Chapter 7 Chapter 7 Danqing Portrait Kylin Terrace

The villagers who participated in the search returned from all corners of Neizhuang one after another noisily, but no one found Monk Peter, as if he had disappeared out of thin air.An atmosphere of uneasiness flows among the people, who are still immersed in this sudden shock. The only one who remained calm was Wei Dingguo. He stood firmly at the entrance of the small bridge, with his arms crossed, and his two sharp eyes swept across the inner village of Wei Village without saying a word.Although he does not have a pen spirit, he is implicitly regarded as the highest authority by default.An elder walked quickly to his side with a serious expression on his face.

"How is the patriarch?" Wei Dingguo asked, but his eyes did not move at all. The elder shook his head: "My heart is broken, I can't do it anymore." When he said this, he looked around vigilantly, and leaned over to Wei Dingguo's ear and whispered: "And... the patriarch's Qiufeng brush is also missing." "Oh? Was it taken by Peter?" "...Uh..." The elder hesitated, "It's not so much that he was taken away just now, it's better to say that he hasn't been there all this time." Wei Dingguo frowned slightly: "What do you mean?"

"Whenever the pen tomb official dies, the pen spirit will leave a pen mark on the body. The pen mark on the patriarch's body is too shallow and old, at least there has been no pen spirit for several years." "Absurd, how can people live without the spirit of the pen?" The elder didn't answer, it was the fact, but it couldn't be explained.Wei Dingguo waved his hand and sighed: "Let's discuss this matter later, let's send someone to the county hospital to go through various procedures." "Do you want...to report to the Public Security Bureau?" the elder asked tentatively.

Wei Dingguo pondered for a while, "Not for now, you go and call that nurse to my room, I will ask in detail later." At this time, several house chiefs and elders who were in charge of directing the search gradually gathered together. They looked at each other. One of the elders took a step forward and said to Wei Dingguo: "The whole village has been searched, and there is only one place left. Searched." Everyone stared at Wei Dingguo, everyone knew where that place referred to, and they all understood the meaning of this place.Now that the patriarch is dead, they are all waiting for Wei Dingguo to make up his mind.

Wei Dingguo suddenly felt very funny when facing these old people—some of them were even pen officials.The Wei family has respected the spirit of the pen for generations, but in the end they let an ordinary person make up their minds.Once the patriarch was not around, it became like this. It seems that the Wei family's peaceful life has been too long. Thoughts whizzed through his mind, and his index finger moved involuntarily, but this subtle movement did not attract anyone's attention.In the end, Wei Dingguo finally lifted his jaw slightly, but he never clicked down... ※※※ … Monk Peter jumped down from the cave, and it lasted four seconds until his feet hit the ground.Monk Peter was surprised that nothing happened after jumping from such a high place.There is still no light around, but compared with the upper floor, the air is much fresher, and there is even a faint sound of wind coming from a distance.Monk Peter is very happy, because there must be an exit if there is wind.

He had gradually gotten used to the darkness, so he simply closed his eyes, stretched out his arms and stretched forward, grabbed a few times but found nothing.He took another three or four steps cautiously forward, but he still didn't touch the wall.He walked a dozen steps in several directions, his hands were empty, and he couldn't help feeling a little panicked. What humans are most afraid of is not claustrophobia, but the unknown. A twisty, narrow grotto isn't really scary, because that at least gives one a clear direction—even if it's the wrong one—while a vast, dark space can be disorienting and unreliable.What human beings need in the claustrophobic and wide space is to be able to touch a real existence, just like what they need most in the snow field is a non-white visual focus.

Monk Peter thought to himself that this is in the mountains after all, how big can it be?Heartbroken, he covered his head with his arms, and ran wildly under his feet.After running for an unknown amount of time, Monk Peter stopped panting, and tiny sweat began to appear on his forehead.He estimated that he had run more than ten kilometers, but the surrounding area was still empty. "Is this another test?" Monk Peter tried desperately to calm himself down.From a physical point of view, such a large space does not exist, in other words, this must be a wonderful dilemma.What he needs now is not to run wildly, but to find out the key.

Now the surrounding area is empty, and the only solid thing is the ground under your feet.Monk Peter bent down and touched it with his hands. The rock surface was flat, cold and hard to the touch, and even felt a little wet.He tapped it with his knuckles, and there was a dull sound, which indicated that the bottom was solid. Monk Peter simply lay his body on the floor, pulled out a piece of thread from the sleeve of the monk's robe, and stretched it flat to the ground. Humans usually walk in a straight line with the help of sensory or external reference adjustments. When these are shielded, the imbalance of the muscles of the legs will lead to different stride lengths, so that one foot walks in the inner circle and the other foot walks in the outer circle. Eventually a circle is formed.Monk Peter realized that he was probably turning in circles just now, so he wanted to use the end of the thread to correct his steps. As long as the two ends of the cotton thread are stretched straight, it will be an absolute straight line, and then pull another cotton thread to match the previous one. End to end, all the way forward.Although this is slow, it can ensure that you will not go astray.

It went on like this for a long time, and Monk Peter's waist was sore and his back hurt, and a sleeve of his robe had been emptied halfway, but he still didn't touch any rock wall.He couldn't help wondering whether he had really fallen into the space of another dimension often mentioned in science fiction. Suddenly, there was a sound of footsteps from nowhere.The sound of footsteps was very slight, but Monk Peter had been in the dark for a long time, and his hearing became quite sharp. He immediately got up and "looked" vigilantly in the direction of the sound. A ray of light flashed in an instant, Monk Peter quickly narrowed his eyes, and subconsciously raised his arms to block it.A cylindrical yellow beam of light slowly moved towards this side, shaking up and down from time to time.

It's the light of a flashlight. "The one who should come is still here." Monk Peter thought to himself, these elders were more familiar with the situation in the Bibi Pavilion than himself, so it would not be difficult to find him.Although the Cangbi Pavilion should not be easily set foot in, but now the situation is special, I am afraid that several elders have ordered to come in to arrest him.Timing, location, and harmony, he doesn't occupy any of these three things at this time. With the help of the light refracted by the flashlight, Monk Peter found himself in a huge round inkstone-shaped rock.The rock surface is quite wide, almost as big as a playground with a 400-meter runway.What is rare is that the rock platform is protruding on all sides, and it has the shape of a pond and an inkstone hall. There is even a tiger-shaped inkstone end, which is exactly the shape of an inkstone, without any traces of chiseling, and it is completely natural.

The surface of the inkstone hall looks smooth, but there are circles of shallow spiral grooves, just like the skid marks of ice skates in an ice rink.Just now, I am afraid that these shallow grooves silently deflected walking, making people's tendency to turn around more obvious. At this time, the light of the flashlight and the sound of footsteps were close at hand. "Peter, you are indeed here." A voice came. Monk Peter turned around, his surprised expression could not be hidden under the light. Wei Dingguo appeared behind the flashlight in his usual navy blue cadre uniform.He was alone, holding a big flashlight, and there was only endless darkness behind him. "Ding...Uncle Dingguo." Monk Peter didn't know what to say when he saw him.Wei Dingguo nodded slightly, neither joy nor anger after his brother was killed, he just said calmly: "I knew it, you will be here." "Are you here to catch me back? Uncle Dingguo." Faced with this question, Wei Dingguo flashed a strange look, and asked back: "What do you think?" Although Wei Dingguo holds the real power of Wei Zhuang, he is just an ordinary village cadre after all, far from the level of Monk Peter.It would be too ridiculous to say that he came to arrest Monk Peter alone. "I thought you could pass this test, so I waited for you for a long time." Wei Dingguo said slowly, "It seems that you still haven't been able to see through this circle." He didn't ask about Peter's situation at that time, as if he had already calculated that Monk Peter would come here, and even felt slightly disappointed. Monk Peter couldn't help being a little embarrassed. This inkstone platform was indeed one of the trials in the Tibetan Bi Pavilion, and if he really participated in the competition of returning to the ancestor of the pen spirit, he might have already been eliminated.With a turn in his mind, the question suddenly rose, what did he come to the Tibetan Bi Pavilion?If we talk about arresting, we should send an elder with a pen spirit. He came to find him alone. What is his motive?Monk Peter knew very well that his uncle said that one hidden ten, the city is extremely deep, as elusive as an icosahedral Rubik's cube. Wei Dingguo took out another flashlight from his pocket and handed it to Monk Peter: "Follow me." Then he turned and left.Monk Peter hesitated, flipped on the flashlight switch, and followed closely behind.The two of them descended slowly along the edge of the inkstone, and walked down a rocky path as narrow as a sheep's gut. The two beams of light swayed from side to side, causing the surrounding moss to emit a faint gleam. Monk Peter can now see clearly that this "inkstone" platform is a piece stretched out from the rock wall, but it is actually half suspended in the air.It is surrounded by a huge rock wall space, secluded and deep.The top of the strange rock and the bottom of the cave are at least 40 to 50 meters high from the inkstone platform in the air. The rock faces are uneven in all directions, with overlapping peaks and ridges. Layers upon layers, at first glance it seems to be the ups and downs and rough sea, but it is frozen by God's remote control in an instant, and then collapses inward to form such a wonderful world.If you look at it from the side, the platform looks like a small flying saucer in the universe, and the moss in the distance is like stars. The boundless horizon can only give people a sense of "broadness", and a huge space with closed boundaries is more likely to cause people to panic. Those cliffs that are visible but out of reach are high up, down, left, and right, forming a magnificent place of emptiness. Showing the insignificance and spontaneous awe of the observer, people seem to have entered the Pangu giant egg when the chaos first opened. What surprised him the most was that directly above the round inkstone, there was a long strip of stalactite hanging from the zenith.It's like an invisible hand gently grabs the ink column and grinds it gently in the inkstone hall, and then lifts it up slowly, so that the ink droplets are still thick, and the beads are on the bottom of the inkstone.A natural "inkstone painting". If it is said to be created by heaven and earth, it would be too delicate; if it is said to be made by human beings, how much energy would be spent to carve such a statue. Monk Peter took a deep breath of air, and his lungs felt cold.He never thought that there is such a magical place hidden in the mountain ridge backed by Neizhuang.Speaking of which, I have to thank the shallow groove on the inkstone.If there weren't those grooves to induce him to turn around on the platform, he might have stumbled and fell to the bottom by now. "Since the Wei family moved here, it has been hundreds of years, and only a thousand people have been lucky enough to enter here. This is a natural cave, and it is also a gift from God to our ancestors of the Wei family, a rare tourist resource. If it is well developed, its popularity may not be inferior to places like Benxi Water Cave and Guilin Reed Flute Cave. According to preliminary estimates, the direct income from tourism alone can bring us one million yuan per year..." Wei Dingguo said as he walked, and he was also enthusiastically holding a flashlight to shine around, and the sound was buzzing in the empty cave.The more nonchalant he is, the more suspicious Monk Peter will be in the back, but right now he can only follow along. They walked in the dark for about 20 minutes. The terrain fluctuated from high to low, making it extremely difficult to walk. The so-called "road" was just a flat line between the sharp edges of the rocks.The whistling of the wind above the head became louder, and the aura became thicker and thicker.It is several times stronger than the concentration at the entrance of the Tibetan Bi Cave. The two walked out of the rocky mountain along the narrow path squeezed by the cliff.The terrain here is fairly flat, and the rock walls on both sides are stacked like terraced fields, and the slope is very gentle.On a small open space before the two slopes meet, stands a huge and simple stone tablet. The beast under the tablet is a stone unicorn, which is very rare in ancient monuments.There are also four large characters written on the stele: "Webster's Pen Tomb." "This is here." Wei Dingguo suddenly stood still and raised the flashlight, "Brother asked me to bring you here before he was alive. My mission has been completed." "Where is this?" Monk Peter asked. "You can see it for yourself." Monk Peter raised his flashlight and shook it towards the mountain walls on both sides. It turned out that there were many niches on the rocky slope, just like the cave dwellings in northern Shaanxi. They were all semi-elliptical in uniform shape. .There seemed to be figures in many niches. Monk Peter took a flashlight to take a closer look. He couldn't help being startled and took two steps back. Under the beam of light was a skeleton wearing a long robe. The bones were already withered and yellow, and there was a glint of light in them, as if some minerals had been mixed in.The posture of this skeleton is very strange. Its legs are spread out in the niche, its hands are clasped in arms, and its whole body is arched forward, as if it wants to bend itself into a cage.There are also handwritings engraved on the top of the niche, but it is impossible to see clearly unless you get close. Monk Peter hurriedly used a flashlight to sweep other rock niches, one corpse at a time.These skeletons wear different clothes, including plain robes, Confucian clothes, mandarin jackets, long gowns, Chinese tunic suits, western suits, and even Ming and Qing court clothes, including court pearls and flower feathers.Some of the clothes were so decayed that only a few strands of coarse cloth remained over the bones. Each skeleton maintains such a posture, concentrating on it, sitting in the niche deep in the pen-holding cave, as if guarding something.Monk Peter's fear gradually disappeared, and instead he felt that everything in front of him was indescribably solemn. "Could it be that this is..." "That's right." Wei Dingguo turned around and knelt down in front of the stele, knocked three times solemnly, and then got up and said, "This is the place where our ancestors of the Wei family buried their bones and brushes, and it is also where the tomb of my Wei family's brushes is." Monk Peter was stunned for a moment, walked to the front of the stele, clasped his hands together, and bowed deeply, but kept looking at the corpses standing in the distance, feeling the spiritual breath flowing, and his mood was inexplicably excited. Wei Dingguo said: "People have life and death, but the spirit of the pen is immortal. When the ancestors of the ancestors of the pen tomb realized that their time was approaching, they would enter the cave of hiding the brush by themselves, choose a niche to die, and use the last spiritual power to put their bodies to death. Ring into a pen hanging. When the pen spirit is out of the body, it is attached to the corpse, waiting for the arrival of the next master to liberate it. For hundreds of years, people have been renewed from generation to generation, but the pen spirit is The cycle goes on and on, recognizing the Lord here and returning to this place.” Monk Peter noticed a faint light in the arms of some skeletons, presumably they were pen spirits collected by the Wei family.These former heroes, literati, or ordinary people turned into skeletons in this dark underground, and spent hundreds of years silently in the darkness, silently guarding the existence of Bi Ling and the Wei family.When Monk Peter thought of this verse, he felt even more respectful. At this time, the flashlight scanned two stone niches, and he found that the bones in these two niches were scattered and there was no spiritual life at all.Wei Dingguo said: "That's right, this is what that girl Qin Yi did. I hate that she not only stole the pen spirit, but also damaged the bones of the ancestors." There was anger in his tone. "But... the patriarch asked you to bring me here, what exactly are you going to do?" Wei Dingguo sighed: "There is no third person here. My brother has passed away, why can't you call him father? Nephew." Without waiting for Monk Peter's reaction, he raised his flashlight towards a certain stone on the high place. The niche flickered, "If you take a look at this, you will naturally know." Not to mention the spirit of the pen in this niche, there is not even half a bone, but there is a big "Yong" character written on the back wall of the niche.There seems to be a thin booklet in the niche. When Monk Peter saw the word "Yong", he couldn't help being shocked, and blurted out: "Zhongxia is in danger!"