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  In the northwest of Zhejiang, at the foot of Tianmu Mountain, there is a mountain village called Hongcun. For generations, people have been telling a legend that on a cliff about 7 or 8 miles away, there is a cave called Lao Ying Cave. The cave contains countless treasures and a rare and precious Blood Lingzhi mushroom that can prolong life, cure all diseases, and bring good fortune. People from Hongcun have lived at the foot of this mountain for generations, where they gather firewood, open up wasteland, pick herbs, and hunt. A winding small road leads to the depths of the big mountain, with a cliff on one side that is thousands of feet deep. The top of the cliff has steep walls, and the cave above it is Lao Ying Cave, which people passing by can't help but glance at.

  No one had ever entered this cave before, because it was too high and too dangerous. It was like an eagle's eye and a precipice merged into one, constantly gazing at the wisps of smoke rising from the foot of the mountain. The local villagers had also passed by its foot for generations. In my youth, I once fantasized that one day I would climb up to that cave and tell the world about everything inside it. Now this fantasy has come true. At the entrance of the cave were piled broken tiles and bricks covered with various patterns, as well as countless withered branches and fallen leaves.

  I'm a person with an extremely curious mind, on such a night, with such a group of people, my adrenaline is accelerating its secretion, there's a hot blood in my brain, no matter what kind of ferocious beast is in this cave, the moment I stepped in, I knew it was destined to be extraordinary.

  That was some familiar broken bricks, these bricks had filled every household in Hongcun Village decades ago. The only one left in my home is a green brick carved with a qilin. It's longer and wider than ordinary bricks, when I was young it was used as a footrest in our small house, I don't know how many times I stepped on it to walk through the doorway, until later I broke it into two pieces, from then on this broken brick became abandoned rubble, sometimes it appeared in some corner of the backyard ditch, sometimes it appeared in the gap between the fence and the vegetable garden. I once told Pángzi that my family had such a thing, Pángzi was delighted and said he wanted to go see it, saying that this kind of brick would only come from ancient noble tombs, because it's called a "yīn brick". I didn't believe him, Pángzi said, "You don't believe me? Go back and measure it, see if it's not 7 inches long, 3 inches wide, and 3 inches thick." Later, I found the two broken bricks under the new chicken coop at home, when I reassembled them, they were exactly as Pángzi said, without a single discrepancy.

  I can no longer trace the origin of that broken brick, it is said that not only my family, but others have also had them before, unfortunately, time has passed and these bricks with exquisite flower patterns are long gone, I once felt a small regret for this, but never thought that the entrance to the Old Eagle Cave would have so many.

  Cha Wenbin analyzed that this place was once a building used for worship or guarding the tomb. In the northwest of Zhejiang, there is no custom of burying inside caves, and this burial method is only common in southwestern China, such as the ancient Shu area where the hanging coffin burial method is particularly prevalent. However, his analysis concluded that this cave was a tomb, but I personally think it looks more like a place for spiritual practice, and I couldn't help but recall an old saying from my childhood that there was an immortal living in this cave.

  This cave was naturally formed. In the northwest of Zhejiang, it used to be a sea in ancient times. The geological structure is stable and there are no karst landforms. The Tianmu Mountains are mostly rocky, so it's rare to have such a regular and deep cave. As soon as I entered the cave, I was hit with a strong stench, similar to the sour smell of fermented feces. Since it was nighttime, I had a miner's lamp in my hand, and I instinctively broke off a few branches to make two torches. I thought these two people were afraid of the dark, but later I found out that they weren't afraid of the dark at all - the torches had another use.

  Not long after walking in, I felt sticky under my feet, just like the soles of my shoes had stepped on cow dung. "Ka ka" sounds were made as I walked. Er Dai was in front, swinging his torch from time to time, shining it east and west. Suddenly he shouted: "Squat down!"

  I was pressed down on my shoulder by Zhang Wenbin behind me, and at this moment a gust of wind whizzed past the top of my head. I heard countless "whooshing" sounds passing by my ears, and there was a disturbance in the airflow. Zhang Wenbin held up the torch above his head behind me, and the two of them sandwiched me in between. It wasn't until then that I slightly lifted my head to take a clear look, and it turned out to be groups of bats flying over our heads. This place must have been their lair.

  This is a bat, and naturally the ground below is covered in bat droppings, a dark and dense pile after pile, making it impossible to see the road. This stuff is highly acidic, if it gets on human skin for a few days, it will fester. In northwest Zhejiang, there are those kinds of mountain bats, not very big, similar to swallows. In the past, they would often fly into houses and get caught, but don't underestimate these creatures, their teeth and claws are very sharp. Moreover, bats are also carriers of another deadly bacteria, rabies. I'd rather be bitten by a snake than touched by this thing.

  This cave isn't small at all, after walking in for over 20 meters, some jars and containers started to appear. Those jars looked familiar to me, one by one they resembled pickled vegetable jars, with complete or incomplete symbols on them, aren't these the same urns that were found in the water pipe the other day?!

  Those jars were neatly placed on both sides of the cave, three in a row and two in a row, with a gap between each pair, and another jar was placed above the gap. The advantage of doing so is stability, at least I haven't found any broken or overturned jars yet.

  Because there were many people, my courage also increased a bit. Er Dai stood in front of me without saying a word, and Zha Wenbin behind us didn't know what was going on either. There were several hundred such jars, stretching far into the distance. When we walked to where these jars were almost at an end, Er Dai suddenly lifted one hand and I immediately squatted down reflexively.

  "He pointed with his finger to the left and said, 'It's right here. To the left there is a small hole, and inside that small hole there is an old tree. At the foot of the old tree is what you're looking for.'"

  Cha Wenbin said behind me: "I smell a strong aura of evil."

  Anyway, all I could smell was a strong odor of feces, and I have no idea what those two gods' noses were made of. Ye Qiu led the way into that small hole, which was wide enough but required us to lower our heads significantly. Following behind him, watching Er Dai's butt twisting back and forth in front of me, I thought to myself, this kid really is quite sexy, these cowboy pants wrapping around his buttocks just right... Suddenly, I had an urge to go up and pinch it...

  "What are you doing!" He suddenly turned around and shouted at me, his voice was low but very severe. Looking at his cannibalistic expression, I kept laughing and said: "Mistake, mistake..."

  After this little episode, the tension came. This small passage was really short, and I also knew why Erhua would be so angry, because he had already reached the end, what he said about this place made me feel a bit stunned, I never knew that Hongcun still had such a magical landscape.

  When my headlamp began to sweep every corner in front of me, I was stunned. Through this small path, what appeared before my eyes was a vast open space, a naturally formed cave large enough to hold the village's town hall. In the center of the town hall stood a giant tree, its trunk straight up through the top of the mountain, leaving me in awe that the tree had burst through the top of the mountain, with the trunk and the small hole in the top of the mountain seamlessly joined together, and the branches that spread out in this visible part were invisible, just like a pillar rising from the center of this great hall.

  There is an even more divine instrument, the four walls of this cave are round, but the ground in the cave is square and upright, just like it was measured with a ruler. I don't know if this is a masterpiece of nature or human effort, but such a scene brings you a shock that is no less than a fantasy trip.

  I also noticed that the base of the big tree was surrounded by stone blocks, which were long and square in shape, similar to the octagonal wells commonly found in rural areas. On each of the eight corners, a black coffin lay quietly, with a coffin lid scattered on the ground.

  I instinctively hid behind Cha Wenbin, his expression was much more complex than mine. He slowly said: "Nothingness is the beginning of heaven and earth; existence is the mother of all things. It turns out that there really are people in this world who have found such a mysterious place according to Chen Tuan's drawing of the Heavenly Round and Earthly Square, it has truly broadened my horizons."

  What Zha Wenbin said is also a lifelong puzzle for the practitioners of Taoism, what is being and non-being? With the change of history, the replacement of Taoist schools, many things have long been lost in the dust of history.

  Chen Tuan, also known as Baiyun Xiansheng, with the Daoist name of Fuyaozi, lived in seclusion on Huashan together with Ma Yibo. He often traveled between Huashan and Wudangshan, and was highly respected by both Emperor Taizu of Later Zhou and Emperor Taizong of Northern Song. His greatest achievement was to derive a diagram of the round heaven and square earth from the eight trigrams of the Book of Changes. The ancients called the vast universe composed of numerous celestial bodies "heaven", and the land on which we depend for survival "earth". Since the sun, moon, and other celestial bodies move in cycles without beginning or end, they seem to form a closed circle with no starting point.

  Chen Tuan believed that movement is yang and stillness is yin, so the "heavenly circle" composed of sun, moon, stars, and constellations is yang, while the "locality" composed of rivers, mountains, and valleys is yin. He used the locality as a flat coordinate system, with directions or direction angles represented by the twelve earthly branches, ten heavenly stems, and four trigrams to indicate twenty-four directions, forming a complete circle in the entire sky. This was called the "heavenly circle and locality diagram", which was used to predict major events under heaven, and Chen Tuan was honored as the ancestor of Taoism and Confucianism by Emperor Taizong of Song.

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