Chapter 143 142 Murals, Text, and Pig Feet
Chapter 143 142. Murals, words, and pig feet
As soon as Brown Shield returned to his tribe with his tribesmen, he heard the tribesmen shouting.
He was not panicked, but full of joy.
Seeing Brown Shield return, the tribesmen in the tribe came to greet him.
Passing through the tribesmen with happy faces, Brown Shield saw the reason for the tribesmen's surprise—a huge, bristly wild boar-shaped monster.
The tribal warrior Red Shield who hunted the wild boar proudly described to Brown Shield how he outsmarted the monster, and then waited for his reward.
Brown Shield picked up his saber, removed the two hind legs of the wild boar, and presented them with both hands.
The applause of the tribesmen and the reward of the tribe leader Brown Shield made Red Shield extremely excited. He immediately separated one of the two pig legs and let the children in the tribe enjoy it.
Brown Shield smiled and motioned Red Shield to follow him.
Instead of heading to the chief's tent, Brown Shield and his group headed for a cave not far from the tribe's camp, where torches were already inserted on both sides of the stone wall.
In the open space deep in the cave, the tribesmen who had already cleaned up the place saluted when they saw Brown Shield coming, and then quietly withdrew.
Red Shield, who had been following silently, saw that several tribal warriors around Brown Shield were frowning, and the joy on their faces gradually faded.
After Brown Shield sat down, Red Shield put the pig leg aside and asked in confusion: "What did Mud Tail say when he asked everyone to go over?"
Brown Shield took off the shield tied to his wrist and put it aside.
"It's time to go to war."
Red Shield's heart skipped a beat, and then he asked: "War, with whom?"
"Mushroom people... and the unknown alien race."
"Through Mud Tail's exploration, those alien races that appeared here inexplicably taught the mushroom people to build walls, learn to use tools, and seem to have taught them mysterious magic."
There was silence in the cave, and Red Shield could clearly hear the breathing of other companions.
Among the four tribes of lizardmen, the Shield Clan inherited the knowledge left by their ancestors, and one of them was the "foreign gods".
"Many years have passed, and the story is still passed down from generation to generation... It is said that the first ancestor of the Shield Clan who recorded these things shook the heir's shoulders, repeatedly exhorted him, and strictly ordered him to pass on everything he said..."
"But he was very scared and only allowed the five strongest people in the tribe to know the secret, and they needed to swear to this land that they would never pass it on."
"However, unfortunately, the story has become more and more distorted, and we can't know what the original meaning of the first generation was... I once seriously asked the old patriarch, are these the original words of the first patriarch of the Shield Clan?"
"He just looked at me silently, without saying a word, until he died... He never answered my question."
The brown shield walked into the darkness behind him. The moment he raised the torch, the light dispelled the darkness and revealed the secret hidden underneath.
Crooked lines, weird patterns, strange totems, and... words that have never appeared on this land.
Brown Shield knew that the things passed down by the old patriarch were full of lies, because if that was the truth, these murals would not be altered.
The Shield Clan chose to deviate from the last words of the first patriarch over a long period of time. I don't know when, those words passed down by word of mouth and sworn to the land were just lies.
Those murals destroyed by sharp objects are like the bodies of prey that have been cut into pieces, which is chilling.
Brown Shield can feel through the murals how scared and frightened the person who made this decision was at the time.
But this person is also entangled...
He who guards the secret wants to bury the secret completely, and he can completely destroy the stone wall and directly modify the tradition of the previous patriarch to pass on information.
But he didn't.
Like a sinner who suddenly felt uneasy and guilty when he was halfway through doing something bad, he ended his "atrocities" after destroying the mural so that it could not convey key information, and continued to pass on the mural and the secret.
"I forged history, I hid the secret."
The chief seemed to want to convey such a message to future generations.
After the erosion of time, the murals on the stone wall continued to fall off and were no longer recognizable. By the time of the Brown Shield generation, they could only know this one thing when they observed the murals.
In the past, another race that walked upright appeared in the Great Wetland.
She appeared out of thin air and became connected with "Blue Water".
At that time, the four tribes were even just the newly rising races on this land, gathered under the command of the same tribe leader, and survived in a harsh environment.
The Blue Water tribe was more backward and closed. They were just snacks for other monsters, and even the lizardmen liked to hunt them very much.
However, all this changed with the arrival of that alien race.
Like a fire that fell on this land in the darkness, the darkness of Blue Water was dispelled by her alone.
She gave Blue Water technology.
Blue Water built walls in their tribe's settlement that could resist attacks, and gradually rebuilt the buildings into more solid houses.
She gave Blue Water powerful magic.
It was a powerful force that they could not imagine or master until now.
The ancestors of the Shield Clan saw with their own eyes that she could create a huge mud giant just by waving at the ground.
Under the leadership of the alien race, Blue Water rose.
Then the Giant Lizard God and the God of the Jungle came together. They made three agreements with the aliens, expelling them from this land, and allowing Blue Water to continue living here.
Then, Blue Water gradually disappeared from this land. Several generations of lizardmen had never heard of the tribe's presence, and the creatures living in the wetlands had no impression of them. They could only vaguely hear some monsters still conveying their past deeds in obscure words.
The message conveyed by the murals was probably like this. What was forged, what was hidden, and what was modified... Brown Shield didn't know.
The Shield Clan has never been a race with a particularly good brain. They pursue physical strength and extreme defense. They like to hold up the shield and start charging forward, and then smash the shield hard on the opponent's face.
The dull sound of the blow can make every lizard in the Shield Clan excited.
There are some speculations among the four tribes about the disappearance of Blue Water.
For example, the Luofa tribe of Mud Tail believed that the Blue Water tribe had been destroyed by a natural disaster that suddenly struck the Great Wetland hundreds of years ago.
The anger of the Earth Mother caused the Great Wetland to shake, and countless creatures were swallowed by the suddenly cracked earth and turned into nutrients to nourish the land.
The four tribes constantly threw the prey they had hunted into the suddenly cracked earth, and even sacrificed the blood of their tribesmen, pouring the blood of their tribesmen on the earth, begging for mercy and praying to the Earth Mother, and only then did they survive the disaster.
The god of Blue Water is an alien race, and the god who was expelled by the God of the Jungle and the God of the Giant Lizard would definitely not provide assistance to this poor tribe.
The natural disaster that destroyed Blue Water is just one of the theories.
The most aggressive and irritable of the four tribes, the current tribe leader Broken Scale, the Stone Split Tribe, believed that Blue Water had angered the two gods of the Great Wetland and ushered in the disaster of extermination.
"Who made Blue Water accept the gift of the alien race?"
When it comes to Blue Water, most lizards react in this way.
No lizard thought it was a pity that Blue Water was destroyed, and no lizard thought it was wrong that those rare magics and techniques of Blue Water were lost.
This is how it should be, this land has its own rules.
Although Brown Shield is not smart, he feels very strange.
Lizardmen also build walls and strong houses.
Then why is it wrong for Blue Water to do it, and should be despised and punished, but not for Lizardmen?
Since the gods of the jungle and giant lizards have reached an agreement with the gods of Blue Water, why did the gods go back on their words and destroy a race that poses no threat to them?
Brown Shield doesn't understand. He didn't think about it carefully before. Now that Mud Tail has organized a four-tribe alliance to wipe out the mushroom people and expel the alien race, he has to think about it.
War is not a trivial matter. Although Mudtail said that it was just a foreign race that invaded the Great Wetlands, not a god, let alone a god's messenger, but...
...
After a long silence, Brown Shield raised his head and glanced at the three heroes who did not oppose the war, and Red Shield who was full of worry.
As the youngest hero in the tribe, Red Shield was regarded by Brown Shield as his next successor, so Brown Shield cared about his opinion.
Red Shield looked at the stone wall illuminated by the torch and stretched out his claws to scratch his face.
"The Great Wetland is vast enough."
"Our people have been walking for sixty days and still haven't been able to leave this land..."
"What I mean is..."
Red Shield looked at the tribesmen around him who were eager to fight, looked at the shields tied to their wrists, gritted his teeth, and said: "Just drive the mushroom people away. What we want is survival, not to be enemies with other unknown forces."
The top five warriors in the tribe stood up, and the leader looked unhappy: "Fight if you want to fight, don't fight if you don't want to fight. Red Shield, you always choose to express your ideas in a way that does not offend any faction. Are you still worthy of being called a warrior?"
"Take off your shield. Since you don't choose to charge, you should hang the shield behind you."
Brown Shield looked at the embarrassed Red Shield with interest, but had no intention of lending a hand, allowing the excited three tribal warriors to surround him.
Red Shield faced three aggressive fellow tribesmen and explained helplessly: "I just want to know... what can we get from defeating the mushroom man?"
"We can bring fruits and meat to our tribesmen by entering the dense forest with shields in hand."
"We can bring smelting tools and convenience to our tribesmen by entering the mine with iron tools in hand."
"We can bring peace to our tribesmen and let our children grow up safely by fighting bloody battles with monsters."
"The blood we shed is meaningful."
"But what can we get from fighting the mushroom man and the unknown alien race?"
"Honor?"
"Blessing?"
The three aggressive lizardmen were stunned by the question.
There have never been many smart people in the Shield Clan, and they are called big fools by other tribes, but once these very easy-to-understand words are thrown out, even the most stupid lizard can chew out some taste.
"Maybe... after the mushroom people grow up, they will become our enemies?"
Hongdun sighed: "In this big wetland, all races may become our enemies. Should we kill them all?"
"The thoughts of the alien gods will corrupt the creatures on this land!" A lizard said with gritted teeth.
Hongdun was stunned for a while, and after a fierce struggle in his heart, he said: "Perhaps, it should be a matter for the gods to solve."
"What we have to do is to keep the tribe alive... Have you ever thought that Mudtail's allies must obey his command completely... Are you really confident in letting Mudtail be the leader?"
"Our people have to obey his orders. How can you guarantee that he won't take the opportunity to annex us while we are licking our wounds?"
Obviously, Red Shield's thinking mode is a dimensionality reduction attack in the Shield Clan. After being questioned by a barrage of questions, the three fools who only have physical strength and martial arts can only dodge in their eyes. Their heads are even more messy and dizzy. They don't know how to refute at all.
Brown Shield sighed with relief. It was not until this time that he stood up and supported Red Shield.
"He's right. Everything should be based on survival... We can't entrust the lives of our people to Mud Tail, and... it's not good for us to wipe out the mushroom people, and there are risks in offending aliens."
"But you have already promised Mud Tail Chief at the meeting... Are we going to break our promise?"
Brown Shield smiled: "I don't intend to break my promise. I still have to show up, but... we can choose to help without doing anything."
After the other lizardmen left, Brown Shield called Red Shield alone.
"You are the smartest among the Shield Clan. Don't consider my face just because I am the chief... Tell me if you have a better decision. Sooner or later, you will take the position of chief..."
Red Shield was stunned for a few seconds and immediately knelt on the ground.
"Don't be nervous. Although I am still young, I think the position of chief should be given to smarter people... The Shield Clan should not be treated as fools by other tribes all the time."
Brown Shield personally helped Red Shield up.
These sincere words made Red Shield tremble. He no longer concealed and said what he thought in his heart.
"I want to go to the mushroom people in person."
Brown Shield shook his head: "It's useless. The language barrier is there. They can't understand our words."
Red Shield raised the torch, and the strange text on the stone wall that was not completely painted was revealed.
"This text should be the alien text that the ancestors saw from Lan Shui. If they come from the same place, then the aliens in the mushroom people can also read this text."
"This is very dangerous. We can't know the attitude of the aliens."
"War is also dangerous." Red Shield insisted.
There was another long silence. Brown Shield was shaken by Red Shield's firm eyes. He sighed and let Red Shield take out the tools to engrave those words.
"I hope your decision is correct... Contact with aliens, now we are also aliens in this land."
Red Shield said indifferently: "This is my reckless action, it has nothing to do with the Shield Clan... If something unexpected happens... Please give my pig's feet to the children."