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  There are legends about water monsters in various places, with the south having its own monsters and the north having its own ghosts. Most of them are variations on a theme: something that can lurk underwater for a long time will drag you down and drown you when you're crossing the water. In folklore, it's also said that vengeful spirits of people who drowned want to find someone to reincarnate into.

  I'm not really afraid of ghosts, I've seen a lot on the ground and in the water, even if there are any, aren't there Taoist priests? What I'm afraid of is those things that have become spirits and can harm people, like this giant salamander in front of me. These strange creatures are not understood at all, let alone ordinary people, even scientists still don't understand a lot about them. The number of undiscovered species on this planet increases every year, so are all the news reports of monster sightings around the world just hype?

  I believe that any legend has a basis, and if you want to make up a story, there must be a prototype. It's not possible to fabricate nonsense out of thin air. At most, people will just laugh it off and forget about it. No one would take it seriously, let alone spread it widely.

  It is said that outsiders watch the excitement, while insiders watch the doorway. What I saw was a huge giant salamander, its grayish-black body covered with mucus, and its large head. Meanwhile, Cha Wenbin was pacing back and forth on the ground nearby.

  He is taking a stroll? Obviously not! He is measuring.

  There are two ways for Taoist priests to walk, one is no different from ordinary people, and the other is a "zhangbu" (a unit of measurement), because Taoist priests are naturally more sensitive to geography, and they can measure some distances by their footsteps. A standard rule for zhangbu is three steps equal to one zhang, if a Taoist priest wants to know some data, he only needs to walk back and forth according to his own position measured with a compass, this skill relies on long-term practice and accumulation.

  I watched him pacing back and forth over there, thinking to myself if he had found some way out. If you say this kind of place has traps or mazes, I didn't have the slightest surprise.

  "What's wrong? What did you find?"

  "Generally, wherever there is a strange beast, there will be an eight trigrams platform. Legend has it that when Fuxi drew the eight trigrams, he painted on the central platform of the Eight Trigrams Pavilion. The pavilion had two stone turtles and two green stone stele. One stele was inscribed with 'Opening Things to Create Fog', and the other with 'Pre-Heavenly Essence'. In front of the Fuxi Eight Trigrams Pavilion, there is a green stone abacus scattered with abacus beads. At first glance, it looks like both the River Chart and the Luo Book, but upon closer inspection, it is neither. For many years, no one has been able to unlock its secrets. The 'Stone Abacus' was Fuxi's magical tool when drawing the trigrams. It is said that if you can solve the 'Stone Abacus', you will have control over the entire universe."

  Afterwards, Cha Wenbin explained that after Fu Xi ascended to the platform and painted the eight trigrams, he deduced the divination of the heavens and the earth's momentum, which was revered by each generation. However, there were always high-ranking individuals who wanted to decipher the "stone abacus" puzzle. As a result, on the vast lands of China approximately 2,000 to 3,500 years ago, there existed over ten replicas of the Eight Trigrams Platform, with some people spending their entire lives studying it, and even now, no one has been able to crack the meaning behind the Eight Trigrams Platform's stone abacus.

  I'm just guessing, because there's a saying that the stone abacus under the gossip platform is a sincere knot, and after a long time, it becomes spiritual and auspicious in prosperous times, but disastrous in chaotic times. In our Taoist classics "Huainanzi", it was recorded that Jiuying was transformed from the essence of Kan and Li trigrams. The Kan trigram has four short lines and one long line; the Li trigram has two short lines and two long lines, totaling nine lines, so there are nine.

  Because the Bagua diagram was drawn by Fuxi in his childhood, and most of the strokes are not long, they all look like babies. Kan represents middle-aged men, so five of them are male figures; Li represents middle-aged women, so four of them are female figures. Kan is water and its color is black, so the five baby boys are good at using water and wear black clothes; Li is fire and its color is red, so the four baby girls are good at using fire and wear red clothes.

  Of course, the things recorded by the ancients are often exaggerated. They often personify things with symbolic meanings and imagine this crying big turtle as a baby. I just measured here repeatedly, and I found that if we judge by walking direction, building an eight trigrams platform here would be three layers in total. Xiaoyi, do you still remember where we went the first time?

  "I remember that when I fell down at that place, it was also sucked in by the water and almost died there." Just thinking about it still makes me feel a little scared.

  Zha Wenbin said: "I remember that we encountered a kind of small fish that eats people, very fierce. If it's really the Bagua Tower, then that place should be the first layer. Later, Ye Qiu went to the big passageway, which is where the fat man got lost, that's the second layer. I also suddenly thought, why did this place appear in ancient books, in my mind, the Bagua Tower may be more suitable to explain its existence."

  Ye Qiu seemed to have no feeling at all, and indeed he had no impression of that trip. This person disappeared here and suddenly appeared in a mysterious ancient site in Hongcun Village.

  Long Ye found a stone and sat down, saying: "Cha younger brother, continue speaking. The materials I gave you can still be seen to have something on them, right?"

  "That's natural, if it wasn't for your map, I might never have thought of it this way." As he spoke, Zha Wenbin pulled out a photo from his pocket. The photo seemed to be taken from above, and the scenery was blurry, with a greenish hue, but the outline of mountains and rivers could still be vaguely made out.

  "Satellite remote sensing technology, the latest technology, this is still an internal test and I'll use it first." Long Ye smiled twice and said: "Last time we did a special study on this place, blowing it up was also my idea, the purpose was to remove the outside edges and corners, revealing the true shell, now doesn't it have some clues?"

  The Fuxi Bagua Pavilion is a three-story structure, with the top being an irregular equilateral octagon. The real Fuxi Bagua Pavilion still exists in Longhu Lake, north of Huaiyang City, and is about two meters high, surrounded by water on all sides. It was here that the first rays of Chinese civilization rose, and it was from this pavilion that Fuxi derived the Pre-Heaven Eight Trigrams diagram.

  According to the aerial view of Longye's birth, Cha Wenbin circled our location with a red pen. If he hadn't circled that patch of green, it would have been really hard to spot the small black dot hidden within. At this time, he pulled out another map from his chest pocket, which was much clearer than the previous one. Longye said: "This is based on the location provided by Brother Cha, I specially took aerial shots with a plane and rushed over with my team as soon as I got it, only to lose three of my brothers at the very beginning."

  The scenery in the tens of miles around this picture is interesting. Cha Wenbin pointed to a region with obvious octagonal marks on the map and said: "This is where we are, if we take this as the Bagua platform, then the location of Lion Peak is just that one stone plate calculation. Most of the houses on the mountain top still maintain their original appearance, occasionally there are a few that have been rebuilt at the original site, so the regional changes are not great. From the air, the houses are like chess pieces."

  He said that, and it really seemed like that was the case. I also listened with wonder and said: "If it's a chessboard, then what is our Hong Village?"

  "It's a stele!" Cha Wenbin drew the location of Hongcun with his pen: "This is probably the location of the large temple, Yizhuang. The original Hongcun should have been centered around here, but when your ancestors arrived, Hongcun was already empty and uninhabited. Most of the original buildings were destroyed, and now most people in Hongcun choose to build their own homes on land that faces the mountain and water. In fact, the real Hongcun has disappeared by about half. From its location, if Hongcun is a stele, it should belong to the one with the inscription 'Xian Tian Jing Yun', while the one we saw at Shizi Peak was the 'Kai Wu Cheng Wu' stele."

  From a geographical perspective, this layout should conform to the architectural specifications of Bagua Tai. The only difference from the original building is that standing in the current Shuangyuan Village location, you can't see the stone abacus, as the Tianmu Mountain range completely blocks the line of sight between the two. However, I personally think this is precisely the most ingenious part of the entire layout."

  "Dragon said: "What is clever? Cha younger brother, I have also found some people, don't be humble to you, they have many theories and seniority are far above you, can see that this is a Bagua diagram of your second."

  Cha Wenbin was not polite, he said coldly: "I think the first one who saw it should be called Ye Huan?"

  Long Ye's eyes suddenly contracted, and I felt a burst of murderous aura emanating from his body, but it vanished instantly without a trace. He glanced at Ye Qiu and then asked Cha Wenbin, "What, do you know each other?"

  "We're all sensible people, so let's not beat around the bush. I don't care why you've been passing off Ye Qiu as his son, but at least from now on, stop trying to deceive others with this. I'm very clear about what kind of person Ye Huan is. This type of gossip and rumors are unique under the heavens, and it's only because they originated from my master Ling Zhengyang. It wasn't until now that I remembered my master had actually been to Lion's Peak back then and saw through all the arrangements here with one glance. However, even he couldn't decipher the meaning behind this layout, so he left us, his later generations, a riddle and a will: One mountain, two temples, three tombs wrapped around; one dragon, two bays, three layers of encirclement; where does the fallen child go to ask for help? Laughing, I point to the immortal who's far away on the road."