Chapter 966 The Green-Haired Scholar (Seeking Guaranteed Monthly Tickets!)
Besides the Confucian scholars and the green figures that appeared to be sorcerers, there were also many men and women in the fire pit, some dressed as palace servants and others as commoners in plain clothes.
It is unknown what crime they committed; perhaps they are family members of those "criminals in the hell pit."
Countless heads were being poured into the enormous fire pit, which resembled an abyss, its gaping maw devouring the endless stream of food.
In the center of the tomb painting, dark yellow flames burn fiercely on the bodies of these little figures.
Especially those green-clad figures, some of whose faces were outlined with expressions of painful screams, and those Confucian scholars in disheveled clothes, who also showed expressions of fear.
The artist depicted the tomb mural with just a few strokes, yet it was remarkably lifelike.
Such superb skill did not elicit applause from Ouyang Rong; instead, he remained somewhat silent.
Riding on a giant fish, Miao Si suddenly spoke:
"This is about the burning of books and burying of scholars alive. Some books have recorded it, but I never expected that the murals in this strange place would be about this event."
Miao Si patted the big, silly fish with her little hand, urging it to swim to the previous tomb painting. Pointing to the elderly man in a ceremonial robe, she said crisply:
"He was the First Emperor, a thousand years ago, who was fooled by a group of sorcerers. At first, he summoned sorcerers from various regions to try to concoct elixirs to prolong life. After failing to achieve immortality, he listened to the slander of treacherous people and changed his plans to sail the seas to find immortals and elixirs. According to the laws of the Qin Dynasty, those who failed to find the elixirs would be executed. In the end, the people who went to sea simply ran away. It's hilarious..."
Little Ink Spirit suddenly made a face at the old and decrepit "Ancestral Dragon" in the mural:
"Burn, burn, all you know is burning. If you're so capable, go burn your own coffin. Burning so many ancient books, what if some ink spirits from Zhou Shou Cang Shi come out? Luckily, this fairy is young and beautiful and was born late, so you can't burn them. Hehehe."
Ouyang Rong remained silent.
He walked up to the tomb mural engulfed in flames, his face close enough to touch the fiery pit.
Ouyang Rong turned his head and looked along the wall towards the darkness on his right, the direction he had just come from.
For some reason, the mural from before suddenly popped into his mind again... the image of a man in ceremonial robes sitting alone in the main hall late at night.
What was the First Emperor thinking as he gazed at the dark palace?
It is the joy of learning that there are immortals and elixirs of immortality in the world.
Did you foresee this day coming, or did you sense the overwhelming anger that would ensue?
Who were those red and purple figures in the front hall who were trying to assassinate him?
Are they remnants of the six states, or mountain cultivators dissatisfied with the Qin Dynasty?
Ouyang Rong suddenly realized that the creator of this mural must have been someone who knew the First Emperor very well.
This person not only knew many of the secret events surrounding the First Emperor's pursuit of immortality and the burning of books and burying of scholars, but also deeply understood the First Emperor's heart and was keenly aware of the loneliness and vulnerability of being at the pinnacle of power.
Looking back now, that seemingly superfluous "lonely figure sitting and gazing into the night palace" was actually the turning point for everything that followed.
Whether it was a leak, overt or covert, it was likely that the First Emperor, after sitting in meditation that night, decided to seek immortality and the elixir of life.
This was also the cause of all subsequent events such as favoring sorcerers and burning books and burying scholars alive.
This picture is absolutely brilliant.
The first half of this First Emperor's life was marked by building upon the achievements of six generations, implementing long-term strategies, ruling the world, conquering the two Zhou dynasties, and destroying the feudal lords. He was considered wise and powerful. However, in the second half of his life, he became almost obsessed with seeking immortality and eventually died on his quest for immortality. This even foreshadowed the demise of the Qin Dynasty under the Second Emperor.
"Xiao Rongzi, what are you daydreaming about? The fire is dying down, the torch is almost burned out. If you're looking for something, hurry up, it'll be daytime soon."
Miao Si's urging voice came.
Ouyang Rong snapped out of his daze, turned around and glanced at the torches illuminating the surroundings; indeed, the fire had shrunk considerably.
It must be getting light soon outside.
Ouyang Rong could not stay at Lu Changgeng's grave for too long; he still had to meet up with Madam Chen at the agreed time.
Who knows how big the interior of this ancient tomb is, or if there are any other switches or secret passages?
Ouyang Rong returned to the tomb painting depicting the burning of books and burying of scholars, and continued walking down the path, still pondering the profound thoughts of Baijiu.
The shimmering white light cast by the fish tail illuminated the tomb mural behind it very clearly, but as Ouyang Rong looked at it, his expression turned somewhat surprised.
I thought the later tomb paintings would continue to depict the subsequent stories of the First Emperor in history, just as recorded in official history.
Unexpectedly, the subsequent tomb paintings did not show the First Emperor's perspective, but instead strangely shifted to a large ship sailing on the sea.
It was that large ship that the First Emperor and his entourage saw off as they set sail in search of immortality.
Ouyang Rong recognized him with his sharp eyes.
Because they saw the familiar figures of the tall-hatted, pointed-faced man and the scholar in dark green robes.
In conjunction with the content of the tomb paintings mentioned above, in a sense, these two people and the large ship that set sail in search of immortality were the trigger for the First Emperor's "burning of books and burying of scholars," an event that has earned him eternal infamy.
The two eerie green figures on the boat had entered the palace to pay homage to the First Emperor after his failed alchemy attempt. Perhaps they promised to find immortals, which is why the First Emperor poured so much effort and resources into them.
Miao Si followed Ouyang Rong to examine the tomb paintings and was somewhat surprised by them, as she hadn't expected them to be there.
Several tomb murals depict the large ship tossing and turning at sea, encountering storms and remote islands along the way.
While pondering the brilliant ideas, I stroked my chin and couldn't help but mutter to myself:
"What are you trying to draw? Are you trying to tell the story of how these two lads tricked the First Emperor and ran away, living a life of luxury? Hehe, no need to draw it, I already know without even guessing. Hmm, if I had been born a few hundred years earlier, I would have also gone to fool that stupid First Emperor... ptooey, no, I mean, I would have helped him find immortality. Hmm, I would have made him prepare a whole ship full of inksticks for me, and I would have taken them out to sea and guaranteed to complete the task of finding immortality and bring the ship back."
Ouyang Rong did not respond.
Miao Si waited a while, but when he didn't cooperate and ask any questions, she wasn't embarrassed. Instead, she simply pointed to her own little face with her thumb:
"Look, this fairy is indeed a fairy. How about that? Surprised? Unexpected?"
Ouyang Rong's lips twitched slightly.
Just then, as if he had seen something, he quickened his pace and came to the next tomb painting.
In the tomb mural, the familiar large ship was still sailing on the sea, but Ouyang Rong noticed something unusual.
People were occasionally thrown off the ship and into the sea.
These people looked like the black-clad elite soldiers who were specifically responsible for monitoring the ship's route.
Unsurprisingly, they were killed by the escape group led by the two eerie green figures on the ship, because Ouyang Rong saw that the two eerie green figures always stood at the bow of the ship, their positions unchanged, which should represent that their status had not changed.
The Immortal-Seeking Ship, freed from the shackles of the First Emperor's power, fell completely into the hands of the escape faction.
Ouyang Rong carefully observed the position of the sun on the sea in the tomb painting and made a rough estimate. He concluded that the Immortal-Seeking Ship should be sailing on the East China Sea, which was also the location that his junior sister had mentioned, where the most concentrated group of sorcerers in the current era gathered.
Two more paintings' worth of time passed, and the large ship slowly docked on a huge island.
The island has many towering mountains, but it is sparsely populated.
It doesn't look like some kind of overseas fairyland.
Then, the man with the eerie green hat and pointed face stepped off the boat.
The ship's crew unloaded crates of treasures and followed the ship's crew, some of them delighted, aboard the island.
Ouyang Rong's attention fell on the figure of the scholar in dark green. He moved very slowly. The crowd had already disembarked, but he was still on the deck and had not come down for a long time.
Moreover, in the tomb painting, the person's face is not clearly visible, but he is vaguely holding something in his hand, the appearance of which is unclear.
However, in the subsequent tomb paintings, everyone on the ship stopped on this island.
They built their dwellings as if preparing to hide there for a long time, to avoid the wrath of some emperor.
The leader should be a man with a tall hat and a pointed face, because in the painting, he often leads the crowd to clear wasteland, and even the green paint on his body seems to have faded quite a bit, whether it's an illusion or not.
In contrast, the scholar in the green robes is often depicted as detached from the crowd arriving on the island, sitting by the campfire as if studying something.
Ouyang Rong quickened his pace, ignoring the scenes, and looked behind him.
Suddenly, in one of the tomb paintings, on a sunrise morning, the large ship that was moored on the island disappeared from the picture.
The man in the tall hat with the pointed face stood on the beach of the island with the crowd, seemingly searching aimlessly.
Ouyang Rong had sharp eyes. He looked around and found that the scholar in green was nowhere to be seen in the crowd.
He disappeared along with the large ship.
At the same time, Ouyang Rong looked up.
The scene depicts the sunrise, yet the sun is portrayed in a somewhat eerie way.
It was covered in green paint.
A sun, a deep, dark green.
In the video, a man with a tall hat and a pointed face is seen searching the beach with others. The face beneath the hat appears to be filled with fear.
This was coupled with the bewildered expressions of the other people on the beach, who looked around in confusion.
The entire tomb mural gives people a sense of gloom and absurdity.
Another detail is that, although the people on the beach are bathed in the green sunlight, their bodies are outlined in black and white paint. In particular, the man with the tall hat and pointed face is not outlined in dark green paint, but is as ordinary and normal as the others.
Ouyang Rong couldn't resist any longer and immediately moved on to the next tomb painting.
The darkness before him sent a shiver down his spine.
Ouyang Rong realized what was happening.
There was nothing on the wall in front of him; it was an utterly black tomb wall.
The tomb murals in the hall seem to have reached their end; if you walk further ahead, you'll find the walls that started with the tomb murals.
Upon reaching this point, the artist who painted the tomb mural seemed to stop painting altogether.
Because the entire hall is roughly circular, the area between the green sun and the beginning of the tomb mural is all dark tomb walls. Ouyang Rong had previously swept the area roughly with a torch, and the walls were completely black with no murals.
Ouyang Rong frowned slightly, turning his head to stare intently at the dark tomb wall behind him.
He was unsure whether the murals at the back had been destroyed or whether the artist had stopped painting there.
Miao Si, riding the white sturgeon, also began searching, clearly annoyed.
"Strange, it's a painting with a severed head. It was painted perfectly fine, how did it go? What a disappointment..."
Ouyang Rong remained silent. As Miao Si searched around the dark tomb walls, he returned to the last tomb painting and looked up at the eerie green sun.
He examined it carefully from top to bottom.
His gaze swept over the faces of the man in the tall hat and the man with the pointed face.
Finally, he turned to look at the still-present, ethereal green figure of a scholar in the corner of the second-to-last painting.
The situation was quite clear: the sudden disappearance of the green-clad scholar and the immortal-seeking ship indicated that the man in the tall hat and pointed face vaguely knew something, compared to the others.
Because this incident of deceiving the First Emperor and fleeing to sea with a ship was planned and orchestrated by him and the scholar Youlu, the two must have had a close relationship, at least in their previous collaborations, and they must have known each other to some extent.
The people are currently hiding on this island to avoid the punishment for their failed search for immortality and the wrath of the First Emperor.
They definitely won't leave anytime soon. If it were just because the big ship went missing and the young man in the dark green had abducted them, leaving them without transportation, the man in the tall hat and pointed face wouldn't have shown such fear.
With so many people on the island, building a new boat to cross the sea is not too difficult.
Could it be that they're afraid the scholar in the green boat will sail back to land and complain to the First Emperor to have him arrested?
This possibility is very small. Not only is it not recorded in historical records, but considering the later events of the immortal-seeking ship not returning for a long time and the First Emperor burning books and burying scholars alive, this scholar in the green robes definitely did not return. Otherwise, the final wrath would not have affected so many people.
There is only one answer: the Green Scholar boarded the Immortal-Seeking Ship and continued deeper into the East Sea to do something that terrified even his companion, the tall-hatted, pointed-faced man.
Furthermore, as the green paint on the tall-hatted, pointed-faced man gradually faded, only the image of the scholar in the dark green robe remained on the tomb mural.
It is conceivable that, at least in the eyes of the creator of the tomb painting, the man with the tall hat and pointed face was a fake seeker of immortality; in a sense, he was a false sorcerer.
Therefore, looking at that scholar in the dark green robe, he was the one who was truly seeking immortality and medicine.
Ouyang Rong walked back in silence, and slowly stopped in front of the tomb painting depicting the burning of books and burying of scholars.
His gaze fell on the Confucian scholars in the huge fire pit in the center of the tomb painting.
Ouyang Rong pursed his lips.
He vaguely noticed a point.
I had a sudden realization.
No wonder that the First Emperor of Qin, a thousand years ago, not only arrested all the sorcerers in the world, but also brutally implicated and buried so many Confucian scholars alive. This was not just a fabrication by the Legalists and other schools of thought during their factional struggles.
The eccentric scholar who disappeared in search of immortality was the instigator!
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(P.S.: I checked the backend and it seems I've been updating for 44 days straight, almost two months, without taking a single day off. Ahem, it's the beginning of the month now, so I'm asking for some guaranteed monthly votes!)
I suddenly remembered something. Are there any brothers who have followed the series from the beginning of Volume 2 all the way through? Anyone still here? Please type "1"!
I remember it was September of 2023. The second volume had been in development for a long time, spanning a whole year of 2024, and only came to an end this May.
Looking back, it's already been two years. Time flies! Damn it, I can't talk about this anymore, my nose is getting sore...
(End of this chapter)
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