Chapter 45: Four Gods

The most important thing in any endeavor is to keep up one’s morale; once that spirit dissipates, the task is likely doomed to fail. Gu Xianwang and Yao Cuo exchanged glances, clearly sensing the heavy atmosphere.

She turned around, and Long Li was standing alone in front of the door, seemingly lost in thought while gazing at the array diagram.

Gu Xianwang walked over, adopting her perspective as she activated the Eye Technique.

“Have you noticed anything?” Long Li turned her head slightly and leaned in to ask her.

To be honest, she hadn’t. The array diagram between the four doors was mostly intaglio engraved, with knife work of extreme complexity that bore no resemblance whatsoever to the standard styles of the Central Plains. Were it not for the karst cave and sinkhole they had passed through earlier, she might have almost believed this underground palace was a bizarre, poorly imitated fake forged by later generations—one that didn’t even copy its source correctly and was instead based on Western printing techniques.

Gu Xianwang lightly rubbed her brow; using the Eye Technique too frequently had left her brain nerves throbbing and swollen with pain. Though these engravings seemed incomprehensible at first glance, for some reason, she subconsciously felt as if she had seen them somewhere before.

Memory was a tricky thing—the harder one tried to recall, the more elusive it became. Gu Xianwang sighed. “No, I can’t make it out.”

Long Li shifted to several different angles, focusing the flashlight’s high-intensity beam on the same central point. She examined it and seemed to confirm her suspicions. “Don’t rush. You two, step back a bit.”

With that, she approached the door carving, positioned herself to one side, and gently blew on that central point—under the beam of white light, swaths of crystalline powder scattered on the breeze, drifting and lingering without settling, light as could be.

Gu Xianwang asked in surprise, “What is this?”

Once the powder dispersed, a palm-sized disc was revealed at the center of the array diagram. Long Li fanned away the floating dust before her eyes and explained, “This is False Earth, a powder ground from crystal ore. It has a light-refracting property. Mix it with surrounding brick dust of a similar color, apply it with a water-soaked covering, and once it dries, it perfectly conceals whatever you want to hide.”

Yao Cuo nodded along as if half understanding. “So the other doors have this too?”

Seeing Long Li nod, the two of them followed suit, blowing away the discs from the array diagrams on all four doors.

At this point, any clue was a lifeline—even if it meant clawing a hole in what seemed like their inevitable doom. If the hole was big enough, they might just scrape by and escape with their lives.

Yao Cuo practically wanted to jam his eyeballs into the narrow gap left by the hollow disc. He vaguely made out what looked like interlocking mechanisms embedded inside. It was a disc fashioned from a few centimeters-thick stone slab, with five indentations in the center—perfect for shallowly inserting five fingers. He guessed, “This disc seems like it can rotate. Maybe if we turn it to the right angle, it triggers the exit mechanism.”

Gu Xianwang had heard of similar mechanisms before. “Setups like this usually limit the number of trial attempts. If they really connect to the exit mechanism, then with four doors and four discs, how many possible combinations are there—and how many chances for error?”

Long Li gazed at the concave pit in the wall and said flatly, “Only one.”

Gu Xianwang: …

Yao Cuo paused in stunned silence, a hint of doubt in his voice. “How do you know?”

Long Li traced an oval in the air with her index finger, following the outline of the pit’s edge. “Doesn’t this shape resemble the layout of this underground palace?”

Gu Xianwang grasped her meaning almost instantly. She whipped around in horror to peer into the darkness—no wonder something had nagged at her, an elusive sense of wrongness she couldn’t quite pin down. It was the underground palace itself. Being inside made it hard to break free from their limited viewpoint. If someone were looking down from above right now, they would see that the entire structure was shaped like a stone cocoon.

The stone cocoon nested that original arc-shaped coffin on the wall, much like an outer coffin encasing an inner one. So her earlier suspicion that the water wasn’t meant for the living had been correct. This underground palace… was very likely a massive water coffin.

Gu Xianwang lowered her gaze to the murky water swirling unstably at her feet; the surface had silently risen past her knees at some point. Realizing the palace’s true purpose brought her no thrill—instead, it felt like a bucket of ice water dumped over her head. If this place really was a water coffin, then what need was there for an internal switch to open an outward exit?

A coffin, by nature, allowed entry… but no escape.

Yao Cuo said earnestly, “All oval-shaped?”

He mulled it over himself before analyzing, “Ancient architecture prized perfect squares and symmetry—ovals like this would probably be seen as highly inauspicious, right? And these stone pillars… they feel like something constructed by a completely different culture.”

Reminded by him, Gu Xianwang realized she had overlooked that detail too. “Stone pillars—what do the stone pillars here signify? Why are they arranged like this?”

Long Li pondered for a moment, then drew a Pilot signal pen from the side pocket of her backpack. She marked several points along the creases of her palm and held it out to Gu Xianwang. “See here? With the tiger’s mouth as the four gates, if you look at it horizontally, this maps out the layout of the stone pillars in the underground palace.”

She gripped the pen in her right hand, the flashlight wedged between her tail finger. The beam danced with every stroke. Gu Xianwang smoothly plucked the flashlight from between her fingers, casting white light across her palm. Every vein and fine line stood out in sharp relief.

Gu Xianwang knew she shouldn’t let her mind wander, but it was only at this close range that she noticed for the first time: Long Li’s hands bore scars. Her regenerative powers were extraordinary, but she wasn’t some lizard that could shed its skin—every wound left an indelible mark.

She stared blankly for a long moment, so Long Li tilted her gaze toward her. “Something wrong?”

Gu Xianwang’s nose prickled, her eyes darting like a startled deer’s. “N-No… this diagram. It kinda looks like the Milky Way.”

What a ridiculous excuse. It was hardly any better than protesting too much.

Long Li’s smile was faint. “It does, doesn’t it? Taoism teaches that the Big Dipper holds thirty-six Heavenly Gang Stars among its clusters. But in truth, after the Yellow Emperor defeated Chi You, he set that number for the new cities of the Divine Land. The real Heavenly Gang Stars are only seventeen, centered on the Big Dipper’s imperial chariot.”

She tapped the dense cluster of ink dots beneath her index and middle fingers with the pen tip. “Tian Shu, Tian Xuan, Tian Ji, and Tian Quan form the bowl. Yu Heng, Kai Yang, and Yao Guang make up the handle. Together, the Big Dipper Seven Stars.”

Yao Cuo, hearing her expound with such authority, sidled over to stand behind them, peering and listening in.

Gu Xianwang had assumed Long Li was just giving her an out, but she was deadly serious.

“In ancient times, the Big Dipper governed celestial omens and the seasons, commanding immense respect. Those three handle stars are also called the Heavenly Prison Stars.”

Yao Cuo was the first to take it the wrong way. “Yang Xiong, the Sick Wei Tuo?”

Long Li shook her head. “The Heavenly Gang suppresses evil, the Heavenly Prison binds ghosts. There was an ancient art called Qimen Dunjia—essentially harnessing the eight trigrams of the heavens to form an array, using star positions as its eyes.”

Gu Xianwang caught on. “So you think the stone pillars are arranged as an array drawn from a star map?”

“Can it really be that uncanny? Qimen Dunjia, star maps, array eyes? That’s not scientific at all.”

Yao Cuo might have been Gu Xianwang’s senior brother, but he’d only apprenticed in the opera troupe. Shang Ruyun never breathed a word to him about the treasure-hunting trade. The tales he knew were all wheedled out of his junior sister. Bluntly put, he’d been born into prosperity and raised under the red flag—he didn’t buy into ghosts or gods, not deep down. Even now, he clung to his faltering skepticism.

“Is that right? Active solar sunspots disrupt Earth’s magnetic field, sparking climate anomalies and scrambling electronic signals. The moon’s tides ceaselessly tug at this watery globe. Dismissing array arts as pure superstition might be a touch premature.”

Yao Cuo: ……

Long Li pointed to the groove along the underground palace’s central axis. “I suspect this place was built to imprison a person.”

“At first, they sealed that person into the stone wall with an iron coffin. Then, using the stone pillars in place of wooden stakes, they drove a Heavenly Prison killing array into the ground and filled it with rootless yin water. All to keep something inside that person’s body in check.”

“I imagine the one who ordered it had some tie to the prisoner—enough lingering hope, or perhaps guilt, that the builders left a door. It must conceal a code only the prisoner would know when lucid.”

“But to build something this ruthless, whatever afflicted that person had to be extraordinarily dangerous. No matter how much pity they felt, those in power wouldn’t grant a second chance.”

Long Li’s theory lacked hard proof, but her calm, straightforward delivery sent a chill seeping from the bones.

Gu Xianwang asked, “No iron coffin here means that person got out in the end?”

Long Li’s eyes traced the jagged rock face inside the groove. Her expression was grim. “They got out. But not through the door, I suspect.”

Yao Cuo’s mind reeled with grim visions. Her even tone turned the whole underground palace spectral. He shifted involuntarily, water sloshing dully. The leaden drag on his thighs set off alarms in his head. The realization hit so hard his breath came shallow and ragged.

“Forget ghosts for a second. This water’s rising way too fast. Those round platforms—will they even work anymore?”

Gu Xianwang’s legs had gone numb from the ache, her whole body throbbing. Oddly, the pain felt familiar, safe—like every attack from her childhood.

Suddenly, several images flashed rapidly through her mind. Gu Xianwang furrowed her brows slightly, trying to recapture them. “These markings on the door might be connected to the Book of Changes.”

“You’ve seen them before?”

Gu Xianwang wasn’t entirely sure. She vaguely remembered glimpsing similar patterns at a family gathering when she was very young, but so much time had passed that the details were hazy at best.

“I only have a faint impression, but the positions of these circular disks weren’t arranged like this.”

Long Li noticed the oddity on her leg and gently steadied Gu Xianwang, guiding her toward slightly higher ground. “Yes, they’re from the Book of Changes—but more precisely, from Returning to Hiding Changes and Linked Mountains Changes.”

“In ancient shamanic divination, they used the earth embedded in the walls to symbolize a person’s fortune. One’s birth chart may be fated by the heavens, but it can be bolstered by forming seals with spiritual objects to channel the qi of the Four Images, thus aiding one’s destiny. The designs on these four doors depict seal-forming arrays: Si Zhi, Gu Yu, Han Dao, and Zang Chi.”

Yao Cuo said, “You knew this all along? Then why keep us in suspense?”

Long Li sighed. “Recognizing the seal-forming arrays doesn’t help much. This is ancient Witch territory—Wu predates the Shamans. We can’t deduce the ancients’ intentions from later interpretations. The Book of Changes records more than just these four arrays. Why select only these four here? That’s the real puzzle.”

The water level continued to rise, and the air grew ever thinner. It wasn’t just Yao Cuo; Gu Xianwang felt her own tension coiling tighter, her mind racing at the brink of overload.

“You mentioned birth charts and celestial patterns earlier,” she said. “This underground palace is riddled with star maps. Could these four arrays correspond to specific stars? Since the array diagrams appear in the Book of Changes, maybe they have real-world prototypes. We shouldn’t judge the ancients by modern standards—we need to think like the Witch Clan.”

Lost in her train of thought, Gu Xianwang continued. “The disks can rotate, just like stars shifting across the sky with the passage of time. If these four doors hold a code meant for the person imprisoned here, what would be the most vital, most personal information for an ancient clan that rarely used writing?”

“The Witch Clan… Whoever commanded the building of this underground palace must have been a high-ranking Witch Priest or divine officiant. Those connected to her were likely the same.”

Almost in unison, Long Li voiced the same conclusion: “Birth time.”

The two women locked eyes, a spark of excitement gleaming in their gazes. Long Li called out louder, “Before the Four Pillars and Eight Characters, true birth fate was determined by the Four Gods and Twelve Images—as recorded in the Chu Silk Book: ‘The Four Gods descend, establishing the Three Heavens; Wei Thought Spreads, establishing the Four Urgents.’ Witch Priests serve as heaven’s emissaries, so their destinies align directly with the stars.”

“Si Zhi, Gu Yu, Han Dao, Zang Chi. These form the Four Gods Star Array.”