"A trio of monkey-shaped statue anomalies..." Song Yarong looked thoughtful. The prosthetic eye in her socket spun around. "To be honest, I don't remember anything like that... Can you describe them in more detail? Their size, material, the poses of the statues—anything like that."
"I'm not sure about their size or material." Sun Hang shook his head. "But their poses... One seemed to be covering its eyes, one its ears, and the last one its mouth."
"Three Monkeys?" Ye Jiu suddenly spoke up.
"You know about this thing?" Sun Hang raised a brow and looked at the man of iron sitting beside him.
"How should I put it... This is actually an allusion, not an anomaly." Ye Jiu said. "It can be traced back to the Confucian classic The Analects: 'The Master said: Do not look at what is improper, do not listen to what is improper, do not speak of what is improper.' The image of the Three Monkeys is the embodiment of those three lines. Besides Xiazhou, the Three Monkeys have also appeared many times in nearby countries influenced by Confucian culture—in carvings, murals, clay sculptures, and so on... But as far as I know, none of the Artifact Anomalies discovered so far have been Three Monkeys-shaped statues."
"I see..." Sun Hang slowly let out a breath, his brows knitting slightly.
Do not look, do not listen, do not speak... As a Xiazhou native, Sun Hang naturally knew that allusion. But clearly, the Three Monkeys he had seen had no direct connection to the "propriety" so revered by Confucian culture. If he insisted on applying the allusion here, he would have to remove the first two words.
Do not look. Do not listen. Do not speak.
Sun Hang suddenly realized that the so-called Three Monkeys statues might not