bit stealing game

Chapter 1 Prologue Ancient Egypt It Haunts Me

I sat up from a coffin.

The thick darkness tightly wrapped the sarcophagus, perfectly explaining what it means to be blind.The walls of the coffin were cool and slippery, with inscriptions in hieroglyphic engraved on them.I am not very proficient in ancient Egyptian, so I can't figure out anything by just touching it.However, the basalt coffin that can afford this kind of regulation, no matter who is rich or expensive.I don't think I can bear this blessing anymore.

The only light in the space comes from a military flashlight not far away.

Artificial light sources steadily illuminate the altar standing on several stone steps and the Eye of Horus painted on the wall behind.The appearance of the element of Horus, the sky god who symbolizes imperial power, shows that I am indeed in a coffin belonging to ancient Egypt.

Since the light of the flashlight is from bottom to top, the head of the statue on the altar is hidden in the shadow.Not only can't see the face clearly, but it looks gloomy and ferocious.And the black eyeliner of the Eye of Horus itself was dark red under the strong light, like weeping blood.

For some unknown reason, only the place where the flashlight was pointing at was clearly visible, and the surrounding darkness was not covered by the slightest bit of rain and dew.Coupled with the frozen silence, it looks like an ominous place for sacrifice.

That doesn't help my situation.

I swallowed, held my breath and groped carefully in the pitch-black coffin.There is a flashlight in hand, and it should be the same family as the one who is working diligently and glowing under the altar.In addition, in the entire coffin, there is only a very uncomfortable pillow where I just lay down.

I was somewhat relieved that the coffin was not shared with other residents.

But it was interesting.

A huge basalt coffin, with intricate hieroglyphic inscriptions engraved on the deep and thick coffin walls.With this high-end configuration, besides me and the flashlight that obviously belongs to modern civilization, there is only one pillow as a funeral object, which is a bit shabby.

After temporarily clarifying the environment, I didn't bother to think about the whereabouts of the original coffin owner. I sat in the coffin and began to count the equipment on my body.Fortunately, I was wearing the uniform of the archaeological team, and I didn't even leave the tool vest, so I should have a lot of guys on me.

However, most mapping tools are useless in this situation.And the hand shovel I had put in the outer pocket of my left leg was gone, and it was one of the few things that could be considered a weapon.In its place was a solid object that felt like a rock.I don't know why, but I think I should keep it.If I still carried it in the coffin, it would be of great research value.

Finally I found an eraser in my breast pocket and threw it into the darkness.

I waited for a while, nothing happened, so I tentatively turned on the flashlight.

This is indeed a black sarcophagus.It's bigger than I imagined, and the space is enough for me to do a one-handed lateral raise after lying flat.There are brightly colored inscriptions on the wall of the coffin, which is higher than I sit, and the whole text is talking about some nonsense about the bones of Seth.

Set is the god of the desert in ancient Egyptian mythology and the younger brother of Osiris, the god of the underworld. Later, the two fought against each other for the throne.Legend has it that after being killed by Set, Osiris was mummified with the help of his wife, the goddess Isis, and was able to come back from the dead.Seth, on the other hand, was drained of blood by the gods, because the ancient Egyptians believed that as long as the gods had blood, they could be reborn.

It is no surprise that Osiris and Isis and even Horus are present in the tombs.But why would it involve Seth, or even Seth's bones?

I didn't bother to think about this unanswered question, and turned to study the pillow that had just been in close contact with my head.

This is an ivory pillow.A scarab made of lapis lazuli is inlaid in the middle of the pillow, and the goddess Isis spreads her wings below, as if holding the head of the sleeper.The overall design is actually a neck brace that suffers when you lie on it.But this kind of pillow itself is not for people to sleep soundly.

It stands to reason that if the ancient Egyptians placed pillows in their coffins, they would usually have the Book of the Dead written on them.

The Book of the Dead is a funerary text in ancient Egypt, which is mostly found on murals, coffin walls and some funerary objects in tombs.Among them, the most well-known ones are the doomsday judgment that the dead passed through and the golden ship of the sun god that can bring the dead across the Styx to resurrection.

However, on this ivory pillow, there are only religious ritual scenes outlined in black and red.The few lines of inscriptions are the same as those on the coffin wall, saying [Bone of Seth].

I did not give up and groped carefully again, but still found nothing new.

Nothing here makes sense.

My eyes fell on the ivory pillow, which stood out from the black sarcophagus.

Could it be that he had to lie on that pillow to find any clues?I lay down suspiciously, and lit the ceiling above my head with a flashlight.

It was a Senet chessboard*.

Like the doomsday judgment of Ma'at, the goddess of truth, this is a link that all pharaohs will go through after their death.Only through this game of chess with the gods can the pharaoh have a chance to get out of death and rise from the horizon like the sun again.

It's really wicked.

The combination of the altar not far away, the Senet chessboard above the head, and this coffin does not conform to any rules of ancient Egypt.

Let’s say it’s a sacrificial offering. There’s no words of praise, and there’s no sacrificial offerings. There’s only a lonely altar on the steps.

It could be said to be a tomb, but there are no funerary objects in the coffin, and even the ivory pillow seems to have been prepared for me.

Unless I'm the funeral object.

Thinking of this, my whole body immediately jumped up.

Still in shock, he squatted in the coffin and turned out all the things he was carrying.If I am really a funeral object, then I must have something worthy of being buried with me.

as predicted.I fished out of my pocket a blue ancient Egyptian scarab and an Eye of Horus, which the dead took to the underworld to use as amulets.Judging from the shape, the two probably belong to the New Kingdom period of ancient Egypt more than 3000 years ago.

My hands were shaking.

This is a cultural relic, why is it on me?Could it be that I have degenerated from an archaeologist to a tomb robber who suffers thousands of knives?

I took a few deep breaths and collected myself.Only then did he find another unremarkable stone from his body, and it was this thing that replaced the hand shovel.Tomb robbers wouldn't carry such worthless things.Luckily, I hooked the corner of my mouth and continued to search.

The last four items were also pulled out.They were a pair of gloves, a weight of lead that blackened my fingers, a heart-shaped lead box, and a well-preserved but aged pocket watch.

I pinned the gloves to the waistband of my trousers and threw the lead back into the pocket.I don't know what was in the heart-shaped lead box, so I didn't open it because I was afraid that it would cause trouble.

A pocket watch might be of use, however.However, it seems to be broken, and the pointer turns backwards.There is also a compass embedded in the middle of the dial.But the pointer was trembling slightly, persistently pointing to the darkness in the opposite direction of the altar.

I only glanced at the darkness, and dared not look any further.

There are drums coming from the depths of the darkness in good time, and the weird drumbeats seem to urge and call me to go and find out.

High and low doesn't get any more fucked up than lying in a coffin.My heart skipped a beat and I flipped out of the sarcophagus.

Where to go next is the question.

For some reason, I resist the altar more than the unknown darkness from which the drum beats.However, I had to go and see.After all, when I woke up from the coffin, the only thing that received special attention was the altar on the stone steps.

There are twelve steps in total, including the egg-shaped altar itself, it is thirteen steps.The golden idol looked down upon the endless darkness.

Gold represented eternity and immortality in ancient Egypt.The ancient Egyptians believed that the body of the god was gold and the hair was lapis lazuli.But the statues of gods are rarely made of pure gold, and more of them are stone or bronze statues.

But not only is the color of this statue wrong, why does the gold on the surface seem to be liquid?
I held the flashlight in my left hand, put on a glove in my right hand and touched it lightly.Sure enough, there was something golden on the glove.Is the paint still dry?

I walked around the altar.A line of inscriptions was seen on the base of the statue.

It reads: Your blood as a sacrifice.

A gust of wind blew by, and I shivered.

The wind seems to be blowing from behind the mural of the Eye of Horus.

I leaned over to have a look.

Below the Eye of Horus is a false door with a small hole that resembles a cat's eye.

This form usually appears in the sacrificial hall of the tomb.Behind the false door is the real tomb.The false door is for the soul of the dead "ba" to pass through.And the deceased himself can look out from the hole in the door to check whether the descendants have brought enough sacrifices.

Something flashed through the hole.

I took a few steps back abruptly, and almost bumped into the golden statue again.

Stumbled down the steps.I don't know where the light from the flashlight hit the wall on the left, and the reverse light almost blinded me.

The tireless drumming continued, and my heart beat faster and faster.But I still walked towards the reflective wall.

That is also a narrative mural wall.According to the above content, the place where I am now is Duat, the underworld of ancient Egypt.No wonder there are things like the Senet chessboard, and some images are very underworld.The bony figure seems to be crawling out of the soil, but the half in the soil is very plump.

There is also an altar on the mural on that wall, and a bronze mirror is embedded in the altar.It was the copper mirror that reflected the light from the flashlight just now.

strangeness.

Judging from the style of the murals and the various scenes that appear here, it should be the New Kingdom period more than 3000 years ago.But this bronze mirror has no trace of oxidation at all.If it is because of the tight seal and good anti-oxidation, I am sure that I have been panting.

And what was reflected in that bronze mirror was not the darkness in front of my eyes, and I could even clearly see the murals on the opposite wall.

Could this be the mirror world of ancient Egypt?So darkness is light and death is life?

Co-authorship obeys the rules at this time.

I moved closer.There is a golden face in the mirror.

I subconsciously took a few steps back, away from the bronze mirror, but accidentally kicked something.The rubbing sound of hard objects and the ground is more abrupt in this space.I froze in place.It was dead silent except for the eerie drumming, as if I was the only living thing here.

I bit the bullet and lit my feet with a flashlight.

Oh, it turned out to be my coffin board.

The zodiac signs symbolizing the ancient Egyptian cosmology were engraved on the thick wooden board that was overturned to the ground, and four circles of gods stood densely.There are also a few stars that I don't recognize.The twelve leading gods correspond to the twelve hours of night in the Book of the Dead.

I knelt down and studied it carefully.This coffin is still Lebanese cedar.It seems that either Thutmose III or Ramses II built this place.

For some reason, I always feel a little inconsistent.

The zodiac should have originated in Mesopotamia and was brought to Egypt by the Greeks.But the New Kingdom was more than 1000 years earlier than that.

Unless this is the coffin that was put in later.But if so, there's no reason why the murals are still talking about the New Kingdom.

However, the smile soon faded away.What I was lying on just now was a sarcophagus, but the one on the ground is a wooden coffin lid.If the coffin is also opened, what about the people in the coffin?
Immediately, I was covered in white sweat.Just at this time, at the interval of the drumbeat, I heard the sound of heavy and leisurely footsteps behind me.

It seemed as if something was coming down from the altar.And the dedicated military flashlight flashed twice and went out.

Da da da
Fuck, I'm not a funeral object, I'm a sacrificial offering.

I turned off the flashlight and ran towards the direction where the drum beats were getting tighter.

As a warm-blooded animal, human beings will continue to emit infrared radiation when they are alive.However, since the human eye is only sensitive to visible light with a narrow wavelength range, it generally cannot see the light on other people's bodies.

But I always feel that in the underworld of ancient Egypt, in this darkness, something is watching me.

I don't know how long I ran, but when my lungs were about to explode, I saw a beam of light suddenly lit up not far away.As far as the eyes can see in the darkness, the little light is like grain for catching birds.

In a panic, I bumped into it and fell onto a black sarcophagus.His left hand, which was not wearing a glove, was cut, and there was a little gold in the red blood that flowed out.

I look up.

This space seems to be immersed in water, and the walls are painted dark blue.The bottomless water color spread all the way to the ceiling, as if those golden stars were also submerged.

This is the afterlife of ancient Egypt.In their belief, the world after death is full of water.Just like in the vast ocean, the sun can't guide the direction.So the dead walk through the stars in terror.

The sarcophagus under my feet symbolizes the only land in this watery world.

I squeezed the wound worriedly, and this time the blood that flowed out was bright red.It seems that I was blinded by myself just now.

With the light that I don't know where it came from, I saw that the front of the sarcophagus was full of lotus flowers.Along the lotus flowers on both sides, I walked into a more open space.After getting closer, I found that those lotus flowers were actually carved out of stone by ancient Egyptian craftsmen who were good at using light and shadow.With the movement of footsteps, the changing light and shadow sway and bloom one after another like a lotus flower.

There is a wide bridge at the end of the Stone Lotus Path.A huge banyan tree protrudes from both sides of the bridge, and continues to grow staggered above the bridge.

The bridge passes between the trees, as if wrapped in the arms of the banyan tree.

In ancient Egyptian legend, the banyan tree can give birth to gods.Is it possible to get rid of this mortal body with naked eyes and become one of the gods by walking over there?

Both sides of the bridge are empty and dark, and the banyan tree seems to grow out of the ground.

I stood cautiously on the edge of the abyss and watched.

There was a drumbeat from the opposite side.I raised my eyes and looked along the wide bridge deck.A man in a white priestly robe was beating a bronze drum on the opposite bank, and he wore the double crown that belonged to a pharaoh.

Both priest and pharaoh.It can only be Thutmose III.Beside this brave and skilled pharaoh was an egg-shaped altar, which was also drenched with golden liquid, glowing in the dark.Unlike what I just saw in the dark, this altar's egg seems to have broken its shell.

But did he just start knocking now?I have come out of the coffin.Co-authoring this drum is not for me, it is because I am being sentimental.

As the drums became deeper and denser, the ground behind me, which symbolized water, trembled.In this gap, there are footsteps that cannot be ignored getting closer and closer to me.

Could it be the ghost on the altar followed?

Compared with the unknown danger, the fear of being sacrificed prompted me to walk onto the hanging bridge in front of me.There are boundless voids on both sides, and it feels like walking on the road to hell.

I took a few steps carefully, and the bridge deck began to tilt slightly.My whole body was tense and stiff in place, not daring to breathe.

It was as if something was watching me from above.I raised my eyes to see a creature with the head of a crocodile, the forelimbs of a lion and the lower limbs of a hippopotamus leaning out toward me maliciously.I looked at this suture monster and felt bad.Isn't this Amit who is responsible for eating the heart of the loser in the Doomsday Judgment?

Sure enough, in the towering darkness, the god Thoth with the dog-headed ape body looked down at me calmly.

So what I'm standing on isn't a bridge.This is a balance between Yin and Yang.I gritted my teeth, whether it was Huangquan or Judgment, I had no choice but to go on.It's just that the one waiting for me in the middle of the road is not Meng Po, but Ma'at

Bite the bullet and hadn't taken two steps before a feather lightly landed in front of me.

The drumming still didn't stop.The scales and the whole of space began to collapse with that feather.Pieces of starry sky approached me.

In the fall, I remembered:
It turned out that I was lying in that black sarcophagus myself.

　This is an adventure novel about the history, mythology and conspiracy of prehistoric civilization in ancient Egypt.Hope everyone likes it.Please leave a lot of comments and suggestions.

　　*Senet Board: A clearance game that often appears in Egyptian tombs as a funerary object.

　　
　
(End of this chapter)