What is this in front of you?

I don't know, I've never seen it before.

Some of them look like large cylindrical chimneys are built in the middle of a large patio of Han tombs. They look nearly twenty meters high and stand straight at the bottom of the water.

Before we could react, the echo duck swam over first.

We waved our heads and swam forward carefully.

As I approached, I looked up.

The diving lights are limited underwater lighting range, and you can vaguely see the top of the chimney with a brim-shaped lid.

I'll look closer,

I saw that there was a layer of black and green covering on the surface of the one-foot-long blue brick, which was suspected to be left with algae. The "square hole money pattern" can also be seen under the covering.

Because the "chimney" is strange in shape and the surface covering is too heavy, it makes it difficult to break the dynasty. Most people may infer that this square hole money pattern is from the Ming Dynasty, because the pattern on the surface of bricks is the most common in the Ming Dynasty.

But I don’t think it’s from the Ming Dynasty. I think it’s a ruin from the Northern Song Dynasty. If you have to ask the reason, it’s my feeling, the feeling of antiquities that I have developed over the years.

In just two minutes, the echo duck disappeared.

Douyazai and I looked around the "chimney", and the echo duck suddenly appeared under Xiaoxuan's feet and hit Xiaoxuan's feet with his head.

As if she had noticed something, Xiaoxuan looked excited and pointed to a place and waved to me.

It turned out that there was a small door at the bottom of the "chimney"! It could not be said that it was a small door, about half a meter wide and about one meter high, and it was sealed with blue bricks, but the two bricks on the top collapsed, revealing a hole the size of a basketball was found.

The Echo Duck just got in from here and then came out again. If it weren't for the Echo Duck's reminder, we might not have noticed it because the light underwater is very dim.

The holes in the small door seemed to exude some mysterious aura hundreds of years ago.

I looked into the hole.

It's very dark, I feel like something wants to come out of it.

The next second, suddenly, a small fish swam out slowly.

This is the first fish we see underwater, only the length of a thumb, no eyes, and transparent, just like the cave fish we have seen before.

At this time, Douyazi pointed at me, then pointed at himself, and then pointed at the small door.

I looked at my head.

Nodded at me.

Then Dou Yazai and I pulled each other's arms to leverage the force, kicked them hard, and quickly kicked the remaining blue bricks down.

Douyazi was the first to drill in, but the gas cylinders hanging on both sides of his waist could not enter and would be stuck.

I stepped forward to help, unbuttoned the gas cylinder and dragged it with my hands. Douyazi then got in.

We went in one by one.

I was shocked by the scene before me again.

Xiaoxuan grabbed my arm.

I could feel Xiaoxuan was scared, she was scared.

The building looks like a chimney from the outside, but it is a hollow structure inside, with many concave wall niches around it, and the wall niches are filled with skulls! Several of them rushed down from above.

I pinched Xiaoxuan's hand, which meant to tell her not to be afraid, I was there.

Due to buoyancy, I cannot stabilize my body, so I have to grab the protruding brick with my hands and I took off the diving lamp to light it up.

You can see that the interior of the wall niche is not flat, but is sloped, with "backlight" patterns engraved on the bricks above each wall niche.

I looked at each other with my head.

This is not a "chimney" at all.

It turned out that this place should be a Buddhist brick pagoda of offering nature, and it is not a traditional pagoda. Although this way of offering skulls is also available in Henan and Tibet, it is not the same style as the overall style. In addition, the "backlight pattern" engraved on the wall niche here is not a traditional flame pattern, but a "water ripples-like Buddha light".

This place must be related to the Manichi religion in the Song Dynasty.

There is no sense of peace like a pagoda here, but it gives people a very strange and terrifying feeling.

I let go of my hand and floated up with the buoyancy.

The skulls in the wall niche were all staring at me, and I looked at them too.

I don’t know who they are, and I don’t know what they were in the past, but I am certainly not ordinary people. Why do they only offer their heads and not see their bodies?

I counted and found that there were a total of forty-three wall niches, plus the few that were washed down by the water, there were a total of forty-three skulls here.

In addition, I also found a detail, more than half of the skulls were black, as if they had been burned a lot of time ago.

I wanted to take one out and take a look, but because the wall niche is made of a slope, it is not easy to get.

At this time, Douyazi suddenly shook the light at me.

Douyazai discovered a strange jade statue, made of white jade, about six inches tall. The statue is made of red lips and white face, with a smile on his eyes, a wide forehead, sitting cross-legged, long clothes and chest bare chest, bow-shaped patterns in the middle of the clothes on his chest, and two long beards on his chin, all of which fell to his chest.

I could tell at a glance what this is.

This is the original statue of Mani Light Buddha! It is a kind of Buddha that belongs to Manicheism, which further confirms my guess.

I gestured to Douyazai, and Douyazai pointed to the wall niche, which meant it was taken out inside.

Next we looked for other wall niches one by one. Apart from this Buddha statue and forty-three burnt skulls, there was nothing else. I doubt if there was a jade Buddha in each wall niche a long time ago? Was it taken away? Only this fish that escaped the net was left.

Douyazi put the Buddha statue into a bag around his waist, and then he urged his head to gesture, saying that there was no other valuable thing here, so let's take it away.

There was no response from Douyazi, and he grabbed his head and floated upwards at the edge of the wall niche, all the way to the top.

I hurriedly followed.

With his head and eyes sharp, he found that there was obviously a brick missing here.

After understanding the meaning of my head, my heart suddenly sank.

A brick tower of secret offerings like this is usually left with inscriptions or bricks of notes inside. It may be the record of something that was recorded in the past, or the specific identity of the forty-three heads here. Now one piece is missing, it may be the record of the bricks of notes being taken away. In other words, we may not be the first person to discover it here.

I speculate that those rotten trees are Fang La lacquer gardens, so where is this place?

Is this place built by Fang La that year? Will these forty-three burned heads be his family members?

After thinking a little, I denied my idea.

That is unlikely. In order to find the treasure, I have specially checked a large number of historical records and local chronicles. Fang La's son, wife Shao Shi, and a large number of family members were escorted back to Beijing by the Song army. Fang La committed the crime of killing the clan. His family could not survive, and it is unlikely that such a tower would be built to support it with great fanfare. Local governments would never allow this.

This place is related to Manichi. Is it possible that these forty-three people are characters in Manichi?

Thinking about it again, I think it is still impossible.

Both inferences and speculations must be based on history. During the Song Dynasty, Manichaeism was explicitly prohibited from spreading, but this place was clearly built at that time and was preserved. I can't understand at all.

Listening to the sound of blisters and inhalation, I held up the flashlight and observed the surroundings again.
Chapter completed!