Yamafu Military Affairs

Chapter 661 Ceremony
"who?!"

As soon as he finished speaking, Qin Huai exerted force with his feet, twisted his waist and turned around, the torch swirling, and the giant sword in his hand directly unleashed a chilling and deadly slash.

clang~
With a clang like metal striking stone, Qin Huai looked up and saw the skeleton at the end of the path, which was not much smaller than a rhinoceros, suddenly stand up, its jaw twitching and its empty throat emitting a hoarse sound.

"Humans who have entered Mount Nanyu with the power of Zisomo, do not worry that I have any ill intentions. This is the first test that Bahui has set for his believers, called 'The Snake's Swiftness.' Whether you can find clues here, pass the test, and enter His kingdom is the key to whether you can embark on the path of suffering and ascend to immortality. Carefully contemplate everything here."

After saying that, the huge skeleton lay down on the ground again and fell silent.

"A messenger? Or a ruthless person who sacrificed all his flesh and blood, leaving only his skeleton?"

Looking at the massive skeleton that had taken a fatal blow but only had a slight dent, Qin Huai had a wild guess in his mind. But when he thought of the extremely sinister stone carvings from before, he felt that this possibility was actually quite reasonable.

"Fine, let's just assume the skeleton is telling the truth. The 'snake's agility,' literally, tests one's keen information gathering ability, or perhaps nimble movements and senses?"

Approaching the skeleton, Qin Huai poked the somewhat petrified bones with his Qingfeng Seven Star Sword to confirm that it was indeed just a mouthpiece. Then, he turned around and, with the help of the crimson flames that filled the entire cavern, began to carefully examine the murals on the wall, starting from the end of the path.

Soon, Qin Huai saw several snake people in some murals that were clearly narrative in nature. They were mixed in with the crowd, presiding over sacrifices, leading armies, and teaching skills.

Unlike the snake-people depicted in mythical cities, the snake-people appearing in narrative scenes are far fewer in number and possess much richer details. They wear strange ornaments and are covered in animal fur, just like humans. Like the snake-person with the headdress mentioned earlier, they should also be high-ranking followers of the Bahui.

However, apart from the serpent saints used to depict priests and leaders, the murals also depict all sorts of monsters. These monsters look far removed from human appearances and have terrifying appearances that only appear in nightmares. However, they are not entirely without pattern. There are three different types of Ba Hui retinues that appear most often in the murals.

One of them resembles a giant anaconda-like snake. Proportionally, they are typically two and a half to three people long, less than one person wide, with a robust body and sharp, short forelimbs on their abdomen, capable of serpentine movement and climbing steep cliffs like apes. Furthermore, the faintly visible facial features, flattened head, and relatively smooth jaw give this creature more human-like characteristics. These animals seem to have been used as pack animals by the ancient inhabitants of the Nanyu Kingdom, and many murals depict them carrying heavy loads or climbing cliffs.

"A serpent demon?"

Looking at the giant snake's strange body proportions, Qin Huai easily thought of the snake-like creature Da Qing he had seen before, except that there were slight differences between the two, which should be the result of iterative evolution.

Another type of animal was even more repulsive. They were like human-snake hybrids that had completely degenerated into wild beasts. They were hairless, covered in hard scales, and had limbs that were similar in proportion to humans, but they hunched over and ran quickly on all fours like hunting dogs. They were able to hunt the prey and enemies of the ancient Nanyu Kingdom like a pack of wolves.

Through some more detailed murals, Qin Huai keenly discovered that their forelimbs did not have short toes suitable for running like wolves, but rather had slender, open knuckles like humans, as well as a thumb that was more suitable for grasping, with the other four fingers curving in the opposite direction. Each slender finger tip had a sharp, pointed claw capable of tearing apart metal, stone, flesh, and blood.

The body structure, resembling both a human hand and a wild beast's forepaw, led Qin Huai to label them as "warriors." But that alone wouldn't have been enough to make him pay too much attention. What truly made him uncomfortable was the creature's face.

It resembles a human more than any other ape, yet its face, a blend of snake-like features, is extremely ugly and ferocious. Although its forehead and eyes are identical to those of a human, it lacks hair and eyebrows. Coupled with its collapsed nose, upturned nostrils, protruding jaws, and enormous canines and sharp incisors, it shows no trace of the intelligence a creature should possess, nor does it display any of the expressions that humans should have.

The last animal is the smallest. They resemble enlarged versions of king cobras, with an exaggeratedly large neck fold, several times larger than their skulls, which are roughly the size of an adult's head. They also possess disproportionately large eyes and rather exaggerated ears. They appear to be scouts employed by the ancient Nanyu Kingdom; the neck fold allows them to easily swing between tall trees and steep cliffs, conveniently locating prey and enemies.

Compared to these strange Bahui retinues, the humans appearing in the murals are far fewer, and they are always active in temples or caves near temples.

These humans belonged to two different classes. A small group of them served as servants and laborers, responsible for trivial tasks such as preparing food, cleaning the temple, and painting murals; while the majority were supported like nobles and did not need to do any heavy physical labor.

The murals do their utmost to depict their plump, even bloated, figures, as if it were something very important and something to be proud of.

"Human sacrifice? In that case, everything matches the Yi legend that Ash told us."

Looking at those plump, white humans, Qin Huai pondered in his heart that now the legendary eldest, second, third, fifth, and sixth brothers had all appeared, leaving only the fourth brother, who was skilled in reproduction and child-rearing, who had not been seen in the mural.

"The skeleton mentioned earlier, with its snake-like agility, seems to be comparable to the legendary second brother who has wolf eyes and deer ears. Does that mean there are five or six similar trials?"

Qin Huai frowned. He felt that the more he learned about the case, the more troublesome it became.

The following murals depict the expansion of the ancient Nanyu Kingdom, with a group of people leading various snake-like creatures away from the cave to new territories. Newly discovered settlements are usually large and deep caves, presumably because the inhabitants of the ancient Nanyu Kingdom believed that these caves connected to the underground world where the snakes lived, which is why they spared no effort to occupy them.

The murals make almost no mention of interactions between settlements, but the deep caves are all connected to underground rivers, like pearls on a ribbon, scattered among the mountains of southwestern Sichuan.

In addition, a large number of murals depict wars between the ancient Nanyu Kingdom and other tribes or countries. Some murals from later periods even depict several settlements fighting at the same time and invading another kingdom.

However, the environments in which those tribal states lived were either fiery lava worlds or blood-red worlds piled high with corpses. Qin Huai had never seen such places, and there were no related records in the history of the Divine Continent.

The serpent people's purpose in waging war was not for territory, but for food, or something more precious. Hordes of serpent-like creatures would storm into cities and villages, slaughtering any living thing they could find, or cunningly ambushing armies crossing treacherous slopes, scattering or pushing the equally bizarre alien soldiers down the hillsides. After the carnage, the enormous serpent demons would enter the battlefield and carry all the corpses they could find back to their caves.

"Perhaps this is a war between the followers of different Diviners? But the Diviners revealed themselves to the world during the Apocalypse Explosion. When and where did these wars take place?"

As Qin Huai carefully examined the war murals featuring only a few humans, his questions not only didn't lessen but actually increased. Following the dim light, Qin Huai approached the stone structures and saw mountains of bones. Without exception, these bones were remarkably well-preserved, as if the corpses had been carelessly placed on the ground and left behind after thousands of years of decay.

Qin Huai picked up a few pieces and examined them for a while. He quickly distinguished that there were ordinary human skeletons among them, as well as snakes and vipers that were often seen in murals. Most of the skeletons were in very natural positions and had no serious damage.

This means that no matter what the Bahu believers living here encountered, they did not resist, or did not have time to resist.

Rather than suicide, Qin Huai is more inclined to believe that they were all driven by the need for sacrifice, actively seeking death to become human sacrifices to please the Ba Hui.

What he found next further confirmed his guess.

Apart from the stone blades and broken pottery shards scattered among the rubble and bones, Qin Huai found a large number of murals at the bottom of the outermost hollow.

These murals, on the surface, all depict sacrificial rituals, and the human sacrifices used are plump, even bloated, white humans who do not need to do physical labor.

Qin Huai roughly estimated the number of humans who had been sacrificed and found it to be abnormally high. Moreover, the performance of the ritual was clearly not as simple as a simple sacrifice.

This terrifying yet grand ceremony is usually presided over by more than ten snake-man priests and an ordinary human dressed in ornate ornaments.

At that time, an even greater flame will ignite at the bottom of the cave than it is now. The younger people who have not yet met the requirements for sacrifice will surround the edge of the cave and beat the ground, while the chosen people will gather in the center of the cave, dancing a strange dance, and one by one walk up to the high platform made of stones.

On the high platform is a four-legged snake-man decorated with strange patterns. It uses its sharp claws to torture, harm, and kill the people who come up to it in various ways, as if it is completing the evil cultivation practices carved on the rock wall.

Of all the murals depicting sacrificial rites, the one that caught Qin Huai's attention the most was a mural located on the western side of the cave wall.

Compared to other murals, it appears hasty and chaotic, lacking both detailed composition and vibrant colors, as if it were a rushed product.

It depicts an unprecedented and chaotic sacrifice, with all the creatures in the painting, whether human or the terrifying serpent species, displaying crazed and twisted expressions.

The location of the ritual was no longer limited to a high platform, and the sacrifices used were no longer selected human offerings; every corner of the cave was filled with people wielding sharp blades or snakes carrying out slaughters, and the targets of the slaughter included not only plump human offerings, but also immature boys, even enormous serpent demons and flying snakes that darted around everywhere.

Although the corpses had piled up into a small mountain, the indiscriminate slaughter showed no signs of stopping. Even the perpetrators wielding knives and claws began hacking at each other. Only the serpent priests, representing the holy Bahui, were conspicuously absent and thus escaped the carnage. Even stranger, in the corners of the painting, several brown figures were hidden within wide cloaks.

They watched silently as the grand carnage unfolded in the hollow, and at the center of the nine stone platforms, the enormous, ethereal portal, rendered with wavy brushstrokes by the painter, appeared and disappeared.

Qin Huai had seen such brown figures before, on the two enormous murals at the very beginning of the cave. They were a brown tribe that had hunted down the white tribe and was later nearly wiped out by their revenge.

"What's this? The priest isn't here, there's no one to supervise, so they're hopelessly immersed in the art of suffering?"

Qin Huai scratched his head, unconsciously thinking, "Or did something happen to Ba Hui, allowing old enemies to take advantage of the situation and wipe out their stronghold?"

With many possibilities in mind, Qin Huai explored the empty space, hoping to find more clues.

Soon, he found a narrow crevice in the northwest corner and a huge passage to the east that was completely blocked by tens of thousands of tons of heavy rocks.

Qin Huai compared the size of his host body with the width of the northwest rock crevice, and went in without hesitation. He walked through a narrow and winding passage, and then entered a cave that was unimaginably huge.

Skeletons.

Endless skeletons.

Moreover, the vast majority of the remains are those of infants, ordinary human infants, and some adult women.

Qin Huai looked at the empty hole and realized where the fourth brother, who had never been seen in the Yi legend, was.

At the same time, the peculiar, fishy odor was so intense here that it seemed to be the source of everything.

The murals here depict a ritual. This ritual was presided over by several snake-man priests, and the participants included all the snake species that had appeared in the previous murals, including those that were extremely rare but distinctive.

But these were not the key points that Qin Huai was paying attention to. He was staring intently at the pottery jar in the hands of the snake-man priest, whose shape was very familiar.

(End of this chapter)