Immortal Dao Fruits, Cards to Help Me

Chapter 108 One Glance Opens the Door

The twenty-seven-member tomb-raiding team from the Duke's mansion consisted of two groups.

One group consisted of seventeen people from Heishan Village, led by Wu Shixian, the nephew of Wu Jinzhong and Wu Jinxiao.

However, after chatting with him for a while, Chen Xiuxian felt that the man's situation was somewhat delicate.

The Wu family had been the estate managers for the Rongning and Ningguo Dukes' mansions for nearly a hundred years, and had accumulated a considerable fortune in Liaodong.

There are quite a few people.

However, when a family becomes too large, conflicts of interest are inevitable.

Moreover, it is even more inevitable that descendants will be unworthy.

Wu Jinzhong and his brother Wu Jinxiao both have sons, and several of them.

However, they are either mediocre or even a bit spendthrift, so they are the kind of people who can't make a living.

Among his generation, Wu Shixian was the most capable, but his father died early and he had no one to rely on.

On the one hand, the Wu family felt that they should cultivate Wu Shixian among the younger generation to maintain their reputation, but on the other hand, they could not give up their favoritism towards their own son.

This put Wu Shixian in a very strange position. The older generation entrusted him with important responsibilities, but they also held back some of their own. Some of his peers formed a group, but most of them were hostile towards him.

However, Chen Xiuxian was only inquiring about it and had no intention of getting involved in such trivial matters.

The other group consisted of ten people, including Wang Yuan.

They were also the personal guards of the former Dukes Rong and Ning, and descendants of those who used to work in the fields. They were considered skilled workers.

The seventeen men brought by the Wu family were laborers and thugs. Although they had some experience, they couldn't compare to Wang Yuan and his group, who all had unique skills.

Wang Yuan was the leader of those ten people; he also had a younger brother and a younger sister in the group.

The short, very thin one is Wang Bian. He has a smug expression.
The girl, who looked about seventeen or eighteen, with two shiny braids, was named Wang Fang. She seemed a little excited.

These three siblings each have their own unique skills and are highly respected within the team.

Chen Xiuxian was in the mood to chat with them about their skills and experiences, after all, he was curious.

But Cao Bianjiao and Li Rusong were not interested.

In their hearts, these people were somewhat dispensable.

They valued the brand of Rongning Ergong more, as well as the distribution channels.

Anyone who's ever raided a tomb knows that while large tombs are easy to raid, it's hard to find valuable items!
Without a distribution channel, these items might be stuck in stock for a long time, and even if they are eventually sold, the price will likely be drastically reduced.

As for hoping that Liaodong can absorb the problem internally, that's a bit of a stretch.

People in Liaodong are pragmatic; they only value things that are beneficial to survival. At the very least, they need to improve their lives.

So take antiques, calligraphy, and paintings as far away as you can.

Therefore, people in the capital and the Central Plains all thought the people of Liaodong were barbarians.
……

Dou Zhongde solemnly bathed and changed his clothes, then used a tortoise shell to cast three hexagrams, finally concluding that setting off at 3:45 AM the next day would be most auspicious.

Dou Zhongde: "My lord, the image says: A fat sheep strays from its flock and enters a mountain ridge. A hungry tiger encounters it and opens its mouth wide. The sheep is satisfied and its heart is filled with joy. If the divination is performed, it will be very auspicious... Although there will be some setbacks, it will eventually succeed!"

Chen Xiuxian nodded: "That's good then."

If you get a bad divination result, keep divining until you get a good one!

My fate is in my own hands, not in the hands of heaven.
……

The next morning, when it was still barely dawn, Chen Xiuxian and his group set off.

A group of over thirty people, in the dry, cold dawn, trudged through the crunching snow toward Jade Pen Peak.

Black Mountain Village is located at the foot of the mountain, and the mountain has been explored for more than 30 years. It can be said that almost every stone is familiar to them.

Wu Shixian had his two most familiar people lead the way up the mountain.

This mountain is extremely steep; sometimes you have to use both your hands and feet to climb it.

However, there were no mediocre members in the team; each one was as agile as a monkey. Even the tall, fat Wang Yuan seemed incredibly nimble while climbing the mountain.

As for Chen Xiuxian's side, Li Rusong and his two ghost soldiers could not be said to be climbing, but rather floating!
The people in the group had roughly learned about their situation yesterday, and they all kept their heads down, focusing only on their feet, not daring to look around.

To be honest, the descendants of a group of tomb raiders are most afraid of encountering the ghost soldiers who capture souls at the City God Temple.

In the past, if someone was caught in the act of committing a crime, and was slow to run away, they would be captured on the spot and sent to the City God Temple for trial.

Don't be fooled by the fact that when the two Dukes Ning and Rong were conquering the country, they organized a group of tomb raiders to plunder military funds. Even the emperor knew about it and tacitly approved of it.

But once the world is conquered, things are a different story. A mere chamber pot!

Tomb raiding was a serious crime in all dynasties, and those caught would be beheaded!
The fact that the two Dukes Ning and Rong didn't erase their dark history back then shows how kind they were.

We climbed the mountain for about half an hour, and by then the sun had already risen.

It's just that it's a bit gloomy today, and the sun is almost like a CD, so it's not very dazzling even if you look directly at it.

Hu Tiedao looked at the map in his hand, muttered some ancestral rhymes and doggerel, and then whispered a few words in Chen Xiuxian's ear.

Chen Xiuxian waved his hand. "Stop. Everyone, take a break for a while. I'll send someone to check this place."

The group stopped to rest on this irregular platform halfway up the mountain, panting heavily, some with frost on their eyebrows. They were probably halfway up the mountain, about three or four hundred meters above the flat ground.

I don't know who designed this fake emperor's treasure, but it must have been done in a hurry.

The reason they ran all the way from Yanjing was because they knew they were no match for Emperor Yongshun, who had swept across the land and established the Great Shun Dynasty.

As a result, the two dukes of Ning and Rong led more than 10,000 cavalry and 40,000 to 50,000 infantry to follow and attack.

The false emperor's peaceful reign in Liaodong lasted less than two months, and he didn't have much time to cause trouble.

Therefore, the treasure was buried hastily, with only two layers of protection.

The first thing is location.

Apart from a few trusted confidants who perished along with the false emperor, no one knew about the location of Jade Pen Peak.

Even the four bodyguards of the pseudo-emperor from Hu Tiedao's ancestors only obtained the incantation for the search, just in case they failed to win, so that they would have a chance to make a comeback.

Moreover, although this location is on Jade Pen Peak, it was originally concealed using a secret method.

Without that incantation, you won't know how to activate it, and you won't be able to find the entrance.

Take the Wu family in Heishan Village, for example. They searched for thirty years and knew there must be something in the mountains, but they just couldn't find it.

The second layer of security is the key!

The key to unlock the treasure was made into a military token, which was split in two and needed to be combined to open the entrance.

It was originally given to two people who went their separate ways. They'll wait to reunite and unlock the treasure again.

As a result, after a hundred years or so, Youyuandao obtained a sliver of information from the believers. After searching for seven or eight years, they finally found half of the key and located the descendants of the original four guardians.

Then it ran into Chen Xiuxian...

Although the treasure was set up hastily, it's clear that the false emperor had some capable people under his command.

According to that set of doggerel-like rhymes, what:
The sun shines on Jade Mountain, which is nine zhang nine feet high.
The ancient tree bends over like an old man.

The stone horse stands with its three hooves suspended in mid-air.
The one-eyed general gazes at the clouds.

……

The stream flowed backwards on the seventh day.
The golden carp leaps over the gourd's shoulder.

The bronze key was hidden inside the fish's belly.
At midnight, the Big Dipper points east.

……

Red silk threads entwine around the southeastern tree.
The crows' cries shattered the dawn.

He stepped on lotus flowers for dozens of steps.
The stone gate opened to reveal the path to heaven.

……

Hu Tiedao and his family had passed down a secret formula for a hundred years, with each of the four families possessing a portion of it.

They also held several gatherings and deciphering attempts during this period, which resulted in mutual dissatisfaction and even turned them into enemies, leading to a bloody battle between two generations!
Now, with the help of Youyuandao and the General's Mansion, Hu Tiedao has finally collected all the "Treasure Hunt Ballads".

After making some preparations, when the sunlight peeked over a ten-zhang-tall stone pillar, Hu Tiedao sat on a rock that looked like a stone horse and looked diagonally upwards...

Wang Yuan, Wu Shixian, and other professionals were also amazed by what they saw.

Because this tomb was unlike anything they had ever seen before. It contained magic!

The magic circle needs to be dispelled before the entrance can be seen.

Finally, after a series of very tedious operations, a hole the size of a fist appeared unnoticed in a corner of the stone wall.

The cracks around the pit formed the shape of a fish's mouth.

Upon seeing this, Chen Xiuxian took out the bronze key that resembled a tiger tally—this thing must have been modified from the tiger tally used to mobilize troops.

Holding the tiger tally, I reached into the fish-mouth pit, which was more than ten centimeters deep. After feeling around, I found a groove inside.

Adjust the position of the tiger tally, and finally, with a click, it was perfectly embedded.

Then suddenly the ground beneath everyone's feet swayed, and there seemed to be a soft, crackling sound coming from inside the mountain. Then, a thin mist, which seemed to come from nowhere, gradually spread from the mountainside of Jade Pen Peak.

"Gather together, hold hands, and don't get separated!" Hu Tiedao shouted.

Everyone gathered in front of the stone wall, holding each other tightly.

The fog thickened in just a few breaths, and in less than a minute, it became so dense that one could not see anything more than three meters away.

You can't even see what the person four or five people away looks like!

Then, two large doors appeared on that otherwise unremarkable stone wall.

The door initially resembled natural cracks in the stone, but quickly transformed into simple lines, which continued to evolve until they became two rough yet very heavy doors.

It's clear that Wang Yuan is very aware of the value of his people.

With a wave of his hand, three or four more people arrived and together they pushed open the stone door.

The others kept their distance, wary of any traps behind the door.

The tall Wang Yuan was indeed very strong, at least 20+. After a sound of stones scraping together, the two stone doors were pushed open!
(End of this chapter)