Chapter 185 The Skull in the Sarcophagus (1/2)
The ancestral temple of the Xin family was locked, but the lock was nothing to the old secret agent of the Ming dynasty. Yin Molan opened the lock in three seconds with two thin wires.
Yin Molan pushed the door open and Ning Tao followed him in.
The ancestral temple was dark and unlit. After Yin Molan closed the door, the darkness deepened. Ning Tao pulled out his phone, woke up the screen, and used the faint light from the screen to reach the shrine.
The blank spirit tablet was gone.
Ning Tao then used his phone to look at other spirit tablets, but still didn’t find the blank one. His brow furrowed. “The last time I was here the spirit tablet was clearly here. Why is it gone?”
“That woman knows you’ll come again.” Yin Molan made the judgment.
Ning Tao didn’t know what to do. Could he see the elixir prescription of the Ancestor-seeking Elixir only if he agreed to Zhu Hongqin’s condition? If Bai Sheng was the only one he had to deal with, he would not hesitate to agree to Zhu Hongqin’s terms. But this matter concerned Bai Jing, and it gave him a headache.
“Wait!” Yin Molan said, in a strange tone.
“Senior Yin,” said Ning Tao tentatively, “did you find anything?”
Yin Molan walked around the ancestral temple, from the wall on the left to the wall on the right, and from the wall on the right to the wall facing the shrine. Then he said, “This ancestral temple…”
“What’s wrong with this ancestral temple?” Ning Tao was a little worried.
Yin Molan looked up at the roof and seemed to confirm something. “This is the study of third Crown Prince! I’ve been there a few times, so I remember it. Do you see that beam?” He raised his hand to the beam overhead and said, “If I remember correctly, there must be two characters inscribed on it, the ‘Ri’ and the ‘Yue’. These are used by the third Crown Prince to encourage himself not to forget the Ming dynasty.”
Ning Tao jumped up and took two separate steps in the void. He reached the beam. With one hand he grasped the top of the beam. After stabilizing, he leaned in and blew on the beam. A piece of dust was blown away and the old beam was inscribed with “Ri” and “Yue”. there was a little space between the two words, but together it was “Ming”.
“Senior Yin, you’re telling the truth. It really has ‘Ri’ and ‘Yue’ on it.” Ning Tao let go of his hand, fell down naturally, and stood firmly on the ground with his legs bent before touching the ground.
He became more and more adept at the Ladder under Feet. If there was no roof over his head, he could take another step into the void and climb another two meters or so.
Yin Molan’s eyes glowed strangely. “Buddy, you have an interesting skill. What’s is it?”
Ning Tao replied, “The Ladder under Feet. But Senior Yin, this is no time to talk about skill. You haven’t told me what you found?”
Yin Molan said, “This study is a replica of the original study and a reconstruction. If that Zhu Hongqin had anything to do with Miss Hongyu, she might have reproduced the gear and the secret chamber together.”
Ning Tao was thrilled. “Where is the gear and the secret chamber?”
Yin Molan walked to the wall behind the shrine and counted up to “8” upward in the corner. Then he counted up to “8” to the left. Finally he reached down and pushed a brick into the wall.
Rattle…
From below came the sound of gear movement, and the ground trembled a little. A moment later, a tunnel entrance appeared on the ground beside Yin Molan.
Ning Tao immediately leaned over. Instead of satisfying the dim light of his phone screen, he turned on the flashlight on his phone and shone it into the tunnel.
The tunnel descended at a 45 degree angle, and there was a corner at a depth of a few meters. The walkway in the line of sight was made of gray clay bricks, and the top of the walkway was arched. Each stone brick was covered with traces of erosion and had a history of hundreds of years.
“Come with me.” Yin Molan stooped into the tunnel.
Ning Tao followed him down the tunnel, curious. “Senior Yin, I noticed that when you were counting bricks, you counted eight up and eight down. What does that mean?”
Yin Molan made a bow, his voice respectful. “That represents the name of Hongwu Emperor.”
Ning Tao immediately understood. Hongwu Emperor was Zhu Yuanzhang, whose nickname was Zhu Chongba, which meant double eight. Thus Yin Molan just counted eight on the vertical and eight on the horizontal, meaning double eight.
They passed the corner and walked a few dozen meters laterally until they came to the end of the tunnel.
A stone door blocked the road and a pair of small stone lions were placed in the doorway. Yin Molan went straight to the stone lion on the left, grabbed the stone ball in its mouth, and gave it a twist.
Rattle…
The stone door opened with a loud noise.
Ning Tao was about to go in when Yin Molan yanked him. “Don’t move!”
Whoosh!
Dozens of arrows flew out of the stone door, narrowly missing Ning Tao and Yin Molan and heading for the tunnel where they had come. Then from the dark tunnel came the sound of arrows hitting clay bricks.
Ning Tao drenched in cold sweat. Several of the arrows had almost brushed his face. If Yin Molan hadn’t stopped him and made him stand by the doorframe, he would have been shot. His Powerful Tolerance to Beating could block blunt blows, but not the penetrating damage of the arrow. Even if he had special spiritual power to heal, if he was stabbed in the vital part, he would be in danger.
“All right, come with me.” Yin Molan walked forward into the stone room behind the stone door.
Ning Tao followed, holding his cell phone high in the air and observing the room in the flashlight’s light.
It was a vault, to be exact, with a sarcophagus in the middle.
In front of the sarcophagus lay a stone table, on which lay a spirit tablet, on which was written “Tomb of our Benefactor Zhu Hongyu.
Ning Tao’s eyes moved to the sarcophagus after seeing the spirit tablet, and his heart was full of excitement. The sarcophagus was so hidden that it probably contained Zhu Hongyu’s skull!
Yin Molan saluted Zhu Hongyu’s spirit tablet three times.