Under One Person: The Taoist Priest Descends the Mountain

(P.S. I came up with some weird and wonderful puzzle-solving methods for this chapter. Just enjoy it for fun, and I won't charge you for it.)

The call connected, and Cheng Mo asked casually, "Fourth Brother, your people said that guy went to the neighboring county. Are you planning to have me go with him?"

An employee whispered a reminder: "It's not Linxian, it's the neighboring Zhangxian."

Cheng Mo waved his hand: "It's all the same."

On the other end of the phone, Xu Si finally spoke: "Everything's the same?"

Cheng Mo was too lazy to waste words with him: "Arrange a car for me."

Xu Si readily agreed, "No problem, the company has no shortage of cars. Here's what you do: just go to the front desk and get the keys. The license plate number is 5214. It's a white van."

Cheng Mo hung up the phone and asked the employee, "Are you staying here or coming back to the company with us?"

The employee pointed to the hospital bed: "I'm in charge of these patients."

Cheng Mo nodded, pulled Xia He away from the hospital, and took a taxi to Heng'an Station.

……

Zhuge Village.

Zhuge Qing sat at his desk in his room, with the photocopy paper and a stack of draft paper spread out in front of him.

It was already dark outside the window, and the desk lamp on the table was on, making the paper appear white.

He broke down the string of scribbles into the most basic strokes—horizontal, vertical, left-falling, right-falling, dot, and fold.

Then count the number of strokes, with one symbol corresponding to one number.

A string of numbers was obtained: 18, 9, 11...

Zhuge Qing opened the "Memorial on Dispatching the Troops" on the table and searched for each character in numerical order.

The first number was eighteen, and he counted to the eighteenth character.

"Your subject Liang reports: The late Emperor passed away before completing his great undertaking..."

The eighteenth character is "州".

The second number is nine, and the ninth character is "half".

The third is "中".

Collapse, half, middle.

What does that mean?

Zhuge Qing frowned and continued searching.

Finally, we get the following characters: collapse, half, middle, path, old, fortress, of, side.

"Beside the old fortress in the middle of the state road"?

No, the punctuation is incorrect.

Zhuge Qing wrote these eight characters on another piece of paper, looked at them for a long time, and couldn't understand how to read them.

What is "Zhoubanzhongdao"?

He looked at the numbers again and suddenly realized a possibility—the numbers did not correspond to the entire text of "Memorial on Dispatching the Troops" in order, but rather to paragraphs of it.

The "Memorial on Dispatching the Troops" consists of eight paragraphs.

He numbered each paragraph and then counted them again.

Medium, internal, suitable.

Still not right.

Zhuge Qing put down his pen and stared at the words on the paper for a long time.

Suddenly, he noticed something—the words were in the wrong position.

If these numbers correspond to the number of words in a paragraph, then what you get are scattered words that cannot be connected into sentences.

But what if we rearrange these characters according to the positions of the Eight Trigrams Formation?

Zhuge Qing turned the paper over and drew an Eight Trigrams Formation.

The order of operation of the Eight Trigrams Formation is: Heaven, Earth, Wind, Cloud, Dragon, Tiger, Bird, Snake, and then it starts again from the Heaven Formation. The change of each formation will affect the other seven formations.

Zhuge Qing arranged the order in this sequence for four rounds.

After four changes, we arrive at eight characters—

Inside, three, one, legacy, towards, with, cultivate, first.

Zhuge Qing rubbed his temples. Something was definitely wrong.

He stared at those eight characters, and suddenly a flash of inspiration struck him.

No—these numbers don't correspond to characters, but rather to the strokes of those characters!

If these numbers are the number of strokes, then there is no need to correspond them to the "Memorial on Dispatching the Troops"; instead, they can be directly associated with the Chinese characters themselves.

He quickly wrote a string of Chinese characters on the paper, with each stroke corresponding to several possible characters.

Turn over, wind, reason, climb, cave, look out, spring, fog.

Let's switch to another set.

Eagle, head, ball, mountain, cave, inside, sky, sky.

What is all this about?

Zhuge Qing stared at these characters for a long time. No, it wasn't the number of strokes.

He took a deep breath and remembered a sentence his grandfather had said when he taught him the Eight Trigrams Formation.

"The changes in the Eight Formations begin with numbers and end with symbols. When numbers change, symbols change, and when symbols change, principles emerge."

When the numbers change, the symbolic meaning changes.

The hexagram!

These numbers are not the number of strokes or characters, but the numbers of hexagrams!

Zhuge Qing immediately divided each number by eight and took the remainder.

18 ÷ 8 = 2 remainder 2 — Dui hexagram.

9 ÷ 8 = 1 remainder 1 — Qian hexagram.

11 ÷ 8 = 1 remainder 3 — Li hexagram.

14 ÷ 8 = 1 remainder 6 — Gen hexagram.

12 ÷ 8 = 1 remainder 4 — Kan hexagram.

9 ÷ 8 = 1 remainder 1 — Qian hexagram.

11 ÷ 8 = 1 remainder 3 — Li hexagram.

14 ÷ 8 = 1 remainder 6 — Gen hexagram.

After the five cycles of change: Qian, Dui, Gen, Li, Li, Gen, Kun, Kan.

Zhuge Qing stopped writing.

He stared at the results of the fifth round, frowning.

Of these eight hexagrams, the Li hexagram appears twice, and the Gen hexagram also appears twice.

What does the recurrence of hexagrams signify?

Li represents fire, and Gen represents mountain.

volcano?

wrong.

Fire on a mountain is the hexagram of Travel.

Fire on a mountain corresponds to the hexagram "Ben".

Two Li trigrams and two Gen trigrams – Fire, Fire, Mountain.

Zhuge Qing's eyes suddenly lit up.

Fire, fire, fire, mountain – two fires stacked together form "flame," and two mountains stacked together form "emergence."

Inflammation?

Yan Chu Qishan?

He rearranged the eight trigrams, putting the two Li trigrams together and the two Gen trigrams together.

Li Li Gen Gen Qian Dui Kun Kan.

Li Li represents fire, and Gen Gen represents emergence.

Flame emerges from Qian, Dui, Kun, and Kan.

Qian represents Heaven, Dui represents Lake, Kun represents Earth, and Kan represents Water.

Flames erupt from the heavens and the earth.

Heaven and Earth – what is this?

Zhuge Qing opened the "Commentary on the Waterways Classic" on the table and found the section on the Qishan Road.

The Qishan Road begins in Tianshui, passes through Yanguan, Mumen, and Pingquan, and ends at Qishan Fort.

The sky is over Qishan Mountain—Qishan Fort is located on the mountain, at its highest point.

Zewei Mumendao – Mumendao is a low-lying area with abundant water.

The place is called Yanguan Town—Yanguan is located on flat land and produces salt.

Pingquan is a spring with many springs.

The Flaming Mountains Emerge from Qishan—Starting from Qishan, passing through Mumen Road, Yangguan Town, Pingquan…

He connected the four place names and drew a line on the map.

The end of the line —

Zhuge Qing's finger stopped on the map.

Old fortifications.

The old fortress in the middle section of Qishan Road.

"On the road to Qishan, beside the old fortress."

right here!

Zhuge Qing folded the paper, stuffed it into his pocket, and took out a backpack from the wardrobe. He then stuffed in a few clothes, a water bottle, a copy of "Commentary on the Waterways Classic", an atlas, and an old edition of "Records of the Three Kingdoms".

He zipped up his backpack and slung it over his shoulder.

I opened the door to find the hallway pitch black, and the lights were off in my parents' room next door.

He tiptoed down the corridor, down the stairs, and across the courtyard.

As I passed the council chamber, a dim light shone through the crack in the door, and I could hear people talking inside.

An elder's voice rang out, aged yet resolute: "The ancestral notes cannot be wrong! I've studied the handwriting, the word choice, the writing style for fifty years; I could recognize them with my eyes closed!"

Another voice chimed in, sounding younger: "But what Ah Qing said makes sense. How could someone like our ancestor possess a stranger and claim to be Zhuge Liang?"

"What does he know!" the first elder's voice rose. "How old is he! A mere brat who's only had a few days of schooling, and he dares to question our ancestors?"

There was a moment of silence in the hall, then someone coughed.

Zhuge Qing did not stop walking. He continued forward, crossing the stone-paved road in the village, passing the old ginkgo tree, and reaching the entrance of the village.

I glanced back.

The old houses in Zhuge Village are laid out under the moonlight, with blue bricks and gray tiles, flying eaves and upturned corners, no different from the descriptions from one hundred, two hundred, and five hundred years ago.

But something else is different.

He couldn't quite put his finger on what was different, but he felt that the shadows under the eaves were deeper than before, and the light coming through the windows was dimmer than before.

Or perhaps, it's just that he himself is different now.

Zhuge Qing turned around and continued walking forward, disappearing into the night outside the village.

The moonlight shone on his back, casting a shadow that grew fainter and fainter until it finally blended into the shadows of the roadside trees.

Good books and good stories accompany you every day.