The structures of ancient tombs across dynasties were invariably "round or square," deriving from the circularity of heaven or the squareness of earth; consequently, both the tomb passage and the burial chamber were invariably aligned with the orientations of the "Four Directions and Eight Gates." Ancient grave-robbing techniques employed the Four Methods: "Observation, Listening, Questioning, and Feeling," among which the "Questioning" method involved the art of "Divination and Verification." Lighting a candle in an ancient tomb was precisely one of the simplest and most primitive secret methods of this "Divination."

Placing the candle in the southeast corner subtly aligned with the principle of "Deducing the Auspiciousness and Inauspiciousness of the Eight Gates." The candle flame was suppressed by an intensely malevolent, chilling wind; though the flame remained lit, it burned with a sickly green hue, resembling ghost fire, foretelling that the "Jing Gate is in flux," and immense danger was about to erupt.

Seeing the bizarre flickering of the candle flame, I knew instantly that something was terribly wrong. Regardless of whether it was a "ghost blowing out the lamp" or a "ghost pressing down the lamp," the best course of action right now was to ignore everything and escape immediately.

Yet, after a moment of turning this over in my mind, I felt that since entering the Tomb of the Wuyang King, far too many strange and bizarre things had occurred; an extremely sinister plot seemed to envelope the vicinity. I immediately abandoned the thought of fleeing, blew out the "candle" in one go, and then turned to glance at Professor Sun. He was about five or six meters away from me, crouching near those small coffins, lost in thought, most of his figure swallowed by the darkness. In that instant, the hairs on my entire body stood on end, and I had a vague sense that I didn't know this "Old Master Sun" at all. Could he truly be a phantom, merely "borrowing a corpse to return the soul"?

The incident of the "Belly Immortal guiding the way" encountered earlier in the "South Dipper Chamber" was too bizarre and uncanny. I had always suspected that there was something within the murals excavated from the Tang Dynasty tomb capable of obscuring vision, and under the influence of burning substances like incense, it could induce auditory hallucinations. During the Tang to Five Dynasties period, there were countless strange arts and esoteric skills; it was rumored that among the tricks of "visual deception" and "soul manipulation," there was a method known as "Illuminating the Candle to Capture the Soul," far beyond what people today could imagine. It would be better to boldly proceed without a candle than to light one to open a coffin.

At this point, Professor Sun saw that I was delayed and said, "Hu Bayi, what's wrong? If the candle won't light, never mind, but don't blame me for nagging now. Out of these tens of thousands of small coffins, only one is real; the odds are one in ten thousand. Most of the others are booby-trapped with hidden devices. Finding the wrong one will inevitably lead to mutual destruction. Don't act rashly on a whim."

Professor Sun paused after saying this, then continued, "Before the tomb gate, you seemed quite confident. I didn't press you then on how you planned to decipher the Guan Shan Zhi Mi Fu because I knew you were always suspicious of me. You wouldn't reveal anything until the moment of opening the coffin. But now that we are both here, as you put it, we are fish on the same string. Therefore, you must explain your plan to me so I can help you assess its feasibility first."

I pondered this and realized he had a point. However, I did not immediately explain my conception to him. Instead, I first asked Professor Sun, "These antique small stone coffins have peculiar and bizarre mechanisms; they appear extremely mysterious. I've never seen anything like them. As an expert in archaeology, Master Jiu, do you know their origin?"

Professor Sun replied, "To be honest, I have never seen them with my own eyes either, but when I was organizing materials in Chongqing in the past, I found a document in the archives."

It mentioned that near the end of the Qing Dynasty, a group of Westerners were aggressively plundering and cheating the Chinese out of antiques in the mountains and rivers of Bashu, including some ancient jades and bronzes. When the local government discovered this, the commandery office, wary of offending the foreigners, found an excuse to release everyone but seized a large batch of cultural relics.

The official in charge at the time was a connoisseur of ancient artifacts. Seeing that the artifacts were of strange workmanship, unlike mortal objects, he relentlessly pursued the matter until he tracked down the local mountaineers who had guided the foreigners in their treasure hunt. These people were brought to the yamen and interrogated under duress. After severe torture, they revealed that the items were found deep in the mountains, likely in an "ancient tomb," entered through a cave high on a cliff face. Inside, tens of thousands of small coffins were stored, but they were empty, only revealing traces of dark blood when opened. The rest of the small stone coffins were left untouched; only the surrounding precious and rare objects were taken.

Later, this official personally inspected the site and saw that the small coffins hidden in the mountains were too numerous to count. The coffin lids were engraved with symbols of the sun, moon, stars, fierce winds, and hexagram riddles. It was unclear which dynasty they originated from. Worried that the coffins sealed some inauspicious demonic beings that might bring disaster if destroyed, he ordered the mountain sealed and hidden.

Many years later, he learned that the Bashu region, isolated from the outside world since ancient times, was a hotbed of sorcery. The mysterious culture left behind, heavily influenced by the Xia, Shang, and Zhou dynasties of the Central Plains, placed extraordinary importance on "astrology, earth veins, and divination." They firmly believed that a "Celestial God" was buried within the Wushan Mountain range.

According to the customs of the witch tribes, upon death, one organ was taken—including the heart, liver, spleen, lungs, kidneys, and even eyeballs and tongues. The specific organs taken differed according to the deceased's status. These were stored in the small stone coffins and buried in the mountain cave to nourish the deity.

In ancient Ba and Shu lands, there are many regions named after "coffins." Tracing their roots leads back to the mysterious shamanistic traditions passed down from antiquity. There must be numerous caves where these small coffins are buried. Although no physical examples have been unearthed since the founding of the PRC, their appearance near the "Tomb of the Wuyang King" is not surprising. They must have been discovered by the Guanshan Taibao (Mountain-Viewing Protector) and then meticulously arranged, with the map of the "Immortal Village" hidden within the coffin. This section was the greatest obstacle concealed within the Guan Shan Zhi Mi Fu.

I nodded upon hearing this. If the origin of these small coffins was as Professor Sun described, it confirmed my previous conjecture absolutely: the words, "The Gate of Life connects head to tail; twenty-four thousand rows, one hundred and seven singles," must refer to this place. But if the coffin truly held the map, it wouldn't be in just one; the cryptic text suggested that at least two stone coffins needed to be opened to retrieve it.

None of the symbols engraved on the ten thousand-plus small coffins were identical. But I dared to assert that the clues mentioned in the Guan Shan Zhi Mi Fu came 200% from the I Ching. Because from beginning to end, prior to the Qing Dynasty, the I Ching contained exactly "twenty-four thousand, one hundred and seven" characters—not one more, not one less. Versions circulated after the Qing Dynasty into modern times contain slightly more characters, no longer totaling "twenty-four thousand, one hundred and seven."

Even experts who perpetually studied the I Ching were unaware of this matter. Old Master Sun, an expert in ancient scripts who had dealt with Dragon Bone divination charts his entire life, would not notice such a detail. Only the Mojin Xiaowei (Gold-Fingered Captains) who specialized in tomb robbing using "Feng Shui secrets" knew this. The two ancient arts they excelled at were the "Dragon Seeking Incantation," based on the He Tu and Luo Shu, and "Dividing Gold to Fix the Location," utilizing the principle of Qian Yuan from the I Ching. To understand the "Dragon Seeking Incantation," one must first pass the I Ching test.

The incantation for "Dividing Gold to Fix the Location" is like a cipher blending various pieces of information, with its deepest layer entirely based on "Yi theory" (the theory of the I Ching). The first coordinate direction in "Dividing Gold to Fix the Location" uses characters from the I Ching as substitutes.

If the art of "Dividing Gold to Fix the Location" were represented graphically, it could be divided into Eight Trigrams and Eight Directions, each intersecting with a trigram assigned to one of the Eight Gates. Every character is a unique marker on the diagram. It can also be arranged according to the Five Elements, because since the Song Dynasty, Feng Shui theory emphasized the principles of the Five Elements, leading to the concept of the Five Surnames and Tonal Properties—this involved categorizing the pronunciation of surnames into the Five Elements of "Metal, Wood, Water, Fire, Earth" according to "Gong, Shang, Jue, Zhi, Yu" (the five tones).

Therefore, in the secret arts of Yin-Yang Feng Shui, no matter how the auspicious site is deduced, it always involves maneuvering the I Ching back and forth. Even the character count of each chapter holds a specific symbolism in numerology. Here we only have the Eight Trigrams; if there were truly Sixteen Heavenly Revolving Trigrams, one might truly be able to "exhaust the changes of Heaven and Earth."

Although I wouldn't claim to have mastered the Sixteen-Character Yin-Yang Feng Shui Secret Art and the I Ching thoroughly, regarding which trigram and intersection corresponds to which under the arrangement of the "Eight Gates," and which trigram and intersection corresponds to which under the deduction of the "Five Elements," and the character count of each section—I can now answer this off the cuff, even in my sleep. The ancient trigrams are called Lian Shan in heaven, Gui Cang on earth, and Zhou Yi for mankind. The sum of all characters in the Eight Trigrams of the Zhou Yi happens to be exactly "twenty-four thousand, one hundred and seven"—an allusion to the I Ching. I only needed to find the first and last characters of the Yi, open the corresponding two stone coffins, and I could certainly retrieve the map without triggering the traps in the Wuhou Hidden Soldiers Map.

Professor Sun was stunned speechless upon hearing this, his face showing numbness and confusion. He remained silent for a long time. Fatty, growing impatient waiting, asked me, "Old Hu, you've talked Old Master Sun right out of his wits; he probably won't recover for a while. Let's not hesitate any longer; let's get started."

I nodded in agreement. Seeing the stone coffins densely packed and seemingly chaotic, finding the two required coffins wouldn't be easy. However, the layout of the coffins covertly followed the "Five Element pattern," allowing me to eliminate four-fifths with just a glance. After locating the targets, Fatty and I got to work.

Seeing us act, Old Master Sun hurried over to watch, constantly reminding us to be extremely careful. Fatty and I pulled out the stone pins securing the lids and lifted them. Inside the two small coffins, there were no scrolls, but rather two halves of exquisitely flat, painted porcelain shards. When pieced together, they formed a book-sized "screen."

The porcelain screen depicted a village resembling a paradise, with houses and courtyards clearly visible, hidden deep within a remote mountain gorge. At the bottom, among the mountains and rivers, were various rare birds and strange beasts, and a verse from the ancient lyric poem Shui Diao Ge Tou was inscribed, carrying a deep meaning that seemed to indicate the path into the mountains. Being in peril, we didn't have time to examine it closely.

I chuckled, "The methods of these 'Earth Immortals' are nothing special. It’s their bad luck to run into a group of 'Mojin Xiaowei' like us." But as soon as I looked up, I saw Fatty and Professor Sun staring intently at me, their expressions extremely strange.

I asked strangely, "What are you looking at?" Fatty swiftly drew his entrenching tool and yelled at me, "Behind you..."

Just then, I felt a blast of cold wind strike me. I knew something must be wrong behind me. I quickly hugged the porcelain screen and did a forward roll, clutching my "Emei Dagger" in my hand. Only then did I look up, but the tomb passage where I had just stood was empty—nothing there.

But that fierce wind and chill returned from behind me. Only then did I realize something was clinging to my back. I twisted around and looked: there was the Tang Dynasty noblewoman who had become the "Belly Immortal," pressed tightly against my back. Her plump, fleshy cheeks were heavily powdered and painted with makeup, frighteningly white. Her eerie features seemed embedded in a slab of pale flesh, her eyes extremely narrow and long, and her tiny, blood-red cherry mouth was disproportionate to her massive face.

When I came face-to-face with the "Belly Immortal" behind me, I nearly lost my soul from fright. The terror was overwhelming, mainly due to the lack of preparation. Earlier in the chamber, I suspected Old Master Sun was causing trouble, but during this map retrieval operation, I stayed with him constantly and deliberately didn't light a candle to deny him the opportunity to perform soul-capturing illusions. I hadn't expected this ghostly "Belly Immortal" to suddenly manifest in the tomb passage. It seemed this was definitely not an illusion.

I knew things were bad. No matter how I moved or turned, I simply could not shake off the "Belly Immortal" attached to my back. I could hear the mournful "ghostly sound" issuing from her abdomen, like the wails of ten thousand ghosts, drilling into my ears and making the hair on my head stand straight up. Fortunately, a moment of clarity struck me: I lay flat on the ground. This way, I didn't have to keep my back exposed to the danger behind me.

Who knew that the "Belly Immortal" wouldn't sink into the ground? Only her head remained visible above the dirt. She opened her mouth and spat out a tongue over a meter long. I hurriedly strained to turn my head and evade, barely missing being coiled by that blood-red tongue. I thought to myself, "Not good. According to the old sayings—ghosts cannot touch the earth. How is this an immortal? This must be a fierce ghost that the Guanshan Taibao dug up from some Tang tomb belonging to his mother."

Fatty tried to swing his "entrenching tool" to strike, but I blocked him, preventing him from swinging. He cried out in frustration, "Old Hu, your head is too much in the way!"

At that moment, Old Master Sun also urged anxiously, "Don't break the porcelain screen map! Fatty Wang, quickly... quickly use the Guixu Divination Mirror to shine on that fierce ghost!"

In my panic, I heard Professor Sun speak, and my heart immediately lurched: "Although the Guixu Divination Mirror is not the Qin King's Bone-Reflecting Mirror, it is still an ancient bronze mirror. Mirrors are implements used by the Legalist school to suppress and seek rectitude, specializing in restraining evil spirits and wicked ways. When encountering a ghost in a tomb, one naturally needs the ancient Guixu Mirror to escape. Otherwise, how can we resist this now?" Thus, I also urged Fatty to quickly fetch the divination mirror.