Chapter 513: A Trace of Cold Light

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

Zu An had actually noticed it as well. In the very center of the stone gate was a strange bird pattern, glowing red all over. Its shape resembled a phoenix yet wasn't quite a phoenix, and it looked like a peacock yet wasn't quite a peacock.

It even bore a slight resemblance to his summoned beast, "Bai Ming."

Zu An had an idea. He quickly summoned Bai Ming and commanded it to approach the strange bird pattern. Unfortunately, no matter how it flew or cried around the pattern, the stone gate showed no reaction whatsoever.

However, as the sound waves from Bai Ming's cries spread, the red light in the eyes of the kneeling skeleton warrior by the nearby steps gradually dimmed. Unfortunately, neither Zu An nor Pei Mianman noticed this.

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

He suddenly recalled records about the Yin-Shang dynasty from a past documentary. The ancestor of the Shang people was named Xie, born when "Jian Di, a woman of the You-Rong clan, swallowed an egg of a dark bird." Therefore, the Shang dynasty regarded the dark bird (Xuan Niao) as their totem. This bird must be their totem, the Xuan Niao. So what exactly did the Xuan Niao represent here?

As he pondered, Pei Mianman, standing nearby, suddenly made a new discovery. "Huh," she exclaimed, "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. He quickly fixed his gaze on it, only then discovering that there were indeed two horizontal and two vertical lines on the Xuan Niao pattern, dividing it into nine small squares.

At the same time, there was a circle of strange symbols around it. Pei Mianman tried it out and found that the small blocks engraved with these symbols could slide into the nine central squares.

"One, two, three..." Pei Mianman counted, then exclaimed in surprise, "There are exactly nine blocks with symbols! It seems like placing these blocks in their corresponding positions should open the door."

"Excellent, Manman, you truly observe carefully," Zu An praised. He walked to the door, staring intently at the nine stone blocks around it. He realized he had been overthinking things earlier and gone astray; it was precisely Pei Mianman's more straightforward approach that allowed her to discover these clues. "But what do these symbols mean? Have you seen them before?"

"No," Pei Mianman shook her head, thinking hard about everything she had learned. "I've never seen anything like this in the texts of any race. Speaking of which, the style of these symbols is somewhat similar to the two characters on the stone tablet we saw earlier."

"Is that so?" Zu An was momentarily stunned. He quickly looked again. Now that she had reminded him, the strange patterns gradually began to make sense.

Since it was related to oracle bone script, these nine numbers, along with the nine squares, easily reminded him of the mysterious River Map and Luo Shu from Chinese history. Among them was a famous verse: "Nine at the top, one at the bottom; three on the left, seven on the right; two and four as shoulders, six and eight as feet; five in the center."

Simply put, the sum of numbers in each row, column, and diagonal was always 15.

Filling in these numbers would be simple; anyone with a basic understanding of mathematics could do it. However, the problem was that the surrounding blocks were not the numbers he was familiar with, and he couldn't tell 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." These should correspond to the numbers one, two, three, and four.

But the others were difficult to recognize. For instance, one symbol resembled a trident with a curved tail; another looked like a roof shaped like the character '人'; one had an "X" in the middle, with a horizontal line sealing it off both top and bottom, resembling a folding stool or the spring beds from Mario; and another was ")(", like a pair of reversed parentheses.

The strangest symbol of all was a cross.

Zu An instinctively thought it was the character for "ten," but then he immediately dismissed that idea. After all, there was no number 10 in a nine-square grid.

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

He wondered how those archaeologists back then had managed to decipher these "ghostly scribbles."

Wait a minute...

A sudden flash of inspiration struck him. He remembered a documentary saying that the reason Chinese culture had been passed down through generations unbroken was that people thousands of years later could recognize the writing of their ancestors from millennia ago.

Why could they recognize it? Primarily because characters evolved from one generation to the next.

Later characters primarily evolved from the Qin Dynasty's small seal script, which in turn contained some traces of oracle bone script.

Given this, oracle bone script and later characters should have a related connection. Complicated oracle bone characters were one thing, but knowing these symbols represented numbers from 1 to 9, he should be able to slowly deduce the clues.

He gazed at the trident-like icon with the curved tail. His mind raced, observing it from various angles.

Suddenly, he realized that if he pulled the trident's head down and flattened the entire shape, it was precisely the left half of the character "nine" (九). The curved tail of the trident was exactly the hook on the right side of "nine."

Didn't the pair of reversed parentheses look similar to the character for "eight" (八)?

"Hmm, if that's eight, then what's the '人'-shaped one? It also looks very much like eight! Could it be the two dots below 'six'?"

So only five and seven were left. The cross-shaped symbol didn't seem to resemble "five" (五) at all.

So, was the spring bed symbol "five"?

He tried to mentally twist the "X" between the two horizontal lines of the spring bed symbol; it seemed it could indeed be distorted into the shape of "five."

So the "ten" symbol would be seven, the only difference being an extra hook.

Zu An re-examined his deductions. He found that while his reasoning was somewhat logical, it wasn't without flaws. For example, if the four horizontal lines didn't represent four, then many subsequent deductions would be wrong. He wasn't even sure if he had correctly identified eight and six.

He was about to verify his findings again, but then a "ying ying ying" roar echoed from not far away. Clearly, the Taotie had devoured their companion's corpse and were now catching up.

"Zu An, what should we do?" Pei Mianman gazed at the indistinct Taotie appearing through the thick fog. Black flames coiled around her hands, clearly ready for battle.

However, with so many Taotie, the two of them were likely outnumbered and in grave danger.

Zu An had no time to think further. He directly moved the various characters to their corresponding positions according to his recent deductions.

This grand gate was intricately designed. The grid formed by the two horizontal and two vertical lines had grooves that perfectly guided the surrounding character blocks as they slid into place.

After he slid the last character into place, a burst of golden light shone from the nine characters. This golden light then extended, filling the gap between the two doors from top to bottom, and then along the upper and lower contours, completely enveloping the two great doors.

A series of mechanical sounds, like gears turning, came from within. Immediately after, the two great doors slowly opened.

Pei Mianman gazed at Zu An, her face full of shock. "Zu An, I truly admire you more and more now! You can even solve such a difficult mechanism?"

"Haha, you'll find out I have many more impressive qualities later," Zu An said, his tone triumphant. Yet, he secretly felt a pang of shame. The main reason he could solve this mechanism was due to the advantage of being a transmigrator. Without the knowledge from his previous life, he wouldn't have been able to figure it out no matter how hard he tried.

"Vain," Pei Mianman thought, her beautiful eyes glinting, wondering why Chu Yan had been able to see his extraordinariness so early. But there was no time to dwell on that now. She pulled Zu An and ran into the stone gate. "The Taotie are catching up! Let's go in!"

After they ran inside the great door, they instinctively tried to re-lock the stone gate to keep the Taotie out. Unfortunately, even with all their might, they still couldn't close the stone gate.

With time pressing, they had no time to look for a closing mechanism. Zu An simply pulled Pei Mianman further inside to escape.

"Ying ying ying!" A Taotie roared as it reached the steps. Just as it was about to lunge into the stone gate, a cold light suddenly flashed, and its body instantly froze.

The tall, burly skeleton warrior beside it slowly rose from the ground. A drop of fresh blood slowly dripped from the long *ge*-halberd in its hand onto the ground, making a soft sound.

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