143: Triple Text, the Last Words of the Celestial Emperor

The hotel room was deathly quiet.

Wang Dalong didn't even dare to breathe loudly as he watched Lin Feng focus on piecing together the copper fragments with a solemn expression.

Eventually, over a dozen copper fragments of various sizes were assembled on the table into a tattered scroll about half a meter long and twenty centimeters wide. The edges of the copper scroll were jagged, and several pieces were missing from the middle, but the core content had been preserved.

Lin Feng's gaze moved from right to left, reading the eerie content line by line, which was a mixture of three different scripts.

His expression grew increasingly grave.

"Bro... Brother Feng, what exactly is written on this?" Wang Dalong finally couldn't help but ask in a low voice.

Lin Feng didn't answer immediately. He finished reading the last line and remained silent for a long time. He took off his glasses and pressed his brow firmly, seemingly processing the massive amount of information brought by this text.

Those words, written in blood and tears, made even this modern hotel room feel surreal.

"This is a person's suicide note," Lin Feng said, putting his glasses back on, his voice a bit raspy.

He picked up one of the copper fragments and pointed at the Western Xia script on it, explaining to Wang Dalong.

"The author of this copper scroll was a Han Chinese. His family had been officials of the Astronomical Bureau of the Northern Song Dynasty for generations, experts in astronomy and calendrical calculations. After the Jingkang Incident, his ancestors didn't move south but stayed in the north. Later, when the Mongols rose and Western Xia fell, his family, as skilled artisans, were captured by the Mongol army and became slaves."

Wang Dalong listened, enthralled.

"Because of his family's heritage in astronomical arts and mathematics, he was chosen by a powerful figure in the Mongol army at the time to be an accompanying 'Astronomical Official', specifically responsible for observing celestial phenomena, divination, and... determining the Feng Shui for important figures' burial sites."

When Lin Feng said the word "burial site," his tone grew a bit heavier.

Wang Dalong's heart skipped a beat. "Important figure? Could it be..."

Lin Feng nodded and continued, "The copper scroll doesn't explicitly state the person's name, using only honorifics like 'Great Khan' and 'Heavenly Khan'. He wrote that during the siege of the Western Xia capital, the Great Khan fell seriously ill and passed away in his traveling palace. According to the Great Khan's orders before his death and Mongol tradition, he needed to be buried secretly, and they had to find an excellent Feng Shui site that could 'suppress the Western Xia dragon vein and eternally secure the fortune of the Golden Family'."

"So, he and several other Astronomical Officials and Feng Shui masters captured from Western Xia and the Jin Dynasty were taken to a certain place. They were ordered to find the best dragon lair in that area within the shortest time possible."

"This man was very clever. He knew that once they found the burial site, according to the Mongols' ways, those who knew the secrets of heaven would have no way to survive and would all be silenced as sacrifices."

"So, in his final moments, he took an immense risk. Using the decorative brass sheets that 'artisans' like them could access, he secretly crafted this copper scroll. He wrote in a mixture of three scripts—Western Xia, Phags-pa, and Han—specifically so the Mongols monitoring them wouldn't understand."

Lin Feng's voice carried a hint of indescribable complex emotions, including admiration and sorrow.

"He recorded the specific location of the burial site he eventually chose on this copper scroll in an extremely cryptic manner. At the end of his last words, he wrote that he didn't know who would obtain this copper scroll in future generations, but he hoped they would find the mausoleum where the foreign monarch was buried and destroy it, so he would find no peace even after death, thus avenging his country and family and comforting the spirits of the Han ancestors in heaven."

Wang Dalong was dumbfounded, covered in goosebumps.

A slave of a fallen nation, in his final moments, used his professional knowledge to set up a revenge plot spanning seven hundred years. What wisdom and determination!

"Then... what about the address? Where is the address written?" Wang Dalong asked excitedly.

"That's exactly the most troublesome part." Lin Feng pointed to the lower part of the copper scroll, where the text and symbols were even more complex and difficult to understand.

That part of the content had almost no normal sentences; it was entirely composed of names of various constellations, codes for Heavenly Stems and Earthly Branches, and patterns similar to star charts.

"'The dragon rises from Venus, hides in the lou mansion... On the day of Gengshen, where the canis major points, with the bi star as a guide, it falls on the south of the Golden Mountain and returns to the source of the Black Water.'"

Lin Feng read out one of the sentences.

Wang Dalong was completely bewildered. "What kind of cryptic language is this? Venus? The twenty-eight mansions? What does this have to do with finding a place?"

"This is the ancient 'Astral Mapping' positioning method." Lin Feng's brow furrowed tightly. "The ancients believed that the star regions in the sky corresponded one-to-one with the states on earth. This Astronomical Official used the celestial phenomena of the time, combined with the division of the Astral Mapping, to mark the coordinates of that mausoleum. This is a form of encryption that only someone equally proficient in ancient astronomy can understand."

Lin Feng looked at the familiar constellation names and unfamiliar deduction terminology, feeling the barrier of knowledge for the first time.

He understood history and scripts, but he didn't understand ancient astronomy.

He had read books like 'Song of the Sky Pacers' and 'Treatise on Astrology of the Kaiyuan Era,' but he had only skimmed them; they were not enough to perform such precise coordinate calculations.

Trying to force a solution would only lead to a tiny error at the start resulting in a massive discrepancy at the end.

Seeing Lin Feng's furrowed brow, Wang Dalong also calmed down. "Brother Feng, you can't read it?"

Lin Feng shook his head frankly. "I can't."

Wang Dalong's shoulders slumped instantly. "What do we do then? After all that effort to get a treasure map we can't read, wasn't it all for nothing?"

"Not necessarily."

Lin Feng's gaze fell into the void.

His consciousness sank into the system interface that only he could see.

In the reputation points column, after a series of task rewards from the Southern Song Dynasty Treasury, a considerable amount had accumulated.

[reputation points: 525,000]

His gaze swept quickly through the skill shop.

Soon, a skill glowing with a bronze light appeared before him.

[Elementary Ancient Astronomy Knowledge: Unlocks basic recognition and interpretation of the ancient Chinese astronomical system (constellations, Three Enclosures, twenty-eight mansions, Astral Mapping divisions, and calendrical calculations). Price: 300,000 reputation points.]

It wasn't cheap.

But Lin Feng didn't hesitate.

He knew this was the only key to unlocking this thousand-year-old mystery.

With a thought, he clicked heavily on the "Purchase" option.