From Under One Person: Sincere Journey Through the Heavens

"This is the 'Guide to the Mountains,' which was left to Feng Shiqi by Feng Shigu of the Feng family. My father, the current head of the Feng family, Feng Sibei, was a good friend of mine. He told me about this guide to the mountains, saying it was a guide to entering the mountains, but none of the Feng family members could decipher it."

At this point, Hua Youtan changed the subject, "But I am naturally intelligent, and with just a thought, I have already understood the mystery."

Shi Jian and Qian He exchanged glances, but could only temporarily trust the old Taoist: "Since you know the way, senior, we should follow you."

"Then come with me."

Hua Youtan took the lead, descended the mountain, and followed one of the unbroken bird trails that led straight to the bottom of the valley.

"What are these?"

As he continued downwards, Daoist Qianhe saw murals on the walls, weathered by wind and rain. Though blurred, the content was still barely discernible.

Locusts swarmed, darkening the sun and devouring crops; floods inundated fields...

There are instances of wildfires creating fiery mountains, landslides and earthquakes causing the migration of dragon veins...

But more often, the scenes depict tribal residents fighting with wild animals in the forest, or people hunting unknown animals, or animals preying on humans.

However, the further you go in the story, the more scenes of humans hunting and killing animals appear.

"Do you know that there are two treasure lands within Wushan?" Hua Youtan asked calmly.

"A treasure land?"

Qianhe looked at Shijian, who was also puzzled and asked, "Besides Wuxia Coffin Mountain, where else is a treasure land?"

"What a king! He has a body but no head."

As Hua Youtan walked, she laughed, “How can a person live without a head? Unless a new head grows back. Or perhaps the head that was lost is right next to us.”

Just then, a cold wind blew by, and a deep, drawn-out "whoosh" sound came from the bottom of the gorge, making Bao Mei'er shiver involuntarily. The hairs on her body stood on end, and she couldn't help but say, "Old Taoist priest, don't tell ghost stories to scare people!"

"This is not a ghost story."

Jiang Liu chuckled, “There is a dragon vein in this Wushan, which is divided into two parts. One part is what you call Wuxia Coffin Mountain, which is thousands of feet high. If you look down from the sky, it looks like an open coffin, so it is called Coffin Mountain. It is said that there is a black spring inside, which is extremely smelly and similar to corpse blood. People dare not go near it.”

King Wuyang and Feng Shigu, who fantasized about becoming an Earth Immortal, are both in this Coffin Mountain.

Another structure, shaped like a skull, stands opposite this coffin-shaped mountain. It's as if this mountain was meant to bury a deity, whose body decayed within the natural coffin, transforming into a black spring resembling corpse blood. The deity's head, for some unknown reason, fell outside the coffin, and due to its incredible toughness, fused with the mountain's structure.

Shi Jian and Qian He both disbelieved in the existence of gods, considering it merely a wondrous creation of nature, but—

"But this coffin mountain doesn't look like a place of aura?" Qianhe also understands aura, but although this coffin mountain and head mountain are peculiar, they don't seem to have any aura.

"Do you know how many hanging coffins there are in this Coffin Mountain? No less than 100,000! The ancients were already exploring the principles of feng shui and energy flow! The soil and rocks in this mountain have been dug up and buried again and again, and the energy flow has long since dissipated, no longer what it used to be! In addition, the energy flow of Coffin Mountain in Wuxia seems to be in conflict with the energy flow that is naturally evolving after the connection between heaven and earth has been severed, so much so that heaven and earth themselves are trying to destroy this dragon vein."

The flower, Udumbara, seemed to have a thorough understanding of the aura, which surprised Shi Jian and Qian He, but they chose to believe it.

Just like the murals on one side of this bird path, in addition to the scenes of humans fighting with beasts, there are also scenes of natural disasters such as lightning striking forests and fires, earthquakes shaking canyons, rivers flooding mountains and rivers, and locusts eating trees!

The ancients were simple and honest; they would record what happened on murals.

Therefore.

It seems that Wuxia Coffin Mountain was truly rejected by the entire world after the severing of the connection between heaven and earth, and it often sends calamities that seem capable of destroying the world to this place.

After the emergence of humankind, their initial purpose was not to destroy this coffin mountain, but rather to indirectly help nature destroy it.

Take this Coffin Mountain, now riddled with holes, for example. It might collapse completely and cease to exist after another major earthquake.

"We've reached the bottom of the gorge."

Reaching the end of the bird path, there is no way forward, but this place is not high from the bottom of the gorge, only twenty meters away, and beyond the bottom of the gorge is the surging river.

Hua Youtan, Shi Jian, and Qianhe were not afraid of the height and jumped down, landing on the rocks by the river. Only Bao Mei'er dared not jump down. Even though Daoist Qianhe said he would catch her, she still dared not jump down. Instead, she took off the rope from her body, embedded a grappling hook into the mountain, lowered the rope, and slowly climbed down.

Seeing this, Shi Jian frowned, feeling that she was just a burden. He said to Qian He, "Junior brother, we already have Senior Hua Youtan as our guide, and we are all cultivators with nimble legs. But your newly accepted disciple has not yet attained Qi, which may delay our progress. Why don't you let her go back first?"

Chizuru was also tempted.

Firstly, he had doubts about Shi Jian's true intentions.

Secondly, he suspected that the Udumbara flower had ulterior motives.

If things really come to a head, not only will Bao Mei'er need his protection, but she might also become his weakness...

# Chapter 1108 Wuxia Coffin Mountain (Part 8) Encounter

"Master, please don't send me away!"

Bao Mei'er has sharp ears; even after falling ten meters, she heard Shi Jian's words. Panicked, she let go of his hand, and her body involuntarily fell.

Fortunately, Hua Youtan was quick-witted and reached out a hand to touch her toes, which straightened Bao Mei'er's bent back and made her stand steadily three inches from her palm.

Shi Jian and Qian He's pupils contracted.

It was easy for them to save her; she was just a woman weighing less than 90 pounds. Wouldn't it be easy to support her?

But to support it so steadily—

Even those who cultivate Qi to the point of circulating Qi throughout the body would find it difficult to do so easily. Only those who have opened all the acupoints in their body can use their own Qi to circulate Qi throughout another person's body!

The flower and fruit of the Udumbara tree have reached the heavens!

But when Hua Youtan put Bao Mei'er down, Bao Mei'er was still unaware. The moment her feet touched solid ground, she knelt down before Qianhe, kowtowing repeatedly and crying out, "Master! Master! My foster father doesn't want me anymore! If you want to send me away, where can I go?"

Qianhe snapped out of her daze after being hit by Hua Youtan's hand and quickly helped Bao Mei'er up, saying, "Don't cry! Don't cry! We won't send you away!"

After comforting his female disciple, he said to Shi Jian, who was frowning, "Senior brother, why don't you take her with you? It won't take much time."

Seeing that his junior brother was disobedient, Shi Jian snorted, feeling somewhat annoyed, but he didn't mention the matter again. He said to Hua Youtan, "Senior, I'll trouble you to lead the way to find the tomb of the Black Sheep King, locate the Earth Immortal Village, destroy it, and eliminate any future troubles."

That's a fair point.

Hua Youtan chuckled, nodded, and led the three of them down a path to the bottom of the valley. There they saw countless coffins hanging from the steep walls on both sides.

A rough estimate suggests there are tens of thousands.

However, Shi Jian's gaze was fixed on the other three people directly in front of him.

It was Zhang Zhiwei, Feng Tianyang, and Sun Xuewu.

The three men had some disagreements regarding the interpretation of the first line of the "Guanshan Zhimi Fu" (Guanshan Zhimi Fu): "What a great king, with a body but no head."

The root of the problem lies in those tens of thousands of hanging coffins.

Feng Tianyang and Sun Xuewu could vaguely see that the tens of thousands of hanging coffins formed the figure of a giant sitting upright, but it was headless, and the headless giant was slightly incomplete in several places, and its left hand was completely empty, without any hanging coffins.

This caused the headless giant's huge hand to split into two fingers, as if making an astrological hand gesture, pointing directly at the ancient cliff diagonally opposite.

Therefore, Feng Tianyang and Sun Xuewu believed that the ancient cliff diagonally opposite was the direction leading to Dixian Village.

But Zhang Zhiwei has a different opinion.

It was because he had looked down on this area from high above and saw two shapes: the first resembled a naturally formed coffin, and the second resembled a huge head.

Therefore, he believes that "What a great king, with a body but no head" actually refers to the appearance of the entire Wuxia Coffin Mountain, rather than the headless giant composed of tens of thousands of hanging coffins.

Furthermore—

After carefully considering the entire "Guanshan Zhimi Fu", Zhang Zhiwei discovered that there were problems with its content.

First half: What a great king, with a body but no head; without his wife, the mountains remain closed; he burns firewood to start a pot, and cooks his liver and lungs; he digs a well to cut salt, and asks ghosts for money; the bird paths are crisscrossed, turning nine times in a hundred steps; if you want to visit the earth immortal, first find the black sheep.

Second half: Before the Frightening Platform, the Yin River stretches across the sky; the Immortal Bridge is invisible, hard to find with the naked eye; sacrificing oneself on the cliff, one can ascend to heaven in one step; iron walls and silver screens, the universe is within count; the Black Mountain Cave, a wondrous realm of the divine palace; a hundred coffins in the copper tower, the Tile God arrives at the door; after kowtowing eight hundred times, one is granted immortality.

The first half is mostly metaphorical, while the second half, even though it also contains metaphors, is closer to realism.

They are two completely different styles!

Anyone with a knack for making connections can likely guess that the latter half of the description relates to potential traps or mechanisms encountered on the way to the Immortal Village.

If Feng Shigu left behind such detailed information, how could the descendants of Feng Shiqi's lineage have been unable to enter the Earth Immortal Village for hundreds of years?

Feng Shigu was the Guanshan Taibao, and his behavior was usually based on metaphors. There is no reason for him to describe a lot of almost factual content in the second half.

Therefore, even before encountering the Soul-Scaring Platform or the Shadowless Immortal Bridge, Zhang Zhiwei had already noticed the contradictions in "Guanshan Zhimi Fu" simply by arriving at the bottom of Wuxia Gorge and observing the tens of thousands of coffins hanging there.

Just like now.

Feng Tianyang was one thing, as if it were his first time here, but Zhang Zhiwei didn't believe that Sun Xuewu would be so surprised by the outline of the headless giant formed by the tens of thousands of coffins.

Anyone with a sound mind who comes to the bottom of Coffin Gorge and looks up will be able to see that the left palm is making a gesture similar to astrology.

Are all the Feng family members idiots?

Why not directly tell the descendants the answers to the riddles that their ancestors have already solved, or simply pass down the "Guanshan Zhimi Fu" given by Feng Shigu?

Isn't this just a waste of time?

If you don't want your descendants to suffer from this mission passed down from your ancestors, why not just destroy the content related to "Guanshan Zhimi Fu"?

Therefore, Zhang Zhiwei's current idea is very simple: don't worry about the "Guanshan Zhiming Fu". Although Coffin Mountain is high, it is not all sheer cliffs perpendicular to the ground. Find a path, climb the mountain, and you will naturally "see all the mountains as small" and be able to see everything clearly.

This explanation suddenly made Feng Tianyang see the light.

Yes!

Why bother with "Guanshan Zhimi Fu"?

Why not just climb up to a higher place and take a look?

He, a shaman from Liangshan, didn't understand the concept of "qi formation," but he did know a little about feng shui. No matter how mysterious it was, it ultimately relied on mountains and rivers for its construction.

He also knew the Feng family well; for at least the first five generations, they spent their spare time studying ancient texts and classics, pondering the "Guanshan Zhimi Fu" (Ode to Viewing Mountains and Pointing Out the Mysteries).

Furthermore, all subsequent actions were based on the inscription when entering the mountain; almost none of them considered climbing to the summit of Coffin Mountain to take a look...

On the contrary, other ordinary herb gatherers and beekeepers in Qingxi Village, or those who had climbed to the top of Coffin Mountain, spread the rumor that "Coffin Gorge is not a single gorge, but a combination of multiple gorges."

The Feng family didn't care about this, after all, they had known this for a long time.

Is it enough to just know?

perhaps.

To truly understand the meaning of "Guanshan Zhimi Fu", one must actually go up the mountain!

"Difficult, difficult, difficult, the journey is difficult; do not take poetry as a form of meditation. Going up and down the mountain is just a matter of a single thought; how can one break through the illusion while one is in the mountains?"

Instantly.

Sun Xuewu and Feng Tianyang were startled and looked behind them, where they saw Hua Youtan, Shi Jian, Qianhe, Bao Meier, and others.