Chapter 165 A face is hidden in the gloom of the high platform...
A flicker of fear crossed the mirror grinder's eyes, and his voice trembled as he spoke: "What Xu Zhangfang? The person looking for me is called Xu Qian. What do I look like to him?" The mirror grinder suddenly realized what he meant and waved his hands repeatedly in denial: "I didn't, absolutely not! I never intended to get rid of you. I didn't even know you were here! We have no grudges against each other. I really didn't come here for you! I'm just a mirror grinder who travels all over the country. The reason I came here was entirely because I was following Lao Fang."
"This is a huge misunderstanding!" Master Fang quickly jumped in to clarify, "Yes, yes, I can testify. He really was with me. I brought him here, but I didn't know you and Tingfeng were also in Mizhou. Old Jiang is just a tinkerer with scrap metal; how could he possibly have that kind of skill..."
Bai Yuan's gaze then turned to Master Fang: "What are you doing here?"
"I..." The previously logical and well-founded Daoist Master Fang inexplicably chickened out. He vividly remembered the ruthless methods of this woman imprisoned in the Taiyin/Daoist body, which had left him with considerable psychological trauma. However, it was ultimately she who killed the Bi'an and shattered the prison's divine form, allowing them, who had mistakenly entered the Daoist body, to escape. Daoist Master Fang considered himself quite reasonable. After weighing his options, he cautiously and timidly probed, "Can't I come?"
Bai Yuan was amused by him. If these two weren't pretending to be stupid, they were genuinely both stupid and clueless.
Master Fang felt uncertain because of her laughter. What did her laughter mean? Could he actually come?
That doesn't make sense. We have legs, so why shouldn't we have the freedom to go wherever we want?
“Of course I can come,” Bai Yuan said. “The question is, what would you be coming for?”
“I’m a Taoist priest who cultivates on Mount Renzu. Our Taoist temple has always…” As he spoke, Master Fang inadvertently raised his eyes and suddenly saw that behind Bai Yuan, the firelight illuminated the stone door that had been put back in place. He stared at the shadow cast by Bai Yuan’s shadow and his eyes widened suddenly.
Seeing the look of horror on his face, Bai Yuan turned away.
The mirror grinder standing next to him gasped in shock.
Zhou Yaren, unaware of the situation, asked, "What's wrong?"
Bai Yuan stepped forward and examined the stone door closely with the torchlight: "This stone door is covered with bloody handprints."
Bloodstains piled up one after another, crisscrossing from bottom to top, along with scratch marks from fingernails and long, bloody trails left by five fingers.
Moreover, not only on the door, but also in the corners and crevices, there were claw marks from fingernails trying to dig in vain.
The mirror grinder blurted out instinctively, "How could this be?"
“It’s quite obvious,” Master Fang squatted down, staring at the blurry, dark brown bloody handprints, “some terrible thing must have happened here. These people are most likely trapped here and can’t get out.”
Bai Yuan observed: "The size, width, and the thickness and length of the fingers of these hands are all different, indicating that there are at least ten people trapped inside, including men, women, the elderly and children."
After Bai Yuan pointed it out, Master Fang also noticed the difference in the palm: "Yes, yes, that's right."
For some reason, when the mirror grinder saw these messy, bloody handprints, he was reminded of the mirage he had seen between the sea and sky the night before, and the scene in which the dark figure crawled and stretched out its hands and howled in pain—it was that same feeling of clumsiness.
He shared this feeling, connecting everyone else with the distorted and varied mirages within the scene, drawing them into the experience.
“Moreover,” the mirror grinder said, “I remember the mirage that appeared at sea back then. It was a low hill, and a long, thin black shadow, like a person, emerged from a dark hole. It looks a lot like our place, doesn’t it, Lao Fang?”
Old Fang nodded, a chill running down his spine: "It seems so."
If that's the case, Zhou Yaren pondered, "Fishermen live by the sea and have seen many mirages of all sizes over the centuries. They have always lived in peace. Why would the mirage energy from the intervention of the Yin Sui turn into a mirage ghost?"
Bai Yuan knew what he was thinking and continued, "It seems that the mirage ghost was not something the Gu Master fabricated out of thin air. If it came from the Taiyin phenomenon, then this mirage that gave birth to the mirage ghost was not just a figment of imagination."
“No,” Master Fang pondered their words carefully, then looked up in astonishment, “Yin Sui? Which Yin Sui?”
Bai Yuan retorted, "What do you think?"
"Could it be my old Yin Sui?"
Perhaps only Lao Tzu's Yin Sui is worth mentioning in this world.
He remained noncommittal regarding the injustice done to him.
Master Fang stood up abruptly: "You two mean that the mirage the other day was created by Master Gu using the sage's Yin Sui?"
The Yin Sui, lost by the sage, is actually in the hands of the Gu Master!
"It was orchestrated by her, but not entirely." Now that everyone knows this is no ordinary mirage, Bai Yuan scanned the stone door from top to bottom and said slowly, "The image of Taiyin that Yin Sui emitted probably represents some old event that happened in the past."
Zhou Yaren nodded: "In my humble opinion, perhaps the Yin Sui absorbed the accumulated resentment and evil spirits in this place, as well as the myriad phenomena of the coastal area, and then interacted with the Dao Qi, which is why such a mirage was formed here."
Fortunately, Master Fang had read many ancient books and knew a little about all sorts of things. His brain was barely enough to work, and with some effort, he could keep up with their pace: "In other words, it was originally just lingering resentment and evil energy, which was not a big deal and did not pose such a great threat. However, because it was incorporated into the Yin Sui, the resentment and Dao energy intermingled and merged, which is why it gave birth to a mirage ghost and even possessed people?"
“That’s right,” Zhou Yaren said. “There’s another possibility: perhaps Yin Sui had actually ‘seen’ such a scene before.”
Master Fang stared in astonishment: "Yin Sui, have you seen him?"
Bai Yuan nodded thoughtfully: "In that case, it seems more like a half-true, half-false recollection."
The mirror grinder couldn't help but praise, "You two are amazing! You were able to deduce so much information from these bloody handprints and mirages."
If one doesn't have a sufficient understanding of matters related to Yin Sui, it's hard to think of this aspect, just like Master Fang never considered that mirages could be related to Yin Sui.
That's why the villagers possessed by the mirage all crawled in the same direction, then crawled into the cave, arrived at this place, and then seeped in through the cracks in the stone door...
What could be inside?
At this point, everyone already had a vague idea of what was going on. The four of them walked through a short passageway and turned into a stone chamber that smelled of old, decaying wood.
The mirror polisher covered his mouth and nose, instinctively sensing that the smell was mixed with the stale, putrid stench of corpses: "This smell."
His voice was so loud that it almost echoed faintly.
It was extremely dark inside, the dense darkness seemed to swallow up the light, so the tinder I held could only illuminate the area within a few feet, and could not penetrate the layers of thick darkness at all.
Bai Yuan glanced around at the firelight, where countless dust particles floated in the dim light.
"Ya-ren, be careful..." She had just spoken when Zhou Ya-ren's warm, dry hand grasped her hand that was hanging by her side.
"Mm," Zhou Yaren replied softly, "I'll go with you."
Bai Yuan paused for a moment, then smiled silently.
After the mirage was separated from the villager, the blood mist seeped into the cracks in the ground and disappeared without a trace. She actually asked Zhou Yaren to keep an eye out for the traces of those mirages.
Zhou Yaren understood and reasonably misinterpreted Bai Yuan's meaning. At this moment, he showed his advantage as a blind man and naturally thought that he needed to be led. However, both he and Bai Yuan knew that although he was blind, he did not need such hand-holding care, so they tacitly showed a silent smile.
Knowing that the blind master was blind, neither Master Fang nor the mirror polisher thought there was anything wrong with their gesture of holding hands.
However, Master Fang was still very puzzled. When they fell into the Taiyin/Dao Body before, Tingfengzhi fought to the death with this evil god.
In just two or three months, they actually turned hostility into friendship and got along so well.
He can confidently let evil spirits guide him, without fear of leading them astray.
Master Fang refrained from asking any further questions and kindly reminded Tingfeng to watch his step.
Zhou Yaren said gratefully, "Okay, I will be careful."
Bai Yuan had spent time with this blind man and had come to know his character. Sometimes he was quite good at pretending, like he was acting really convincingly at this moment.
Bai Yuan let him have his way, saying, "Then you'd better stay close."
So Zhou Yaren intertwined his fingers and held her tightly.
Suddenly, he heard a sharp cracking sound under his feet. The mirror polisher felt something sting his foot, as if he had broken something. He quickly moved his leg and bent down to check: "What was that?"
Master Fang leaned closer and saw him pick up the bamboo pieces that had been split in two and put them back together: "Something like a waist tag, with words on it."
The mirror grinder struggled to make out: "Zhang, Qi."
Master Fang perked up and immediately snatched the two plaques to examine them closely: "These also say Qin Xiaozuan's name."
Bai Yuan frowned upon seeing the three-finger-wide, curved bamboo plaque: "Bamboo Book Immortal Register."
"What?" Upon hearing this, Master Fang looked up and handed a portion of the bamboo token in his hand closer to her so that she could confirm.
The mirror grinder asked, "Do you recognize this thing?"
Although Master Fang had never seen the Bamboo Book Immortal Register, he had heard of it: "You mean this is the register of Fang Immortal Dao?"
Bai Yuan nodded: "That's right."
"After Qin Shi Huang unified the world, he toured the east to the former Qi region. There, a man named Xu Fu from Qi submitted a memorial, saying that there were three sacred mountains in the sea, where immortals lived." Master Fang rambled on. "This Xu Fu was a sorcerer of the Fangxian Dao, who cultivated secret arts and immortal formulas in pursuit of immortality. He then persuaded the First Emperor to set sail for the sea to seek the elixir of immortality. It is said that he set sail from Langya, which is probably a port nearby. So this place used to be the activity area of the Fangxian Dao sorcerers."
The story of Qin Shi Huang seeking immortality and medicine is as well-known as his conquest of the six states and his ascent of Mount Tai for the Fengshan ceremony. However, the mirror polisher was a little puzzled and muttered, "You say Qin Shi Huang was wise and powerful, how can you believe such a thing?"
Yes, a great emperor of all time wouldn't be so easily fooled by a sorcerer.
Zhou Yaren, who had been silent all along, spoke softly: "If I hadn't seen it with my own eyes, I probably wouldn't have believed it so easily."
Master Fang asked in bewilderment, "How could you have seen something that didn't happen?"
"People revere gods and ghosts, and cannot understand many things that are unheard of or unseen. Most people have seen the vastness of the sky and the earth, but very few have seen the breadth of the four seas. Long ago, when people living on the shores of the four seas did not know what a mirage was, what would they think if they suddenly witnessed majestic mountains and intricate buildings appearing in the originally empty sea fog and clouds?"
“They would associate all of this with supernatural events, believing that divine miracles had occurred and that divine mountains and heavenly palaces had appeared,” Bai Yuan continued. “Because they witnessed it with their own eyes, they believed it even more deeply, and then, like Xu Fu, they said that there were three divine mountains in the sea, named Penglai, Fangzhang, and Yingzhou, where immortals lived.”
Fang Xiandao was shaken.
"According to the Records of the Grand Historian, when Qin Shi Huang toured the counties in the east, he ascended Langya Mountain in the south, was greatly pleased, and stayed for three months. He then moved 30,000 households of commoners to the foot of Langya Mountain, and stayed there for another twelve years. He built Langya Mountain, erected stone inscriptions praising the virtues of Qin and expressing his pride." Zhou Yaren spoke slowly and deliberately, recounting the Records of the Grand Historian. "We know that Qin Shi Huang once stayed in Langya for several months and moved 30,000 households of people to Langya Mountain to build Langya Mountain. Why did he go to such lengths to build Langya Mountain? Qin Shi Huang toured the world five times and ascended Langya Mountain three times, precisely because he had personally seen the 'divine mountain' in the sea, which is why he built a high platform to view the divine mountain in the sea."
Master Fang suddenly realized: "So the sacred mountain that Qin Shi Huang once saw was actually a mirage at sea. He mistook the mirage for a celestial palace."
The mirror grinder chimed in, "That makes perfect sense."
“Mirages are ever-changing and ever-shifting. Anyone who sees such unknown phenomena for the first time will feel awe and endless imagination, and thus yearn for them,” Zhou Yaren said. “Qin Shi Huang, who believed he had seen the sacred mountain, was convinced of this and thus believed Xu Fu and others, sending Fang Xiandao to the sea to search for the immortal mountain and seek the elixir of immortality.”
However, Fang Xiandao's entry into the sea brought calamity to the undead people living in the secret realm of the sea. Whenever Zhou Yaren thought of the alchemy room in Ruicheng, her body would feel a chill run down her spine.
"Since there is a bamboo scroll of immortal records here, it means that those immortals who went to the sea to seek immortality once..." Master Fang was speaking when suddenly a cracking sound was heard.
Just like last night when he had been in the same position with his arms and legs curled up, not moving for too long, when he suddenly straightened up, his bones and joints made a "crack" sound.
He suddenly fell silent.
The cracking sound didn't come from his three companions, but from not far behind him. Through the dim firelight, Master Fang glanced at his three companions' expressions and realized that he wasn't the only one who heard the cracking sound.
The stone chamber was spacious and empty. When Master Fang turned around, the dim yellow light in his hand could not reach the source of the sound.
Compared to Master Fang's cautious attitude, Bai Yuan had already headed towards that place without saying a word.
As expected of an evil spirit imprisoned in the Taiyin Prison, surrounded by piles of corpses, it feared nothing, leaving Master Fang and the mirror polisher only daring to follow behind.
As the flames in Bai Yuan's hand reached, the first thing that came into view was a long, scattered expanse of dry, yellow hair, which was almost terrifying at first glance.
Master Fang's heart skipped a beat. As the firelight approached Bai Yuan, it spread out, revealing a grime-covered person lying on the ground, head down, knees tucked in.
As everyone's attention was drawn to the huddled figure, the mirror grinder suddenly caught a glimpse of a face hidden in the dim light at the edge of the shadows.
He instinctively turned his head and was startled to see a person lying quietly on their back on the ground. The person, who should have been facing him, was now upside down, chin pointing skyward, because their chin was raised high. The person's mouth was wide open, their dark eyes staring at them with a mixture of shock and terror!
The mirror polisher cried out in horror, and his hasty retreat caused Master Fang to stumble.
Caught off guard, Master Fang lost his footing, and the bean fire he was holding flickered, illuminating the ashen, upside-down face that looked like skin and bones!
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