Volume 4Chapter 6: The Simple Answer

The old man spoke in a clear voice with a Changsha accent, and the content of his words intrigued me.

I secretly sized up the old man, who looked very strange. He was probably in his 70s, skinny, not very tall, with a hint of melancholy in his eyes. He was wearing an old cotton jacket that was a bit wrinkled, and old-fashioned reading glasses with a super-large bottom like a beer bottle. This kind of dress is not like a guest here, but there are many capable people in Uncle Er’s teahouse, so the waiter doesn’t seem to be surprised.

I didn’t say anything, and I watched him to see what he would do. I saw him pick up the book, put his hands behind his back, and return to his seat. He walked with a straight back and a brisk pace. If he wasn’t a martial artist, he must have been a soldier in the past. There were a few people at his table, all of them elderly, chatting away. As soon as the old man returned, they all showed a respectful look, obviously this guy was the boss.

I secretly took my tea and sat behind them, my ears pricked up, listening to what the old man would say.

At first, the old men chatted about stocks for a while, which I didn’t like at all. After half an hour, the old man remembered that he had taken the magazine. I heard that there was a way out, this guy might really know something, and I didn’t dare to make a sound.

He then opened the magazine and turned to the page where I had burned the hole. I thought to myself, this guy might really know something. I didn’t dare to make a sound. The old man continued, “Come and take a look. What’s so special about this map? Let’s test you.”

The old men looked at it and said a lot of chatter. You say a map with a hole burned by a cigarette has something special. The old men really can talk nonsense. A few of them even talked about the three-legged tripod. The old man in charge shook his head and said it was all wrong.

I was itching to hear the answer. I was hoping that I would surrender.

Seeing that no one could come up with an answer, the old man laughed and suddenly lowered his voice, saying something I didn’t understand. The other men immediately became excited and were all eager to see the magazine.

I was suddenly depressed. What dialect are you talking about when there is nothing wrong?

The old men looked at it for a long time and all of them made a sound of sudden enlightenment. I was so anxious that I almost burned up, hoping that they would discuss it and let me know some details. According to my ability, knowing some should be able to guess the general idea.

What I didn’t expect was that, in the following, all the conversations of this group of people were in that strange language. I listened carefully for a long time and could only determine that it was not a dialect of Chinese. Where the hell did those old men come from?

I listened for a long time, but I really couldn’t take it anymore. My brain was also getting hot. I thought to myself, “You won’t let me understand, will you? I’ll fucking ask you myself. You can’t do anything about it, can you? I stood up, walked over to them, and pretended to be a studious young man, asking, ”Where are you from, old man? Why do I find this so strange?”

This was very rude in Hangzhou, unlike in Beijing, where everyone in the teahouse courtyard knows each other. I regretted it as soon as I said it, thinking that they wouldn’t give me a look.

Unexpectedly, the old men all froze and laughed. The one who took the book said, “Little boy, it’s normal that you don’t understand. This is the language of the Miao people. There are no more than a thousand people who can speak it in the whole country.”

I was surprised and said, “Are those people all Miao people? They don’t look like it.”

The old men laughed again, and they didn’t answer me. I saw that these people were all talkative, and they weren’t from this area. I might be able to find out something. I hurriedly followed the momentum and asked, “Don’t laugh, just now I heard the old man say that the map was for me.

The old man in charge looked at me and said, ‘Young man, are you also interested in feng shui? You can’t understand this knowledge.’

”I can! I wanted to lick his feet to make him tell me, “Why don’t you tell me, so I can see it too?”

The old man and the others smiled at each other and said, “Actually, it’s nothing. Look, the three points you ironed out are all in very special positions. If you connect them and look across, what do you see?”

I picked up the magazine and looked at it. Suddenly, I felt cold all over. “This is it!” I opened my mouth wide.

It turned out that the three places where the fish were unearthed, the tomb of the Western Zhou Dynasty in Qimengshan, the underground palace of the reclining Buddha in Guangxi, and the underwater tomb in Xisha, were connected by a curve along the coastline of China.

I wanted to slap myself, thinking to myself, Wu Xie, how could you be so stupid! I couldn’t even draw a map, just focusing on the different dynasties of these places, and never thinking about the relationship between the locations.

The old man looked at me in surprise, knowing that I had already seen the clues, and felt quite appreciative, saying, “It’s a not-so-obvious ‘emerging dragon’. To put it nicely, it’s called a hidden dragon emerging from the sea, but this game is still missing a little bit, a missing dragon head.” He then picked up his cigarette and pointed it at the magazine, right on the location of Changbai Mountain.

The magazine was smoking, but I couldn’t react at all. After a moment of stunned silence, I asked him, “This… this, Master, what is the meaning of this game?”

The old man laughed, “You see, this is called a mountain range from a horizontal perspective, and these points are connected to the Changbai Mountains, the Qinling Mountains, the Qimeng Mountains, and the Kunlun Mountains. This is called the thousand dragons pressing the tail. The several dragon veins in China are all connected. This is the integration of feng shui. There are countless places along this line where qi and wind are gathered. The points you have marked are all very important treasure eyes, because this line ends in the water and the other end is on the shore, so it is called the water dragon.

“But is this kind of big-headed feng shui practical? The dragon veins seen with this kind of feng shui are more abstract. We call it big-headed dragon. In ancient times, it was used to divine the fortunes of the world and the location of Beijing City, which was determined by this. When it comes to choosing a mausoleum for the emperor, this feng shui is too big. I only know a little bit about it. If you want to talk about a master, it was Wang Zanghai in the early Ming Dynasty. Big-headed feng shui is his specialty.”

I heard this and my eyes swam, and I felt that all seven of my orifices were opened. All the things I couldn’t figure out came flooding back to me. Why would the hexagonal bell in the corpse cave at the Five Tombs Ridge outside the Lu Palace appear in the underwater tomb? Why would there be such a sophisticated maze box in the Western Zhou tomb? Why would the Buddha’s bone relics in the Guangxi Fudu “Jing’er Palace” turn into a snake-browed bronze fish? The reason is too simple, because Wang Zanghai has been to all these places.

The treasure eye of the dragon is generally a place where the dragon vein gathers wind and qi. Although it is not known what the purpose of placing the bronze fish in these treasure eyes is, according to the general practice of feng shui, this feng shui line is for the dragon head on Changbai Mountain. All of this is for the Yunding Palace. No wonder he is so fascinated and has spent so much effort.

Who is buried in the palace under the snow?

The old man looked at me in a daze, probably not knowing what I was thinking, so he beckoned to the others to get up, stuffed the magazine into my hands, and waved to pay the bill. I was thinking about something and didn’t react right away. When I remembered to ask for his contact information, he had already left the teahouse. I chased after him and saw him take off his glasses. When I looked at the outline of his eyes, I couldn’t help but stop.

I saw a terrible scar starting from the corner of his eye, passing over his nose and ending at the corner of the other eye. There was a depression on the bridge of his nose, as if he had been cut by a sharp instrument. I saw his eyes and was scared again, forgetting to chase after him. I thought to myself that this old man had an extraordinary way of speaking and was full of energy. It was probably what Old Hai said today, Chen Pi A Si!

I just talked about him at dinner, and now I bumped into him at the teahouse. This is too coincidental. I thought about it, and suddenly I felt that it was a bit abrupt for Lao Hai to come to Hangzhou and tell me the story. Could it be that the old man and Lao Hai have something fishy going on? Did they set up this trap to lure me in? The old man looked a bit cunning, so I had to be on guard.

I cursed in my heart, not knowing what this set of plays was about, and I was suddenly confused. I recalled Lao Hai’s narrative. Wasn’t this old man already blind? How could he still see? And he spoke with full energy, not like a 90-year-old. But after I figured out the plot of the big-headed Qianlong, I felt much better. The feeling of gloominess was gone. I paid the bill and went back to sleep comfortably and soundly.

I woke up the next day at noon. I looked at the invitation and saw that it was already over. I called Lao Hai, but he didn’t have much to say. He just said that not many people had taken pictures of the fish. I was very happy. Only idiots would buy this stuff. I told him a few more things, and it sounded like Lao Hai was very busy. It seemed that he had bought a lot of things, so I didn’t bother to talk to him. I didn’t want to go to the store in the afternoon, and I wanted to go to the teahouse to wait for that person. But Uncle San’s store called and said that someone was looking for me.

I thought to myself, “Could it be that Lao Yao has appeared again?” I drove over there in a panic, and when I walked into the shop, I saw a man sitting on the sofa. I almost burst into tears, and immediately yelled, “Pan Zi!”