Chapter 172 Let's Go Home "We're almost home."
At that moment, the gnomon used at sea to observe the shadow of the sun malfunctioned.
The mirror grinder swallowed his dry rations, wiped the crumbs from his mouth, and hurriedly followed Master Fang toward the deck.
"It's a solar eclipse!" Master Fang shouted as he ran. "It's a solar eclipse! I know it! The black circle painted on the ceiling of that secret room yesterday was a solar eclipse! It's because the moon is blocking out the sun, and the yin energy is encroaching on the yang energy. The moon is blocking out the sun, so it's painted black."
Bai Yuan and Zhou Yaren clearly had the same idea as him.
The mirror grinder looked up at the sky and said, "So in that mural, Fuxi has the sun and moon above his head." He had argued with Old Fang for so long, but he hadn't thought of a solar eclipse.
“We just saw a solar eclipse in a secret room last night, and now the same celestial phenomenon has appeared today?” Master Fang thought, “This is too much of a coincidence.”
"It might not be a coincidence." This scene didn't seem like a coincidence at all. Bai Yuan squinted. "The mural's meaning is very clear. The phrase 'opening the Guanghan Immortal Cave' must be related to a solar eclipse. If the Gu Master must create the body of Fuxi, is it because Fuxi's hand can seize celestial phenomena?"
“Seizing celestial phenomena?” Zhou Yaren pondered after being reminded by her. “When Fuxi drew the trigrams, he looked up to observe the celestial phenomena. Therefore, the trigrams that Fuxi laid out must also be related to celestial phenomena.”
“For example,” Bai Yuan looked up at the heavens, “holding a fire torch and exhaling the image of the moon, obscuring the sun with the moon, can thus create a solar eclipse.”
Zhou Yaren finally understood why Bai Yuan said that Yin Sui was the key to finding the Boundless Secret Realm.
The moment the moon appeared in the sky, the calm sea was gradually affected. As if a huge gravitational force was pulling the seawater upward, it rose up like a slope. Huge waves pushed the ships high into the air, then crashed heavily into the troughs of the waves. The ship tumbled and rolled endlessly between the rises and falls, which was truly breathtaking.
"Ah Cong!" Chen Ying spun around, hitting her forehead and scraping her forehead. She grabbed a sturdy plank of the ship and shouted, "Protect Lu Bing!"
In the face of danger, Ah Cong swung out his chain and wrapped it around Lu Bing, who had been thrown into the air. The chain quickly wrapped around Lu Bing's waist several times and suddenly pulled him back from the side of the ship. Ah Cong reached out and caught him, securing him firmly to his side.
Lu Bing felt his lungs churning, his head spinning, and he felt as if his bones were about to break against the side of the ship.
Chen Ying gritted her teeth and clung tightly to the deck, her whole body being tossed around. Before this, none of the stone carvings and bamboo slips collected from the secret room had ever recorded that a lunar eclipse would cause sea disturbances.
She knew that going to the secret realm wouldn't be easy. She had spent more than ten years of hard work and effort in the early stages, and she was already exhausted. Now she had to overcome many more difficulties.
The captain, his face filled with horror, glanced at the huge wall of water rising from the sea several meters away. This had come without warning; just moments before, the weather had been fine and sunny. The weather had turned on him in an instant. He gestured to the crew while shouting to the four men on deck, "There's a huge wave ahead! Quick, all of you get into the cabin, close the doors tightly, and hold on tight! Hurry! Hurry!"
Everything was fine just now, so how could a huge wave suddenly appear? Master Fang and the mirror polisher didn't have time to think or ask any questions, and turned around and ran back to the cabin.
The boatmen received an urgent order from the helmsman to climb the rope ladder and do their best to lower the heavy mainsail.
The raging storm arrived in the blink of an eye. The bulging sails were filled with the gale, and the masts creaked under the strain, threatening to capsize at any moment.
The helmsman frantically turned the wooden rudder, tilting the bow at a delicate angle to meet the massive crisis. The bow was lifted by the surging waves, and the deck tilted so high it could no longer stand upright. Bai Yuan grabbed the mooring rope and swung out, landing on the mast. He pulled hard on the sail rigging, and several sailors felt their hands lighten as the heavy sail was lowered.
Before the agile boatmen could even react in surprise, Bai Yuan warned, "Hold on tight!"
They reacted quickly, grabbing onto the support and hurriedly tying the lowered sails securely. When they turned around, the woman who had single-handedly helped them lower the sails had already climbed diagonally onto the raised bow of the boat. With a single step, she managed to steadily lower the high-sloping hull a little.
"Please help me, I'm innocent."
Bai Yuan turned around and reached out to pull Zhou Yaren, who had jumped onto the bow of the boat, towards him.
"Danger—" The boatman below had just shouted when the reckless man in blue stood on the ship's side, holding a folding fan and flipping it from bottom to top, splitting the oncoming giant wave in two.
The ship, facing imminent disaster, did not collide with the raging wave, but instead sailed through the bisected channel. Schools of fish swimming in the waves had no time to dodge and splashed onto the deck.
The boatmen stared in disbelief at the scene, speechless for a long time. Just who were these two? Their ability to cut through the wind and waves was simply too incredible.
The fierce wind cleaved through the curtain of water, and in the howling wind, it erected two tall wind walls to block the surging waves, creating an incomparably magnificent spectacle.
The boatmen could hardly believe that they had managed to cross such a stormy sea without any real danger.
Bai Yuan steadily pressed down the tilting and swaying bow of the boat, looked up at the waning sun, and saw that the world was no longer bathed in bright golden light, but rather tinged with an eerie old yellow, and even the seawater had become dark.
As the ship passed through the turbulent sea, Bai Yuan looked down at the vast ocean and suddenly sensed something was amiss.
She looked at the part of the sun obscured by the shadows, its reflection in the sea forming a huge yin-yang pattern: "The sun and moon revolve, yin and yang meet."
In that instant, Zhou Yaren's blind eyes also reflected the yin-yang diagram formed by the meeting of the sun and moon, which fell into the sea and spread out infinitely between heaven and earth: "Yin and yang are the way of heaven and earth. This is the terrain formed by celestial phenomena."
And behold, the winds and clouds of the eight directions converge, surging mightily amidst the sea of clouds, using the very essence of all things to create the image of the Eight Trigrams…
Bai Yuan's thoughts were in turmoil: "This must be the hexagram laid out by Fu Xi, with the sea as the platform for the hexagram."
Upon seeing this celestial phenomenon and terrain, Master Fang leaned out of the cabin, looking as if he were in a daze, exclaiming, "This is the Sacred Site of Emperor Xi! The Sacred Site of Emperor Xi!"
As the sun and moon meet, a hexagram is formed, the eight winds sweep across the land, and the sea of clouds surges wildly, the vast sea and sky like boiling white smoke, filling thousands of miles.
The rumbling sound was like muffled thunder, coming from the sky thousands of miles away, or from the bottomless sea.
Heaven and earth trembled violently, indifferent to life and death. Bai Yuan could no longer hold back the turbulent ship, and the entire ship was tossed about by the raging sea, with the boatmen clinging to the ropes being flung away like ants.
The raging waves crashed against the ship's timbers like giant rocks, tearing the sturdy hull apart instantly.
"Help, help me—"
The thunderous tsunami swallowed all screams, biting down on the struggling, weak humans, trying to drag them into the abyss.
Bai Yuan casually scooped up the nearly choking Taoist priest Fang and leaped onto the ship's side, where the latter, feeling dizzy, clung tightly to a ship's pillar.
"I, cough..."
Bai Yuan didn't have time to listen to what he was saying. With a snap, the mast broke, and the two boatmen who were clinging to it screamed and fell to the ground. Bai Yuan leaped up, grabbed the mast in time, and pulled it back with all his might.
The sharp splinters of broken wood sliced her palm, and a giant wave crashed vertically towards her, only to be forcefully blocked by an invisible wind barrier. Bai Yuan seized the opportunity to escape, skimming through the gaps in the churning waves. Suddenly, the surging waves beneath her feet seemed to gain their own will, barely managing to hold up the ship that was about to capsize.
"A white injustice."
A long wind swept to her feet, steadily lifting her from the surging waves onto the deck.
The world was a vast expanse of water, with waves rolling endlessly. Zhou Yaren managed to find a safe place to stand. If he hadn't possessed the ability to ride the wind and withstand such storms, he would likely have perished in the shipwreck.
Nevertheless, the ship's planks cracked in the raging wind and waves, and everyone was terrified and filled with fear as they listened to the sound of breaking wood.
"Boat!" the boatman suddenly shouted, "There's a boat over there!"
Bai Yuan looked into the distance and suddenly saw a ship adrift on the vast, churning sea. But the next moment, the ship was torn to pieces by the raging waves.
The ship was destroyed, and Chen Ying fell into the salt sea, feeling as if her internal organs had been shattered.
She was never worried about drowning. The lurking sea creatures swarmed up, lifting her and Lu Bing onto the surface, tossing and turning them around with the tide.
Wang Xiang snatched a small boat from the disintegrating ship and carefully placed the two people inside.
Lu Bing had already fainted, while Chen Ying was utterly exhausted, feeling as if her internal organs were out of place and in excruciating pain. Her face was contorted in agony, and she felt like gagging as soon as she opened her mouth. She managed to utter a coherent sentence through sheer willpower: "I'm going to die of discomfort, Acong, hurry, it's over there! We're almost there!"
The entire sea was engulfed in a massive upheaval, except for a narrow strip of sea that remained as still as water, without a ripple.
"The bamboo slips of Fangxiandao clearly state that there is a Zhenlan Stone at the entrance to the secret realm, which is impervious to wind and rain and keeps the sea calm."
All the mythical creatures gathered together, braving the raging winds and towering waves, and propelled their small boat towards that calm, narrow stretch of sea.
It's getting closer and closer.
Getting closer and closer.
Chen Ying sat up, still wet, and leaned against the gunwale, saying wearily, "We're almost home."
They died far from home, longing only to return to their homeland. However, this journey home took her and them more than ten years, and could barely be described as arduous.
Until the rocking boat smoothly glided into the calm sea, all the monstrous creatures stopped in place and leaped out of the water.
"Why did you stop?" Chen Ying asked. "Is it still far? Do you all remember what it looks like in front of your house?"
Ah Cong shook his head.
"What does shaking your head mean? Is it not far? Or do you not remember it? Could it be that we've taken the wrong road?"
Ah-Cong sign language: It's here, not far.
Chen Ying was relieved: "That's good, let's go."
Seeing that they remained motionless, Chen Ying suddenly remembered: "Oh right, we need to use Fuxi's hand to open it, right?"
As she spoke, she was about to shake Lu Bing awake when she suddenly stopped halfway through her hand. She saw dozens of elephants standing neatly in front of the flatboat, their upper bodies floating on the water, silently raising their hands in a gesture of respect and bowing deeply to her.
From childhood to adulthood, she had always kept the elephant by her side. Perhaps their parting was imminent. When Chen Ying saw this scene, her eyes suddenly stung with tears. She pretended to be indifferent and said, "I'm just seeing you off."
Although the process was long and arduous, she had not let those perpetually silent eyes down. A relieved smile appeared on Chen Ying's lips, and she felt lighter than ever before, because: "I finally kept my promise."
She promised, and she kept her promise.
"Ah Cong, let's go home."
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