Chapter 25 Sacrifice

When Lao Yang and I heard this, we asked him what he had in mind. He scratched his head and said, “I’m just guessing, but I think that the key thing here isn’t this bronze tree but the grooves on it. When they conducted ritual sacrifices long ago, this thing may have been used to collect some kind of liquid, such as rain, blood, or dew.”

“Is it similar to how the emperors used to collect dew to make tea?” Lao Yang asked him. “What was it called…rootless water?”⁽¹⁾

Master Liang pulled a pen out of his pocket and used it to scrape off some of the black residue in the grooves. But after thousands of years, it was impossible to tell whether it was the dried blood of some ancient sacrifice or just sediment from the rain. He took another look at the branches and said, “Look, there are troughs under these branches that resemble the blood groove you’d see on a bayonet.⁽²⁾ They appear to go all the way to the double-bodied snake patterns on the trunk. These branches must’ve also played a role during the ritual, which means that this tree might really have something to do with blood sacrifices.”

I didn’t quite understand what he was talking about, so I asked him to explain in detail how these grooves were related to ancient blood sacrifices, and how these sacrifices were carried out.

Master Liang told me that although the sacrifices in the Western Zhou Dynasty weren’t as brutal as those in the Shang Dynasty, they were still human sacrifices. The methods were different but they still involved killing humans. For example, when offering sacrifices to the land, the people would be buried alive; when offering sacrifices to the fire god, the people would be burned to death; and when offering sacrifices to the river god, the people would be thrown into the river to drown.

Right now, we were standing on a giant bronze tree that seemed like it could touch the sky. It might have been a sacred tree like Fusang, Ruomu, and the like. Or, it could’ve been a representation of the god of wood, Jumang.⁽³⁾ It was common for blood sacrifices to be offered to such a god after all.

Just now, Uncle Tai’s blood had flowed along the bronze branch and into the grooves of the double-bodied snake patterns on the trunk before continuing down towards the roots. If such a path hadn’t been designed in advance, there was no way it could have run so smoothly. That, coupled with the traces in the troughs on the bronze branches, made it clear that this tree must have been a vessel used for blood sacrifices.

When it came to blood sacrifices, the blood would usually go into the ground. The person being sacrificed would be strung up on these bronze branches and their blood would flow down the grooves until it merged with the double-bodied snake patterns on the trunk. If the blood didn’t congeal along the way, it would eventually flow to the tree’s roots, which were buried deep under the rock. This whole process symbolized the offering of a gift to the god.

To put it more figuratively, all the grooves carved on this tree were like the sloped dissection tables in a hospital morgue—no matter how much blood flowed into the drains at the end of the tables, it would eventually flow through the pipes in the drainage system and then out into the sewer.⁽⁴⁾ The only difference here was that the bloodletting grooves were carved into what appeared to be a decorative pattern, which might explain why the grooves between these double-bodied snakes had been carved so deep.

Even in a powerful country, such cruel and large-scale sacrifices obviously couldn’t be carried out for long, so there were only sporadic records of them in ancient books. As for the process of the specific ceremony and how many sacrifices were needed, it was impossible to know now.

After listening to Master Liang’s explanation, I couldn’t help but sigh at the wisdom of the ancients while also feeling a little horrified. It was inconceivably stupid that such an amazing feat of engineering was only used as a tool for killing people. When I thought of the countless slaves being hung upside down on these branches, and how their blood must have flowed along these bronze grooves and turned the whole tree into a column of blood, I felt as if a biting cold was seeping out of those grooves.

Suddenly feeling a little nervous, I turned to Lao Yang and said, “Let’s hurry up and go. If we wait for Uncle Tai’s blood to flow down, the god of wood might think that someone has come to offer it a sacrifice. If it comes out to investigate, we might really end up as sacrifices.”

Lao Yang didn’t take Master Liang’s words to heart at all and said to me, “Don’t be so gullible. At that time in China’s history, where would you find so many people to kill? I bet that the blood sacrifices here were probably pigs or sheep or something. If we climb up a bit further, we might even see some thousand-year-old pork jerky. Besides, no matter how many people were sacrificed, their blood would start to congeal after they died. This place is so high up that Uncle Tai’s blood will dry up long before it reaches the bottom. There’s nothing to worry about. Plus, the god of wood probably won’t like your blood considering how the people back then used to live more naturally. Peasants would eat pesticide-free food and drink unpolluted water so their blood was a little sweeter. But you? You’re not the same. Even if you started bleeding right now, the god of wood would definitely get food poisoning after drinking your blood. That’s why I said you were being fooled.”

When I heard him say this, I became so furious that the tendons on my forehead bulged and I shouted at him, “What the fuck? What are you talking about? Why is my blood poisonous? You better watch your fucking mouth…”

Master Liang saw how angry I was and quickly interrupted us, “Gentlemen, you should pay attention to our current situation. This isn’t the time nor the place to make jokes. Don’t you guys think that these branches are becoming denser the higher we climb? If it continues on like this, won’t it be harder for us to make it to the top?”

“There are places where the branches are both sparse and dense,” Lao Yang said, “but it’s definitely easier to climb when they’re densely packed together. Or what, are you trying to say that it’s more convenient when there aren’t as many of them? Would it be better if each branch is more than two meters apart and we build a ten-meter high human pyramid to reach them?”

“There’s no need to jump to conclusions just yet,” I said to Lao Yang. “But I think something’s wrong. Turn on the flashlight.”

We had continued to use the torch while we were climbing because the flashlight in Uncle Tai’s bag only had half the battery power left and we didn’t want to waste it. But now I wanted to get a better look at what was in the distance, which I couldn’t do with the torch.

Lao Yang turned on the flashlight, focused the beam, and pointed it upwards. We could see that above our heads, the number of bronze branches appeared to be increasing gradually. Even the ones seven or eight meters above us were densely packed together like thorns. If we wanted to keep climbing up, we’d have to hang upside down and climb on the tips of these branches, which was a lot more dangerous than climbing on the parts of the branches closer to the trunk.

But we had already come this far, so even if there was danger in front of us, we still had to push through. Lao Yang told us to stay where we were while he went to the tip of the branch he was standing on and started climbing up. Once he got a little higher, he lowered down the rope we had found in Uncle Tai’s bag. Master Liang and I grabbed onto it and started climbing up after him.

I looked up again and found that the situation here wasn’t like what we saw below—the bronze branches were so closely packed together that there was almost nowhere to place our hands. After climbing for a while, I couldn’t help thinking that it wasn’t surprising that Uncle Tai had fallen down. If things continued like this, I was afraid it would be even harder to find a place to put our feet. The slightest bit of inattentiveness or even a gust of wind from above would be enough to send us down to accompany Uncle Tai.

Despite all of this, Lao Yang was climbing very fast. I didn’t have the strength to stop him, so I simply focused on maintaining my current speed. On the one hand, I didn’t want to fall behind, but on the other hand, I had to remind myself to be careful lest I slip and fall. The torch could no longer be used now since I needed both hands to keep climbing, so I extinguished it and slipped it into my belt to save for later.

This portion of our journey was so dangerous that none of us spoke. Instead, we all chose to focus our attention on climbing. After a while, thanks to the light from Uncle Tai’s flashlight, I noticed that the rock wall around the bronze tree had also begun to change. Natural stalactites and rock formations started to appear, making it obvious that this section of the cave hadn’t been excavated by men and was naturally formed.

As we passed through this section, I found that the rock wall was much closer to us than before. I also started to notice that caves of various sizes began to appear on the rock walls on both sides, but they were shallow enough that we could see what was inside of them. There were a few caves, however, which seemed to have something in them that was startled by the light of the flashlight. This gradually made me feel uneasy, but the rock wall was tens of meters away from us so I didn’t think that whatever was over there could directly affect us.

I was so focused on observing these caves that I didn’t realize that Lao Yang and Master Liang, who were both climbing in front of me, had stopped. In fact, it was only when I bumped into Master Liang’s butt that I finally reacted—I looked up and saw that a bunch of masked monkeys like the ones we encountered below were lying in wait above us.

But upon closer inspection, I found that these monkeys were all dead. Their bodies, which had dried up due to the hot air blowing down from above, were strangely contorted, and their hands and feet were stuck in the cluster of dense branches, preventing them from falling below. There were dozens of these mummified corpses, all of which were still wearing those weird masks. They stared at us silently, as if they would come back to life at any moment.

We slowed down so that we could take a closer look at these strange things.

Based on the state of the monkeys’ bodies, they seemed to have been suffering from a skin disease. Most of their hair had fallen off, exposing a layer of skin that was an ashy color. It looked somewhat similar to human skin, but upon closer inspection, we could see that it was covered in obvious skin lesions. In terms of size, these monkeys were about as tall as—or maybe a little taller than—a fifteen- or sixteen-year-old child (of course, they weren’t as tall as Yao Ming).⁽⁵⁾ After seeing this, I almost felt like my height perception was all out of sorts.

The masks on the monkeys’ faces appeared to be made of stone polished to such perfection that I even suspected they had been made of porcelain. And based on how the edges smoothly connected to the monkeys’ heads, it seemed that these masks had been soldered directly into their flesh or fused to their faces by some bloody means.

Most of the mummified corpses were intact, but there were a few that only had one limb left. This was probably because the monkeys had died long ago and their corpses dried out so much that they naturally disintegrated.

Master Liang told us not to climb up yet and then pointed to one of the corpses while saying, “Wait a minute, there’s something off about the positions of these monkeys. I think I’ve seen it somewhere before. Let me take a closer look.”

“You’re such a pain,” Lao Yang said to him. “You always have to look at everything. But you better be careful. In a minute or two, the monkeys down below will think that you’re in a strange position.”

Master Liang ignored Lao Yang and carefully climbed up to the nearest mummified corpse. When he grabbed its mask and pulled, the monkey’s dry skin immediately cracked and the mask easily came off. Master Liang leaned in to look at the mummified monkey’s face and then turned to us and said, “You…guys, this…doesn’t seem to be a monkey. This is a…human face.”

<Chapter 24><Table of Contents><Chapter 26>

****

TN Notes:

(1) It’s basically water that doesn’t come from the ground (so think rainfall, snow, dew, etc.). According to this, the water should be caught with containers out in the open before it falls to the ground. That’s why it’s called “rootless water”. In ancient times, when air pollution wasn’t as bad, water vapor rose from the ground to the air and became rain or snow after being purified naturally, so the water was clean. 

(2) A blood groove (aka a “fuller”) is a longitudinal groove on the shaft of an arrow, spear, or blade that is said to cause increased bleeding of a wound or reduce suction when the blade is removed from flesh. In reality, it just lightens the blade without sacrificing its strength or integrity. Info here.

(3) Fusang refers to various entities, most frequently a mythical tree or location east of China, described in ancient Chinese literature. In several texts, it’s referred to as the mythological “tree of life”. Ruomu is a similar tree that exists in the west. Each morning, the sun was said to rise in Fusang and fall on Ruomu. Info here. Jumang (aka Goumang) is an auxiliary god of the Fuxi family. The “Classic of Mountains and Seas” described his appearance as “bird body and human face, ride two dragons”. He is the god of wood and spring, in charge of life and health.

(4) Little disturbing but it does seem like blood and other body fluids during an autopsy are just drained from the decedent, flow to the end of the table where there’s a drain, lands in the sink below the drain, and just goes into the sewer system. Going off of this article.

(5) Yao Ming is a Chinese basketball executive and former professional player. He played for the Shanghai Sharks of the Chinese Basketball Association and the Houston Rockets of the National Basketball Association. During his final season, he was the tallest active player in the NBA, at 2.29 m (7 ft 6 in).