Chapter 329: Mythological Archaeology (1)
Translator: Lordbluefire Editor: Lordbluefire
Continent, an entire continent!
This universe ruins was actually formed because of the fragmentation of a floating continent. This was something no one expected.
(A floating continent in s.p.a.ce?)
(What logic is this? This isn’t scientific at all!)
Everyone furrowed their brows, but they weren’t able to make any sense out of it.
There were simply too many secrets in ancient mythology civilizations. They were poles apart from interstellar science, and it was very hard to fathom anything.
The A.I. could only scan the traces of the surroundings to restore a likeness of the battlefield. Most of it was from its a.n.a.lysis; thus, it wasn’t 100% accurate.
The scene before their eyes were merely a simulation of the battlefield.
The truth of ancient mythology civilization had long since been lost to the river of time.
Therefore, everything still needed to depend on them spending vast amounts of time to explore and piece their findings bit by bit together before they would be able to see the full picture.
Everyone quietly continued watching.
In the scene, the battle between the shamans and demons continued.
In truth, what they saw was only the beginning.
This battle lasted a long time and was incredibly intense, far surpa.s.sing their imaginations. The power levels here could destroy the heavens and earth and cause the stars to turn dark, even flipping the sun and the moon.
The aftershocks of the battle spread out, causing devastation everywhere.
The ancient shamans formed military formations and their movements were adjusted to uniformity.
Each of them was as large as a mountain. They wanted to crush their enemies thoroughly.
Their large bodies contained black-colored totem tattoos that shone with demonic light. There were all sorts of strange totems, including a giant eye, a mountain, snakes and dragons… all of them exuded an ancient air that was filled with violence.
They wielded beast bones from the various demon races, forging the bones into their weapons. They smashed their weapons down heavily, with enough force to cause mountains to crumble.
The shamans rushed out; their numbers seemed endless like ferocious tides of the ocean. Blazing flames, torrents of water, the trembling of the earth and mountains—their attacks flowed forth endlessly.
On the other side, the demon race’s army exuded an overbearing feel of menace: Leopards, wolves, tigers, and panthers rushed onto the ground; phoenixes, peac.o.c.ks, and nine-headed birds flew through the air.
Demonic qi towered up into the sky, forming dark clouds that blotted the sun, casting the world into darkness. One wouldn’t even be able to see their five fingers if they stretched their hands out.
The shamans and demons partic.i.p.ated in an orgy of slaughter to deal maximum damage to the opposing side.
There was no strategy at all, just stark naked slaughter. Either you die or I die!
It was unknown how long this battle lasted. Even though the A.I. sped things up, it still took them six hours to view everything.
After countless casualties on both sides, they decided to retreat, understanding that it was impossible to completely defeat the other party.
In any case, the war between shamans and demons existed since the very beginning. It was unknown how many tens of thousands of years had it been.
Feng Lin and the others understood that what they were seeing was merely a battle between the two races in a particular war.
In the holographic image, both the shamans and demons retreated, settling the aftermath.
The shamans carefully collected the corpses of their comrades, but the demons directly ate the dead bodies of their kind.
When Feng Lin saw this, he silently mused. No wonder during ancient times, the weak humans were able to stand tall and defeat the demon race, becoming the lords of the world. The gathering force born from caring for comrades wasn’t something the demon race could compare to.
Although the demon race was powerful and was the tyrant during the Primordial Era, there were many different races within the demon race. They fought for themselves and couldn’t unite at all akin to a pile of loose sand. How could they not lose?
History had proven that the victors were humans. They became the lords of the world.
The scene gradually darkened. Everyone thought that the restored battlefield’s holographic scenes were going to end, but all of a sudden, everything turned black.
The sun, moon, and stars lost their l.u.s.ter; everything was in complete darkness.
(Has things ended?)
(No, something is wrong!)
This darkness persisted even after a long time.
“Quickly look!” An exclamation rang out.
Feng Lin and the others turned over only to see a gigantic mouth chomping down, swallowing the continent along with the shamans and demons.
Creak, creak!
Unbearable creaking noises rang out. The continent was being chewed into rock fragments before being spat out and scattered all around. Of the remaining continent that wasn’t chomped off, the traces of the bite marks could be seen at the edge.
…
The scene suddenly stopped. Light appeared once more, but everyone was still stunned, unable to break free from their daze.
What the h.e.l.l was that?
Everyone exchanged glances; fear and shock were evident in their eyes.
That gigantic mouth of darkness was too terrifying. It felt like the apocalypse had come. Even though they were merely watching an ancient scene through holographic technology, their hearts were drowned in despair just by seeing it.
It was unknown how long had it been before they finally drew a deep breath and returned to their senses.
There were simply too many secrets hidden in ancient mythological civilizations. This was just the tip of the iceberg, yet it was enough to cause all of them to be stunned.
“Everyone, let’s act.” At this moment, Zhao Yue`e calmly spoke.
Sutt and the others all nodded after they heard that. “Right.”
Tiny probes were sent out by the flying shuttle to the surroundings.
The shuttle’s door opened as ant-like robots appeared. The robots then began to harvest the skeletons, bones, rocks, fossils here, moving them back to the shuttle.
“A large item is about to enter,” stated Sutt. He gave the command to open the shuttle’s door wider.
A fossil as large as a pillar was being moved in. There were intricate swirling patterns engraved on it, and its end was a tip, exuding an ancient aura.
Zhao Yue`e, Sutt, and the others also personally acted, heading over to study the pillar. They were like researching the meaning of the swirling patterns, which seemed to be some ancient characters.
The first used a soft brush to clean the dirt away, revealing the original patterns. After that, they used their microchips to scan it, recording the information before they cut a part of it, storing it in a test tube with a solution within to preserve it for a long time.
This set of procedures seemed complex, but it wasn’t random. They were following a methodological operation order.
Zhao Yue`e, Sutt, and the others seemed to be extremely familiar with this. Clearly, it wasn’t their first time doing this.
Even the dark-skin, burly Iron Pillar also acted. His movements were very smooth as well, giving off a strange sense of beauty like a giant doing embroidery work.
Feng Lin watched at the side as he commented in a low voice, “What are you all doing?”
“Oh, Feng Lin’s school has not officially started, right? No wonder you don’t know what these are.” Zhao Yue`e was startled for a moment before she smiled. “This is mythological archaeology, every student must learn this subject. Ancient mythological civilization has been lost for a very long time, and we have to explore ancient mythological ruins to do the research. Only by doing so can we find valuable items and gradually restore the truth about ancient mythology. This is the interstellar discipline formed by combining archaeology and mythology, mythological archaeology! The mythological gene systems we are currently cultivating are slowly being built up as well. Sadly, three thousand years were simply too short. Ancient civilizations have long explored places outside of the Milky Way Galaxy, probing the boundlessly vast universe. What we have now is merely the frame. There is still a very long path ahead of us.”
She then sighed and continued with her work.
“Mythological archaeology?” Feng Lin nodded silently.
From a ruin where there was nothing, how difficult must it be to restore the mythological gene system? How many generations must put in the effort for something like this to be established today?
Mythological archaeology had been developed for many years. It was undoubtedly a very profound field of study.
Feng Lin seriously began to observe as he took notes in his heart, trying to learn from them.
“Another large item!” The door to the cabin opened wide as a skeletal fossil was being moved in.
This was the skeleton of a giant bird of about a hundred meters. It actually had nine necks, but its heads had long since disappeared. There were many cracks on this skeleton. It seemed like the person who killed it had instantly slashed off all nine heads in one shot.
“What monster is this?” Sutt and the other westerners completely didn’t recognize it. “There are also nine-headed monsters such as hydras in western mythology, but I’ve never heard of a giant nine-headed bird before. Zhao Yue`e, this is a battlefield of the shamans and demons, and your Wudang Planet has the most perfect preservation of Huaxia Mythology. You should be able to identify this monster, right?”
Zhao Yue`e furrowed her brows in thought as she studied the skeleton. She was filled with perplexity. Only after a long time did she speak, “If I’m not mistaken, this should be the corpse of the Nine-headed bird who is also known as the nine-winds!”
“Oh.” Sutt and the others nodded in praise.
As expected of Zhao Yue`e, she even knew such remote mythological knowledge.
“Wrong. Although this is a nine-headed bird, it isn’t the nine-winds, rather, it is a Ub.u.me!”
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Note:
In Chinese mythology, Ub.u.me (guhuoniao – nine-headed bird) is related to another mythical bird called nine-headed birds 九头鸟. In the book XuanZhongJi, it says there was a guy one day that saw 6 or 7 women in the fields and sneaked to steal a feather coat on the ground. Later the women flew away like birds, only leaving one without the feather coat. The guy married her and had three daughters. One day, the wife let the daughter ask their father where he put her feather coat. After finding out, she flew away and so did the three daughters. After that, people called the birds GuicheNiao (Ghost car bird) 鬼车鸟 or JiuTouNiao 九头鸟, nine-headed birds.