Daomu Biji

The relationship between Uncle Hai and I is not so good that we can talk about everything. We usually communicate about business matters. After we got acquainted with him, I called him Uncle Sheng to give him face, but he suddenly wanted to get close to me. I felt something strange. But it’s not easy for a little girl to show off to me. He agreed casually and asked her: "What do you mean? What information did he find out?"

Qin Haiting smiled mischievously, "My uncle said, I'll tell you when the time comes. I don't know what happened, so don't pry."

I cursed in my heart, this old profiteer probably wanted to rip me off again.

As expected, Lao Hai arrived on the third day. I picked him up from the train station and took him on the elevated train to the hotel he had reserved. In the car, I asked him what news he had heard. If he deceived me, I would not spare him.

Lao Hai shivered with coldness and said: "The strong dragons will not suppress the local snakes. They are all in your territory. How dare I deceive you? But let's not talk about it here. I am almost freezing to death."

I took him to the hotel, put down his things, and went to find a private room in the dining hall. After boiling a pot of wine and drinking several glasses of wine, I finally felt relieved.

I saw that he was drunk all the way up to his neck, so I knew he was done, so I asked him, "Okay, you drank and ate, it's time to talk about it. What did you find out?"

He blinked, smiled, took out a stack of paper from his bag, slapped it on the table, "Look at this."

I picked it up and took a look. It was a yellowed old newspaper, dated 1974. He circled a piece of news and had a large black and white photo. Although it was not very clear, I still recognized it. The photo was of a snake-browed copper fish, and there were many small cultural relics on the side, such as Buddhist beads.

But the appearance of this fish is different from the one in my hand and the one in my third uncle's hand. There are three fish reliefs on the forehead of the tomb passage statue in the undersea tomb, and this one should be the top one. In this way, it can be said that all three fish are present.

I asked Lao Hai: "How did you find this newspaper? Is there any secret behind it?"

Lao Haidao: "I've been helping a big boss sort out old newspapers recently. You know, rich people collect everything. You see, this is the Guangxi Cultural Evening News from 1974. He wants me to work from January to December. I found it for him. I spent two months looking for it. It was due for delivery in the next few days. I was checking it, and I happened to see this news. Do you think it was a coincidence? This newspaper was the July 4th newspaper. It was only a year old, but it closed in 1975. It’s hard to find in the world. You’re lucky, my eyes will be gone if I hurry up.”

My eyes glanced down, and there was a news article of about 300 words under the photo, saying that this fish was found in the foundation of a Buddhist temple in Guangxi. The tower naturally collapsed due to its age, and the underground palace was dug out when the ruins were being cleared. There are some soaked scriptures and treasure letters inside.

One of the treasure letters contained this fish. Experts speculate that it is a relic of a monk in the late Northern Song Dynasty.

Northern Song Dynasty? I lit a cigarette, leaned back on the chair, and murmured in my mind. The first fish of this kind of snake-browed copper fish appeared in the tombs of princes in the late Warring States Period; the second fish appeared in the late Yuan and early Ming Dynasties. In the undersea tomb; the third fish is in the underground palace of the pagoda in the Northern Song Dynasty. What kind of plane are you flying? There is no time limit at all.

I flipped through other parts of the newspaper and found only this one news item about this fish. In fact, there was nothing new in these contents, which meant that nothing was said. I still don’t know anything about this fish, and I feel depressed thinking about people.

Lao Hai looked at my expression and said, "Don't be discouraged. I haven't finished speaking yet. The story behind this is still exciting."

I frowned and said, "What should I say? Is there anything else that this newspaper can derive from?"

Lao Hai nodded and said, "That's right, if I just find a newspaper, I don't have to come to Hangzhou to find you, right? We have to start from the beginning. By the way, you are also in the industry, you know Don’t you know a person named Chen Pi Asi?”

I was surprised when I heard that Chen Pi Asi was a famous local master in Changsha when he was old. He was a contemporary of my grandfather. I heard that he is now over ninety years old. He lost his eyes during the ten years of catastrophe. , has not appeared since then, and I don’t know whether he is dead or alive, but his name is still loud in my grandfather’s mouth.

But this man is different from his grandfather. He lives his life on a knife's edge, that is, not only robbing tombs, but also killing people and arson. As long as he can get money, he will do it. So before liberation, people called him Shaved Asi, which means He kills people without hesitation, just like shaving his head.

I was a little surprised when Lao Hai mentioned this person, because he is not a contemporary of ours, and I have never been in contact with him. Could this fish be related to him? The story behind this fish, even if it has nothing to do with me, is definitely worth hearing.

Seeing that I was silent, Lao Hai thought I didn't know, and said, "It's not surprising that you don't know about Fourth Master Chen. After all, he is not of the same generation as us, but I have to tell you, this copper fish in this newspaper, He was the one who brought it out of the underground palace of the pagoda. The matter is really not as simple as what the newspaper said." After that, he briefly told me what happened that year.

It turns out that in 1974, Chen Pi's Asi was nearly sixty, and he was still blind. It was during the ten years of turmoil. He had served as a platoon leader in the Kuomintang army in the early days of liberation, and was later reorganized into a platoon leader. Ling had been a bandit for several years, so he had no legal status. At that time, if caught, he would be killed. He could only move around the minority areas in Guangxi, and he did not dare to even enter the county seat.

In the early years of the Four Olds eradication, many historical sites were almost destroyed. Chen Pi Asi has been to many places in Guangxi, because Guangxi was not the Central Plains in ancient times and there were not many ancient tombs. He lived a fairly honest life in those years. . But unfortunately, that year, he happened to be taking stock in Jiaqiao Ridge and was passing by. He was chatting with some local Miao people. Those people drank too much and they mentioned that a temple in Maoer Mountain had a collapsed tower. It was said that the movement was so loud that even the ground sank, creating a large crater. On the night of the collapse, many people heard a very strange scream.

Chen Pi Asi felt something was wrong when he heard it. He had been to Mao'er Mountain many times. The temples there were very solid. How could they collapse just because they were said to have collapsed? After asking carefully, I found out that this pagoda is not on Maoer Mountain, but in the center of a nearby mountain range called "Wofo Ridge". This place is very strange. It is surrounded by villages. It is a basin of about ten square kilometers in the middle. The altitude is very low, the vegetation is dense, and the trees cover the sky. The villages are on the cliffs, and the woods are below the cliffs. With a drop of more than 100 meters, they are two completely different worlds, and there is no road going down from the village. To go down to this basin, you can only use ropes.

Local people said that there must be other entrances and exits to this basin, but the underground vegetation is so dense that it is difficult to walk. Miao people who used to go down there to hunt and collect medicine often disappeared inside, so no one was willing to go down there when nothing happened.

The ancient pagoda was built in such a place. It is almost in the center of the basin. Usually when people look down from the cliff, they can only see a very small spire revealing the dense tree crown, and it is covered with plants. It is impossible to see clearly what is below. Miao people said that they knew there was a tower here more than ten generations ago, but no one thought of going down to see it, and now they are used to it. One day recently, there was a sudden loud noise. When I came out and saw that the top of the tower was gone, I realized that the tower had collapsed.

There are many local legends about this mysterious ancient pagoda. According to some old people, this tower was built by an eminent monk in ancient times to suppress monsters. Now that the tower falls, the monsters will come out and do evil. The strange cry is the cry of the monster breaking free from its restraints.

After hearing this, Chen Pi Asi found it very interesting. He felt that there was something wrong with the location of the tower and the sound heard by the Miao people in the middle of the night. But people like them may have a strange intuition and can instinctively find out information from other people's narratives and some legends. This is hard to find in our generation.

Chen Pi Ah Si thought for a moment and decided to go take a look before talking.

Guangxi has many mountains, which can be called the largest in the country. Maoershan is one of the important sources, spanning the three counties of Xing'an, Ziyuan and Longsheng. It is the source of Lijiang River, Zijiang River and Xunjiang River, connecting the two major water systems of the Yangtze River and Pearl River. There is a large area of ​​primitive jungle in that place, and Laoshanjie, the first mountain that the Red Army crossed during the Long March, is among them. During World War II, several bombers of the Flying Tigers aiding China mysteriously disappeared here, so this place has always been rumored to be a bit mysterious.

After many twists and turns, Chen Pi Asi came to a village on the "Wofo Ridge". He stood on a hillock and looked towards the basin in the middle of the mountains. **, the tower was much bigger than he thought. When it fell, it was smashed. Several trees fell, so there was a gap in the green canopy of the forest. On the "Wofo Ridge", we couldn't see anything in the gap, but Chen Pi Asi discovered almost immediately. In the week where the tower collapsed, all the trees appeared very messy due to the subsidence of the ground. It seemed that the bottom of the tower , Sure enough, there is something, and it is larger than the tower base.

When I heard this, I already knew it was a "Mirror Palace". "Jing'er Palace" is the dialect of the Changsha area before liberation. That is to say, below the above-ground building, there is an underground part that is the same size as the above-ground building. It looks like the reflection of the above-ground building on the lake. The upper and lower ends are symmetrical. .

This is also called "Yin Yang Shuttle" in the Northern School, which means that the entire building is like a shuttle inserted in the ground, with one side being the underworld and the other side being the yang world. However, such ancient tombs or ancient buildings are rarely seen anymore, and most of the remains on the ground have been completely destroyed, so this statement was almost no longer mentioned in the ten years before liberation.

Chen Pi'asi could tell that the "Mirror Palace" was buried underneath just by looking at the changes in the arrangement of the trees. This kind of judgment was impossible without extremely rich experience. I couldn't help but sigh secretly, calm down and listen to Lao Hai continue to speak.

After Chen Pi Asi made up his mind, he was already greedy. There would only be three things in the underground palace of the pagoda, either the relics, the golden body of the eminent monk, or a large number of Buddhist scriptures, whatever. They are all priceless things.

But for a foreigner like him, it was not convenient for him to move around here. Firstly, he had a special status and a bad background. Secondly, there were constant disputes between the Miao and Han tribes at that time. Several villages here were Miao villages. If he entered rashly, he might Make others suspicious.

After much consideration, he came up with a plan. He paid a high price to find a local Miao guide. He told the guide that he was an old intellectual from the border area who came from outside. When he came here, one of his students fell off the cliff. The Miao people are simple and ignorant of worldly affairs. How could they have thought there was a conspiracy? As soon as they heard that someone had fallen off the cliff, they immediately notified everyone in the village. A young Miao man tied a hanging basket with a rope and lowered Chen Pi Ah Si and several young men who helped him to the bottom of the cliff.

According to Chen Pi's own recollection afterwards, passing the drop of more than 100 meters was a hellish experience. The cliff is very steep. The person's weight is completely stretched by a rattan rope, and the buttocks are wrapped in a basket. When the wind blows, the whole person spins in circles like a top, making it extremely unstable. By the time he passed through the dense tree cover and descended to the bottom of the jungle, he only had half a life left.

There is almost no sunlight inside the forest, the light is extremely dim, and the air is filled with the smell of methane. There are many types of trees here, but without exception, green moss grows everywhere, and the mud is so soft that it is almost impossible to stand.

After Chen Pi Ah Si came down, he pretended to be exhausted (actually he was really frightened) and sat there panting. The Miao leader saw that he was not too young and looked like a little old man, so he asked him to wait for them to come back. He lit a torch and asked others to search in the direction he pointed.

As soon as they left, Chen Pi'asi immediately took out his compass and went deep into the jungle according to the direction he had written down in advance. He estimated that it would take an entire night for the Miao people to travel back and forth in such a large area. With his This skill should be enough to find the entrance to "Jing'er Palace" and make a round trip. It's a pity that he didn't bring enough equipment this time. Whether he can enter the palace depends on his own luck.

After walking aimlessly in the jungle for a full four hours, relying on the compass and his determination to travel all over the world, Chen Pi Asi finally arrived at the area he planned on the "Wofo Ridge", which is where Remains of a monastery surrounding a tower.

After walking aimlessly in the jungle for four hours, relying on the compass and his determination to travel all over the world over the years, Chen Pi Asi finally came to the area he planned on the "Wofo Ridge", which is where Remains of a monastery surrounding a tower.

As he went deeper, Chen Pi Asi saw more and more broken eaves and broken walls. It was obvious that the ancient buildings here had disappeared. Only some foundations and broken walls were left, almost mixed with the vegetation. I can't even see clearly what it is. But looking at the scale, this temple is very large. Although the tower falls within this large area, it is difficult to see clearly where it is.

After all, Chen Pi Asi was not young. As he walked around, he felt a little short of breath. He was about to sit down and rest. Suddenly, his eyes flashed. The grass surrounding the entire wall suddenly shrank, and something seemed to be wrapped inside. .

Chen Pi's Si was startled. He rolled out and pulled out an iron bullet in his hand. Looking back, he saw a Miao body in the vine quilt wrapped around the wall. It was almost shriveled. But the belly of the corpse, for some unknown reason, was stirring slightly, as if there was something inside.