123: Baisha Ancient Port and General's Monument

Three days later, Haikou.

The tropical sun scorched the earth without mercy, and the air was thick with the smell of humidity and salt.

As soon as Wang Dalong stepped off the plane, he felt like he had entered a steamer; his T-shirt was instantly half-soaked.

"My god, Brother Feng, this godforsaken place is way too hot." He complained while wiping sweat and dragging his suitcase. "Are you sure those ancestors would choose this place to hide their treasures? We haven't even started looking, and I'm already about to get heatstroke."

Lin Feng wore a baseball cap with the brim pulled low, ignoring his grumbling.

His gaze quickly swept across the surroundings, and only after confirming there were no suspicious eyes did he whisper, "Let's go. To Baishamen."

The two took a taxi straight to Baishamen Park, located in the northern part of Haikou City.

This place was once the site of 'Shenying Port' seven hundred years ago; today, it was a seaside park for citizens' leisure and entertainment. Coconut groves, beaches, and children's playgrounds were everywhere, filled with laughter and the peaceful atmosphere of a modern city.

Wang Dalong looked at everything before him, completely dumbfounded.

"Brother Feng, are you kidding me? Looking for treasure here? There's nothing but sand and people. Even if there were treasures, they would've been picked up long ago, right?"

He felt that Lin Feng's deduction this time was truly a bit far-fetched.

Lin Feng didn't explain, only walking slowly along the coastline. His eyes, like radar, scanned every inch of the land.

He bypassed the crowded beaches and amusement areas, heading straight for a slightly desolate small hill on the easternmost side of the park.

This was the 'Baishamen Hillock' recorded in ancient texts, which served as a natural navigational mark for Shenying Port in the past.

The hill was overgrown with various tropical plants and tangled vines, with almost no path. Wang Dalong followed behind, getting bitten by mosquitoes several times, his mouth never stopping its complaints.

Lin Feng, however, seemed completely oblivious.

Using the super-perception granted by the system, he filtered out all the surrounding noise, focusing only on finding things that did not belong to nature.

The angles of stones, traces of manual labor, the imprints of time... Finally, behind a dense thicket of bougainvillea, he stopped.

There, a stone tablet half-buried in the soil and covered in moss lay quietly. Unless one was looking for it intentionally, no one would ever notice its existence.

"Found it." Lin Feng's voice carried a hint of imperceptible trembling.

Wang Dalong leaned over, pushed aside the bushes, and was instantly stunned.

"Holy crap! There really is something!"

He immediately perked up, took out an entrenching tool and a soft brush from his backpack, and together with Lin Feng, carefully cleared the dirt and moss from the surface of the stone tablet.

As the moss was brushed away bit by bit, lines of characters on the stone tablet, blurred by years of erosion, gradually came to light.

Wang Dalong set up his camera, aimed it at the stone tablet, and lowered his voice to narrate: "Folks, the moment to witness a miracle has arrived! Who would have thought that in such a corner of a park, an ancient stele would actually be hidden!"

Lin Feng ignored him, lightly stroking the cold carvings with his hand, identifying the characters one by one.

The inscription was in clerical script, the font ancient, but many parts had weathered and peeled away.

"...General Who Pacifies the Seas Su Xian, led his clansmen... here... in gratitude for the Emperor's grace, mourning the national tragedy... ascending the heights year after year... looking north to offer sacrifices..."

Su Xian!

When these two characters appeared, Wang Dalong sucked in a breath of cold air!

It really was him!

The trusted general under Zhang Shijie who led the treasure fleet on its long voyage, Su Xian!

"Brother Feng! He really did come to Hainan!" Wang Dalong's voice cracked with excitement.

Lin Feng nodded, but his expression remained grave. He continued to decipher the text.

The content of the inscription was simple, the general idea being that Su Xian led his 'clansmen' to settle here. To never forget their fallen country, they would climb to a high point every year to offer sacrifices toward the northern capital to express their grief.

Wang Dalong looked on, confused: "That's it? Brother Feng, this doesn't say where the treasure is. It just says they made a home here and held commemorative activities every year."

"The information is already sufficient." Lin Feng stood up, his eyes bright as torches.

"First, Su Xian's fleet did indeed come to Hainan and never left. Otherwise, he wouldn't use terms like 'led his clansmen' and 'here,' which indicates they treated this as their new home."

"Second, they didn't go south. If they still intended to go to Australia, they wouldn't have erected a stele here, let alone performed the 'looking north sacrifice.' This ritual itself is an announcement of giving up the long voyage to take root here."

Lin Feng paused and pointed to the last few characters on the stone tablet.

"Third, and most crucial—'ascending the heights year after year.'"

Wang Dalong scratched his head. "Ascending the heights? What's so strange about that? Don't people also climb mountains on the Double Ninth Festival?"

"No." Lin Feng shook his head. He pulled out his tablet, opened a satellite map of Haikou City, and his eyes flashed with the light of wisdom.

"This 'ascending the heights' isn't a general term. It points to a specific location. A place high enough to 'look north' toward the Central Plains and express their grief."

His finger moved slowly across the map, finally landing on a mountain peak in the distant outskirts.

That place was the highest point near Haikou.

Wang Dalong leaned in to look and read out the name of the mountain.

"Jiuzhou... Ridge?"

He suddenly looked up at Lin Feng, only to see a confident smile on Lin Feng's face.

"Fatty," Lin Feng put away the tablet and patted the stone tablet as if saying goodbye to an old friend, "let's go mountain climbing."

Wang Dalong swallowed hard. Looking at Lin Feng's frighteningly bright eyes, he knew that the real clue had arrived.

"Mountain... climbing? In this heat?" Wang Dalong complained subconsciously.

Lin Feng didn't look back, only leaving behind a sentence, his voice filled with a strange, penetrating power.

"To pay our respects to the people who truly guarded the tombs for the Great Song."