Changsheng: Peak at the Beginning

Thunder and lightning roared for a whole day and night. Several surrounding villages discussed organizing people to go into the mountains to investigate the situation early in the morning. However, Zhalong Village, the village where Jiang Xinxin and the other two had briefly stayed before, had other considerations. They privately believed that Jiang Xinxin and the other two had angered the mountain god, so the mountain god sent down a lot of rain during the dry season, which might affect next year's harvest.

Following the lead of Zhalong Village, several villages also took their weapons and entered the mountains.

After breakfast in the morning, Jiang Xiaoguan quickly packed up and urged everyone to act quickly. "Yesterday's wind, rain, thunder and lightning will definitely alarm the surrounding villages. We can't conflict with them. We need to act quickly."

Jiang Xinxin and Jiang Jiuri also understood this truth, and quickly packed up. After leaving the mountain temple and cleaning up the traces, Jiang Xinxin recalled the tomb-suppressing picture carved on the lid of the crystal coffin yesterday and asked, "Do you still remember the tomb-suppressing picture carved on the lid of the coffin yesterday? There is a blank area on the other side of the mountain. I think it should be a place filled with miasma. Why don't we go over there and take a look?"

Jiang Xiaoguan still remembered the Zhenling Map, but he was not optimistic about Jiang Xinxin's proposal: "Nearly two thousand years have passed, and the surrounding terrain must have changed. We can't just copy and paste it. Especially with the wind, rain and thunder and lightning like yesterday, the terrain of the mountains and rivers must have changed again. We can only walk and observe."

That's fine. Jiang Xinxin was just making a casual suggestion anyway. When we turned over the hill, the place with the couple tree that we checked yesterday was in a mess. It even slid down the mountain. Only half of the mountain was left, and the way down the mountain was gone.

Jiang Jiuri pointed to a dark spot on the opposite hillside and said, "That looks like the entrance to the Tomb of King Xian. Besides the water, the Tomb of King Xian doesn't seem to have been affected much. It should be the natural water dragon halo pattern that protected that old guy!"

The three of them quickly went down the mountain and finally arrived at the dense forest they had liked earlier after walking for a whole morning. However, they did not encounter the miasma described in the tomb-guarding map. This showed that yesterday's wind, rain, thunder and lightning not only caused some landslides, but also destroyed the poisonous miasma that King Xian had arranged at the entrance of the tomb.

Not long after entering the dense forest, Jiang Jiuri found some red soil with a medicinal smell. Jiang Xiaoguan concluded that this was the insect-killing path that King Xian had set up around the mausoleum.

The three of them took out a few fruits to eat as they walked, until they followed the red soil into a gap that looked like an entrance. After entering, they saw a different world without taking any further steps. Several stone pillars were built to look like a temple, and the level of sophistication was far beyond what they had seen in the mountain temples before.

After pushing open the heavy stone door, everyone cleared away the various vines and dead branches that covered the hall, and the main hall was fully revealed to everyone. The face of the statue on the altar was majestic and solemn, without any kind and solemn aura. He held a wine gourd in his left hand and a toad in his right hand.

Jiang Xinxin looked at it carefully for a while, and just when Jiang Jiuri was about to take the wine gourd, he suddenly snorted coldly, drew his sword and beheaded the statue. After losing its head, the statue instantly shattered into a pile of mud, and only the wine gourd and the toad remained intact on the altar.

Jiang Jiuri was almost frightened to the point of falling to the ground. He pretended to pat his chest and complained, "Xinxin, what's wrong with you? At least make a noise before you do it. You scared me so much that I almost fell backwards!"

While checking on Jiang Jiuri, Jiang Xiaoguan explained for Jiang Xinxin: "This mountain god temple should be a forged mountain god that King Xian created in order to seize the incense offerings from the surrounding people. The real mountain god is the one suppressed by the high priest on the opposite mountain."

Jiang Jiuri also remembered the tomb-suppressing pattern carved on the lid of the coffin of the high priest who was buried with the couple in the tree. That thing was meant to help King Xian suppress the evil spirits around him!

That old fellow, King Xian, brought disaster to the legitimate mountain god and cut off his inheritance. Then, he turned around and not only suppressed the legitimate mountain god as an evil spirit, but also created a false god to guard the entrance to his tomb!

Jiang Jiuri really looked down on that kid King Xian, so he picked up a dead branch and was about to sweep away the pile of dirt left by the false god. As a result, after the toad landed on the ground, some mechanism was activated, and eight stone statues of toads slowly emerged from the open space behind the altar.

The heads of these toads are different, and their mouths are sometimes open and sometimes closed. Jiang Xiaoguan is best at counting mechanisms, and after observing them for a while, he came up with an idea: "If these toads are the mechanism to enter the tomb of King Xian, then according to the distribution of the Nine Palaces and Eight Diagrams, combined with the corresponding number of Nine Bends and Loops, as long as these stone statues are moved in a specific order, they can be cracked."

Jiang Jiuri added, "There are some cow skulls on the way here, which should represent the totem of the ancient Dian Kingdom. So apart from the Gate of Life and the Gate of Death, the most likely way to crack the mechanism should be the Ox Mansion in the Twenty-Eight Mansions. So, the first one to move should be the toad in the northeast."

Jiang Jiuri rubbed his hands and was about to take action, but Jiang Xiaoguan reminded him, "Maybe we only have three chances, so be careful."

Jiang Jiuri was not wrong in his calculations. As soon as he triggered the toad in the northeast direction, the toads behind it were automatically triggered according to Niu Su's ranking. When they finally settled, a small door opened on the stone wall behind, and behind the door was a narrow tunnel.

The three of them acted without delay. As soon as they stepped into the tunnel, the stone door of the main hall slowly closed, as if no one had ever been in.

As the tunnel went down, a burial ditch soon appeared in front of everyone. Looking at the huge white bones and ivory scattered on both sides of the cave, Jiang Xinxin cursed inwardly and made up her mind not to let the old boy King Xian die easily.

The cave gradually widened, and white water could be seen at the end. When entering the water, Jiang Xinxin reminded everyone to be careful and not to be confused by the illusion. As a result, Jiang Jiuri pointed at a skeleton half lying in the water and said, "Just now I saw an old lady over there calling me over."

After swimming forward for a while, the water in front of him became wider than before. Jiang Jiuri couldn't help but comment: "These two ponds combined really look like a gourd. The small pond is followed by the big pond, and there is a narrow place connecting them in the middle. It's really quite vivid."

It was too empty and quiet here. After getting ashore, they could still hear the echo of Shuisheng's conversation with Jiang Jiuri. In this underground place where they could not see the sun, Jiang Jiuri estimated that they had been walking for a long time, so he asked everyone to stop and take a rest. However, he did not expect that the abnormal creatures here would be happy to see the three of them having so much fun, and they could even prepare three dishes and a soup for them to enjoy.

The three of them first saw one dead body after another floating past the water near them. Jiang Jiuri suppressed his curiosity while holding the bowl of rice, but he didn't expect that behind the dead bodies there was a huge meat worm nearly two meters thick!

Jiang Xinxin was so disgusted by the sudden appearance of the desert death worm-like monster that she instantly lost her appetite. She put down the bowl and picked up the Three Poisons to go straight up to meet it. This thing not only looked like a giant earthworm, but after Jiang Xinxin split it vertically with a sword, it squirmed for a long time and was able to piece itself together and heal quickly.