Chapter 510: A Glimpse of Cold Light

"Zu An, look quickly, there's a strange bird!" Pei Mianman exclaimed, pointing to a spot in the center of the stone gate. "Perhaps the mechanism to open the door is right there."

Zu An had already noticed it too. In the very center of the stone gate was a strange bird pattern, glowing red all over. It resembled a phoenix but wasn't quite a phoenix, and it looked like a peacock but wasn't quite a peacock.

It even bore a slight resemblance to his summoned beast, "Hundred Melodies."

A thought sparked in Zu An's mind. He quickly summoned Hundred Melodies and directed it to approach the strange bird pattern. Unfortunately, no matter how it flew or sang around the pattern, the stone gate remained completely unresponsive.

However, as the sound waves from Hundred Melodies' chirping spread, the red glow in the eyes of the skeleton warrior kneeling by the steps nearby gradually faded. Unfortunately, Zu An and Pei Mianman did not notice this.

"It had no effect?" Zu An frowned, feeling deeply disappointed.

He suddenly recalled records about the Yin-Shang dynasty from past documentaries. The ancestor of the Shang people was called Qi, born when "Jian Di, a woman of the You-Song clan, swallowed the egg of a black bird." Thus, the Shang dynasty regarded the black bird as their totem. This bird must be their totemic black bird, but what exactly does the black bird here represent?

As he pondered, Pei Mianman, standing nearby, suddenly made a new discovery. "Huh, this bird pattern is a bit strange. The stones around it seem to be movable, and in the center of the bird, there appear to be some grids."

Zu An was startled and quickly looked closely, only then realizing that there were indeed two horizontal and two vertical lines on the black bird pattern, dividing the entire design into nine small squares.

Around it was a circle of peculiar symbols. Pei Mianman tried moving them and found that the small blocks carved with these strange symbols could slide into the nine small squares in the center.

"One, two, three..." Pei Mianman counted, exclaiming in surprise, "There are exactly nine numbered symbols. It looks like placing these blocks in their corresponding positions will open the door."

"Excellent, Mianman, you're really observant," Zu An said, approaching the gate and gazing at the nine surrounding stone blocks. He realized he had been overthinking things and going down the wrong path, whereas Pei Mianman's straightforwardness had allowed her to spot these clues. "But what do these symbols mean? Have you seen them before?"

"No," Pei Mianman shook her head, pondering everything she had learned. "I've never seen anything like these in the records of any race. Speaking of which, the style of these symbols is somewhat similar to the two characters on the previous stone tablet."

"Really?" Zu An was momentarily stunned, then quickly re-examined them. With her reminder, he began to make sense of the strange patterns.

Since they were related to oracle bone script, and with nine numbers and nine squares, he easily connected them to the mysterious He Tu Luo Shu (River Map and Luo Shu) from Chinese history. A famous mnemonic rhyme associated with it states: "Nine on top, one below; three on the left, seven on the right; two and four are shoulders, six and eight are feet; five is in the center."

Simply put, the sum of numbers in every row, column, and diagonal is 15.

Filling in these numbers would be simple for anyone with basic math knowledge. The problem was that the surrounding blocks did not resemble the numbers he was familiar with, making it impossible for him to distinguish which pattern corresponded to which number.

Four of the patterns were relatively easy to identify: "one horizontal line," "two horizontal lines," "three horizontal lines," and "four horizontal lines," which likely corresponded to one, two, three, and four respectively.

However, the others were much harder to recognize. For example, one symbol resembled a trident with a curved tail, another looked like an inverted V-shaped roof, one had an "X" in the middle with horizontal lines at the top and bottom, like a folding stool or a spring platform from Mario, and another was like reversed parentheses, ")(".

The strangest symbol was a cross.

Zu An subconsciously thought it was "ten," but then immediately dismissed the idea, as there was no number 10 in a nine-square grid.

He was filled with regret, wishing he had watched more documentaries about oracle bone script. If he had, he might have recognized these characters.

He wondered how those archaeologists back then had managed to decipher these enigmatic symbols.

Wait a minute...

A sudden flash of inspiration struck him. He remembered hearing in a documentary that Chinese culture has remained continuous because people thousands of years later can still recognize the writing of their ancestors from millennia ago.

The reason for this recognition is primarily that writing systems evolve from one generation to the next.

Later scripts primarily evolved from the Qin Dynasty's Small Seal Script, which itself retained some traces of oracle bone script.

Given this, there should be a discernible connection between oracle bone script and later characters. While complex oracle bone characters might be difficult, knowing that these particular ones represent the numbers 1-9 should allow him to slowly deduce their meanings.

He stared at the trident-like symbol with a curved tail, his mind racing as he examined it from various angles.

Suddenly, he realized that if he pulled the trident's head down and flattened the entire symbol, it looked exactly like the left half of the character for "nine" (九), with the curved tail of the trident forming the right hook.

And didn't the reversed parentheses resemble the shape of "eight" (八)?

"Wait, if that's 'eight,' what's the inverted V-shaped one? It also looks quite like 'eight.' Could it be the two dots below 'six'?" he wondered.

That left only "five" and "seven." The cross-shaped symbol didn't seem to fit "five" at all.

Could the "spring platform" symbol be "five"?

In his mind, he tried twisting the "X" between the two horizontal lines of the "spring platform" symbol, and it indeed seemed to form the shape of "five" (五).

Therefore, the cross must be "seven." The only difference was an extra hook.

Zu An reviewed his deductions again. Although his reasoning seemed somewhat logical, it wasn't without flaws. For instance, if the four horizontal lines didn't represent "four," many subsequent deductions would be incorrect. He was even unsure about the "eight" and "six" identifications.

He was about to verify his findings once more when the roaring cries of "ying-ying-ying" echoed from not far away. Clearly, the taotie beasts, having finished devouring their companions' corpses, were now catching up.

"Zu An, what do we do?" Pei Mianman asked, looking at the taotie beasts dimly visible in the thick fog. Black flames flickered around her hands, indicating she was ready for combat.

However, against so many taotie, their chances of survival were slim.

Zu An had no time to ponder further. He immediately moved each character to its corresponding position based on his recent deductions.

The grand gate was ingeniously designed. The two horizontal and two vertical lines forming the grid had grooves that guided the surrounding character blocks as they slid into place.

As he slid the last character into place, a golden light shimmered from the nine characters. The light then extended, filling the gap between the two doors from top to bottom, and then tracing the upper and lower contours, completely enveloping both doors in golden light.

Click!

The sound of gears and mechanisms whirred from within, and then the two large doors slowly began to open.

Pei Mianman gazed at Zu An with a look of shock. "Zu An, I'm truly more impressed with you by the minute! How did you manage to solve such a difficult mechanism?"

She had always prided herself on her intelligence, but she had been completely stumped by those strange patterns just moments ago.

"Haha, you'll find out there are many more impressive things about me later," Zu An said with a triumphant tone, though inwardly he felt a pang of shame. The only reason he could solve the mechanism was because he had the advantage of being a transmigrator; without his knowledge from his previous life, he wouldn't have been able to figure it out no matter how hard he tried.

"Braggart," Pei Mianman teased, her beautiful eyes sparkling. She mused to herself how Chu Yan had somehow seen his extraordinary qualities beforehand, but there was no time to think about it now. She grabbed Zu An and hurried into the stone gate. "The taotie are catching up! Let's get inside!"

After running through the gate, they instinctively tried to re-lock the stone doors to keep the taotie out. Unfortunately, despite using all their strength, they couldn't close the doors.

With time pressing, they had no opportunity to search for a closing mechanism. Zu An could only pull Pei Mianman deeper inside.

"Ying-ying-ying!" A taotie roared as it reached the steps, about to pounce into the stone gate. Suddenly, a cold glint flashed, and its body instantly froze.

The tall, burly skeleton warrior nearby slowly rose from the ground. A drop of fresh blood slowly dripped from the long-handled spear in its hand, landing on the ground with a soft thud.

Then the frozen taotie's body trembled, and its massive head slowly slid from its neck.