"Death is a dead head!" As soon as I touched the two holes, I knew that the ball was filled with a skull.
A mole changed her face slightly, but she reacted better than me.
She held on and said: "Yunfeng, you are a grown man, but you are still a tomb robber. What should the skull be afraid of! How dare you kiss this thing if your second son is here."
"Start! I'll do it!" She frowned slightly and got started.
Because I had already cracked the ball open with a big crack before, she didn't expend much effort this time, just hit it with a rock a few times and it was opened.
This time it was really true. What I guessed before was correct. There was indeed a dead skull inside the ball.
Some areas of the skull have been weathered. What is strange is that there are some gilt layers on the surface of the skull. These gilt layers are scattered and do not look like words, but more like some kind of pattern symbols.
In ancient crafts, I have heard about gilding copper, gilding silver, thin gold hairpins, gold and silver, gold and silver threads, etc., but I have never heard of using gilding craftsmanship on the skulls of dead people.
The gilt layer around the skull's eye sockets is golden, and paired with the pure black skull, the style is quite strange.
A mole frowned and said: "In the early years, when I was helping a Chengde gang do logistics, I saw something similar, but that thing was not a skull, but a small piece of human finger bone. At that time, the leader of the gang told me that this thing was from the Spring and Autumn Period and the Warring States Period.
period.”
She looked up at the trapezoidal bronze vessels on the roof of the cave and said, "Yunfeng, you're pretty sure. There are dozens of these at first glance. Just smash one down and we'll study it."
．
"Yeah," I nodded in agreement.
At this height, I couldn't even reach it by jumping, so I still used the old method of hitting it with stones. I specially picked a bigger stone.
"Bang!"
I hit it with the first hit, and the stone and bronze collided together, making a long and crisp echo.
Hearing this sound, I already agreed with a mole's previous guess. Ninety percent of this row of trapezoidal bronze vessels are chimes.
"I'm trying harder," a mole looked up.
"Bang!" The last blow was a solid blow.
With a pop, the chime bell fell into the river. A mole was already prepared, and she fished it out in less than a minute.
After catching it, I will study it.
This bronze vessel is narrow at the top and wide at the bottom. It has some red spots and green rust on the body. In addition, the waist line, fan line, and cloud and thunder patterns are all very regular. This is an old Western Zhou item that can be opened at a glance.
I weighed it and found it was a bit too light, so I lifted it up lightly.
"Sister Hong, try it. Why do I feel that the weight is not right?"
A mole reached out and picked it up, "Hey, it's so light. Isn't this made of bronze?"
A mole is older than me. She has been in this industry all year round and has seen many more things than me. She used her fingernails to pick up the patina on the copper chime. The patina was very buoyant and would fall off with a light touch.
Already.
Once the green rust faded away, the gray-black background was revealed inside the trapezoidal chime clock.
A mole frowned after looking at it and said: "It's not bronze. This is a good thing. If I guessed correctly, it should be made of Tiantie."
"Iron chimes?" I stared and said in disbelief: "Sister Hong, there were iron tools in the Western Zhou Dynasty? No? Did you admit it wrong?"
She shook her head, "You didn't understand. What I said was Tiantie, not pig iron. Iron tools appeared in the late Spring and Autumn Period. To put it bluntly, Tiantie is meteorite, a meteorite mine. No wonder the weight feels wrong as soon as you get started."
A mole said that the trapezoidal chimes were made of meteorite iron. In fact, there is evidence. A few years ago, in 1996, the Henan Provincial Institute of Cultural Relics and Archeology and the Sanmenxia Cultural Relics Working Team joined forces.
The cemetery conducted rescue excavations and finally discovered two rusty iron swords. The two daggers came from the tomb of Guo Zhong. After X-ray radiation analysis, the archaeological team found many similar high-concentration nickel on the iron swords.
Finally, these two swords from the Bronze Age were identified as meteorite swords by the national archaeological team.
"Sister Hong, tell me, this thing is so precious, why don't we carry it out?" Knowing the preciousness of this chime, I felt a little greedy.
I muttered in my heart, "Rather than put it in this dark underground river, why not let me take it out? It's not a waste of natural resources, right?"
A mole glanced at the chime on the ground, and she was also a little moved.
"It's not heavy, so let's take it with us. Not a single person will come to this place for hundreds of years." She shook her head and motioned for me to bring the chime.
I took off my shirt and twisted it into a rope. I didn't mind the coldness of the chimes. I carried the chimes behind my back and tied them up with my clothes, and then tied a knot in front of my chest. That was done. I shook it, but it didn't move at all. It was stable.
.
"Is your chest okay?"
"It's okay, Sister Hong," I patted myself on the back, "I carried hundreds of thousands on my back, and it doesn't hurt at all. Now, I'm fine."
A mole smiled and said: "Don't panic, I'll be looking for help when we get out. When the time comes, call the boss and the third, and let's get this out."
"It's matching, it's a good feeling," I tightened the straps on my chest.
We continued walking along the underground river, and I looked back from time to time. I always felt that the chimes hanging on the roof of the cave were like a lot of banknotes, swaying in the wind and waving to me.
About 200 meters away from here, while walking, my nose felt hot and suddenly I had a nosebleed for no reason.
"Wait a minute, Sister Hong," I quickly raised my head and shouted to a mole to stop.
A mole didn't forget to tease me at this time. She said: "Young man is full of firepower. His nose will bleed even if he is bare-chested. Wait a minute." She tore a piece of cloth from her body and said, "Keep your head high and say goodbye."
If you move around, I'll wipe the blood for you."
"Sister Hong, why do you have a nosebleed?" I saw a mole and suddenly started to have a nosebleed.
She didn't wipe it for me anymore, she hurriedly raised her head and used a cloth strip to stop the bleeding.
"Bang"
At this moment, a low metallic sound suddenly came from behind us. The sound sounded somewhat similar to the sound of ringing a chime.
I carried the struck chime on my back, raised my neck and looked back.
At that moment, all the hairs on my body exploded!
The underground river kept bubbling, and the copper chains hanging the clay ball skulls began to pull quickly.
Dozens of round mud balls began to swing from side to side, rhythmically, and began to hit the meteorite chime one after another.
Those colliding skulls and heads were able to operate autonomously under the control of some kind of underwater mechanism. These chimes began to play a tune of their own from more than two thousand years ago.
"Bang."
"when!"
The low chime sound became louder and louder, as if it reached the depths of people's souls, and my scalp tightened as I listened.
Less than 200 meters away, as I listened to this sound, I began to feel my eyes swollen, my heart tightening, and the veins on both sides of my temples began to bulge.
The nosebleed I just had cannot stop now, and the nosebleeds are getting more and more frequent.
A mole is in a similar situation to mine. I also have nosebleeds that won’t stop.
Her eyes were swollen and veins appeared on her forehead, and she heard her yelling angrily: "Yunfeng, run! We are going to die!"
Many people don’t know that chimes themselves don’t make any sound. Chimes vibrate under the hammer’s strike. The vibration passes through invisible air as a medium and is finally transmitted to people’s ears. Therefore, it becomes the chime rhythm.
A few years later, in order to understand the principle, I spent some money to pretend to be the leader of a Hong Kong art troupe. I found Professor Wang Dan, an old technician who had worked at the National 703 Musical Instrument Factory. Professor Wang Dan had personally presided over
Completely restored Zeng Houyi chime set.
So I asked her, under certain circumstances, is it possible that the sound of chimes can kill people?
Professor Wang was very surprised after hearing this. She asked me why I asked this, and I said it was just out of curiosity.
Finally, she told me that it was possible. She gave an example, saying that someone could shatter a glass with a high-decibel sound, and that chimes were also possible.
Looking back now.
This is a life-threatening concert. The performers are dozens of skulls with gilded runes, and the musical instruments are a set of meteorite chimes from the Western Zhou Dynasty.
And the host who asked me and Sister Hong to listen.