The Lost Tomb : Tibetan Sea Flower

Chapter 89: Religion

I could list the civilizations in the pre-Qin period on one hand, and the unpopular ones were tribal in form at that time, which made it difficult to even call them civilizations. Moreover, the pre-Qin period was very broad, and in terms of dating, it was very similar to the time from when we were monkeys up until around 221 BC. During this period of time, some places weren't even deserts in the beginning, but turned into them on the eve of the establishment of the late Qin Dynasty.

"Bullshit." I said. "What's the point of saying such nonsense at this time?"

"When do I talk bullshit? You might not have heard of the civilization I'm talking about, but you've certainly heard of its follow-up. This is from a secret report made by the Japanese, Torii Ryuzo."

Torii Ryuzo was a Japanese ethnologist and his report was of great significance to the discovery of many historical sites in western Liaoning. At one time, he did an investigation as a consultant to the Mongolian royal family. He was also a rare scholar who was interested in the ancient Miao people of China, and he studied the customs and races of the local Yi and Miao people in Hunan, Guizhou and Yunnan.

"What's the name of this civilization?" I asked.

Fatty shook his head: "There's no name, but they think this civilization is the predecessor of the ancient country of Juyan, and had a scattered social structure. Let's just call it Juyan."

"That's not right, wasn't Hongshan the biggest civilization discovered by Torii Ryuzo in western Liaoning?" I asked, "Hongshan is far away from the ancient city of Juyan, and the dynasty is far from pre-Qin. What kind of shit are you trying to pull? You've been fooled."

Fatty became angry. "You know, I haven't gotten to the point yet! How would you know what I'm talking about?"

I immediately apologized, and Short Feng said from the side, "That Chinese civilization doesn't have a name, because it can't have a name. On our end, there are clear records so I understand what Mr. Wang is talking about."

"I thought you didn't understand Chinese tradition?" I wanted to slap him in the face and keep scolding him, but I refrained and gave him a saccharine smile instead: "Shorty... no, what does Teacher Feng have to say?"

"Feng isn't my name, but forget it. It's like this: in between Hongshan and Juyan— that is, the whole area from the present Heishui City to Hongshan— there was a huge civilization that can't be dated. Because all of the archaeological clues were very strange, this civilization wasn't recognized in your country and had a certain confidential nature." Short Feng said: "There are three factors that contributed to this kind of secrecy. First, there were traces of this civilization appearing throughout different time periods. That is to say, this civilization seemed to exist until the Yuan Dynasty, and all the signs seemed to show that it didn't change much. But all the neighboring civilizations that lived in the same time period as this civilization had no records of it. It was distributed in the vast desert of western Liaoning, but it seemed like it hadn't been seen or even touched by anyone.

"Second, all the information about this civilization seemed to have been taken back to Japan when they invaded China. There isn't much evidence of this civilization in itself, because Torii didn't disclose too much about it. It's said that the systematic features of this civilization make it difficult to find again.

"As a result, without the basic information, no one in China is willing to carry out a second archeological expedition. It's tantamount to a wild goose chase.

"Third, many basic features of this civilization are subversive." He touched his chin: "This civilization's religion was very similar to Buddhism, but the details are completely different. If we assume that Indian Buddhism originated from a 'key factor', then this civilization also had very similar 'key factors', but the resulting religion was completely different."