novelaction Chapter 1117 Phoenix Blood
Chapter 1117 Phoenix Blood
Lin Zhen's gaze was fixed on the stone platform.
The enormous octagonal stone platform, like a silent behemoth, lay prostrate in the center of the ancestral hall, exuding an ancient and eerie aura.
The distorted, ghostly characters carved on it made people dizzy and uneasy.
Of the "Night Owl" assassins behind him, fewer than fifty were still standing.
Everyone was wounded, and everyone's breathing was heavy and labored.
They had just fought their way out of the layers upon layers of deadly traps and mechanisms outside, and were already completely exhausted.
But now, they face a predicament more desperate than any mountain of knives or sea of fire.
time.
They ran out of time.
It felt like countless bees were buzzing in Lin Zhen's mind.
The Grand Canal, tens of millions of people... these words were like mountains, pressing down on him and making it hard for him to breathe.
He forced himself to calm down, but his hand gripping the sword hilt still trembled uncontrollably.
"Your Highness, what... what is this thing?" The ghostly figure approached, his voice hoarse, one arm haphazardly draped in a cloth strip across his chest, clearly having been seriously injured while trying to break through the trap.
Lin Zhen did not answer. His gaze shifted from the eerie stone platform to the already stiff corpse in the corner.
Zhao Si.
Kong Zhiqian's henchmen.
This bastard, after completing his poisoning mission, actually came here and decisively committed suicide. With his life, and the words written in blood beside him, he gave Lin Zhen the most vicious mockery.
"Lin Zhen, the game has only just begun."
Lin Zhen's teeth were grinding together.
He got it.
Kong Zhiqian, that madman, never intended for them to obtain the antidote easily from the very beginning.
What he set up was a series of traps, a deadly trap!
He sacrificed his life to ensure the message was delivered, putting Lin Zhen and Murong Yan in a dilemma where they had to be careful not to harm the innocent.
Then, he used Zhao Si's death and this damned stone platform to buy time.
He was gambling that Lin Zhen couldn't solve the mystery.
He was gambling, gambling that the Great Qian Dynasty wouldn't last until Lin Zhen found the antidote!
If enough time is allowed to pass, the canal's poison will spread completely, plunging the people along its banks into chaos due to water shortages. By then, even if an antidote is found, it will be too late.
The entire Jiangnan region, and even half of the Great Qian Dynasty, will be plunged into an abyss of no return.
How ruthless! How vicious!
"Your Highness, let's smash it!" A man with a bloodied face, nicknamed "Night Owl," said viciously, brandishing a knife. "Forget about Bagua and Qimen, we'll split it open with one axe. I refuse to believe we can't get what's inside!"
"No!" Lin Zhen immediately stopped him.
His gaze fell on the base of the stone platform.
There, countless golden threads, thinner than a human hair, connect the ancestral hall, extending all the way to its four walls and roof beams.
“This is a series of traps.” Lin Zhen’s voice was as cold as ice. “If we use brute force to destroy the stone platform, the entire ancestral hall will collapse instantly. We will all be buried alive here. And the formula for the antidote will also be destroyed.”
Upon hearing this, everyone's hearts sank to the bottom.
Smash it, no way.
If you don't smash it, you can't untie it.
What the hell should we do?!
All eyes were on Lin Zhen.
In their hearts, this young prince was an omnipotent god.
As long as he's there, there's no obstacle we can't overcome.
Lin Zhen felt the expectant and trusting gazes behind him.
He knew he couldn't panic. He was the pillar of support for everyone; if he panicked, it would truly be the end for everyone.
He took a deep breath, forcing his heart, which was pounding wildly with anger and anxiety, to slowly calm down.
He started walking and slowly circled the stone platform.
His brain was working at lightning speed.
Kong Zhiqian... Qimen Dunjia... Dead End...
Kong Zhiqian was born in a Confucian holy land and was well-versed in poetry and books from a young age, having explored the teachings of various schools of thought.
He was particularly fascinated by the Mohist mechanical arts and the Taoist Yin-Yang and Five Elements theories.
These pieces of information flashed through Lin Zhen's mind one by one.
This stone platform appears to be an unsolvable divination formation, but Lin Zhen has a vague feeling that things are not so simple.
Kong Zhiqian is an extremely arrogant, even narcissistic person.
The ultimate goal of his scheme was not simply to kill Lin Zhen, but rather... to show off.
He wanted to show off his intelligence and brilliance to Lin Zhen, the man who had ruined everything for him.
He wanted to make Lin Zhen, amidst endless despair and failure, admit that he, Kong Zhiqian, was the smartest person in the world.
Therefore, there must be a solution to this situation!
The key to solving it lies not in the art of Qimen Dunjia, but in Kong Zhiqian himself!
Lin Zhen's gaze fell once again on the strange characters on the stone platform.
He didn't recognize a single word, but he discovered that the arrangement of these characters seemed to follow a certain special pattern.
He crouched down, stretched out his fingers, and gently touched the cold words.
Suddenly, his finger stopped on one of the characters.
That character was engraved deeper than the others. And its shape…
Lin Zhen's pupils suddenly contracted!
He recognizes the shape!
This is not some ancient script, this is... this is the shape of the artificial hill in the back garden of the Confucius family mansion!
When he was young, he once visited the Confucius family in Qufu as a guest.
He was deeply impressed by the uniquely shaped artificial mountain.
A bold idea suddenly popped into his mind!
These so-called "ancient characters" are not array runes at all! They are... a map! A map of the ancestral home of the Kong family, dismantled and torn to pieces!
The key to solving this puzzle lies in piecing the map back together in the correct order!
But what is the correct order?
Lin Zhen's gaze swept back and forth across the stone platform.
Suddenly, he saw the very center of the stone platform, at the eye of the yin-yang symbol in the Bagua diagram. There, two tiny, almost imperceptible characters were carved.
"Life" and "Death".
Lin Zhen's heart skipped a beat!
He recalled what Kong Zhiqian had said to Uvi at the Northern Desert Royal Court.
—"Use the Southerners' own methods to deal with the Southerners."
"Ruler and subject, father and son, social order, ethics..."
What is the most important thing to the Kong family?
It is etiquette, it is tradition, it is ancestral hall!
In the ancestral hall of the Confucius family, the placement of the ancestral tablets must follow a strict order!
The living and the dead, elders and juniors, legitimate children and illegitimate children...
This stone platform is the ancestral hall of the Confucius family!
These characters are the ancestral tablets of the Confucius family!
The key to solving this puzzle lies in the order in which the ancestral tablets are placed in the Confucius Ancestral Hall!
"Ghostly Shadow!" Lin Zhen suddenly shouted.
"My subordinate is here!"
"Do you remember that member of a collateral branch of the Kong family we interrogated before? Did he mention how the ancestral tablets in the Kong family ancestral hall are arranged?"
The ghost was taken aback upon hearing this, then a glint of light flashed in its eyes!
He immediately replied, "Your Highness! I remember! That person said that the ancestral tablets in the Confucius Ancestral Hall are arranged according to seniority, from top to bottom, and from closest to most distant relatives, with the central axis of the main hall as the dividing line. The tablets of the living are not placed in the main hall, but are enshrined in the side hall!"
"Left Zhao, right Mu, with the ancestor as the most respected..." Lin Zhen murmured, repeating this phrase over and over, his eyes growing brighter and brighter!
He found it!
He finally found the key to breaking this deadlock!
He immediately walked to the stone platform, took a deep breath, and began to press the characters representing "memorial tablets" on the stone platform in the order instructed by the ghost.
Each time a button is pressed, a soft "click" sound comes from inside the stone platform.
Everyone's hearts were in their throats.
They held their breath, watching Lin Zhen's every move with bated breath.
Time passed by minute by minute.
Fine beads of sweat appeared on Lin Zhen's forehead. His movements became faster and smoother.
Finally, when he pressed the last character!
"Boom——"
The entire stone platform suddenly shook violently, and then slowly cracked open from the middle, revealing a hidden compartment.
In the hidden compartment, lay quietly a yellowed parchment scroll covered with tiny, neatly written characters.
The antidote!
"We got it! Your Highness! We got it!"
The surviving "night owls" erupted in a huge cheer of relief!
However, Lin Zhen felt no joy whatsoever.
He picked up the parchment scroll, glanced at it, and his face turned extremely ugly again.
The prescription for the antidote was indeed on the parchment scroll.
However, the most important ingredient was only described in two characters.
—"Phoenix Blood".