“How is this related to Yu the Great?”
Yi Sa grabbed the back of Ding Yudie’s pants waistband, successfully preventing him from moving forward, then asked Zong Hang: “Why?”
Despite being soaked in muddy water, Zong Hang was excited to have a chance to explain something to Yi Sa. He counted off on his fingers, listing his points one by one.
First, there was a local legend that the Yellow River didn’t originally flow through here – Yu the Great diverted it. How did he do it? Splitting the Hukou with one axe stroke would be too exaggerated. He must have led countless laborers to dig channels and waterways according to the terrain.
Second, labor is tiring, and when tired, one needs relaxation. When the workers rested, they expressed themselves through art, commemorating this great project through simple artistic expression – looking at these images, they depicted river engineering and flood control.
Third, one of the figures standing on the earthen platform wore a rain hat and held a wooden fork, matching Yu the Great’s image perfectly. Whether in animations or the comic books he read as a child, Yu the Great always had this appearance.
Yi Sa asked him: “Then why would Yu the Great build this corridor? And who’s that other person standing on the platform?”
Zong Hang didn’t know why Yu the Great would build a corridor, but he had an idea about the other person: “Could it be your founding ancestor, Ancestor Ding?”
It was possible, but too little could be discerned from these images. The more crucial parts must lie ahead. Yi Sa released Ding Yudie: “Let’s go.”
Ding Yudie, who had been marking time for quite a while, finally stumbled forward when released and continued moving stiffly ahead.
Zong Hang wanted to take photos but hesitated and caught up instead – his film camera could only take about thirty shots, and he couldn’t waste them randomly.
The corridor was very long, with “lamps” made of breathing soil placed at intervals along the ceiling. Each lamp had a uniquely shaped head – fish, turtles, soft-shell turtles, flood dragons, and some that looked like deformed children’s heads. Yi Sa suspected these were the legendary “worm children” that once lived in the upper reaches of the Yellow River, known in folklore as “water monkeys.”
These “lamps” depicted creatures that lived or had gone extinct in the Yellow River. The breathing soil’s light was naturally unstable, and under its flickering illumination, each face appeared lifelike. One could easily get the illusion that these heads were “moving.”
Rock paintings appeared at regular intervals along the way, sometimes depicting people, sometimes animals, and sometimes distorted suns. They all shared a primitive, simple style. After seeing many of them, Zong Hang began to feel aesthetic fatigue and grew distracted. Just as he was about to suggest Yi Sa pick up the pace, she suddenly exclaimed “Oh!” and stopped abruptly. Whatever she saw was so striking that she forgot to grab Ding Yudie.
Zong Hang quickly darted forward two steps, grabbed Ding Yudie’s collar to forcibly hold him back, and then turned to Yi Sa: “What’s wrong?”
After freezing for several seconds, Yi Sa raised her hand and pointed to a spot on the left side of the corridor, slightly above.
When Zong Hang peered over, his initial amusement quickly gave way to shock as a chill rose from his heart.
This couldn’t be… a computer, could it?
It had to be – a square screen with a base, and hands extending from both sides of the screen, grabbing a person as if trying to stuff them into its mouth. The person’s head had already disappeared into the screen, with only the body from the neck down visible outside.
If Zong Hang had seen this image anywhere else, he wouldn’t have found it particularly special: it would have seemed like a satirical cartoon warning young people about internet addiction – quite an unoriginal concept.
But appearing here, it was utterly bizarre. Not only did it completely clash with the surrounding artistic style, but it depicted… a computer.
Unsatisfied, Zong Hang reached out to touch it: unlike the other carved images, this was painted, presumably using some primitive materials possibly mixed with animal fat, appearing in a dark red color.
Yi Sa said quietly: “Altamira bison.”
“What?” The term was quite a mouthful, and Zong Hang couldn’t even repeat it fully: “Alta-what bison, what’s that?”
Yi Sa explained: “It’s an ancient human cave site discovered by the Spanish, dating back over ten thousand years. The cave contains many bison paintings with bold, vibrant colors and precise perspective, depicted very vividly. The style is completely different from other primitive paintings of that period or even thousands of years later – so modern-looking that when the Spanish revealed these paintings to the public, no one believed them, thinking it was a hoax. Even today, some people believe these paintings weren’t created by ancient humans at all, but by someone else.”
The Three Families themselves were mysterious and supernatural entities, so they always paid attention to various mysteries throughout history. While not claiming expertise, they could generally explain the basics of any such topic that came up.
Zong Hang stared at the painting.
Though he had never seen the Spanish bison paintings, he was certain this wasn’t created by primitive humans.
Maybe it was painted by aliens, or perhaps…
Zong Hang blurted out: “Yi Sa, could it be that your Three Families’ ancestors actually… came from the future?”
The more he thought about it, the more it made sense.
— The Three Families’ founding ancestor seemed to be able to predict the future. Phrases like “flying without wings, facing without facing” might not have been about the future to them, but rather about their past.
— They had abilities but didn’t seek official positions or enter government service because they were familiar with history and knew how frequently and brutally dynasties changed – today’s ministers could be tomorrow’s prisoners. No position was as safe and sustainable as hiding among common people and making a living with unique skills.
— Current technology is already quite advanced, capable of cloning cattle, sheep, cats, and dogs from somatic cells, just short of cloning humans. He had recently seen news that head transplant surgery might soon be possible. So in the future, perhaps resurrection wouldn’t be difficult at all, especially for those who died from accidents – just inject some powerful regenerative cells into recently deceased bodies. The “fertilized egg” Ding Panling mentioned might be these kinds of regenerative cells.
— As for the breathing soil, it might be some form of energy-matter, like a computer, capable of executing complex operational programs…
Yi Sa said that while people could attribute anything to aliens, the same logic could apply to future humans: just as Jiang Shehu from the late Ming Dynasty could never have imagined airplanes, videos, or electronic payments, modern people couldn’t imagine what the future might hold.
Zong Hang’s scalp tingled as he felt he had uncovered some extraordinary secret.
He raised his camera and photographed this painting.
As they continued forward, Zong Hang paid extra attention to the rock paintings on both sides, afraid of missing something crucial. Sure enough, not long after, they discovered another one. Its content wasn’t as violent as the first, but the more you looked at it, the more chilling it became: it showed a person with their back to a computer, busy with something, while behind them, the computer had a somewhat fierce appearance, grinning menacingly.
The person who painted these rock paintings seemed to dislike computers: these computers were either eating people or sneering behind their backs as if they had become malevolent spirits.
Zong Hang photographed this one too, and again emphasized his conclusion to Yi Sa: “Time travel, it must be time travel.”
He suddenly felt reassured: it seemed he wasn’t some strange being, but rather a product of future technology. As a modern person, he was just experiencing imperfect future technology ahead of its time.
Yi Sa pondered.
The theory that “the founding ancestor was a person from the future who traveled back in time” could indeed explain some things, but time travel itself involved too many paradoxes, and more importantly…
Yi Sa said: “I understand the concept of time travel, but it’s usually about going back a few decades at most, to correct small regrets from the past. Why go through all the trouble of arranging water ghosts, Golden Pools, and reincarnation when you could just travel directly to this year?”
This hit the mark, but Zong Hang persisted, stammering: “Could it be that something went wrong during their time travel? Maybe they set their time travel device too far back and accidentally ended up in Yu the Great’s time, so they had to make long-term plans?”
Yi Sa couldn’t help but laugh.
“Time travel device” – who knew Zong Hang was so good at making up terms? Besides, these “long-term plans” seemed excessively long.
She had a feeling they were approaching the truth, but something was still missing.
The next section didn’t contain any more strange paintings.
Perhaps Ancestor Ding got bored while participating in the river works here, and seeing others painting, casually drew a couple himself. No one would know what he was drawing anyway, and people of that time didn’t appreciate this style, so no one followed his lead or developed his artistic school further.
At the end of the corridor was a wall.
Like the ceiling before, the wall’s surface was densely covered with various aquatic creature heads, but these weren’t fixed: they would surge up and recede randomly, their positions chaotic, like a vertical water surface with fierce aquatic creatures competing to show their heads.
Ding Yudie slowly raised his right hand.
His movements seemed completely without pattern: sometimes he would slap, pushing a catfish head back into the wall; sometimes he would pull, grabbing a flood dragon’s long horns and drawing out its body for over half a meter – this length was strictly defined, not allowing even a centimeter’s deviation; sometimes he would twist, pressing five fingers against a worm child’s head, turning it left three times and right two times.
Like when Jiang Jun was “pushing water,” it was a complex code directly given by the ancestor tablet, with Ding Yudie merely receiving and executing it like a puppet – Yi Sa suspected that for absolute secrecy, this code was random and different each time.
While staring in amazement, Zong Hang remembered to take a photo.
After countless repetitions of these operations, the wall suddenly opened inward like double doors.
A huge space appeared before them. Though not comparable to the scale of the Golden Pool cave under Lake Poyang, it was still quite large, but there were no honeycomb structures or corpses inside.
Instead, it was extraordinarily empty.
The entire space was cylindrical, with countless open doors around the edge of the bottom, each leading to long corridors extending in all directions.
In the center of the bottom was a high platform with a circular base, rising in tiers, with countless stone-carved skulls densely arranged on the first step.
A flash of insight struck Yi Sa’s mind. She quickly looked back at the corridor they had come through, then at the platform: “An altar? A sun altar?”
She explained to Zong Hang: “Ancient China had sun worship. Look at our mythological legends – Kuafu chasing the sun, Houyi shooting the sun, Xihe, and Woshu. Yu the Great lived within this cultural system, so in his era, people also worshipped the sun as a deity.”
“You’re right, this entire project might have been led by Yu the Great. The middle chamber is cylindrical, the platform is a circular terrace, and the corridor we just came through is a ray of sunlight. With so many corridors down here, they’re like countless rays – if you piece the whole outline together, doesn’t it look like a sun radiating light?”
Diverting the Yellow River into the dragon trough was an enormous project in ancient times, and according to ancient customs, they would certainly build an altar to pray to the gods. Unlike the Yangtze River, Ancestor Ding probably couldn’t find such a large underground dome to store corpses, so he convinced Yu the Great to use labor to build this place that appeared to be an altar but was a reincarnation crossing point.
Once the Yellow River was successfully diverted, this place would instantly be buried underwater. After thousands of years of sand accumulation and riverbed elevation, plus the rushing waterfall above, this place became even more impregnable, with a safety factor higher than the Old Master Temple.
However, there was only an altar… without even bodies for grafting, how could it serve as a reincarnation crossing point?