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Loading document SCP-CN-2845……
To my successor:
I don't know who you are. We might not even be from the same spacetime. But if you're reading this document, you probably have come because of SCP-CN-2845. I originally hoped nobody would be able to open this document, but if you've reached this point, that means my efforts have failed.
As the previous HMCL Supervisor of this object, my suggestions are simple. Do not continue reading. If you must investigate, do so without thinking too deeply about anything you read.If you are unfortunate enough to be unable to control your thoughts, do not tell anyone about your conclusions. Remember one thing: you are now an SCP-CN-2845-A.
He Zhuozhi
You are reading Iteration 1 of this document.
This version was last updated on 11/07/2020. You may need to read the newest version to obtain further information.
BY ORDER OF THE OVERSEER COUNCIL
Descriptions of SCP-CN-2845 may possess unknown cognitohazardous properties, the effects of which are still being investigated.
This document is for authorized personnel only.
Unauthorized personnel will face severe consequences.
| Item #: SCP-CN-2845 | 6/CN-2845 |
| Object Class: Euclid | CLASSIFIED |
Subject of the painting Blood of the Zhulong, by Song dynasty painter ████ █████, considered to be related to SCP-CN-2845 (designated SCP-CN-2845-7). Sensitive information has been removed. Note the red spots in the bottom left and bottom right; these are thought to be a reference to the instance "Phymœrlii of Sanguæis and Carniolore".
Special Containment Procedures: All known entities relevant to SCP-CN-2845 have been placed in an underground containment chamber in Site-CN-64. HMCL Supervisor approval is required to access the contained information. With the exception of authorized research personnel and the HMCL Supervisor, all uncontained instances of SCP-CN-2845-A are to be administered Type G viral amnestics. If the suppressive effects of the amnestics fail, the HMCL Supervisor is authorized to execute SCP-CN-2845-A instances.
Description: SCP-CN-2845 is a collective designation for a series of folklore elements and derived performance, visual and literary works. In all versions of the story, a large volume of anomalous concepts unexplainable by current history is present, and the story is heavily self-contradictory and at times indecipherable. If a human subject with non-anomalous cultural background and intellect becomes aware of SCP-CN-2845's contents, they will become an instance of SCP-CN-2845-A. Some SCP-CN-2845-A instances are capable of using anomalous means to understand the above-mentioned concepts, but are incapable of communicating this understanding using non-anomalous language.
SCP-CN-2845 has been confirmed to have been present in Sichuan, Yunnan, Guizhou and Guangxi provinces in southwestern China for an extended period of time prior to discovery, and has been traced up to the mid-Tang dynasty period.
Addendum: Collected Information
Testimony from Cang Zhou藏舟 (PoI-170272732), discoverer of the anomaly
Site-CN-64, 19/11/2018
No, I swear this is true. I'm not going to keep you in the dark, I come from this village in Sichuan. The first stop I researched, Leijie垒堺 village, is my hometown. I spent the first twelve years of my life in this place.
Every village has its weirdos, that's nothing special. But in Leijie, that weirdo was my uncle. My family insists that when he was young, he was completely normal, not a single bit weird. But one day after a long day in the fields, he just shut himself in his house. He never came out, he just stayed in there going mad, eating whatever he could, waiting to die. He was uneasy all day, mumbling something about how the sun was alive and the sky was bleeding.
Around that time, the kids in the village were reading, and they'd just learned the phrase "the man of Qi fears the sky杞人忧天"1. Quite a few of them ran to my uncle's house to use their newfound knowledge to ridicule him. The parents were mad when they found out; they were scared the kids would also go crazy. I was eight at the time, and pretending not to know I asked my uncle why he didn't leave his house. My uncle pulled me in, and with song and dance told me a story about the sun turning black and dead men not dying. At that time, his eyes were bloodshot, striking fear into everyone who saw them. If you hadn't seen him with your own eyes, you wouldn't know just how insane he'd gone. I was eight then, so I was scared to my soul. They had to get a shaman to knock it out of me before I recovered.
After that, I never saw my uncle again. I heard he died not two years later. But when I was playing around in the next village over, I heard my friends mention their village weirdos, and that was the strange part. These two guys went mad three years apart, not leaving their houses, and had no way to contact each other. But the crazy stuff they said, that bleeding sun story, was almost the same.
After that, I went to university, and it was then I saw Li He's Lament of the Short Days苦昼短. At that time, I broke out in a cold sweat — it was exactly like what my uncle was raving about — but he never got past elementary school, so where did he read this poem? I told my instructor about it, and he was quite interested. He had collected such folklore in the southwest before, and had seen such cases. He thought this was a lost supernatural tale, but… I don't think that's the case. This is different.
Right, another thing. I remember there was an old man — an elementary school teacher in his youth — who went mad as well when he got old. I wanted to hear his story, so he took me to his house and showed me a bunch of old drawings, saying he'd found them in the attic of his old house. In the end I found his son, bought the paintings off him — that's the one. There are words at the side, but I can't make heads or tails of them — they might be a poem.
His father said he went crazy after he read that poem.
Subject of painting retrieved by PoI-170272732, thought to originate in the Ming or Qing dynasty periods. Sensitive information has been hidden.
溃痕转荒穹，天凝白夜裂。
Forking traces of ulcer flooded on heaven,
welkin congealed and blank nyght was riven.
骨瘦神肤皱，坠日龙血热。
Skin of the bony senile Lord Anonyms,
oh, is crumpled and withering to hoar.
Sun Chariot flops whilst blood boils in dragons' limbs.
股肱起铅兵，火诫闭而灭。
Feverish jinns arise from terminal arteries,
yet burn themselves out in the heart war,
scribbling Fire Sermon's verses.
昼短闻歌长，来向断颈泄。
On a short day sentient beings heard lengthy ballads,
which are spilling out from those broken necks.
君不见八百万花夭艳绝，落舌说尽美人血。
Do you not see myriad daises blooming only to spasm,
weeping brilliant rouge like old beauties' bloody heads?
君不见盲者瞽者鼓盆歌，断弦弹裂心衷铁。
Do you not see the blind and deaf drumming the wrack2,
until their strings snap, with their iron hearts crack?
人途谁堪立，一径吊影孑。
Watching as nobody wanders on lonely way,
who merely hangs out with a single shadow.
失语或噎鸣，有客见红雀。
Whether his gorge is blocked or no word to ululate3,
someone has seen the scarlet crow.
Excerpt from research notes - SCP-CN-2845-02
Researcher Lin Yuhe, 12/01/2019
… In these rituals, one adult rooster, full of vitality with a strong call, is required. The ritual is carried out on the day of the winter solstice, when the Pleaides appear to the south and before the sun rises. The rooster's head is cut in one swoop, and a specially selected person collects its blood. The rooster's body is placed on a specially made wooden rack, and its wings and legs are fixed in an open position.
A golden mask used in this ritual.
The director of the ritual will wear a pure gold mask specially prepared for the ritual. The construction is pristine, and its shape is uniquely bizarre; typically, this is a personal treasure of the director's family, with a shape that brings to mind a bird of some sort.. Following this, the director will drizzle the blood of the rooster on its neck, until its wings have been drenched in blood. The rooster will then be taken down, and three days of preparation will follow, during which a trained craftsman will stitch the head back onto the rooster's body and perform preservative measures, upon which the rooster's head, wings and legs will be rethreaded and turned into a puppet.
The last step of the ritual must begin before sunrise, and must not encounter rain. The director of the ritual, wearing the golden mask, will continuously manipulate the rooster puppet in their hands, and mimic its call at dawn until sunrise. At this point, the rooster is no longer needed, and after being embalmed is cast into a bonfire until it is completely burned while all participants put on masks and dance around the bonfire, singing a local festival song unique to the area until the sun is fully visible.
This ritual has likely happened in this area for hundreds of years. In the most difficult periods, people here used dried grass and bark to make the shape of a rooster, and used red mud in place of its blood. The people say this is to maintain the rising and setting of the sun; however, they were unable to explain its origin.
Record excerpt - SCP-CN-2845-06
Site-CN-64, 03/02/2019
Note: The following text originates from a draft of the History of Ming, and was recovered from the home of Jiao Lu焦鹿, a resident of Tuyong涂咏 Village, Liangshan Yi Autonomous Prefecture, Sichuan Province. Beginning in the twenty-fourth year of Hongwu (1391 CE), the history documented in this version begins to differ from recorded history.
……
至坏劫时，魙魔凌空，稠雾如痰，胶滞玄黄。中见绛气乘极，先薄薄如罔两，后熊熊如煌。其周抟抟蔓生，发绪萦绞，如蛆如虺，啮裂天幕，蠢蠢其形，缀而填之。或散如麻，罗织星野；天河遏流，飞鸟囚帧。或聚如索，逶迤螣蛇，龘龘烛龙，曳哑四纮，长绳系日。日绞彊而不死，悬止中天，天如灼洞，洞黑且窈，周勒流沙箍，其色腐螺紫……
Until the disastro, the demon of Ghœlium was high in the sky. Dense fog, like phlegm, bogged down darkred firmament and khaki earth. Purple-red gas covered the sky, first thin like a net, then brilliantly raging. Surrounding it were spirals of growths, winding and entangling like maggots and snakes, gnawing open the sky, erratically climbing, stitching together and filling it. At times it scattered like oakum, weaving a net in the sky; the rivers were blocked, and birds were trapped. At times it gathered like a rope, the winding dragon-serpent Zhulong flying in the sky, tying down the sun. The garrotted sun did not die, but stiff; it merely floated like a deep, black hole burnt in the sky, surrounded by flowing sand-like particles dyed in decomposing Tyrian purple…
天应为星，地应为潮。潮者非水，谓火之滥焱不止，烰烰如洪水，尽没九土。初焚草木，混毁形影，至江河为衈水，人畜禽虫触之，则化为衃、臡、骾、魇之属，不似万类，不可指谓。劫火漫掷应天府，遇物则销之，遇水则煏之，炚彻三十三天。琉璃塔化玉浆，高阁飞梁皆为灰土，无复存者。
The omen in the sky took the form of stars, and on the earth it took the form of waves4; yet these waves are not of water, but of an endless flame, rising like a gushing river to consume the land from horizon. First it burned the greenery, destroying their form, until the rivers were made of sacrificial blood. Humans, animals, birds and insects that touched it turned into Sanguæis, Carniolore, Œssilaghos and Odiæmonium, which do not look like anything of this world, and cannot be named. The disastro ran rampant throughout Nanjing. Whatever encountered it melted; when it reached a river, the river would run dry; the flames burned through for thirty-three circles of heavens. The tower of lapis lazuli was turned to precious paste, and the towers were all burned to ashes. None survived.
……
㤵宁二年，帝觅天下之药，作《平魙万宝方》，凡草木水石虫兽臠骾衃臡尽录其中，求止魙灾，然未有所成。市井多传童谣，“斩衰不留日，白衣起刀兵”云云。帝诏罪己，告于天下，誓化劫以定民心，又肆捕妖人。
In the second year of Cüning, the Emperor found the medicine to cure the world, creating the Ghœlium-Calming Myriad Precious Prescriptions《平魙万宝方》, and the grass, the trees, the waters, the rocks, the insects, the beasts, and the demons were all recorded in it so as to prevent the disastro of Ghœlium, but it was all in vain. In the streets, many talked of the children's rhyme, "Those clothed in white have risen from the mourners who dressed the garbs of unhemmed sackcloth斩衰 not staying with sun, going ahead with nothing but the swords. "
The Emperor send out imperial decree to whole country to claim that he Paid It All by himself, and promised the people of the world that he would change the course of the disastro and calm the people's hearts, and would capture the cultists responsible.
……
黄河水漫，妖风日盛，鬼气遮天，黑风照世，黄沙埋人，怪雨伤人。鬼火满地，赤薍丛生，红蕘遍野，三千血华次第开，盘盘脓蛾舞。极天遍奏玉楼乐，老龙瘦凤嘶哑之音不绝……劫后余州，血流盈野，诸省生民，百不存一。一如《定劫》所泄之机，末灾劫年之景。
The Yellow River flooded, the evil wind grows day after day, the demonic gas covers the sky. The dark wind shines on the world, the yellow sands bury the people, the strange rain harms the populace. The demonic fire covers the earth, the crimson sprouts overgrow, the scarlet moss covers the fields. Three thousand bloodied flowers bloomed one after another, and moths danced across them. The dome of the sky plays the melody of the Jade Tower, and the old dragon and the starved phoenix's crowing continues on… The lands that survived the calamity were flooded with blood, and of the people of the provinces not one in a hundred survived. It was as the Precious volume of Quell Catastrophes (定劫宝卷) had exposed; the scenery of the end times.
……
Video recording of performance of Journey of the Zhulong (Textual record excerpt)
Site-CN-64, 27/6/2019
Researcher's Note: This videotape was recorded in the late 1980s, and has been heavily damaged. The Foundation obtained it from an eighty-six-year-old man named Jin Shiyue金适越. The subject claimed that during this performance something happened, and as such it has never been performed again. In addition, information obtained from similarly-aged persons in the area indicates that no related performance has ever been officially performed. Many of the lines in the performance are taken from Li He's Lament of the Short Days, and are marked as such below.
[Begin Recording]
0:00:00: Recording begins. The play is being performed in what appears to be an open-air stage in a village; a large audience fills all of the visible seating. As the point of view is tilted and shaky, the facial features of the audience members are indiscernible. It is roughly 3 p.m.; the play has progressed to an act titled "Changji5 Travels to Dahuang6". It is explained that Li He is sleeping in an inn on his journey from Chang'an to Luoyang, and in his dream has reached the land of Dahuang.
0:06:20 Li He discovers an old angler while traveling through Dahuang. While the backdrop of the stage has not changed, the sound of water can be heard on the audio channel. The old angler's basket is empty. Li He asks the angler how long he has been fishing; the angler extends a finger, but the audio channel is damaged and his speech is indiscernible. Li He appears surprised, and salutes the angler; the subtitles indicate that the angler is Father Ren任父7. Li He and Father Ren sing a large number of nianbai8 sections. Auditory analysis of this section revealed no major results.
0:11:12 An albino donkey is brought onto the stage. The beginning of Li He's distinct song is heard: "The king of Chu grows fat from eating bears, and the people of Chu grow thin from eating frogs9; yet none have heard of anyone of Chu enjoying a long life. I do not know the height of the blue sky, nor the thickness of the yellow earth. I have only seen the cold of the moonlight and the heat of the sunlight, tormenting the lives of men. I wish that all people under heaven can grow old yet remain strong." Father Ren appears shocked but appreciative, and the two exit the stage atop the donkey. A quiet sobbing is heard.
0:27:44 The background has been changed to a mountain road reaching the clouds, which the two are ascending. Seven feathered humanoid entities pass by from above; the quality of this appearance is seen to exceed local contemporary makeup standards. Father Ren refers to them as "feathered angles羽人", and notices the anomalous rays of light surrounding them. Li He takes out a wineskin and calls out to the feathered people: "Flying lights, flying lights, may I offer you a cup of wine?"10 The feathered people fall to the ground, covering the two in feathers. Through the gaps, all nine actors drinking wine can be seen.
0:32:17 While no significant changes were found in the tape, the audio quality anomalously improves. Li He appears to lament how fast time passes, how one cannot grow old healthy, and how he cannot bear the suffering of the human world. The feathered people state that beneath the Ruo tree11, there is a divine dragon roosting, with a golden candle in its mouth.12 When the dragon breathes out and ignites it, it is day, and when the dragon blows it out, it is night.
0:44:56 Li He asks the feathered people: "If I could stop this dragon from returning in the morning or hiding at night, would that mean that the old would not die, and the young would not cry?"13 The feathered people laugh and call Li He crazy. They explain that the cycle of birth, death and rebirth is a natural law, warning Li He that this dragon, Zhulong, is immortal, and can only be defeated by the Ghœlium. Li He bids the feathered people goodbye, and all exit the stage. During this scene, the actor playing Father Ren is not seen.
0:59:01 The backdrop depicts the roots beneath the Ruo tree. Li He and Father Ren appear. It is noted that the actor playing Father Ren has a dark stain on his clothes that is slowly growing. Father Ren asks Li He how they should proceed. Li He replies, "We will cut off the foot of the dragon, pry off its scales, feast on its flesh and drink its blood."14 Father Ren bestows his sword and white donkey upon Li He, and in an abnormal posture leaves the stage. Li He rides the white donkey in circles around the stage several times; an anomalous light fills the screen. Several actors in a "dragon dance" costume appear on the stage.
1:12:53 Li He withdraws his sword and rushes towards the dragon, cutting off the dragon's legs. One actor falls to the ground and bleeds out; however, the corresponding location on the dragon continues to move as if the actor were still there. Li He continues to attack the dragon; several more actors within the dragon die, but the dragon does not stop; rather, its movement becomes significantly faster compared to when it first entered the stage. Li He raises a severed arm and bites onto it, consuming several fingers. A black mist rises from the blood on the stage, covering the entire scene. Several feathered people can be seen rushing onto the stage towards Li He through the mist.
1:23:04 Li He wakes up from his dream and discovers that it is pitch black outside the window. Li He asks the innkeeper what happened; the innkeeper replies that morning should have come, but the sun has not yet risen. Several people are heard shouting indistinct phrases out of frame. The actors on stage are forced to the ground and the backdrop is torn down; blood is seen flowing. The audience begins to scream; the point of view shakes and recording stops.
[End Recording]
Excerpt from research notes
Researcher Zheng Jixian郑季咸, 9/07/2019
长吉气绝，尝所居窗中，勃勃有烟气，闻行车嘒管之声。
When Changji was on his deathbed, from outside the window there came a strong burst of smoke, and the sound of chariots and flutes.
李商隐《李贺小传》/ Li Shangyin, Lesser Biography of Li He
This was how Li Shangyin described Li He's death. The practice of romanticizing the death of poets is a common practice among ancient scholars. The story of Li Bai reaching for the moon's reflection in a lake and drowning, and the ringing out of flutes at Li He's deathbed, are all mysterious legends put together to romanticize death. To someone like Li He, whose works more often than not drew upon such aesthetics, this kind of record would be a perfect footnote at the end of his life. Li Shangyin's brush described the scarlet-cloaked envoy that brought Li He back to Heaven as saying:
帝成白玉楼，立召君为记。天上差乐，不苦也。
The Celestial Emperor has prepared a tower of white jade, and has called for you to be its scribe. To work in Heaven is not suffering, but joy.
李商隐《李贺小传》/ Li Shangyin, Lesser Biography of Li He
"To work in Heaven is not suffering, but joy."
To Li He, who suffered much but remained honest, the two words "not suffering" may as well have been a curse. While being tasked with writing such records would admittedly be pleasant, it clashed deeply with the nature of his life. I always thought it was just another weird story about a historical figure, until I saw that old painting, that scenery of an eternal day in the capital of the Emperor of White Jade. In that dream, Changji showed me his incomplete record, written in ink that had faded until it could fade no more; I knew it would never be completed. Twelve towers of white jade, towering over us from between the lines of poetry, just as brilliant as the skies.
Everyone — those who had died, those who were dying, and those who were yet to die — stood on floor upon floor of these towers, hoping earnestly for a sunset that would never begin. People beheaded, torn limb from limb by chariots15, drawn and quartered, would all dissolve in the sunset. The poetry they recited would let them, the dead, eternally linger until they met themselves again.
I ran, and didn't look back. I knew what they were. They were the beads of Xiangwang16.
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