OBS Chapter 276: Finding Traces of the Beam
Chapter 276: Finding Traces of the Beam
Chapter 276: Finding Traces of the Beam
It was late at night and the dew was heavy in the forest. The roads were winding and rugged, making it inconvenient to travel and search. They could only wait until dawn. However, that night, crows were crying and foxes were howling on Zhanlu Mountain. The whole mountain was filled with strange noises. The cold wind was blowing through the shabby window frames all night long, and it didn't stop. Naturally, no one could get a good night's sleep.
For this reason, Jiang Wen, who was in charge of navigation and site selection, silently bore the blame, was driven out of the carriage alone, and ran to an abandoned temple called "Zhanlu Zen Temple", where he stayed there obediently for the whole night. At dawn the next day, he hurriedly climbed out of the empty and deserted side hall, ready to start the first day of the search.
Jiang Wen walked out of the side hall and felt that Zhanlu Mountain after dawn was completely different from the place where demons danced wildly last night. Looking up, he saw gurgling springs on the mountain, lush trees between the temples, deep ancient roads, and numerous peaks. It was indeed a place with extremely beautiful scenery.
The wooden door of Zhanlu Temple, which was better than nothing, was suddenly pushed out with a clang and hit the brick foundation.
Yuan Ziyi opened the door with a refreshed look. She wanted to see how Jiang Wen was tortured by snakes, insects, rats and ants last night. However, she did not expect that Jiang Wen was walking silently around a corner of the abandoned Zen temple.
The corner of the wall that Jiang Wen was staring at was already overgrown with half-human-high weeds. It might have been a stable in the temple, but now it was exposed to the sun. Only a rectangular stone jar carved out of solid sandstone was left in the corner. The surface had been eroded by wind and rain over the years, and the inside of the jar was covered with moss and dirt. If one hadn't observed it carefully, it would probably have been mistaken for a piece of waste stone.
"Oh, you're up so early."
Yuan Ziyi approached Jiang Wen with ill intentions and joked, "Master Jiang, you are looking at the stone jar like that. Do you think you want to sleep in it tonight?"
Jiang Wen said nonchalantly, "No, only the Evangelion lives here. It is said that he can shoot nails from his hands."
Then he pointed to a layer of traces carved shallowly on the stone jar and said with great confidence, "Look at the three words "Zhanlu Mountain" and the words "The third year of Shenlong in the reign of Emperor Zhongzong of Tang Dynasty". This ancient temple is indeed the oldest building on the mountain and is worth studying."
Yuan Ziyi said disapprovingly: "Just a broken jar and a few ugly characters, is this dilapidated temple worth looking at for so long?"
"You are wrong, Miss Purple."
Jiang Wen said with great confidence, "To understand the origin of this mountain, we must look for clues from these ancient monuments. After all, no matter how detailed the written records are, they can be tampered with. However, these things that were left behind inadvertently at the time can best preserve the original information."
He then gave an example, "Look at the 'Zhanlu Academy' that you saw at the foot of the mountain earlier. Although the layers of buildings and pavilions are magnificent, their origin is just Zhu Xi's poetry room in the Song Dynasty. How can it compare to this dilapidated temple built in the Tang Dynasty!"
As a person of the underworld, how can you look down on a dilapidated temple? Mysterious tokens, sharp weapons, deadly intelligence, peerless martial arts, how many heroes and heroes started their careers from a dilapidated temple——
Jiang Wen instantly became the spokesperson for the ruined temple. If Yuan Ziyi still didn't believe it, he would tell the chronicle of the ruined temple again.
"Oh."
Yuan Ziyi ended the topic with one word.
Jiang Wen touched his chin awkwardly, his ambition still could not be extinguished. He wanted to trace Ou Yezi, but the Spring and Autumn Period and the Warring States Period were too vague. He could only settle for the next best thing and prepare to look for clues left by Lei Hua. If that didn't work, then he might have to do the same as Taoist Yuan Lou and dive into the vast forest to search for the broken Zhiku monument whose whereabouts were unknown.
The so-called "陟岵断碑", 陟 means to climb, 岵 means a high mountain with vegetation. There is also a poem related to it in "The Book of Songs·Wei Feng". However, tracing back to its original meaning, it should be a broken stele hidden in a mountain with dense vegetation, which is no different from looking for a needle in a haystack.
On the other hand, the Zhanlu Zen Temple is located on the top of the thousand-meter-high Zhanlu Mountain and was built as early as the Tang Dynasty. It is the product closest to the Jin Dynasty, so it is reasonable that it could leave more clues.
"...Miss Zi Yi, since you are here, please help me find out if there are any stones similar to the stone jars in the temple. It doesn't matter whether it is for building walls or paving the ground. Just find them and show them to me."
Seeing Jiang Wen was so serious, Yuan Ziyi suppressed her complaints for the time being and helped to search in the ruined Zen temple. Soon, she found a fragment of stone with rounded patterns and clear carvings in the crack of the wall on one side of the main hall.
"Come and see, there are words here!"
Upon hearing the news, Jiang Wen rushed over immediately, pried the broken stele from the crack in the wall, wiped it lightly with his palm, and began to read the words on it carefully.
"Inscription on the Re-□ Monument in the □□ Year of Yuanfu"
"From Shanyin to the south, there are many sword furnaces, tripods, and immortal herb."
"□□There are many supernatural phenomena"
…………
The writing on it is blurred, with many omissions and unimportant parts, but it can still be seen that it was written during the Yuanfu period of the Song Dynasty, when the county magistrate rebuilt it on the old site in memory of county resident Zhou Cai who prayed for rain on the mountain.
"You did a good job, Miss Purple. During the Yuanfu period, that was the reign of Emperor Zhezong of Song. Three hundred years have passed since the temple was first built, so it is normal for it to be dilapidated and abandoned. But look at the handwriting here..."
Jiang Wen carefully examined the words on the broken stele, then scraped out a pile of rubble from the cracks in the wall and pieced together a passage of text.
"Tang Tianyou □□...rebuilt the Jingkong □ Zen Master Chen □jian......chanted □"
"That's strange. The place rebuilt by the Song people doesn't seem to be the same building from the Shenlong period. It's clear that nearly two hundred years have passed from the Shenlong period to the Tianyou period."
Jiang Wen suddenly realized something was wrong. Two more stages kept appearing in the middle. It was hard to say whether these people had discovered the clues left by Lei Hua when they built the temple on the mountain, or even erased these traces?
As if to verify Jiang Wen's guess, the two of them found a side hall on the left side of the inner wall of the Zen temple. The plaque read "Xigu Hall", but some even older stone components were found in a hidden place, with the words "Ouye Temple" engraved on them, which caused Jiang Wen to sigh.
"As expected, the temple built by the Tang people here should be the ancestral temple of Ou Yezi. The locals probably thought that Ou Yezi forged swords and killed too many people, so they used a kind-looking golden Buddha to neutralize the murderous aura of Ou Yezi. In the end, as the world changed, the Buddha took over the temple."
Having said that, Jiang Wen walked outside with a dull look on his face. Yuan Ziyi took two steps forward, as if she wanted to ask a question, but was interrupted by Jiang Wen who spoke first.
"No need to look here anymore, let's go to the mountains to look for clues later..."
The speed at which traces of civilization were disappearing was so fast that Jiang Wen could hardly imagine it. For example, the up-and-coming Zhanlu Academy at the foot of the mountain had trained many scholars and officials in the Song and Ming dynasties, and had even been granted a title by the court in the Yuan Dynasty. As a result, the "literary" side of Zhanlu Mountain had quickly overwhelmed its "military" side. It seemed that except for the two words "Zhanlu", everything on the mountain had been transformed and had nothing to do with Ou Yezi's sword-forging anymore.
But Jiang Wen still didn't give up, because according to King Shura's description, there was at least a sword shop here in the late Song Dynasty, and there was a peerless sword master who lingered there. It is impossible for him to disappear without a trace.
Jiang Wen and Yuan Ziyi walked out of Zhanlu Temple and soon found the mysterious Red Lotus Mother and asked her about their search today.
Mingzun, who was entrusted with the White Lotus Robe, had collected many strange and bizarre things before. He had witnessed the "Dragon Light Shooting the Dou" at Yanpingjin the night before. Naturally, he was also very curious about the things that Jiang Wen was interested in, so he sneaked into the mountains to search early in the morning.
Seeing Jiang Wen coming over angrily, the Red Lotus Mother was the first to ask, "Master Jiang, did you gain anything?"
"It's not much, but fortunately there is still something."
Jiang Wen frowned and said, "It's just as I expected. This was originally the Ou Ye Temple during the Shenlong period of the Tang Dynasty. It was clearly built here on purpose after the Tang people discovered clues that Ou Yezi had forged swords here."
According to Jiang Wen's guess, although people in the Wei and Jin dynasties were not aware of the existence of Ou Yezi's sword-forging place in Songxi County, there must have been people in the Tang Dynasty who knew about it. It is even very likely that people like Fang Xuanling, who compiled the "Book of Jin", were all aware of the Huixi incident, which is why they compiled such a bizarre and vague history book in accordance with the emperor's order.
The Red Lotus Mother nodded in realization and said, "It is indeed so. We entered the mountain this morning and found it to be a treasure land with majestic mountains, lush trees, flowing springs, and clouds all year round."
Then she took out something from her sleeve and laid her palm out in front of Jiang Wen.
"Look, we found some stone houses and caves close to the rocks on the east, south and west slopes of Zhanlu Mountain. There is also a circle of rammed earth outside, which looks like the remains of an ancient sword-making furnace. There are even charcoal dust and charred stones under the ground. We retrieved these charcoal remains."
Jiang Wen picked up the black and red dirt on her palm and crushed it gently with his fingertips. He found that it did look like charcoal dust.
Most of the charcoal used by the ancients was specially fired from wood and was in the form of strips or blocks. Swordmaking and smelting were naturally inseparable from these things. They would often use local materials to build circular straight-walled kiln chambers nearby as kiln chambers for firing charcoal, so it was normal to find some.
"...No. This ash is darker, and the wood grain is clear. It is obviously burned from wood or bamboo. If this is really the place where Ou Yezi forged swords for the King of Yue, this kind of charcoal is obviously not qualified..."
Bamboo is abundant in the south, and iron smelters often "burn giant bamboos" to make charcoal from them, which is used instead of charcoal and coal to fill smelting furnaces. The "Taiping Yulan" by Li Fang, a famous prime minister of the Northern Song Dynasty, and "Laoxuean Notes" by Lu You both record that people used bamboo charcoal to "make good iron."
The problem is, charcoal like this has the wrong color and texture.
It's not that Jiang Wen doesn't believe in the existence of pre-Qin black technology, but before the Qin and Han dynasties, only white charcoal was the only fuel that could melt steel. White charcoal is named after the white ash generated by oxidation on the outside, which is attached to charcoal. The texture is also harder, and it is impossible to be this black and loose.
"I am also a little suspicious. After all, if that is where Ou Yezi forged the sword, it is strange that there is still charcoal in the furnace, and it is too bizarre to have only this little charcoal trace."
But at this point, the Red Lotus Mother suddenly looked at Yuan Ziyi warily, as if she was considering whether she could say these words to her. Only when she saw Jiang Wen nod slightly did she speak in a low voice.
"Strangely enough, before we opened the charcoal kiln, we found some broken jade beads with holes and some melted copper pendants on the ground."
"When we opened the kiln, we found countless traces of fingernails scratching on the smoke-blackened kiln wall. It seemed that someone was trapped inside and burned to death by the charcoal fire..."
"Jade beads with holes and copper pendants? These seem to be the remains of Buddhist beads and cassocks..."
Jiang Wen suddenly realized some key words and said in a cold voice.
"Does the Holy Mother suspect that the monks in the Zhanlu Temple did not escape, but were tortured to death?"
The Red Lotus Mother nodded with great fear.
"That's right. I think the monk's body has been dragged away and no trace can be found. But I don't know if these cruel villains are still hiding in the dense forest, ready to attack people, so we turned around and searched for the whereabouts of the bandits..."
The Red Lotus Mother continued to speak, but her expression revealed a hint of panic and fear.
"We checked the bandits' tracks and finally found many corpses covered with pus, blood and scars in a secret camp in the rock nest. Many valuables in the cave were also related to the temple. It was obvious that they were the bandits."
"The smell in this cave is foul and unpleasant, and these corpses are already rotten, but for some reason, they are not lying on the ground in a mess. Instead, they are sitting upright beside the wooden chairs and rattan tables, talking and laughing, as if they are still unaware of their death and have been living in the cave for a long time..."
(End of this chapter)