Cai Zhao looked at the pattern again and again: "According to this picture, this underground palace should be like Bagua, with eight sides and eight sides. The place where we fell in just now may be the edge of the underground palace, but after walking for so long, we didn't We know where we are now. Hey, what is this?"
She pointed to a hollow five-sided pattern in the center of the Bagua—a regular pentagon, with each side the same length.
"I don't know." Mu Qingyan shook his head.
Cai Zhao turned around and looked at him, "Why are you so expressionless?"
Mu Qingyan frowned: "We have seen this pattern more than once along the way."
"Yes." Cai Zhao said, "It's just that we never paid attention."
"I don't think it's a map, for two reasons." Mu Qingyan was full of doubts. "First, if I planned to trap the people who entered the underground palace to death, I would never draw a map. Second, even if I draw a map, I It won’t be painted everywhere along the road.”
Cai Zhao blinked: "Maybe the leader Mu Donglie has a completely different personality from yours? Maybe he is kind-hearted and willing to give charity?"
Mu Qingyan rolled his eyes at her, "When I get out, I will read you the historical records of this religion and see what the methods and temperament of those ambitious and promising ancestors were, and then you will know how valuable it is for me to be like this. Just take care of it and cherish it!”
"...Okay then." Cai Zhao scratched his ears, "But I think this is like a map."
"It's useless even if this is a map. Do you know where we are on this map now?" Mu Qingyan continued to pour cold water.
Cai Zhao waved his little hand: "Not only is this a problem, there is also this fatal gossip, which has no line identification, so is this the innate gossip of Fuxi or the acquired gossip of King Wen? If it is the innate gossip, it is Qiannan, Kunbei, Lidong Kanxi; if the Bagua is acquired, it will be from the south to the north, and from the east to the west. We no longer know where we are, and if we can no longer determine the Bagua direction, we will not be able to get out no matter what."
Mu Qingyan looked at it carefully, pointed to a spot directly above the Bagua and said, "Look, these three short horizontal lines are a bit abrupt and are not related to the surrounding patterns."
Cai Zhao stood on tiptoes and looked, "It's really abrupt. I know what you mean. The so-called 'three consecutive lines of Qian and six breaks of Kun'. If these three short horizontal lines are implying the position of Qian, then this is Fuxi's innate gossip. But it's hard to say. Maybe that’s how the Flowing Cloud Bat was portrayed. After all, it was a thing more than a hundred years ago, so the scenery is different.”
Mu Qingyan glanced at her, "When you said this Bagua is like a map, why didn't you feel that the scenery was different?"
Cai Zhao apologized and said, "Let's find a few more murals and compare them."
So the two of them touched the iron walls along the way and looked around, carefully distinguishing the patterns of the murals.
Soon they came to a conclusion: every one mile or so, there would be large swathes of carved patterns on the iron wall, including the pattern of auspicious clouds and lotus flowers, the pattern of flowing clouds and bats, and the pattern of pomegranate blossoms and entwined branches, and then every other After two groups of patterns, the Bagua pattern will appear in the third huge group of patterns.
They walked twenty miles in one go and found that even if the patterns were different, the lines inside the Bagua pattern wrapped in the center were always the same, and there were three short horizontal lines directly above each Bagua.
Therefore, Mu Qingyan had to believe that it was a map, and Cai Zhao also had to believe that the three short horizontal lines were the marks of the gan position.
"Even if we know that this is Fuxi's innate Bagua, we still need to figure out where we are in the underground palace." Mu Qingyan followed the lines on the Bagua map with his fingertips.
Cai Zhao sighed: "Yes, let's go on a walk and see."
After the two used some water and dry food, they set off again.
After walking for another half an hour, a pattern of a flying goddess appeared on the iron wall in front of him again. Cai Zhao let out a sigh, pointed at the Bagua in the middle of the pattern and said, "Look, there is a bloody palm print on the Bagua diagram here."
She turned around and pointed at the gray skeleton leaning against the wall opposite, "It seems that this man also realized that the Bagua Diagram might be a map, but he was still sleepy. Hey, what are you looking at?"
Mu Qingyan looked at the bones on the ground steadily, "Do you feel that this man's bones are missing?"
Cai Zhao hurried to look and found that it was indeed the case, "The bones in this man's left shoulder and left arm are gone, and his ribs are broken. Ah, this is, this is..."
The left half of the skeleton's body was leaning against the wall. There was a very thin crack from top to bottom on the iron wall that he was leaning on. You would never find it unless you climbed up and took a closer look. And the left shoulder of the deceased disappeared right here. After a gap.
Apparently half of his body was caught behind the iron door.
Cai Zhao was overjoyed and quickly drew his sword and struck at the gap. The Yanyang knife was sharp and extremely thin, and when it was struck with all its strength, there was only a swish sound, and the blade was inserted right into the gap in the iron wall.
The two of them were about to work together to pry open the gap, when they suddenly heard the familiar sound of rolling chains.
"No, there's a mechanism!" Mu Qingyan shouted in a deep voice. He grabbed Cai Zhao with one hand and slapped the iron wall hard with the other. With this force, his body slid backwards like a spring.
At this moment, dozens of small holes suddenly appeared in the iron wall facing where they were standing, and arrows began to shoot out. Each arrow is about half a foot long, and the arrowheads are faintly blue, and they are obviously quenched with poison.
The mechanism for firing arrows is extremely powerful, and the arrows are like iron rods piercing deeply into the iron wall, almost reaching the top.
Mu Qingyan dragged Cai Zhao and slid back seven or eight feet. They had already escaped the range of the arrows, but unexpectedly the iron plate under their feet flipped over, revealing sharp and dense iron nails underneath.
Mu Qingyan had no choice but to slap the ground and use his strength to jump to the top, intending to hang under the top of the beam and wait for the arrow to be fired. However, before the two of them reached the top, more than a dozen holes were revealed in the iron wall at the top, and powerful arrows stained with poison shot down like a heavy rain.
Seeing that the two of them had nowhere to escape and were about to be beaten into pieces by the rain of arrows, Cai Zhao shouted with all his strength: "Go hit that wall with the mechanism!"
Mu Qingyan tried his best to hit the wall. He originally thought that the iron wall was the same as the one in front. It was made of extremely thick fine iron and had a huge stone on the back. Unexpectedly, there was only a crashing sound, and the iron wall on that side The iron wall actually cracked a big hole.
The two immediately jumped into the large opening.
Due to several twists and turns in the air, the two of them no longer had the strength to leap, so they fell heavily to the ground inside.
In order to avoid another trap, Mu Qingyan helped Cai Zhao get up as quickly as possible. The two looked around and found that this was an extremely tall and magnificent hall. There were sixteen desktop-sized glazed crystal pools hanging on the wall. The golden shark-fat oil lamp is burning, as if it can last for thousands of years.
Cai Zhao's heart moved and he shouted: "This is the pentagon in the middle of the Bagua map, which is the center of the underground palace!"
Chapter 81
Mu Qingyan looked at his empty arms, and then at the excited girl standing in the center of the hall, "Are you blind or can't count? There are clearly six walls here."
He pointed around. The walls of this hall were surrounded by five equally huge stone walls. Each stone wall was engraved with ancient and complex murals. On the outside of the stone wall was a three-foot-thick precision cast iron wall. Two of the five stone walls are slightly outward, leaving a gap several feet wide between the two stone walls.
And between this gap, the iron walls on both sides of the gap are welded together to the narrow iron wall they just entered.
There are five stone walls and one iron wall, which is exactly six sides.
"You are the blind one!" Cai Zhao turned around, "Come here and take a look, come here..." She took Mu Qingyan's left hand with both hands and pulled him up from the ground excitedly.
"I didn't dare to say it before, because it is not as easy to judge the age of gold and iron as wood and stone. Now I dare to conclude that this iron wall and the entire underground palace were not built at the same time." Cai Zhaola and Mu Qingyan stood at the door where they came in In front of the crack in the iron wall, the arrow rain outside had stopped at this time, leaving only many short arrow tails on the passage wall and the ground.
Mu Qingyan lowered his head and took a closer look, and found that the iron wall he had torn apart was only a few inches thick, which was very different from the iron wall on the opposite side that he had just cracked. The casting technique was not fine enough, causing the iron color to be slightly gray instead of gray. The entire black iron underground palace is as dark black as the underground palace.
As Cai Zhao said, this hall is indeed a pentagon surrounded by five stone walls, and the iron wall they entered was added by later generations.
"Not only were this iron wall and the underground palace not built at the same time, neither were these five stone walls." Cai Zhao looked around the five stone walls and pointed, "Look at the texture of the stone and the carvings on it. Shi Bi Shao said it was two hundred years ago. Your Demon Cult was also established two hundred years ago, and this underground palace was built by your fifth-generation leader. Even if the first four generations of leaders were shorter-lived, it would still take decades for their turn to come. The fifth generation..."
"One hundred and thirty years." Mu Qingyan said suddenly.
Cai Zhao: "?"
Mu Qingyan said: "Master Mu Donglie succeeded to the throne more than 130 years ago. Fifteen years later, that is, about 120 years ago, he abandoned the throne and ran away, and there is no news from him again."
When she heard this year, Cai Zhao was slightly startled. A thought quickly passed through her mind and disappeared before she could catch it.
"After reigning for fifteen years, he abandoned his position and ran away..." She murmured to herself, and suddenly asked, "Why on earth did he build this underground palace? Even if your demon sect's great cause was being heated up, he would not miss it. There is no reason to make such a grand move."
Mu Qingyan frowned attentively, "Actually, I had a strange idea just now. Leader Mu Donglie built this underground palace as if to hide something."
"Hiding something?" Cai Zhao looked up at the surrounding stone walls, "If the map is not deceiving, these five stone walls are the center of the underground palace. Is he trying to hide these five stone walls?"
"It's not like that." Mu Qingyan shook his head, "As you said, this hall was originally surrounded by five stone walls of the same size, with a several-foot-wide gap deliberately left in between to allow people to enter. Such a move does not look good. It’s like trying to hide these five stone walls.”
Cai Zhao: "Is there really a treasure left here?"
Mu Qingyan: "I don't know if Leader Mu Donglie left any treasure, but the dead bodies outside must believe that there is a treasure here."
The two of them had no clue. Finally, Cai Zhao let out a long sigh and sat down against the stone wall, "Here, please tell me, Master Mu Donglie, who is the leader of your sect, Mu Donglie."
Mu Qingyan sat down next to the girl and stretched out his slender limbs leisurely, "Master Mu Donglie is the most ambitious leader since the founding of our religion. He can annex the six Beichen sects and dominate the world in one breath - At least that’s what history says.”
"You've already said this, let's talk about something else." As a disciple of Beichen Sixth Sect who was 'almost annexed', Cai Zhao had a sour tone.
Mu Qingyan thought for a moment and said, "The leader Mu Donglie was only twelve or thirteen years old when he succeeded to the throne."
"Ah?!" Cai Zhaoda was surprised. She suddenly remembered something, "By the way, you told me before that your teacher was the first to adopt adopted sons to assist his biological sons who lacked talents. It was the third Acting leader. And Mu Donglie is the fifth generation leader, so his father is..."
"Yes, the father of the leader Mu Donglie is the fourth generation leader Mu Huaning, the only son of the Mu family who lacks talents." Mu Qingyan admitted simply.
After a gap of 130 years, there are many similarities between the Mu family back then and the Mu family now - this was what the young Mu Qingyan often thought when reading the annals of Apostolic History.
Like Mu Qingyan's great-grandfather, the third-generation leader Mu Sheng was also a tolerant and kind-hearted person, so much so that he was unable to discipline his only son harshly, and instead raised Mu Hua to be sentimental, weak and gentle. At that time, the six Beichen sects had just been divided into families and had only been independent for about ten years. They were so powerful that they were eyeing the enemy Li Jiao.
Mu Sheng knew very well that he could not entrust the responsibility of teaching power to a weak son, so he started the adopted son system.
The first adopted son, like Nie Hengcheng, was a wise, decisive, and extremely talented man with both civil and military skills. He could help his adoptive father to intimidate his followers, and he could keep the sect in good order and prosperous.
Therefore, similarly to Mu Qingyan's great-grandfather, Master Mu Sheng was relieved to have his adopted son but could not help but feel a little worried. But he was lucky. Although his son and daughter-in-law were generally useless, his eldest grandson was a fierce and powerful young man who was already outstanding at a young age.
This young man is Mu Donglie's elder brother Mu Dongxu.
After Mu Sheng's death, his adopted son has indeed grown in power. Although Mu Huaning has the title of leader, all the religious power is in the hands of his adoptive brothers. While the loyal ministers are worried, they only hope that the young leader Mu Dongxu will grow up quickly. , so as to take over the position of leader as soon as possible.
Unexpectedly, just one month before Mu Dongxu turned eighteen, he suddenly accidentally fell off a cliff and died.
"Is it really an accident? It couldn't have been the act of the adopted son secretly." She couldn't blame Cai Zhao for being obsessed with conspiracy theories. She had heard too many of Nie Hengcheng's dirty tricks in the past few days.
Mu Qingyan: "This matter has been mentioned in the history books. Leader Mu Donglie has repeatedly investigated in the future. Mu Dongxu's death was indeed an accident and had nothing to do with the adopted son."
When Mu Huaning heard about the death of his eldest son, he immediately vomited blood and fainted. When he woke up, he only had half a life left.
Beside him were his second son Mu Donglie, who was only twelve or thirteen years old, and Mu Dongxu's infant Mu Song, who was still learning to speak and was a concubine from a humble background.
Under such circumstances, the supporters of the adopted son's line immediately became active. They contacted each other and shouted, openly and covertly advocating that Mu Huaning should follow the actions of the ancient Ming Dynasty leaders Yao and Shun and abdicate the position of leader to his young, powerful and meritorious adoptive brother. .
Mu Huaning was really shaken.
Unfortunately, what they met was not Mu Qingyan's indifferent and desireless father, but Mu Donglie, the most cunning and adventurous man in the world.
When the second son, who had always been silent and withdrawn, proposed to succeed his elder brother as the leader, Mu Huaning thought it was a joke and comforted the younger son not to worry, as the old father could hold on a little longer.
Mu Donglie didn't waste any words to persuade his father, he retreated without saying a word.
The next day, while a group of elders, protectors, adopted sons and other big figures in the sect were arguing in front of Mu Huaning's bed, an indifferent young man half-stained with blood came in carrying two heads. He shook the bundle, and the two heads rolled down at everyone's feet. It was the two confidants around his adopted son who clamored for surrender the loudest, and they were also two of the Seven Star Elders.
"He killed two elders by himself? He was only twelve or thirteen years old!" Cai Zhao was shocked, "Is it possible that the Seven Star Elders at that time were not very capable?"
Mu Qingyan poked her forehead angrily.
At that time, there was a mess in front of Mu Huaning's hospital bed.
No one expected that Mu Donglie's cultivation at such a young age was already so amazing, and no one knew about it.
According to the rules of the sect, members of the congregation are not allowed to kill each other. Even if they commit apostasy or violate the rules of the sect, they must obtain an order before they can take action, and they are not allowed to kill on their own.
From top to bottom, there is only one exception, and that is the leader himself.
Now, Mu Donglie killed two Seven-Star elders for no reason. There were only two options before Mu Huaning, either punish his younger son according to the canon rules, or pass the throne to him in advance.
Of course Mu Huaning chose the latter.
"That adopted son just accepted his fate?" Cai Zhao was a little unbelievable.
Mu Qingyan had a complicated expression: "Judging from later records, the adopted son was not someone who deliberately sought power. In the early days of the leader Mu Donglie's rise to power, although the two had disputes, they did everything for justice. Later, he even He was so loyal that he died countless times in charge of the leader Mu Donglie."
Cai Zhaopo sighed with emotion: "Well, so you have to cultivate ambition. If your father is like the leader Mu Donglie, maybe Nie Hengcheng..." She shook her head, "No, Nie Laogou has been in love since your grandfather was not married. I have begun to plot against him, and I have been determined to harbor evil intentions for a long time."
