Chapter 43 Lingshan
At the top of the giant tree was a giant golden bird, which seemed to be confronting the giant snake.
The magnificent mural was tens of meters high and hundreds of meters wide. In the middle of the mountain, two huge characters "Lingshan" were carved in Qin Xiaozhuan. It took more than 20 minutes to watch such a large mural. After watching it, everyone was thinking deeply.
After dozens of seconds, Ling Xiaozi looked up and sighed: "I haven't heard of it."
"I do have some impression." Jiang Xian frowned and said, "Have you heard of... the elixir of immortality?"
"The elixir of immortality?" Hong Si Niang's eyes suddenly lit up: "Are you talking about the elixir of immortality for the Qin Emperor?"
Jiang Xian seemed to have sorted out his thoughts. He raised his head and said solemnly, "No... In fact, there are five kinds of elixir in ancient books. The peaches of the Queen Mother, the ginseng fruit of the Five-Zhuang Temple of the earthly immortal Zhen Yuanzi, the elixir of the Queen Mother of the West, the thousand-year-old divine fruit Qiongsang, and..."
He looked at the mural: "The elixir of immortality in the painting - how is it."
"It is recorded in the Shenyi Jing that there is a tree in the southern wilderness named 'He Ru'. It blooms once every three hundred years and bears fruit once every three hundred years. The flower is red and the fruit is yellow. The tree is ten feet tall, and even a leaf is more than ten feet long and two feet wide. The fruit of He Ru has a core and looks like a jujube. If you cut it with a golden knife, it will become sour, and if you cut it with a reed knife, it will become spicy. If you eat it, you will become an earthly immortal, not afraid of water, fire, or swords."
"But...what does this have to do with Lingshan? This tree should be a certain kind of tree. There are no giant snakes or yellow birds on it..."
As he was speaking, he suddenly froze and rushed towards the next mural.
Everyone followed. Under the illumination of the flashlight, the next mural soon became apparent.
It was still a worship pattern, about the same size as the previous one, but in this pattern, there were ten people worshipping at the bottom.
The ten people looked different. Some wore masks, some had human faces and snake bodies, some had wings on their backs, and some stood without heads... There were all kinds of strange and bizarre looks.
They knelt on the ground devoutly, with their hands raised above their heads. Each of them held a clay pot. Above them was the vast mountain.
There were endless mountains, and one of them was particularly tall. The image of ten people worshipping the mountains only took up half of the pattern. The remaining half was that one exceptionally tall mountain! It stretched all the way from the mountains to the top of the pattern!
Around it, there were clouds and lightning, and some people could be seen vaguely flying in the sky. Thick plant roots hung down from the clouds. It was as if... this was underground.
"That's right...that's right..." Jiang Xian's eyes were burning as he gently stroked the wall. Suddenly he turned around and said, "Quick! Everyone, help me take a look! In groups of two!"
Hong Si Niang blinked her eyes and said, "Look...what's in the relief?"
"Yes!" Jiang Xian's chest rose and fell slightly, and he said firmly: "Find these few pictures: Chang'e flying to the moon, Houyi shooting the sun, and the Tenth Day coming to the world! Also, see if there is a relief of Emperor Jun!"
Hong Si Niang and the Eight-armed Arhat left immediately, while Jiang Xian and Ling Xiaozi quickly ran past the relief and rushed to the next one.
The room was one thousand meters long, five hundred meters on each side from the entrance. One relief mural was two hundred and fifty meters long. After walking through two of them, they had walked from the "length" to the "width" of the hall, and the "width" also had reliefs, but only a hundred meters in size.
In this picture, there are mountains like waves at the bottom . Among the mountains, there is a peak that goes straight to the top. The peak is so huge that it almost occupies the entire picture. Moreover, there is a gorgeous palace complex carved on the peak.
"Is this... what it means to say it's an immortal?" Ling Xiaozi asked doubtfully, "It means that there is an immortal living on a certain mountain?"
Jiang Xian did not answer him. The flashlight shone into the palace complex. The two suddenly discovered that there was a person there.
He is at the center of the whole picture. There is no doubt that the whole relief is built around him. He is the core soul of this picture.
He was a man wearing ancient costume, but...his costume was not men's clothing.
"Women's clothing?" Ling Xiaozi narrowed his eyes, then simply took out a telescope and looked up. At one glance, his pupils shrank severely.
That's not human.
It was a monster with a leopard head, loose hair and a human body.
In his dense hair, there were decorations, but they didn't look like decorations. Instead, they looked more like torture instruments such as sticks, knives, and shackles.
"Is this...is this the Queen Mother of the West?" he cried out in a low voice.
It looks like a human, with a leopard tail, tiger teeth, and is good at howling, with disheveled hair and a Daixiong... Daixiong mostly refers to a torture instrument.
Taoists are very familiar with the Queen Mother of the West... But he couldn't figure out why the Queen Mother of the West appeared in Qin Shihuang's buildings. But the next second, a word pierced his mind like a bolt from the blue, shaking his whole body.
Elixir of immortality!
The Queen Mother of the West's elixir of immortality... the Qin Emperor's elixir of immortality... the two words were instantly connected together. He was about to continue reading when Jiang Xian pulled him away.
Time passed by minute by minute. After an hour, everyone gathered in front of the clock again. Hong Si Niang nodded to Jiang Xian and said, "You guessed it right. Emperor Jun, Hou Yi shooting the sun, and Chang'e flying to the moon. These pictures are all there. I'm curious, how did you guess it?"
Jiang Xian took a deep breath and said directly without keeping anyone in suspense : "The one connected together is the immortality elixir!"
"As I said, there were five immortality pills recorded in ancient times, and the How Fruit was one of them. However, the How Tree should grow on Lingshan Mountain." He raised his chin in the direction of the map, his eyes burning: "But I'm afraid you don't know that Lingshan Mountain... is not a virtual place."
"It actually existed in a certain place in history. It was Wushan Mountain!"
The eight-armed arhat was stunned and asked, "Wushan? Yujiang City? Three Gorges?"
"That's it!" Jiang Xian turned around and took out a Qin Dynasty map from his backpack. He had prepared this map long ago after knowing the situation below. He directly pointed to the location of the Three Gorges: "Nanjun. This is where Wushan is located."
"The "Classic of Mountains and Seas. Great Wilderness Southern Classic" records that there are yellow birds on Wushan Mountain. This is the royal garden where the Emperor of Heaven collects herbs and refines medicine. The yellow bird is in Wushan Mountain to control the black snakes here to prevent them from stealing the immortal elixir."
Everyone nodded in understanding. The giant snake, the yellow bird... everything was explained clearly.
"But how could the Queen Mother of the West appear?" Ling Xiaozi asked in confusion, "The Queen Mother of the West is not in Wushan. She is in Kunlun Mountain. It is 180,000 miles away from Wushan."
"No hurry." Jiang Xian shook his head and smiled, "In mythology, during the reign of Emperor Yao, Yali, the son of the Zhongshan God, was conspired to be killed by his own subordinates. In order to appease the Zhongshan God and revive Yali, Emperor Yao ordered the Ten Witches of Lingshan to use the elixir of immortality to revive him. Therefore, Lingshan... no, the Ten Witches of Wushan, at least in mythology, definitely have the elixir of immortality."
He smiled, licked his lips, and repeated: "Ten witches."
Ling Xiaozi Kazilan blinked her big eyes a few times, stood up suddenly and looked at the second picture.
The picture of ten monsters holding up clay pots and offering sacrifices to the mountains.
"That is……"
"Those are the Ten Witches of Lingshan." Jiang Xian said with certainty: "And the place where they worship is Kunlun Mountain!"
Ling Xiaozi slapped his forehead suddenly: "I remember it!"
He shook his head fiercely and said solemnly, "Legend has it that the Ten Shamans of Lingshan would pay tribute to the Queen Mother of the West on a regular basis. So... Chang'e's immortal elixir is actually the 'How' fruit obtained from the Ten Shamans of Lingshan! It is also the immortal elixir that is said to revive Yali!"
The eight-armed arhat nodded in sudden enlightenment: "So, there was Hou Yi shooting down the sun and Chang'e flying to the moon...but what does this have to do with Qin Shi Huang?"
Jiang Xian raised his head and looked at everyone. After a long while, he said in a deep voice: "All along the way, I initially thought that this was the Qin Emperor's Mausoleum, and I confirmed it step by step, but when I got here, I overturned it and the option of a warehouse appeared. But...what if this is the hidden place of the immortal medicine?"
This sentence was like a thunderbolt across the sky. The corners of Hong Si Niang's eyes twitched fiercely. She looked at Jiang Xian as if she had seen a ghost: "Immortality medicine? Are you sure you are not kidding?"
"Maybe... it's not entirely a joke." The person who spoke was not Jiang Xian, but Ling Xiaozi. He stared at the surroundings, as if he wanted to penetrate the murals and see what was behind them inch by inch: "First of all, you have to know the ancient view: the most important things in the world are war and sacrifice. This is the Zhou ritual. The Qin Dynasty, as the first unified dynasty after the Zhou Dynasty, also inherited the Zhou ritual. In a place like this that has been elevated to the level of major events in the world, irrelevant things will never appear."
Everyone looked towards the altar of the white jade bell. Ling Xiaozi continued, "The altar is the core of the world. Everything around it must serve the purpose of worship. Either telling its history or praising its owner. Everyone..."
He said firmly: "The elixir of immortality will never appear without any connection, including the black death butterfly on the clock face. It's just that we don't understand their connection yet."
Everyone fell into deep thought. After a few minutes, Jiang Xian said quietly, "Maybe we can think a little more broadly."
"The cause of Qin Shi Huang's death is unknown in history. The cause of death is 'sudden death'. Could it be because of... the curse of the black death butterfly? So he needs the immortality medicine to cure him?"
Before he finished speaking, Ling Xiaozi rolled his eyes elegantly: "Mr. Jiang, can you be a little more reasonable? Throughout the history books, there has never been a record of the Black Death Butterfly, and only your lineage has won this jackpot. Qin Shihuang is going to be entangled by this curse, isn't he your ancestor?"
Jiang Xian insisted brazenly: "It's not impossible... Didn't Ying Zheng also have the surname Zhao... There is also some scientific evidence that Lan Shanhai had the surname Ying..."
"Oh? Are you trying to flatter yourself? Does it feel sour to touch a 2,000-year-old porcelain?" "How can something that scholars do be called touching porcelain? Please watch your words."
"Everyone." Hong Si Niang looked at the two coldly, lit a cigarette with her orchid finger, exhaled a puff of smoke and said: "I have to remind you that the three words "immortality medicine" focus on Xu Fu. This record the origin of the immortality medicine, which shows that Qin Shihuang knew about the immortality medicine of the Queen Mother of the West on Kunlun Mountain, but why... did he finally let Xu Fu go out to sea to find immortals?"
One east and the other west, in completely opposite directions.
