Chapter 1366 — The Entrance to the Great Hall
The Blossom Guardian · Page 2 of 2
Wei Zhao did not turn his eyes to those murals, and for good reason: in the materials Liu Bojia had given him, this hall before the entrance to the underground palace had indeed been mentioned, but the key to solving it, as Liu Bojia described, lay not in the murals at all, but in the stone pillars within the hall.
Though Liu Bojia had never said plainly what was special about the pillars, even such a hint was good enough. After all, much of what Liu Bojia had was conjecture — he had never been here in person.
"Male Thief, what's so special about these stone pillars?" Qiu Lingshan asked, seeing that Wei Zhao's gaze had lingered on them all this while.
"Perhaps something. But I haven't found it yet. Let's look together." Wei Zhao first circled one pillar, studying it, and found nothing special; then he examined several others in turn, and found nothing amiss in them either.
Wei Zhao smiled bitterly. Perhaps he simply had no expertise in this line, and that was why, even if the pillars held something special, he could not see it.
This mechanism carried no danger, so Wei Zhao had no use for the jade pendant's warning functions — standing before the pillars, his jade pendant showed not the slightest reaction.
There were only a few pictures in the hall. Old Hei, Yu Xiaoke, and Elder Yu finished examining them quickly, then went over one another's findings. In the end they found nothing special: the pictures were ordinary, more like talismans to soothe the dead, with no other meaning at all.
"Seems we've taken the wrong path. There is nothing special about these pictures," Yu Xiaoke said. "The last one is the melody of a dirge — something to lay the dead in eternal sleep..."
"I fear that is so," said Old Hei, a man of rich experience, who had also glimpsed a hint of the truth.
"Then what are we to do?" Elder Yu was thoroughly displeased. They had searched so long and found nothing — what had they been doing all this while?
"Let's see how Male Thief is doing," Old Hei said. Though he nursed some resentment, he had to admit that Male Thief might already have discovered something.
"Male Thief, have you found anything?" Elder Yu walked over and asked bluntly.
"No. But there ought to be something special about these stone pillars. Lady Yan, what do you think?" Wei Zhao did not understand such things himself, but he could at least give Yu Xiaoke a hint.
"Oh?" Yu Xiaoke had never considered the pillars before. Now, at Wei Zhao's reminder, she was startled — could these pillars hold something special as well?
"Stone pillars?" Old Hei was startled too. In general, the pillars of an ancient tomb served to support the hall and had no other purpose. Unlike stone statues, they could not be moved at will, and no one usually used them for mechanisms — which was why he had overlooked them entirely upon entering.
But since Wei Zhao had raised the matter and declared the pillars problematic, Old Hei rather thought they might indeed be problematic.
Having handed the puzzle to Yu Xiaoke and Old Hei, Wei Zhao simply stopped studying it himself. He sat down cross-legged on the ground and began to cultivate.