I am your natural enemy

After all, Zhang Laoxi has been working for so many years, and there are many things that local members of the Lieyang tribe may not be familiar with.

At least Zhang Laoxi knew who to call when he wanted to ask something. If the person he found was unknown to others, he could continue to find others.

In just over a day, Zhang Laoxi called Wen Yan, and on the day he was discharged from the hospital, he drove Wen Yan in his pickup truck to a nearby village.

The mountains and rivers here are beautiful, and the village is built along the river. You can even see fish swimming in the small river that is only a few meters wide.

When they arrived, several old people were already sitting under the big banyan tree at the entrance of the village. Zhang Laoxi went up to greet them in local dialect and quickly got down to business.

An old man here who is just ninety years old is an old worker who participated in the construction and planning decades ago.

The old man was telling what happened in the past, and Wen Yan was listening quietly beside him.

In the beginning, Decheng was just a small town below Weizhou, close to the Xijiang River. All people relied on the Xijiang River to make a living.

It was able to develop in the first place because it was considered an important transportation thoroughfare, and the river here was gentle, so there was already a ready-made riverside dock.

A few decades ago, the levees were not as high as they are now. If there were heavy rains in the upper reaches for several days, the lower reaches would be notified to pay attention to flood prevention.

At that time, the road network was not so developed, and it was regarded as a distribution center for surrounding goods. At that time, transporting many things by river was much more cost-effective than land transport, and the volume was also large.

At first, it was for flood control, but the flow of people here gradually increased.

In addition to people making a living on the water, more and more people gathered around it, and it gradually developed.

With more people, the building will naturally continue to expand. The city is facing Xijiang to the south and can only expand to the north.

And at that time, when it was expanding, many old buildings were demolished if they could be demolished. The more important ones were either left in place or demolished and rebuilt elsewhere as they were.

There is a Confucius Temple in Decheng. Because it has been well preserved and repaired, it was left there and is still there today.

But there were many more, old buildings that had fallen into disrepair and were in ruins, and they were all demolished.

This includes the original building behind the stone archway.

According to the old man, a few decades ago, there was a ruined wall behind the stone archway. The valuable things had long since disappeared, and even the beams had gone. I’m afraid that old wood would be useless now. It will be valuable.

During the planning, the stone archway was actually to be demolished together.

But at that time, an old man who was over ninety years old came and was said to be a scholar of the last century. He said that this archway was a Zhenjiang archway, given by the Dragon Mother to protect the local area from floods.

The old man was reasonable and felt that this was a plan of the imperial court and a good thing for the development of the country and the people. It was necessary to move, but the sin must not be borne by those hard-working workers.

So, you all get out of the way, and the old man hits his head on it and dies. After you have paid this sin, you can take it away again.

He was obviously here to stop him, but as soon as he said these words, he was really going to be knocked to death. Who would dare?

Anyone who dares to cause trouble to the ninety-year-old birthday boy with a very high status in the local area today will be beaten to death by the angry local tribesmen that day.

In addition, after saying this, who dares to touch the stone archway?

Here, if the feng shui of a family is considered to be bad, it may be a deadly enemy. If the feng shui of a city is bad, all I can say is, don't sleep too hard at night.

A fight between two villages is the standard ending.

And a few decades ago, the people here were extremely martial and moral. There was a precedent for two villages fighting each other and pulling out enough equipment to fight a local war.

Not for a stone archway.

Finally, a leader came from above and asked the people from the planning bureau to slightly change the plan so that the stone archway would be right at the intersection. As a result, it didn't need to be moved at all and it stayed in place without affecting anything.

Then today, what was once a wasteland has become the center of the city.

This ninety-year-old man believed very firmly in the words he heard when he was young, and he is still grateful to the old scholar who came out to stop them.

He was so frightened that he secretly kowtowed in front of the stone archway at night, saying that he would go to the Dragon Mother Temple every year and hire someone to clean it every year.

Then the old man remembered it until now and still remembered the promise he made back then.

Now that I am older and my legs and feet are inconvenient, I have returned to the village to take care of my old age. My son, who is seventy years old, has left first. The grandchildren think that the elderly are superstitious and don't want to care about cleaning every year.

No, when I heard that someone was asking about it, I quickly called people over to take a look with my own eyes. The most important thing was to hire a sincere person to continue the cleaning that had been done for decades.

After hearing this, Wen Yan made repeated promises.

"Don't worry, we will ensure that someone will clean it every year from now on."

"He who is not sincere will not tolerate it." The old man was very stubborn and stretched out a hand to grab Wen Yan's hand.

Wen Yan was slightly startled, feeling the cold hand of the other party, and nodded heavily.

"I'll do it myself until I find someone I think is more suitable to take over. Do you think that's okay?"

The gentle words silently inspired the blazing sun, and the soft yang energy bloomed in him.

The old man's cloudy eyes felt the gentle yang energy, saw the brilliance on Wen Yan's body, and also saw the water official seal on the back of Wen Yan's hand. He looked at Wen Yan in surprise, and nodded repeatedly with a grin. .

"You wait."

The old man was holding a cane and didn't let anyone help him. He slowly returned home and came out with something wrapped in red cloth.

He stuffed the red cloth package into Wen Yan's hands, and Wen Yan was not allowed to look at it now, nor was Wen Yan allowed to refuse.

When Wen Yan and Zhang Laoxi were almost done talking, they stood by the car and looked back at the village as they left.

"Do you feel it?"

"That old man's end is approaching."

"No, it's already here. There was an obsession in his heart and a breath that kept him from closing his eyes.

Don't listen to him. His grandchildren and great-grandchildren don't want to take over his affairs. He is still a little annoyed.

He was afraid of affecting his descendants, so he believed deeply in this matter. Over the past few decades, it had long since turned into an obsession.

Now, this obsession is gone. "

Zhang Laoxi was slightly surprised. Of course he understood what he meant.

The old man is actually gone.

"No way, I didn't even feel it, and he didn't show any signs of freezing."

"That old man will not become frozen. He just did not continue to move forward until the end of his life. He held on for his last breath. Didn't you hear that when he spoke, there seemed to be phlegm in his throat? That breath has always been there. Without spitting it out, he kept relying on his obsession to get stuck on that last step. Strictly speaking, he is still alive, but his body has reached its limit and cannot hold on any longer."

"Do you want……"

"Let's go, we have nothing to do here. We came here once, and then the old man left. Do you think his family will treat us well?"

"That's right." Zhang Laoxi nodded, he knew this best: "But, having said that, when did you know this?"

"I don't know, but since the last time I went to the Kingdom of Shadows, I felt it when the old man grabbed my hand just now. So, I just blessed him with yang energy, but didn't hurt him, and let him look at my hand. God gave me the talisman, so he believed what I said."

Wen Yan looked at the red cloth package in his hand but did not open it.

After driving home, Wen Yan put the red cloth package on the table and opened it.

Inside is a very delicate mahogany box, which has become somewhat blackened over time.

After opening it, there were several yellowed ancient books inside, as well as a yellowed homework book. The time was recorded in the homework book, and it was marked and cleaned several times.

I looked at it and found that last year, the old man went to clean it himself, but there was no record this year.

It may be that my physical condition is really unable to support me this year.

As for those ancient books, Wen Yan only glanced at them a few times, and felt a headache after looking at the vague words on them.

There are no markings, no sentence fragmentation, it is still arranged vertically, and the font is also an ancient font.

After reading the original Taoist book of ancient books several times and making him dizzy, he now feels sick when he sees these.

"Please take a look at it. I don't know why, but when I see so many pronouns, I feel a headache. I have to look up information for a long time before I can even understand it after reading one page."

Wen Yan took out the ancient books and asked Zhang Laoxi to read them first.

When he took out the last book and touched the corner of the box, a familiar feeling emerged.

He looked at the box carefully and knocked it lightly. No matter how he looked at it, the box didn't look like it had a sandwich.

Finally, after looking over and over for a long time, I took out a ruler and measured it again. There was indeed no interlayer.

When I hit a place at the bottom of the box, I could tell that the sound in this place was not right and different from other places.

In a final act of cruelty, Wen Yan dismantled the bottom of the box according to the seams.

After taking it apart, I immediately discovered that a semicircle was dug out between the two thick wooden boards at the bottom. When the two semicircles were put together, there was only a space about the size of the nail of a little finger.

A gold particle the size of a small fingernail is hidden here.

Seeing the gold particle, Wen Yan finally determined what that familiar feeling that could be felt through the wood was.

He stretched out his hand, picked up the gold particles, and tried to bless it with the blazing sun.

Sure enough, the blazing sun couldn't bless it at all.

This is the only thing Wen Yan has discovered so far that cannot be blessed by the burning sun at all.

The divine crystal condensed after burning the water god with "burning body".

But at that time, an old turtle was burned to death, and the gold particles condensed were only the size of millet grains.

But the one here is about the size of the fingernail of your little finger. It is oval in shape. When measured, it is already one centimeter long.

Wen Yan took out the previous gold nuggets and compared the two together. Calculating roughly, just counting the volume, there was at least a difference of seven to eight hundred times.

Wen Yan couldn't help but take a breath of air, trying to condense such a big gold particle.

He killed all the wild water gods in the entire Xijiang water system and refined them into gold particles. It should not be enough.

Good guy, does that old man know this thing?

He took a photo of the wooden box and sent it to Feng Yao, asking Feng Yao to have a professional look at it to see when the wooden box was made.

In less than half an hour, Feng Yao sent a message.

I asked an expert to take a look at it and said that the pattern on it and the pattern on the copper buckle seemed to be from the style of Lao Zhu's family during that period of the past 500 years.

It can also be seen that an antique box made of red rosewood has just been dismantled by some prodigal son.

Even if it's not an antique that's hundreds of years old, but a modern imitation, it's still worth something.

Without seeing it with my own eyes, experts dare not give a definite answer.

Just after listening to it, Wen Yan was sure that it must be an old thing.

The old man may not know about the gold nugget, but he definitely knows that it is worth a lot of money.

In the end, I was willing to give it to him, but 80% of the time I really couldn't hold on anymore, so I had to take a final gamble and choose the one that was relatively reliable at the moment.

He wanted to ask again, but he felt in his heart that it was probably too late.

Just as he was thinking about it, Zhang Laoxi's phone rang. It was the person who helped him find the ninety-year-old man before.

After hanging up the phone, Zhang Laoxi felt a little sad.

"The old man left. Before he left, he said that he had a chicken to worship God, so he asked a neighbor to kill one of the chickens he had raised.

After he worshiped God, he distributed the chickens to several neighbors who took care of him. He asked the village chief and several people to witness it, and wrote his will.

I ate a big bowl of rice, drank half a bowl of porridge, took a nap, and never woke up again.

What it means now is that the old man knows that his time has come, he will be free from illness and disaster, and he will die in peace.

But I went there today after all, so I wanted to ask me to do a ritual as a gift. "

"Since his family doesn't mind our visit today, let's go together."

“I don’t mind, his grandson is quite reasonable.

Because the old man's son died of illness at the age of seventy. Before he left, he suffered from many sins for several months and was tortured to the point where he was no longer human.

The grandson of the old man felt that it was good that the old man was in a good mood today, happy, had a great appetite, and didn't suffer much. He just ate and drank enough and went peacefully. "

Wen Yan put away his things and set off again with Zhang Laoxi. When passing by the funeral supplies store, he purchased a bunch of things and took them with him.

When we arrived at the place, preparations had already begun.

According to the rules in the village here, if an elderly person who has lived a long life and has no illness or disaster, dies in the village, it is a standard funeral, and every household in the village will come to help.

Some of the older people in the village are even a little envious. Being free from illness and pain, having enough to eat and drink, and going on the road as soon as they fall asleep is the best ending they want.

When Wen Yan came, he didn't say that he was from the funeral home, so he just helped. Seeing that these people had no intention of sending the old man to the funeral home, he didn't say anything.

The old man's face was calm, as if he was asleep. In Wen Yan's perception, this was definitely one of the "cleanest" corpses he had ever seen.

Before death, he had not experienced any pain, but his soul had already dissipated. There was not even a trace of death on his body after death. It could be said that he was one of the few corpses that had no possibility of becoming frozen.

A day later, the village chief came and said something to the family. He called a car and took the body to the funeral parlor.

Wen Yan followed him to see him off.

This old man generously gave him what he considered the most precious thing before his death, and he still trusted him to take over the important task. It was only right that he come to say goodbye and kowtow.

When it was time to get off work, Wen Yan left in the car. At midnight, he couldn't sleep, so he searched for how to clean stone and studied it for a while.

Looking at the old man's notes again, in the middle of the night, in the dead of night and when there was no one on the street, he took his tools and came to the crossroads in the center of the city. According to the steps recorded in the old man's notes, he meticulously cleaned up the place. A stone archway.

After cleaning it up and down, he stood on the east side of the stone archway. When he looked up again, he seemed to see that the stone archway had become much larger, and he had to look up to see part of it.

After a while, it seemed to be back to its original state.

Sure enough, it is not an ordinary stone archway.

Everyone in the Lieyang Department knows about this. The people who came down from above must have done it intentionally when they asked the planners to keep this stone archway and specifically leave it in the center of the city.

Zhenjiang Archway...

After recalling the information I had read in the past two days, it seems that it is true that the largest flood a few decades ago did not even reach this place.

Even if we put aside everything related to the water god and the dragon god, this thing may be more like a boundary monument summed up from ancient experience. When encountering flooding of the water system, the place above this archway is safe. .

Wen Yan stood under the archway, hesitated for a moment, then stepped forward again, stretched out a finger and touched the archway, stimulating the blazing sun and blessing the yang energy.

Blessed by the fierce Yang Qi, it spreads upward like flowing water, following the patterns on the pillars of the stone archway.

Seeing that his own yang energy was a bit far behind, Wen Yan inspired the yang energy of Lieyang Jade and blessed it again.

In an instant, I saw that the Yang energy spread along the ravine to the entire stone archway. It could be blessed, but it could only be blessed on the surface.

In the middle of the stone archway, a little golden light floated, and the familiar feeling of being completely unable to bless emerged again.

Wen Yan thoughtfully dispersed the scorching sun.

He felt that this stone archway was its most basic function, a portal.

Recalling the information and various legends he had read in the past two days, he began to understand why Cai Heizi told him to come here when necessary.

The old man said that this stone archway was the Zhenjiang archway given by the Dragon Mother.

Since the archway is really magical, and the Xijiang Dragon God is really a dragon.

In other words, part of the legend is actually true.

Wen Yan was checking information in the past two days and found out one thing. According to local legend, the dragon mother's surname was Wen, and she had miraculous powers. She could not drown in water and had saved many people.

According to legend, the Dragon Mother once raised dragons, and there were five of them...

Wen Yan probably understood why Cai Heizi kept mentioning a peaceful solution many times.

He must be timid.

Don't even mention it. I'm afraid if you leave me alone.