Chapter 221: The Secret of the Zodiacs
Chapter 221 The Secret of the Zodiacs
Hu Xiaoxian had also come up with it. She said, "We should respect the dead, in spite of all the Spirit Stones we've got from him. We should make a kowtow to pay out respect to Senior Situ."
After that, she knelt down on the ground, and kowtowed to the tablet three times. Before she could stand up again, she heard the squeaking sound of some gear starting up.
"Crap! The gears just started!"
Qin Haodong held the little fellow in his arms and reached out to hold Hu Xiaoxian's waist. Then they rushed out of the stone cabin in a hurry.
When they looked back, nothing dangerous had happened in the room. The table under the tablet was moving to the right and revealed an entrance. The entrance was bright inside, with stages connecting somewhere below.
"Looks like there's another world down there!"
Qin Haodong took his hands off Hu Xiaoxian. The two went down through the burrow. It was another stone cabin down there, covering nearly 20 square meters. In the middle of the cabin, there was a futon, on which a man was sitting with his leg crossed. That was Situ Zhaixing, but there was not a single clue of vitality in him. He had been dead for long.
Just when their attention was drawn by the dead body of Situ Zhaixing, they heard a cracking sound. The entrance had been completely sealed.
"What happened?"
Qin Haodong was startled. He raised his hand and slapped on the direction of the entrance. Bang! The entrance moved still. Qin Haodong reached out to flicker on it, and it sounded like something metal. It turned out that the entrance had been sealed by a large piece of steel.
"Oops, we're trapped here!" Qin Haodong said.
"I'll have a try!"
Hu Xiaoxian said when she pulled out the Purple Flash Sword. The purple flash cut on the iron steel board at the entrance. After a clear clank, there was nothing but a small white dot left on the board, no other damages.
At the moment, they heard someone saying, "Don't bother. I made the entrance with enduring cold iron. You would never be able to break it."
Qin Haodong and Hu Xiaoxian turned back and saw a shadow showed up in the basement again. It was Situ Zhaixing. Now that his dead body was sitting aside, this must be his residue spirit.
"Senior Situ, why are you trapping us here?" Qin Haodong asked.
"You're the lucky ones who have found the secret room that I left. Why the rush since you've already in here? Now sit and listen. I got a story for you."
After he said that, he pointed at the two futons at the corner for them to sit.
Qin Haodong thought about it for a moment and knew it wasn't the time to rush. The stone basement was too tough to break out. They had no option but to hear Situ Zhaixing talk first.
He took Hu Xiaoxian to sit down on the futons. Situ Zhaixing was no more than a virtue spirit, but he sat down, too. The little fellow stared at the virtue spirit with strong interest because she found it quite interesting.
"Senior Situ, if there's anything you want to tell us, please." Qin Haodong said.
"This story is a bit long, and I'll start with my father, Situ Qing."
Situ Zhaixing gradually started.
"My father was the 42nd master of Yiyuan Sect. He was once set up by the evil cultivator, Ghost Load of Mountain Meng. He was severely injured and escaped to the Liaodong Area."
"He had got away from the hunting of Ghost Lord, but he was at the same time too severely injured that he was about to die. But it turned out that wasn't the end of his life, he was so lucky to have run into a hunter in the forest."
"The hunter cured my father with deer blood. When he had been healed, he told the hunter that he could bring up any of his wishes and my father would fulfill them in reward. It had never occurred to him that the hunter was such an ambitious person; he said he wanted to be an emperor."
"As the master of Yiyuan Sect, my father was a man of his words. The hunter's request had crossed the line, but my father promised him. To realize the hunter's wish, my father used 12 Upper Level Spirit Stones. He took advantage of the geomantic of the rivers and mountains outside the borderline, and then build a Rising Dragon Formation to nourish the Dragon Veins of the hunter."
"A hunter? The Dragon Veins outside of the borderline?" Qin Haodong was so surprised when he heard that. He asked, "Senior Situ, the nameless hunter you're talking about, was he Nurhachi, the Mongolian emperor?"
"Right, that was his name." Situ Zhaixing continued, "After my father helped him. He grew luckier and luckier day after day. Finally, he had unified the Liaodong Area. It as a pity that he died young, even before the Rising Dragon Formation performed at its peak."
"Before he died, he pleaded my father to be the National Master of the Jurchen. My father was a cultivator, and he didn't want himself to get involved in the vulgar affairs; therefore, he refused him. But he did have promised the hunter that he would keep nourishing the Dragon Veins of his family with the Rising Dragon Formation, and make his descendants emperors."
Qin Haodong was so surprised. He had heard that there were Dragon Veins outside the borderline of Huaxia, and now it turned out it was true.
Situ Zhaixing said, "The hunter had a son named Hong Taiji. The guy was pretty smart. He knew my father's Rising Dragon Formation was the foundation of his family, so he tried his best to flatter my father. He offered my father the position of national but was rejected again. Later he named the country with my father's name, which was the Qing Dynasty."
"Gosh, that was how the Qing Dynasty got its name?"
When Qin Haodong was in history class, his teacher had taught him about the history of the Qing Dynasty. He said Hong Taiji changed the title of the dynasty to counter the repulsion of Han Chinese. He wanted to show the world that the Qing Dynasty wasn't any extension of the Jin Dynasty, and it would be a time when all the people ruled themselves.
The statement was questioned by the students immediately. Somebody asked why he had to choose the character Qing out of so many Huaxia Characters? Why he had to take the word Qing as the title?
The question really got the teacher back to then. Now Qin Haodong finally got the answer. The title came from the name of Situ Qing, the late master of Yiyuan Sect.
Situ Zhaixing continued, "Later the Qi of Dragon gathered around the Rising Dragon Formation was getting thicker and thicker. Hong Taiji finally became the president as he wished. His respect for my father remained the same after his enthronement. Every year he would donate a great deal of money and various cultivation resources to Yiyuan Sect."
"However, the mortals didn't live as long as the cultivation artist. We could live for hundreds of years while they only had decades. Soon Hong Taiji passed away and his descendants succeeded."
"The existence of Yiyuan Sect and the Rising Dragon Formation became a secret kept between the emperors of the Qing Dynasty. The old emperors only told their successors about us as their last words."
"When Kangxi succeeded to the throne, he let out the secret of the Rising Dragon Formation unexpectedly. Some supporters of the previous dynasty know that the Qing Dynasty had Dragon Veins outside of the borderline. Many of them went to look for it, hoping to break the veins."
"Kangxi panicked when he heard about the leaking. He found my father in Yiyuan Sect, asking him to move the Rising Dragon Formation to the capital."
"The man had been respectful to my father for many years, so my father promised him. He let Kangxi build the Summer Palace in the capital city and sealed the 12 Upper Level Spirit Stones in the status if the 12 zodiacs. That was how they moved the Rising Dragon Formation to the capital secretly."
"With the nourishment of the Rising Dragon Formation. Qing Dynasty rose up like the sun at high noon. The country was powerful, and the emperor lived long."
Upon hearing that, Qin Haodong knew that there must be some accidental events to happen, or the Qing Dynasty wouldn't have declined.
Just as he had expected, Situ Zhaixing continued, "Accident happened when it came to Kangxi. He chose the 14th son as his successor, but his fourth son stole the crown after he died."
"The fourth son, Yongzheng, prisoned the 14th prince after he succeeded to the throne. The problem was that Kangxi had told all the secrets about the Rising Dragon Formation and Yiyuan Sect to his 14th son, and Yongzheng was none the wiser. The 14th prince was going to tell the secret to Yongzheng, but he could not meet him in person. The Dragon Veins mattered so much that he wouldn't let anyone else take the message."
"After Yongzheng succeeded to the crown, he found the government donated a great number of resources to Yiyuan Sect every year. He was pissed off because he knew nothing about the relationship. At the same time, he took our sect as a threat to the country because we held too many powerhouses."
"So he summoned a lot of powerful cultivators and poisoned the wine of Yiyuan Sect with the drug named Power Dispersing Powder. After all the preparations, the beast took all the powerhouses and slaughtered Yiyuan Sect. They killed my father and all the disciples in our sect, even all the fairy beasts."
Situ Zhaixing was just a Spirit, but when he said that, Qin Haodong and Hu Xiaoxian could feel his overwhelming anger and killing rage.
Qin Haodong asked, "Senior Situ, then how did you survive?"
Situ Zhaixing sighed and said, "I was a born talent in cultivation. I was better than most people when I was young and was the first genius in the sect."
"When I was 100 years old, I left Yiyuan Sect to making efforts to reach the Nascent Soul Realm. I built Zhaixing Palace here and practiced alone. That was how I survived. I've stayed seclusive for more than 30 years, and when I went out again, the Yiyuan sect had been wiped out for more than decades."
"I was outrageous when I heard the news. So I went to the capital and tried to kill Yongzheng."
Qin Haodong felt that was too much information for him to process today. The events shocked him one after another. Yongzheng's death has been a mystery in history. He died when he was 57 years old, which was not a very old age. He had been a healthy man until the day he died.
There are many stories about how Yongzheng died. The most widely spread version was he had been assassinated by Lyu Siniang. Now it turned out that he did have been assassinated, but the killer wasn't Lyu Siniang. It was Situ Zhaixing.
Hu Xiaoxian asked, "Senior Situ, what happened then?"
Situ Zhaixing said, "Yiyuan Sect helped the Qing Dynasty, but Yongzheng killed us all. Killing him wouldn't vent my anger, so I decided to destroy the Dragon Veins and stop them from continuing."
"But at that time, the powerhouses hired by Yongzheng arrived. Although I have reached the Nascent Soul Realm, I failed to confront them one-to-many. I was severely injured but I did have taken away the head of the dragon out of all the 12 zodiacs."
"Of course, Yongzheng had no idea about the secret of the 12 zodiacs. He had transferred away all the powerhouses in the Summer Palace, and that was how I got the chance. The Rising Dragon Formation was powered by the 12 Upper Level Spirit Stones. After I took away the head of the dragon, the formation was destroyed, so was the Dragon Veins."
"I had been hunting by a large number of powerhouses. I escaped to Shennongjia, a place with few people tread. I came back to Zhaixing Palace. In case somebody would find me, I arranged four formations out of Zhaixing Palace, and built the basement."
"I wanted people to believe that the one above was my last palace, so I left the Nine-Dragon Furnace and some of the Spirit Stones outside to confuse the enemy."
"I've made exquisite gears in the basement to ensure that anyone who kowtowed to me would not be my enemy. And they would have the chance to obtain my inheritance here."
Qin Haodong finally understood the full picture of the story. Hu Xiaoxian's kowtow just now opened the basement and let them see the body of Situ Zhaixing; however, they were still trapped here now. He couldn't tell whether it was good or bad.
Situ Zhaixing continued, "I was so badly injured, even worse than I imagined. Soon I died in the cave. My biggest regret was that I haven't seen how the Qing Dynasty dying."