Starting My Treasure Hunting In England

After three hours of searching, Liang En and the others pieced together a white marble slab that was 1m5 long and about 80cm wide. Although they only found a little more than 60% of the fragments, they could roughly tell what it was.

The image of a Buddhist monk is carved on the stone slab. The monk has a round face, slightly raised eyebrows, thin lips, and deep corners of the mouth, giving people a peaceful and comfortable feeling. Judging from the lotus platform where he sat and the light behind him, it was likely that this was a statue of a god.

"It feels a little strange." Fan Meng said to Liang En while looking at the damaged relief. "The white marble fragments just now are basically distributed near this hall and the surrounding buildings, and some are even hidden in the gaps between the stones."

"So this is not caused by natural collapse." Joan added at this time that after this period of study, her spoken English level has been able to communicate normally, but there are still problems with spelling.

"Especially some of the fragments stuffed in the corners and crevices were obviously done deliberately. It gives the impression that the previous people should have actively smashed the relief and then hid the relief."

"This is a bit abnormal." After hearing the observations of Fan Meng and Joan of Arc, Liang En quickly fell into thinking, because this white marble plate was obviously a Buddha statue, and in ancient times, ordinary people would not deliberately damage such things. of.

More importantly, if the item was accidentally damaged, the pieces should be disposed of properly, and if it was intentionally damaged, they should be left where they were damaged, rather than going to all the trouble of throwing them everywhere. .

"When you were searching around just now, did you find any carriers of writing, such as stone tablets and other things?" After looking at the white marble relief on the ground and confirming that there was no writing on it, Liang En turned to Fan Meng and the others to ask. got up.

Because there is only one Buddha statue on this white marble marble slab, and the Buddha statues often have similar shapes and no distinguishing features, so if you want to understand the situation here, you must find more information.

"No, there are no stone tablets left at this place." Fan Meng recalled carefully and then shook his head, then showed a thoughtful look.

"This situation is completely abnormal, because I have seen various temples before, and there are various stone tablets in the temples, and even a forest of tablets, but there is not a single stone tablet in this place."

"But it turns out there should be a stone monument." Liang En recalled the photos of the ruins on the top of the mountain that were taken by drone before and said.

"At least judging from the remaining foundations, there were originally several stele pavilions here, so naturally there should be stone stele. So I guess those stone stele were probably destroyed and hidden like this Buddha statue."

"One more thing." Joan of Arc suddenly added at this time. "I'm basically certain that this temple was abandoned after a battle."

"After the battle, do you have any evidence?" Hearing what Joan said, Liang En immediately became energetic, and then turned to look at her, because Liang En knew that she was definitely an expert in ancient warfare.

"There is a lot of evidence, such as this." Joan of Arc said as she took out several small balls that looked to be the size of pinballs and a piece of metal that was half the size of a palm from her pocket.

After Liang En took it, he found that these small balls were either ground from stone or cast with lead. Although the piece of iron was severely corroded, several holes could be seen on the edge of the iron piece.

"These small balls are the projectiles used in firearms in the past." While Liang En was inspecting these small balls, Joan of Arc explained from the side. "In addition to these projectiles, there are also many signs of shelling and fire on the remaining buildings."

"The most important thing is that this piece of metal should be part of the armor." At this point, Joan of Arc picked up the piece of metal. "And this kind of thing is not very common. It is often only equipped by the army."

"That is to say, this temple was completely destroyed during the war." At this time, Liang En thought of some scattered traces of fire that he had seen after entering the ruins before.

At that time, he just thought it was a common fire in ancient wooden structures or caused by wildfires around the temple after it was abandoned. After all, this place is full of flammable materials, and it is not impossible to find it by yourself when the weather is dry.

But based on what Joan of Arc discovered, it seems that this armed temple was obviously hit by external military forces, so it finally declined.

The reason why it is said to be military power rather than armed force is also very simple, because in ancient China, private individuals could hold swords, short spears, and bows and arrows, but hiding armor was definitely a taboo.

To give the simplest example, in the late Ming and Qing dynasties, when the dynasty's rule was at its weakest, civilians were allowed to possess various cold weapons and even matchlock guns, but armor was absolutely taboo, and holding it would be regarded as rebellion.

Therefore, whether these armor pieces belong to attackers or defenders, it can only mean that there is a regular army or rebels close to the regular army and a fierce battle broke out here.

After all, not everyone in the ancient army had armor, and armor could even be regarded as a symbol of elite troops. Therefore, the battles that broke out in this place were either very large-scale, or elite versus elite.

Obviously, this place should not be a simple temple, and it is likely to hide some secret, so this elite force was used to start a battle here.

The local county annals found on the Internet also explain this point from the side, because there is no introduction to this temple that is not small in scale, let alone a war that has occurred here.

But both the size of the temple and such a large-scale battle should be enough to be recorded, and the lack of records can only mean that someone has hidden these things.

Being able to fundamentally erase these records can only mean one thing, that is, this temple is definitely a big deal, so much so that it is even necessary to completely erase the traces of this temple from history.

This can also explain why the white marble relief Buddha statue was deliberately hidden after being smashed. Obviously, there may be something special on this Buddha statue, or even an absolute taboo.

So when the temple party realized that they could not defend the temple, they chose to destroy and hide this possibly the most important Buddha statue in the temple.

It's a pity that Liang En and the others don't know much about Eastern religions, so they can't see anything wrong with this sacred-looking Buddha statue.

However, considering that this place is located in a mountainous area with inconvenient transportation, it is difficult to move things like stone tablets, so whether the temple party wants to hide or the attacking party wants to destroy it, there will always be a lot of damage around the temple.

After confirming this, several people began to search with the main hall as the center.

Soon, they found the stone sculpture Ba Xia, which was broken into two pieces and thrown aside five or six meters away from the original stele pavilion. However, the stone stele that was supposed to be carried on it disappeared.

"I think we are close to the truth." Looking at the Baxia stone sculpture that was obviously broken open by humans, Liang En had a smile on his face. "I think as long as we can find the stone tablet, we should be able to know what happened here."