OBS Chapter 275: The End of the Mountain Journey
Chapter 275: The End of the Mountain Journey
Chapter 275: The End of the Mountain Journey
Songxi County is named after the Songxi River that runs through the county. According to the Records of Jian'an, "the mountains and rivers of Fujian are famous throughout the world, and the Songxi River in Jian County is the best in central Fujian." The scenery along the way is naturally amazing.
Jiang Wen and his party went upstream and saw tall pines on both sides of the river. The pine trees shaded the long green stream for hundreds of miles. And every time they reached a hilltop, they seemed to see temples, palaces, nunneries and monasteries built in beautiful places, scattered among the pine trees and mountains, with their eaves and corners rising abruptly and shining brightly.
"Master Jiang, this place is in the wilderness. Where are you going to stay overnight?"
Yuan Ziyi stuck her head out of the carriage. She watched Jiang Wen driving the carriage into a deserted path. There were fewer and fewer pedestrians on the road. It didn't look like a path leading to the county town at all. There was clearly a fairly neat "Zhanlu Academy" just now, but Jiang Wen ignored it.
Jiang Wen was driving the carriage, concentrating on identifying the direction, and said perfunctorily, "This is a shortcut to Zhanlu Mountain. We are short on time this time, so we can only stay on the mountain."
The so-called trip now turned into running from one hill to another. In the eyes of Yuan Ziyi, who was looking forward to the trip, this was really a waste of time. Moreover, she was drowsy in the car and boat all the way, and did not seem to be of any use at all, which made her complain in her heart.
"Master Jiang must have his own intentions, so don't disturb him."
Yan Yongchun weakly defended Jiang Wen, but only received a roll of the eyes from Yuan Ziyi, while Luo Shuang'er looked around curiously. After all, for her who had experienced the primitive rain forest on the shady side of Jiuzu Mountain, this level of barren mountains was no problem at all.
Not long after, the carriage finally arrived at its destination, which was an ancient temple with a fish-scale roof and flying eaves on all four corners. On the wall on the east side of the temple gate was an inscription of the first year of the Chongzhen reign of the Ming Dynasty.
If you only look at the mountain gate, this place looks like a deep mountain jungle. It is an excellent choice whether for lodging or worshiping Buddha. However, the walls and tiles that have stood the test of wind and frost are deeply covered with traces of smoke and fire, and all the wooden components have turned to ashes, obviously destroyed in some war disaster long ago.
"This Zhanlu Temple is our base for this trip. Everyone, just take a rest here and don't run too far. When it gets dark, there might be tigers out there. It would be troublesome if they were to be carried away by mistake."
Jiang Wen said to the dumbfounded Yuan Ziyi, "What's wrong, Miss Ziyi? We are all people of the martial arts world. We should be used to living in the open air, right? Or do you have some grudge against living in a temple?"
Yuan Ziyi decisively turned her head back at him and decided to sleep in the carriage tonight. Her reaction had no effect on Jiang Wen's mood at all.
Jiang Wen's purpose of this trip was to trace the sword. The first things that came to his mind were the clues he had in his hand. As a well-trained swordsman, Jiang Wen was no longer bound by formalities like a novice, but had his own way of approaching the truth.
Many years ago, Jiang Wen and Lin Zhennan were escorting a caravan on a business trip. They were passing through Yanpingjin at night and witnessed, together with the fishermen and merchant ships on the river, a miraculous sight of dragons and snakes several feet long entwined in the water, with the bright sun shining on the river.
According to local people, this scene can be seen frequently. It is the shadow of a dragon formed when an ancient sword from the Jin Dynasty fell into the water. It has appeared miraculously for more than a thousand years. People can see it in vast open areas where there are no people, but nothing is found when people go into the water to search. This is the wonderful scene of "Two Swords Turning into Dragons" in the local area.
[…When Hua was executed, the sword was lost. After Huan died, his son Hua became a provincial official. He was holding the sword and passing through Yanpingjin. Suddenly, the sword jumped out from his waist and fell into the water. Someone dived into the water to retrieve it, but the sword was nowhere to be found.]
This story is based on the "Book of Jin·Biography of Zhang Hua", which obviously refers to the story of Lei Huan, a native of Yuzhang, who saw sword energy rising from the sky and then found a pair of male and female swords. The male sword was given to Zhang Hua, the prime minister of the Western Jin Dynasty, and the female sword remained with Lei Huan.
But the records after that became inexplicably vague.
According to historical records, the female sword was finally passed into the hands of Lei Huan's son Lei Hua, and was left in the peaceful Yanpingjin, and has since disappeared from the long river of history.
But now, after experiencing what happened at Manting Peak, Jiang Wen has learned more of the original secrets from the Mirage Snail. In the past, the Western Jin Dynasty's Prime Minister Zhang Hua not only sent Lei Huan to Jiangxi to find the sword, but also asked him to find an unknown knight, intending to destroy the things in Wang Mang's head that should not exist in the world. After that, the white rainbow piercing the sun was heroic and inspiring, and it is still inspiring thousands of years later.
But this is where the problem lies.
The ancient sword that the nameless knight held at the end was the Chixiao white jade sword that Emperor Gaozu of Han used to kill the snake. It is now in Jiang Wen's hands.
The original origin of the White Jade Sword should be that it was kept in the royal armory of the Western Jin Dynasty as precious as Wang Mang's head. For this reason, Sikong Zhang Hua had to direct and act out a drama of "oil accumulated to ten thousand stones will naturally produce fire".
In order to conceal the details, Zhang Hua deliberately mentioned in "Bowuzhi" that there was a fire in the armory during the Taishi period of Emperor Wu of Jin Dynasty. The cause was also too much stored oil that spontaneously ignited. In the end, even who Zhang Hua was guarding against was a matter of debate.
However, even though this sword is as sharp as ever after thousands of years, it is not necessarily irreplaceable. At least the Zhanlu sword in Jiang Wen's hand and the Juque sword in Chen Jinnan's hand are comparable to it.
For this reason, Jiang Wen has always been puzzled. Lei Huan had already found the extremely sharp male and female swords, so why did Zhang Hua go to so much trouble to steal Emperor Gaozu's sword?
What happened to the sword that made Zhang Hua keep wearing it until the fall of the Western Jin Dynasty? Coincidentally, Lei Huan, as the prefect of Fengcheng, dug up the foundation of the prison and found the sword around 291 AD. It was not until the first year of Yongkang that Sima Lun, the Prince of Zhao, launched a coup and Zhang Hua was killed in 300 AD. The time span is not small.
By comparison, it was not only Zhang Hua who kept the male sword secret from others, but even Lei Huan kept the female sword with him tightly, and only passed it on to his eldest son when he died of old age.
Jiang Wen felt it was still ambiguous whether such behavior should be called stinginess or obsession. The term "miser" has long existed in this world, so should these two people be called "sword-guarding slaves"?
The last record in the Book of Jin is even more suspicious. It is clearly a rare sword, but when Fang Xuanling and others were writing the book, they found out that the female sword was lost in the water shortly after Lei Huan's death and disappeared, and even turned into a dragon and snake and swam away? What kind of magic is this in the Book of Jin?
What is even more strange is that the names engraved on the stone box where the swords were originally hidden were clearly the "Longquan" and "Tai'a" swords. However, when Zhang Hua wiped the swords with dirt and looked at the inscriptions on the swords carefully, it was said that one sword was "Gan Jiang" and the other was "Mo Ye". It is obvious that even the names of these two swords were intentionally kept vague and not wanted to be clearly revealed to others.
If these things were in the past, Jiang Wen would probably laugh at himself for being suspicious. Perhaps Zhang Hua and Lei Huan were not what he thought at all - maybe they were obsessed with swords and wandered around with swords on their backs every day; or maybe they were forgetful and had thrown these two swords into a corner long ago.
But after what he saw and heard last night, Jiang Wen used the Mani Pearl to find the real remaining traces of "Double Swords Transforming into Dragons"!
The Mani Pearl has a natural reaction to mysterious things. What outsiders see may be just a glimpse of the leopard through the tube, with many shadows, but the Mani Pearl can illuminate the scene clearly and make every detail visible.
What is "Double Swords Transforming into Dragons"?
This is clearly "furious"!
After Jiang Wen saw the sword energy left over from the ancient sword soar into the sky like a geyser, he finally understood what Zhang Hua meant by "there is often purple air between the Douniu"; it was not the colorful galaxy between the stars in the sky, but another kind of "starry light".
And when Zhang Hua and Lei Huan "climbed the tower to look up and explore the astronomy together", what they saw was "the essence of the sword reaching up to the sky". It was clearly the unspeakable tacit understanding between the two Wei and Jin Dynasty scholars after they witnessed the strange phenomenon in the sky, and they began to do things that outsiders could neither guess nor see through!
More importantly, with Yuan Huazi's reminder, Jiang Wen suddenly realized that someone else was eyeing these things. Things like the Longqiu Immortal Seal on Mogan Mountain, the Junchi Relics on Dongye Mountain, the Ancient Box on the Prison Base of Fengcheng, Yuzhang, and the Longchi on the Sword Pavilion on Yefu Mountain were all places where ancient swords were once cast or kept!
Thinking further, Lei Hua, the son of Lei Huan, must not have encountered any accident, but deliberately dropped his sword into Yanpingjin and set up a confusing array, just to tell those who have coveted the sword for a long time that the sword has turned into a dragon and flown away, so don't try to get your hands on it again.
As for why this scene was chosen to take place in Yanpingjin, Jiang Wen boldly guessed that the other party's purpose might be the same as his own, both of which were to create confusion and make a feint!
The Minjiang River is downstream of Yanpingjin. Those ferocious Wei and Jin Dynasty rhinoceros hunters who heard the news and rushed here would definitely dig deep in Yanping or the upper reaches of the Minjiang River and continue to investigate. However, Lei Hua's move was simply to confuse the enemy. It is very likely that he, like himself now, had already returned to the mouth of the Jianou River with a sword and entered the territory of Songxi!
Even though the Wei and Jin Dynasty swordsmen were well-informed, they only knew that the ancient swords originated from the Wu and Yue in the Spring and Autumn Period. They could not have imagined that in the mountains of the Min and Yue region right before their eyes, there would be the real place where Ou Ye forged swords and created magic weapons.
All this is because the history of Wu and Yue has long since disappeared, and during the Wei and Jin Dynasties, Songxi County and Zhanlu Mountain had not yet been named.
The "Yue Jue Shu" of the Eastern Han Dynasty believed that the place where Ou Yezi forged the sword should be in Kuaiji. It was not until the publication of "Shi Yi Ji" of the Eastern Jin Dynasty that it was vaguely recorded that there was a secret sword-forging place in the world called "Kunwu Mountain"!
The legend of Kunwu Mountain in "Shi Yi Ji" has been ambiguous about multiple locations since ancient times. Yuan Huazi's senior brother Yuan Lou Daoren has now visited the most likely ancient sites of Wu and Yue, such as Mogan Mountain, Dongye Mountain, and Yefu Mountain, before he locked his sights on Zhanlu Mountain, which was unknown and almost uninhabited at the time.
But according to Jiang Wenyuan's vision for the future, the land of Minyue was not desolate and remote in the pre-Qin period. It even had a very developed iron smelting industry supported by the rich local iron ore resources. For example, archaeological discoveries have left behind a large number of iron farm tools and iron weapons in the Han City of Wuyi Mountain in the mountains. The March 2001 issue of "Archaeology" also announced that one of China's earliest iron smelting furnaces from the Warring States Period was discovered in the Xindian Smelting City Ruins in Fuzhou!
Jiang Wen felt that he was probably very close to the answer. As expected of Zhang Hua, Zhang Maoxian, who was famous for his knowledge during the Jin Dynasty, he had left behind such a work quietly!
Nowadays, apart from Jiang Wen himself, perhaps no one in the world can see through the true nature of this "Qi-watching" technique. However, hundreds of years ago in the Song and Yuan dynasties, Jiang Wen was very sure that at least the mysterious "Nine Stars of the Value Symbol" must have also understood the method of looking at Qi to find swords, which is why they were so determined to search for the whereabouts of the famous swords in the world.
But what Jiang Wen is most curious about is also here.
Why did Zhang Hua and Lei Huan, who had found the male and female swords, try so hard to hide the trace of the swords' birth? And why did "Zhi Fu Jiu Xing", who had obtained many famous swords through untold hardships, hide these swords in a tomb deep in the mountains?
A gust of wind blew through the forest. Jiang Wen looked at the ancient Zhanlu sword in his hand, which was as deep as water. He felt that apart from the ancient and mysterious patterns on the sword, he did not see the legendary divine sword with brilliance that pierced the sky and shone like the sun and the moon. This made him shift his curiosity to the casting place and the caster.
At this moment, the secret memories that had never been recorded in history had turned into a long river flowing around Jiang Wen, as if he could grasp the truth behind the fog with just a stretch of his hand.
If the clue to Xi Yi is not in the ancient sword itself, then the sword spirit that can still "fight with great force" at the bottom of Yanpingjin after more than a thousand years must have some connection with Zhanlu Mountain, Ou Yezi, and the forging night when the stars avoided anger and the ghosts and gods wailed...
(End of this chapter)