Chapter 169 Fuxi Diagram "I'm really not that 'Chang'e'."...
Sever the tendons and veins, then lure the venomous snake into the body, just like Officer Lu and the man who died in the secret room.
Upon hearing this, the mirror polisher felt extremely uncomfortable, as if snakes and worms were crawling inside his body. The Gu technique was truly insane and utterly distorted his understanding of the world. If he hadn't seen it with his own eyes, he would never have believed it. After all, most people would only listen to such fantastical tales as strange stories.
Zhou Yaren asked, "Is there anything else?"
Bai Yuan said, "No, that's all."
Master Fang stood up: "Let's see if there are any elsewhere."
Several people held torches and used them to examine the four walls and even the ground beneath their feet, while Zhou Yaren carefully felt her way inch by inch.
Bai Yuan glanced around, then looked up: "At the top."
Everyone looked up in unison, and Master Fang and the mirror polisher simultaneously raised the torches to illuminate the top of the secret chamber.
Master Fang said, "It's a mural."
Zhou Yaren asked, "What are you painting?"
The lines of the mural are quite bold, and one can immediately see the human-headed, snake-bodied figure depicted. Master Fang replied, "Fuxi."
Bai Yuan explained in detail: "The painting depicts Fuxi with a human body and a snake's tail, holding a compass and square, which should be used to regulate the heavens and the earth. Cloud patterns and stars are painted around him, and a circle is painted on his head..." Bai Yuan paused, because since they were all circles, she couldn't tell for a moment whether the painting on Fuxi's head was the sun or the moon.
Zhou Yaren: "What?"
Master Fang and the mirror polisher spoke in unison, one saying, "The sun."
One said, "The moon."
Generally speaking, when craftsmen paint the sun and moon, there are corresponding and specific scenes to make them easy to distinguish. For example, they might paint a golden crow to symbolize the sun and a toad to symbolize the moon. However, this mural does not show any of these features. Moreover, Bai Yuan said, "This circular image was filled with black paint."
The mirror grinder said, "With so many stars around, it must be nighttime. Needless to say, that's the moon."
"Heaven and earth were dark and yellow, the universe was vast and boundless." Master Fang said, "The universe is so vast that, regardless of day or night, the stars are all within the universe's orbit. It's just that we can only see them directly at night, so it must be the sun."
"No, don't give me that. Logically, we can only see stars at night, so this must be the moon."
“No, no, no,” Master Fang said firmly, “this is the sun.”
What makes you so sure?
"What? What's the basis? All things are divided into Yin and Yang. Male is Yang and female is Yin. Correspondingly, the sun is Yang and the moon is Yin. Moreover, our Ancestral Temple enshrines murals of Fuxi holding up the sun and Nuwa holding up the moon."
"According to you, let's say it's Fuxi holding up the sun. But shouldn't the sun be golden or vermilion? Why not use cinnabar to paint it instead of making it a black mess?"
"The moon should be silver, not black."
"Is this neither the sun nor the moon?"
Just as the two were arguing about the sun and moon, Bai Yuan silently moved to the lower right corner of the secret chamber. In the firelight, she discovered two lines of small characters: "The Immortal Cave of Guanghan is opened by the hand of Fuxi."
“Oh, so it’s written here,” the mirror grinder immediately sidled up. “The Guanghan Immortal Cave is the Guanghan Palace where Chang’e lived after she flew to the moon. It refers to the moon. Old Fang, come and see for yourself. You must have made a mistake.”
"Indeed," Master Fang pondered, craning his neck. "Does this phrase, 'opening the Immortal Cave of Guanghan,' refer to opening the Immortal Realm within the Moon?"
The mirror polisher said, "Doesn't this match up with the Taiyin/Dao Body of Bei Qu? Guanghan Immortal Cave is the fairyland in the moon, and it is the Taiyin/Dao Body."
Upon hearing this, Bai Yuan turned his head to look at the mirror polisher. He hadn't even had a chance to question him before the man brought it up first.
Bai Yuan suddenly spoke up: "So back then, you sent Sun Xiuniang to the Ghost Bureau to offer sacrifices, with the purpose of opening the Taiyin/Dao Body?"
"Huh?" The mirror polisher turned his head blankly. "You mean me?"
Bai Yuan stared directly at him, and it was unclear whether he was just putting on an act.
"You mean I sent her to the underworld as a sacrifice?!" the mirror polisher exclaimed in surprise. "You can't just say things like that."
"Isn't that so?"
"To be honest, I'm just a dutiful person who polishes mirrors, and I've never intentionally harmed anyone."
Zhou Yaren said, "When you went to Beiqu, you polished mirrors for Sun Xiuniang for several days in a row. After that, she took the bronze mirror you polished to the Ghost Bureau as a sacrifice. Do you dare to say that her death had nothing to do with you?"
The mirror grinder hesitated for a moment: "It's not that we're completely unrelated, but to be honest, this can't be blamed on me."
Master Fang chimed in, "Yes, yes, Old Jiang told me about this before, so we really can't blame him."
Bai Yuan: "What do you mean?"
"I don't know if you've heard of our line of work. Those who can be called 'Mr. Negative Case' are all top-notch experts in the industry. But I'm not that good. I'm just a half-baked amateur with limited skills. I don't have that kind of ability."
Bai Yuan: "Mr. Fu Ju?"
“That’s right. Mr. Fu Ju isn’t like me, casually polishing rusty copper and iron utensils for the neighbors,” the mirror polisher said. “They say that everything has a spirit, and some objects may also be imbued with a bit of spirit. For example, some funerary objects dug out from ancient tombs or piles of dead bodies, after being aged for a long time, are tainted with blood and death. Occasionally, a few pieces of funerary objects will become evil.”
At this point, Zhou Yaren, who was carrying the bronze mirror, was most moved. As the mirror polisher had said, the bronze mirror was indeed a funerary object tainted with evil.
"For example, the bronze mirror in Sun Xiuniang's hand. Although she wouldn't say where it came from, I guessed it was dug up from the ground, probably from the Ghost Bureau. It was covered in patina and couldn't reflect anything at all. I spent a lot of effort polishing it until it was gleaming. At first, I didn't notice anything unusual, but the next day, Sun Xiuniang came to me again. She handed me the same bronze mirror she had asked me to polish the day before. For some reason, only one night had passed, and the mirror had developed rust again. This was definitely unusual, so I paid attention and polished it carefully." I noticed a trace of blood in the mirror's texture. When she came to see me again on the third day, I asked her if there was anything unusual about the mirror. She seemed flustered by my question, and out of good intentions, I had to remind her to tell me the truth if she found anything unusual, as there might be some danger. But she kept saying no. Of course, I didn't believe her. I also noticed a cut on her index finger. So, when I was polishing the mirror for her this time, I secretly pricked my own finger and dripped a drop of blood onto the mirror surface. Guess what happened?
Bai Yuan had no time to guess: "Stop keeping me in suspense."
As the mirror polisher spoke, Zhou Yaren silently took out a bronze mirror and, following his instructions, cut her fingertip, squeezed out a drop of blood, and dripped it onto the mirror. She then handed it to Bai Yuan, asking, "See if there are any changes?"
Then he turned to ask, "Is this the Moon Palace Mirror that Sun Xiuniang asked you to polish?"
The mirror polisher stared at the rusty bronze mirror, opening his mouth: "...No, how did this thing get here?"
At the time, he discovered that the bronze mirror was strange, explained the situation to Sun Xiuniang, and intended to pay for it. However, Sun Xiuniang reacted very strongly and snatched it back, as if she was afraid that he would steal it.
He's not a robber, so of course he wouldn't force anyone to buy or sell. He's just worried that if these kinds of evil things fall into the hands of ordinary people, even if it doesn't necessarily cause problems, what if?
He might not be able to handle it with his half-baked skills, but he can take it back and ask his senior brother to take a look.
Zhou Yaren said, "After Sun Xiuniang died, I put this bronze mirror away."
Bai Yuan stared at the mirror for a moment: "There's nothing there."
The mirror polisher stepped forward and took a few glances. After more than three months, the mirror was covered with patches of rust. "I need to clean the mirror first. I need to use a medicinal stone to polish and clean the copper rust off the surface. Otherwise, Sun Xiuniang wouldn't have come to me one after another."
Bai Yuan said, "Then let's wash it."
Mirror grinder: "..."
When asked how he could wash the mirrors here, he shrugged and said, "I didn't bring a mirror washing kit."
Bai Yuan: "Then tell me, what did you find in the mirror back then?"
The mirror polisher didn't waste any words: "With my washing and polishing, I actually polished out a picture of Chang'e pointing the way."
Bai Yuan frowned: "What do you mean, Chang'e guiding the way?"
“Look at the pattern carved on the back of this bronze mirror. It depicts a scene of the moon palace, and the image shown in the mirror is Chang’e flying to the moon. No matter how you flip the mirror, Chang’e always points in the same direction. I certainly didn’t understand it at the time. Later, I heard that Sun Xiuniang was offering sacrifices at the Ghost Bureau, and I also heard Master Fang talk about their experience of accidentally entering the Taiyin/Taoist body. Only then did I suddenly realize that the direction Chang’e in the mirror always points to is the location of the Ghost Bureau and the Taiyin/Taoist body.”
“Yes,” Master Fang chimed in at the right moment. “Tingfengzhi, when we unfortunately fell into the well, didn’t you tell me that Sun Xiuniang was worshipping the moon in the mirror? Later, after analyzing the clues that Lao Jiang found when he was polishing the mirror for her, I believe that it must have been this evil mirror, that is, the ‘Chang’e’ in the mirror, that gave Sun Xiuniang some kind of guidance or instruction, which made her carry the bronze mirror step by step to the Ghost Bureau and make a sacrifice. She must have thought that this would allow her to ascend to the ‘moon’, that it was the way to the Moon Palace, so we thought that this was Chang’e pointing the way.”
But Sun Xiuniang certainly didn't know that this road was a dead end, and that the Taiyin/Dao Body was not the Moon Palace in the sky, but also imprisoned countless wronged souls and... Master Fang secretly glanced at Bai Yuan, not daring to say the rest.
However, his words were exactly the same as what Zhou Yaren had previously guessed.
At that moment, Bai Yuan met Zhou Yaren's gaze and chuckled inwardly, reiterating, "I am really not that 'Chang'e'."
When Chang'e was mentioned, Zhou Yaren's heart tightened: "I didn't say you were her, I know it's not you."
But he had actually said those things before.
Because when Sun Xiuniang offered her life as a sacrifice, the eerie wind from the Ghost Bureau struck the flute at his waist, and the sacrificial text in the wind read: "The Taoist priest has completed his mission, the Taoist gods have returned to him, he has sought refuge in the world and died in the Taiyin, and will be reborn and not perish."
It is a foolish delusion to try to be reborn from the moon.
He naturally suspected that Bai Yuan had used this to lure Sun Xiuniang into offering a sacrifice, and even said: "The legendary Chang'e may very well be a story taken from you. It's just that you can't ascend to heaven, and you're not going to the Taiyin in the nine heavens. Instead, you've trapped yourself in the Taoist prison. This is the price of immortality."
He even said that Bai Yuan's being trapped in Taiyin/Daoti was his own fault, digging his own grave.
Looking back now, he shouldn't have been smoking his eyes, but rather cutting off that tongue that was spreading false accusations.
The mirror polisher quickly clarified, "Anyway, it's just that this mirror is haunted, it really has nothing to do with me. Besides, I've already warned her and said everything I needed to say. After all, my abilities are limited and my understanding is poor. Mirror polishing is just mirror polishing. Strange occurrences in bronze artifacts are quite complicated. I only have a rough understanding of the basics. If you want to find out the truth, you'll have to go to Master Fuju. But Sun Xiuniang insists on not listening, and I can't force her to interfere."
However, having arrived at this point, they had no time to look for any Mr. Fu Ju. Bai Yuan examined the bronze mirror over and over, speculating, "This bronze mirror may have originated from the Qin Dynasty. It was already in Bei Qu before the formation of Taiyin/Dao Body. Of course, it cannot be ruled out that it may have been a personal item of a sorcerer who died in Qin prison. It has undergone a long period of corrosion and has reflected Taiyin/Dao Body and the construction of the Ghost Bureau."
Buried in such a place filled with wronged souls, if it were a sorcerer's personal artifact, it would inevitably corrode and cause problems.
"Then why specifically the Moon Palace Mirror?" Master Fang asked. "Is it a coincidence?"
"The story of Chang'e flying to the moon is about Chang'e stealing the elixir of immortality and ascending to become an immortal. The sorcerers of Fangxian Dao spend their entire lives cultivating secret arts and immortal formulas to refine the elixir of immortality." Both stories revolve around immortality. Bai Yuan raised his head and looked at the small characters on the top of the wall. "It can be seen that the Guanghan Immortal Cave also implies this meaning."
Zhou Yaren suddenly realized: "The Moon Cave is about Chang'e flying to the moon and gaining immortality, so Chang'e flying to the moon here refers to the path to immortality."
Bai Yuan remained noncommittal: "Moreover, the path to immortality is related to the moon."
At that moment, they both thought of the same thing.
The so-called myths may be alluding to another truth. For example, the Moon Palace corresponds to the Boundless Secret Realm.
Chang'e corresponds to the immortals who seek the elixir of immortality, and is a metaphor for people like Xu Fu.
If they want to go to the Boundless Secret Realm, they must take the "Journey to the Moon" route. The key is how to reach the moon, which is clearly stated above and must be opened by Fuxi himself.
This is why the Gu Master captured Lu Bing and then turned him into the body of Fuxi.
Zhou Yaren finally understood that the Gu Master wanted to use Lu Bing to open the Boundless Secret Realm.
Master Fang and Zhou Yaren had different levels of knowledge, so when they heard this, they only thought that the Guanghan Immortal Cave referred to the Taiyin/Dao Body. The Gu Master made Lu Butou into the body of Fuxi in order to open the Taiyin/Dao Body? But that doesn't make sense. Master Fang felt confused because the more he discovered, the more questions he had. The Taiyin/Dao Body was clearly broken, so could there be another Taiyin/Dao Body somewhere else?
None of those in the know were willing to answer his questions.
"Hey, what is this drawing?" The mirror polisher stood on tiptoe and held up the firelight, recognizing it. "Oh, it's a seashell."
Bai Yuan immediately stepped forward and stared at the spot where the light shone. In the lower right corner of the Fuxi snake's tail, there was a large toad with its head slightly open.
Although the strokes are slightly thick and simple, the shape of the giant clam is exactly the same as the Yin Sui that Bai Yuan had seen in the Jing Guan.
Before Zhou Yaren could even ask, Bai Yuan said, "It's a yin sui (a type of fire-resistant device), which opens to the moon."
The mirror grinder was also taken aback: "What? This seashell is a firefly?"
Bai Yuan had clearly stated before that Yin Sui was the key to finding the Boundless Secret Realm. Zhou Yaren said, "Now that Yin Sui is in the hands of the Gu Master, and Lu Bing has also become... it's like everything is ready. Their next step is to open it." Because Master Fang and the mirror polisher were present, Zhou Yaren paused and did not say the Boundless Secret Realm. Instead, she said, "Guanghan Immortal Cave."
"Don't waste time here," according to what Master Fang and the mirror polisher had just said, the Gu Master and Lu Bing were still in the small fishing village the day before yesterday. So much time has passed, and if we delay any longer, it might be too late. Bai Yuan made a quick decision, "We need to get out of here as soon as possible and find the Gu Master."
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