodies into mummies, twisted grotesquely, with their limbs caught in the dense branches, preventing them from falling. There were dozens of such dried corpses. The eerie masks hadn't fallen off as the bodies shriveled; they still silently stared at us, as if they might come back to life at any moment.

We slowed down and carefully observed these strange things.

The monkeys' bodies seemed to have a skin disease. Most of their fur had fallen off, revealing a grayish-white color that looked somewhat like human skin. But on closer inspection, there were very obvious spots of disease. Judging by their size, these monkeys were about as tall as a fifteen- or sixteen-year-old child (though not Yao Ming's height), maybe a bit taller. Under these circumstances, my sense of height was nearly useless.

The masks on the monkeys' faces looked like stone, polished to perfection. I even suspected they might be porcelain. From the junction of the mask and the monkey's head, the mask seemed to be fused into the flesh, or attached to the face by some bloody means, grown together.

Most of the dried corpses were intact; only a few were missing a limb, probably due to natural fragmentation from extreme desiccation over the long ages.

Liang Shiye told us to stop climbing. Pointing at one of the dried corpses, he said, "Wait a moment. I think the posture of these monkeys is a bit strange. I feel I've seen something like this before. Let me take a closer look."

Lao Yang said to him, "You're so troublesome, wanting to look at everything. Be careful, or those monkeys down below might think your posture is strange."

Liang Shiye ignored Lao Yang. He carefully climbed closer to the nearest dried corpse, grabbed its mask, and the dry facial skin immediately cracked. Liang Shiye easily tore off the mask. He leaned in to look at the face of the dried corpse, then turned to us and said, "G... gentlemen, this... doesn't seem to be a monkey. This is a... human face."