Volume 5 Chapter 20 The Hall of Doors (4)

The fat man immediately raised his hand, “Me!”

“Me too!” Pan Zi also raised his hand.

Shunzi didn’t know why, but suddenly there was an unmistakable air of authority in his brows. He waved his hand and said, “Those who fired the gun stay! Everyone else runs! Keep running! Never look back!”

I looked and counted. Oh, all of our people stayed. What should I do? If I follow Chen Pi A Si, I’m just waiting to be slaughtered! Pan Zi also raised his hand and said, “I… I forgot. I also fired!”

Ye Cheng and the others didn’t know how to react at first. At this time, we heard the sound of tiles cracking on the roof of the temple. It seemed that a lot of things were climbing onto the roof of the temple, and the number was unimaginable. Several people were shocked and didn’t know what was going on.

“It’s too late, let’s go!” Shunzi yelled.

Chen Pi Ashi looked at us, shook his hand, and said to the monk Huaxiang, “Go!” The three of them quickly ran out of the front hall.

I felt strange, but the situation did not allow me to think too much. The sound of the tiles above our heads cracking was getting louder and louder. The fat man threw his bullet bag to Pan Zi, and both guns were loaded. We formed a circle and asked Shunzi, “What is it up there? What should we do?”

Shunzi said in a low voice, “I don’t know.”

“Then why did you let them run?” Pan Zi asked.

Shunzi said, “I just wanted to separate you from the old man. This was not my idea, it was your third uncle’s order.”

When we heard this, we all turned to look at him, wondering what he meant. Pan Zi asked, “Then who are you?”

“Don’t ask so much.” Shunzi said, “I’m taking you to see your third uncle now. You can ask him yourself then.”

I felt a chill run down my spine. I was about to ask, “Is my third uncle here in the mausoleum?” Suddenly there was a series of cracking sounds overhead, and the tiles rained down like rain. We all looked up, covering our heads. In the light of the flashlight, we saw countless shadows moving, seemingly the same as the ones we saw earlier.

Shunzi said, “When you fired your gun, the dead forest was full of sounds, all of which were heading this way.”

“Then why aren’t we running?” Pan Zi listened to the dense sounds of crawling around him, and asked nervously, “Aren’t we waiting to die here?”

“Wait until they go further away.” Shunzi looked behind him and saw that Chen Pi Asu seemed to have run far away. He turned to him and said, “Go!” He patted us on the shoulder and ran ahead to the exit of the front hall, and we followed closely behind him.

Outside the gate hall, we could see the hall of the gods, and in front of it was a twenty-arch white marble bridge. Hanging from the bridge were two dragons of unknown material, winding along the railings on both sides of the bridge. The jade color was excellent, and there was not a single gap, as if it had been carved as a whole. Under the bridge was the moat of the inner imperial tomb, and we didn’t know if there was water underground.

We had only run a few steps when a gust of wind came up from behind, and we all rolled over. The fat guy fired a few shots in the dark, but he didn’t hit anything.

A faint feeling of restlessness filled the darkness. I vaguely sensed that this thing seemed to be able to fly, but the flashlight couldn’t see anything.

We got up and continued running. Above our heads, there were bursts of sound, as if something was hovering above our scalps. The fat guy was shooting at the sky as he ran, and soon we reached the bridge. Suddenly, I felt something on my back, and I fell out. I turned around and got up, but before I could react, the fat guy smashed a butt of a gun against my ear, and I felt something fall off my back.

I looked back and saw only a black shadow struggling to get up. Pan Zi raised his hand and shot it in two, then the fat man fired several shots into the sky. The tracer of the bullet flashed, and countless shadows hovered above our heads.

“What the hell are these?” I said in amazement.

“There are too many, we can’t shoot them all, how can we go?” Pan Zi yelled, asking Shunzi. “Where is the third uncle? How do we go!”

Further ahead is the second hall of the Four Dragon Palace. When we get there, we will inevitably have to meet with Chen Pi A Si again. To be honest, I feel a lot of psychological pressure when I am with these people. And now that we have the whereabouts of Uncle San, I can’t wait to find him and ask him what the whole thing is about.

“Your Uncle San should be in the underground palace,” Shunzi said.

“Underground palace?” The fat man fired another shot, not knowing what he had hit. “Great, that’s a relief. Where is the entrance to the underground palace?”

Shunzi said, “I don’t know.”

Suddenly, everyone froze for a moment. Looking at Shunzi, they could tell from his expression that he wasn’t joking. The fat man scolded, “You don’t know that you said you would take us to see him. This mausoleum is so big, how can we find him?”

Generally speaking, the formal entrance to the underground palace is the third dragon tower along the sacred path, the Heavenly Palace, but it must be under the bronze tripod. There are more than 70 layers of blue bricks and armor made of lead and molten iron waiting for us. The modern engineering corps cannot dig it open in ten days or half a month, but there must be a secret entrance to the underground palace, and it should be inside the mausoleum building, on the central axis. The entrance to the underground palace of the Empress Dowager’s tomb is in the screen wall of the mausoleum, but now there is no time to dig a hole in this situation.

Shunzi was very calm, hunched over, and said to me, “Your third uncle said that this is the place where the ‘Xuanwu refuses to accept the corpse’. He said that if he told you this, you would naturally know where it was. Think about it and see if you have any impressions.”

I was surprised to hear this. “Xuanwu refuses to accept the corpse” is a joke. In other words, in the theory of feng shui, it is the place that combines the worst feng shui in the world. This kind of place is the same as the supreme treasure cave “Nine Dragons Coiling” in the theory. It is something in the theory, and there is no such place in the world. I asked, “Did he really say that? Did he say anything else?”

The book on burial says, ”The earth has four forces, and the qi comes from all directions, so the sand is left for the blue dragon, right for the white tiger, front for the red bird, and back for the black turtle. The black turtle hangs its head, the red bird dances, the blue dragon winds, and the white tiger bends. If the situation is reversed, the law will be broken and death will follow. Therefore, a crouching tiger is called a corpse-holding tiger, a crouching dragon is called a jealous dragon, a crouching black tortoise is called a corpse-rejecting black tortoise, and a dancing red bird is called a fleeing red bird…

Shunzi looked around with his head bowed, and said hurriedly, “That’s all. At the time, your third uncle seemed to be avoiding someone, so he was in a hurry. Your third uncle arranged for me to meet you in the village, take you into the mountains, and then give you these few words.”

I listened, suddenly stopped, and was dumbfounded. If this is really the “Xuanwu rejecting the corpse,” then it is not strange for the descendants to die out, for the wife to cheat on her husband, and for anything to happen if they are buried here.

And according to the old man Chen Pi, the feng shui here should be extremely good, so how could it be “Xuanwu rejecting the corpse”?

I suddenly regretted not paying attention to these things before. If I could understand some things when I came here, I should be able to understand what it means now.

The fat man also understood these things, and in some ways he knew even more than I did. At this time, he was also very puzzled and cried out, “Nonsense, it’s impossible. How could the place where the imperial mausoleum is located be a place where ‘Xuanwu rejects corpses’?”

Pan Zi fired another volley, pushing away the things that were pressing down, and then turned around and said, “It’s not impossible. Feng shui is about people. Didn’t you hear the monk say that? The people buried in this imperial mausoleum are not people. Maybe this strange difference in the layout has something to do with this!”

I know that Pan Zi’s words are purely angry. With the weak power of the Dongxia Kingdom, all the strength and resources should have been poured into building these buildings. Only the Wan Nuwang could have launched such a huge project. Moreover, I don’t believe that the last Wan Nuwang at the time still had such prestige. The construction of this mausoleum must have mixed some religious elements. At that time, Wan Nuwang was probably a religious idol of man and god.

The bronze fish says that the Wan Nuwang of all ages are demons from the ground. I don’t think we can understand it directly. The information on the bronze fish should have another hidden meaning. What exactly does it mean? Maybe we need to decipher the two bronze fish in my hands to know.

But the fat man didn’t buy it. As soon as he heard Pan Zi say this, he angrily said, “Don’t pretend to know what you don’t know. If it’s not a human, could it be a dog? No matter what is buried in the tomb, according to the feng shui theory, one should not choose a place with a “bad omen.” Do you think that the coffin is a monster, so the feng shui for burying it should be the opposite of human? There is no problem with this! And look at the scale here, it is at least a city-state level, why build such a tomb for the monster?

Pan Zi’s business knowledge is not as rich as that of the fat man, and he is suddenly at a loss for words, not knowing what to refute.

Shunzi said to us, “Bosses, I don’t understand what you’re talking about. Don’t talk about these cock eggs. What the hell is going on? Whoever knows, speak up!”

Fatso said, “It’s not that difficult. Have you read the burial manual? Do you know what it says? ‘There are four forces in the earth, and the qi comes from all directions. The front is the Red Bird, and the back is the Black Tortoise. The Black Tortoise means the back, and the refusal of the corpse means that there is no corpse. Put it together and it means that there is no corpse in the back. Isn’t that obvious? The corpse is in front!”

I thought to myself, ‘Damn, is that what this sentence means? If Guo Pu (the author of the burial manual) hears this, he will crawl out of his grave and strangle you to death.

Shunzi didn’t understand this and really believed it. He said, ’This scope is too broad. If it is in front, in front of what? You can’t find the entrance just by this?”

I told him not to listen to the fat man’s nonsense. How could you interpret the burial manual like that? “Since Uncle San didn’t directly say the location of the entrance to the Xuan Gong, it must be because if he had, you wouldn’t have been able to convey it. Then you can’t understand his words simply from the literal meaning. It’s useless to guess like the fat man.”

The fat man was unconvinced. He asked, “Then what do you have in mind?”

I shook my head and said that I didn’t have a clue yet, and that I needed to think about it. Uncle San was proficient in ancient ciphers and secret texts, so I should work on that aspect. And since he thought I could understand, he must have had his reasons. But now was clearly not the time to think about it.

In the meantime, we had already retreated to the end of the stone bridge. Beyond that is the square of the imperial tomb, where in the darkness you can see two stone steles standing side by side at the end of the stone bridge. They are both more than 10 meters high, one of them is broken, and underneath it is carried by a huge black beishan. Not far behind the steles is a towering black shadow.

I knew that this was the “mausoleum boundary stone,” and behind the stone should be the “Wangsengdian” immortal stairs, which is the gateway to the underworld. The “mausoleum boundary stone” can be said to be the true boundary between the human world and the underworld. Because after the “mausoleum boundary stone,” the tomb guardians are unable to enter. Hundreds of years ago, when the mausoleum was closed, no one has set foot in the area opposite the boundary stone.

The moment I saw the stone tablet, I suddenly had a very ominous premonition. It seemed that in the huge black shadow in front of us, in some corner of the dead and silent inner city of the imperial tomb, something was waiting for us.

At this moment, the fat guy in front of me suddenly stopped, opened his arms and stopped us. I went up and saw that the end of the stone bridge had collapsed. Between the stone bridge and the “mausoleum boundary stone” on the opposite side, there was a deep abyss about three meters wide. The flashlight shone down into the darkness, and it seemed that there was water, but I didn’t know how deep it was.

“What should we do?” I looked at Pan Zi, who didn’t think twice before picking up his gun and saying, “What else can we do? Jump over one by one, quickly!”

I looked at the distance and couldn’t help but swallow my saliva. How far can those people at the Olympics jump? Three meters isn’t too far, but for someone like me who doesn’t exercise all day, it’s really a bit difficult to jump over easily.

The fat guy on the side had already handed the gun to Shunzi, then took a few steps back, ran for a while, and then jumped, walking through the air and rolling onto the stone ground on the opposite side. Shunzi threw the gun back to him, and then threw the equipment on our bodies over first. Then Shunzi jumped over too, and Pan Zi wanted to be my backup, letting me jump first. I looked at the abyss in front of me, and my heart was set on dying, so I yelled at the fat guy on the opposite side, “Pull me a little!”

The fat man promised, I took a few steps back, calmed down, and suddenly accelerated. Unfortunately, just as I was about to jump, Pan Zi suddenly yelled from behind, “Wait!”

At this point, I couldn’t stop the car, and suddenly I jumped high and jumped to the opposite bank. I subconsciously looked back and wondered why Pan Zi was calling me.

As I looked up, I saw a huge black shadow swooping down from above my left side, grabbing me by the back of my neck in mid-air, and suddenly its claws hooked my clothes, pulling me to the side.

I lost control of my position in the air, and then the claws loosened, and I fell over backwards, falling into the abyss. For a moment, my mind went blank, and I didn’t know what to do. Everything in front of me seemed to be in slow motion. I saw the fat man rushing over, leaping up to try to grab me in mid-air, but his hand just brushed past my collar. Then Pan Zi raised his gun and fired three bursts of bullets at my head, “papa-papa-papa,” and the bullets whizzed past. Then I fell into a darkness, and their flashlights disappeared in an instant.

The fall was extremely fast, and I spun a few times in the air, while my mind flashed a series of thoughts. What was down there? It was the moat. How deep is a normal moat? Is there water? Will I die from the fall, or will the sulfurized water here melt my bones into a pile?

Before I could even think of the answers to these questions, my back hit an object that looked like a chain, almost breaking my back in two. The pain made my vision go dark, and then my body spun around the chain and fell down again. Before I could even recover, I hit another chain. This time, because of the previous impact, the impact was not heavy. I reached out to grab it, but I grabbed an empty space, and I continued to fall.

This series of impacts knocked me into a daze, and even the posture of curling up when falling was lost. Then I fell heavily on the ground face-up. I could hear the bones in my body making a muffled sound, and then my ears were deafened by a loud buzzing sound.