Tomb raiding: It all started with shocking the archaeological team.

The so-called 'eight trigrams' shape is easy to explain.

The Bagua diagram has eight gates on the outside and yin and yang on the inside.

The passageway of this tomb is arranged with the eight directions of the outer Bagua (Eight Trigrams) in a "Bagua Dragon Locking Formation". Therefore, the central Yin-Yang pole position must be the burial chamber!

In Qimen Dunjia, there is also the concept of "Eight Trigrams and Nine Palaces". Each of the eight directions represents a palace, and the yin-yang symbol in the middle is the "Central Palace"!

In other words, the tomb chamber is located in the 'central palace'.

To enter the 'Central Palace', one must first break through this 'Eight Trigrams Dragon Locking Formation' and find the 'Gate of Life'. Only through the 'Gate of Life' can one enter.

The 'Gate of Life' is located in the 'Kan Palace' in the northeast direction.

Chen Yibai was proficient in both the pre-heaven and post-heaven Bagua, including Qimen Dunjia, so finding the 'Gate of Life' was not difficult for him.

The Pre-Heaven Bagua is the 'Fu Xi Bagua', and the Post-Heaven Bagua is the 'King Wen Bagua'. These two Bagua have many complex relationships, but their order is different.

This tomb of King Kang uses the 'Pre-Heaven Fuxi Eight Trigrams'.

If you don't understand the Pre-Heaven Bagua and Post-Heaven Bagua, and misjudge the hexagrams, you will also be trapped here.

It's highly likely that Brother Chicken didn't understand whether this was the innate Fuxi Bagua or the post-Wenwang Bagua.

"I'll lead the way, you guys follow closely behind!"

Chen Yibai led the way at the front of the group and gave a special reminder.

Having learned from their previous experience, everyone in the team was on high alert this time. The archaeological experts formed the second echelon, following behind Chen Yibai, while the special operations team split into two groups, sandwiching Brother Chicken and his group of tomb raiders in the middle.

After navigating several passageways, Chen Yibai led his team to the 'Kan' position in the northeast direction.

Before them was another cave passage exactly the same as before. The air inside was damp and cold. Chicken Brother's four henchmen, who had been stripped naked, were shivering so badly that they were huddled together, their legs clamped together.

"Mr. Chen, there's no road ahead!"

Wang Haichuan, who was standing next to him, pointed a flashlight directly ahead of the passageway and gave a reminder.

"No road doesn't mean there's no exit!"

Chen Yibai narrowed his eyes as he looked at the dead end in front of him.

Wang Haichuan and the others immediately understood what Chen Yibai meant. They all took out their flashlights and shone them close to both sides of the passageway, searching carefully with wide eyes.

According to Chen Yibai's judgment, this is the 'Kan' position, which is the location of the 'Life Gate'.

The entrance to the 'Central Palace' is definitely hidden here.

"Mr. Chen, look here, it seems to be..."

Suddenly, Yang Qingyun seemed to have made a discovery. She stared wide-eyed at the stone wall of the passageway, her expression astonished. She opened her mouth to speak, but for a moment she was at a loss for words and did not know how to describe it.

Chen Yibai immediately strode over and followed Yang Qingyun's gaze to the stone wall of the passageway.

There were many marks on the stone wall from when it was carved with special tools, but at first glance, there was nothing special or unusual about it.

Yang Qingyun looked astonished because she noticed that the stone in front of her looked somewhat grayish and didn't appear as natural as the rocks in other parts of the mountain.

Chen Yibai also noticed this and reached out to break off a protruding rock.

click!

Chen Yibai actually broke off a small, protruding piece of stone with his bare hands.

"This isn't stone, it's 'whitewash'!"

Yang Qingyun, who was standing next to him, immediately said with certainty.

'White lime powder' is a type of solidifying material that first appeared in the Neolithic Age. It was made by grinding natural ginger stone into fine powder and is equivalent to modern 'cement'.

As an archaeology expert, I am very familiar with this kind of knowledge.

"So, this place was sealed with 'lime'?"

Wang Haichuan immediately widened his eyes and added a comment.

Chen Yibai nodded. If nothing unexpected happened, that should be the case.

"dig!"

Chen Yibai took a few steps back, leaving a spacious area.

Yan Wanlei immediately assigned several special operations team members to take their entrenching tools and begin digging into the stone wall of the passageway.

Although 'white lime' is a solidifying material, it is a product of three or four thousand years ago. Compared with gypsum clay mixed with glutinous rice and modern cement, its strength is still far inferior.

In addition, after three or four thousand years of weathering, it has now become as brittle as a twisted dough stick.

The special operations team members, wielding sharp military shovels, had barely dug a few strokes when the rock face in front of them collapsed with a loud 'boom,' as if a large piece of skin had shed off, sending up clouds of dust.

As the dust settled, everyone looked at the stone wall again.

Behind the collapsed 'white lime surface', a bronze door more than two meters high and more than one meter wide was exposed.

Chen Yibai immediately shone the flashlight in his hand directly at it.

The bronze door in front of me was dark red all over, but this dark red color was not rust; it was as if blood had been mixed into the molten bronze when it was cast.

There is also an extremely eerie and unsettling picture on the bronze door.

The diagram is divided into two parts.

Above, a monster with a human body, snake tail, and beast face was coiled. Its lower body had a thick snake tail covered with scales like steel armor, while its upper body was a naked human body. Most bizarrely, its huge head was like a snake, but it had a strange human face with eyes that stood upright like olives. It had no nose, and below its upright eyes was a gaping maw that was looking down at people from above.

Below is a grand sacrificial scene.

It was less of a ritual and more of a purgatory of torture. Large numbers of slaves, as insignificant as ants, were bound hand and foot. Some were dismembered and placed in giant cauldrons, while others were beheaded and bled. There were even special containers for collecting the blood.

Some were even disemboweled separately, their internal organs removed, and placed in a giant cauldron to be cooked over a fire!

This cruel and heinous sacrifice was solely for the purpose of pleasing and appeasing the worshipped deity.

Although cruel human sacrifice was not uncommon in slave societies, and many ancient books contain detailed records of it, these are mostly one-sided written accounts.

Seeing such a comprehensive picture with my own eyes is probably a first for me.

"This is... far too cruel..."

Yang Qingyun stared wide-eyed at the sacrificial painting on the bronze door in front of her, her brows furrowed into a tight knot.

Especially seeing the scene where one of the women had her breasts cut off and her lower body gouged out, I was glad I didn't live in that era...

"Mr. Chen, are the drawings on these all real?"

Yan Wanlei, who was standing next to him, also frowned and suddenly asked a question.

"Most of the murals depicting these scenes found in ancient tombs are genuine!"

Chen Yibai nodded, his eyes slightly narrowed.

"It's probably half true and half false, right?"

Wang Haichuan couldn't help but correct him, then looked at the human-bodied, snake-tailed monster at the top and said, "This human-bodied, snake-tailed creature with upright eyes looks a lot like the mountain god Zhulong from the Classic of Mountains and Seas, which also confirms what Mr. Chen said earlier about the Taikang clan worshipping the mountain god Zhulong, but..."

Wang Haichuan stopped mid-sentence, turned to Chen Yibai, and asked, "But a fictional mythological figure like Zhulong couldn't possibly exist, could it?"

Chen Yibai shrugged and smiled, without directly answering Wang Haichuan's question.

Because no one dares to stand up and guarantee that the Classic of Mountains and Seas is fictional, and nothing is impossible in this world!

Almost everyone's attention was focused on the 'Candle Dragon' with a human body and a snake's tail at the top of the bronze gate, and the horrifying sacrificial scene below.

Only Chen Yibai stared intently at the sacrificial altar between the two.

On the sacrificial altar, a figure kneels with his back to the wall, positioned at the center of the entire painting, looking up at the 'Candle Dragon' above.

And the 'Candle Dragon' looking down has its center of vision directly facing it.

If I'm not mistaken, the person kneeling with his back to the tomb should be the tomb owner, King Kang!

quack quack...

Wang Haichuan and several experts were taking pictures of the bronze door.

The sacrificial images on the bronze door can fill the gap in the fact that the cruel human sacrifices of the Shang Dynasty were only documented in writing and lacked pictorial evidence.

This is also a major archaeological discovery.

Ideally, we could pry this bronze door off and take it back with us...

However, before Wang Haichuan could take more pictures with his camera, a creaking sound suddenly came from behind the bronze door in front of him.

Then the bronze door started shaking inexplicably again, making a rumbling sound, and slowly rose upwards with the sound!