Seeing my expression change, Jiang Man pressed me for an answer: "What did you do wrong?"

"You're thinking wrong! Everyone who came here assumed that the Miao Jiang Immortal Palace was a colossal tomb, but in reality, it's not a tomb at all; it's a giant altar!"

Combining the series of events I've encountered since arriving in Sichuan, my thoughts gradually became clearer: "The feng shui layout of this tomb is fundamentally unfavorable for burial, and with the internal alterations, it's essentially a formation used to suppress the prevailing forces!"

Judging from this mural, after the tribal rulers were overthrown, they must have somehow obtained the method to create berserkers, which gave them the power to contend with the Xia Dynasty army. Since the Xia Dynasty army couldn't defeat them, the old man who appears later must be a shaman-like figure who temporarily defeated the old rulers' forces using a special method, but couldn't completely eliminate them. Therefore, he suppressed the berserkers, who could be resurrected, in this mountain!

"So, Ping'an Village isn't a descendant of the Miao tribe at all; they are either subordinates or descendants of the shaman who suppressed the berserker!"

Jiang Man understood the key point, and then her expression changed immediately: "Duan Shenxing, looking at these berserkers in the murals, do you think of anything?"

"The dried corpse from Ping'an Village!"

Without hesitation, I replied, "Like the berserker in the picture, the corpses of Ping'an Village are monsters that ordinary people cannot deal with."

Jiang Man looked at me with a serious expression: "That's right! That's what I'm worried about. Do you think the berserker in this picture might be the corpse of Ping'an Village? And the people of Ping'an Village are the descendants of these royal families?"

"Won't!"

I thought for a moment and shook my head: "The process of making the preserved corpses in Ping'an Village is complicated, and it can only be done using the corpses of the villagers. For them, it is a very sacred thing! If I'm not mistaken, this should be a secret technique of the shaman clan!"

Look at what's depicted in this mural. After the shaman led his men to suppress the berserker army, he didn't leave. Instead, he settled around this mountain, clearly guarding it! And in the mouths of the village people, this place is never called the Miao Jiang Celestial Palace, but rather the Temple of the Fierce God!

"So... the people of Ping'an Village have been making preserved corpses for generations because the berserkers suppressed in these mountains are unkillable and extraordinary, so they need preserved corpses to fight them! And they have been guarding them since the Xia Dynasty, through the changing times, until today?"

Jiang Man was startled by her own words and continued, "If the Zhai people are indeed descendants of that great shaman of the Xia Dynasty, then their mastery of Qimen Dunjia and witchcraft makes sense! But isn't it a bit too far-fetched that they have guarded this mountain since the Xia Dynasty?"

"Human beings do not appear out of thin air, but are reproduced generation after generation. Every person in this world has an ancestor who lived in the Xia Dynasty, otherwise they could not exist in the world."

I paused for a moment, then continued, "For thousands of years, the people of Ping'an Village have lived a secluded life in a remote corner of the country. It is truly admirable that they have been able to persist to this day! Especially since what they are guarding is not the spirit of their ancestors, but a temple of a malevolent god! So, in fact, we are the villains. If it weren't for our sudden intrusion, this secret would probably have been guarded by them forever!"

At that moment, I suddenly felt immense respect for the people of Ping'an Village.

Miao Xiaoxian has always been determined to overthrow Ping'an Village and end the oppression that the villagers have suffered for generations.

I can understand how she feels.

Man is born free, but he has to spend his whole life guarding a meaningless grave. In fact, most of the people in Ping'an Village do not even know why they are trapped in this life.

The lives of the Ping'an Village people are undoubtedly filled with sorrow, but their purpose in life is to protect the peace of this land and prevent the tragedy of the tribal royal family slaughtering living beings from being repeated.

After reading the mural, I was deeply moved and remained silent for about ten seconds before quickly walking back to the tunnel we had come from: "We have to stop Duan Jinyan and the others from opening the third door!"

Jiang Man, standing beside me, said, "Duan Shenxing, don't you think the legends here are a bit too much like myths? The Xia Dynasty was four thousand years ago. Even if those berserkers were really suppressed here back then, do you think they could still be alive after all these years?"

I replied without stopping, "What I'm worried about isn't what might exist behind the third door, not only those berserkers who can come back to life, but also the severe radiation!"

Jiang Man thought for a moment: "Do you think that the berserkers in the murals were affected by radiation, which is why they turned into that state?"

"That's right, and this isn't just my conjecture."

I turned my head and replied, "Do you remember how Sanbao got the key?"

"Isn't it said that the origin of the Three Treasures Key is because the ancestors of Ping'an Village discovered three meteorites from outer space, considered it a miracle, and therefore modified the site, adding three gates to the Miao Jiang Immortal Palace for protection?"

"That's right! Although we don't know when those three meteorites fell, we can be sure that meteorites have fallen in the deep mountains of this area!"

I paused for a moment: "Many of the traces we've discovered along the way are actually quite bizarre when you think about them carefully! The first one that comes to mind is the fluorescent forest we encountered on the previous level! It's illogical that these plants can grow so lushly in the underground space and emit fluorescence! And the hairy monster that attacked us, with so many eyes on its face, is equally baffling! I suspect there's a meteorite with strong radiation here, which has changed the magnetic field of this mountain and caused anomalies inside it!"

"And those glowing skeletons! And the content in the murals! That corpse covered in tumors that was carried into the court was very likely exposed to intense radiation!"

Following my train of thought, Jiang Man also came up with a different idea: "In the mural, after the wizard destroyed the berserker army, those who smashed the statue turned into skeletons. This could very well mean that the core of the statue was a meteorite with strong radiation, while the outer clay body was likely made of a material like lead ore, which weakened the radiation and made it less deadly. Moreover, radiation can change a person's constitution to some extent, or damage their brainstem nerves, which is why those slaves turned into murderous madmen!"