9: The key to the mechanism

"Brother Feng, to be honest, is this thing really reliable? This snake looks like an earthworm spirit. Could some guy have just gotten drunk and doodled this?"

Wang Dalong carried the camera, the lens pressed tightly against the rubbing Lin Feng held in his hand. He complained while panting heavily.

There were no paths in these mountains at all, only thorny brambles and jagged rocks. Following the map's guidance, they had been trudging through this primeval forest for over two hours. Wang Dalong's stamina bar had long since turned red, and his fleshy body shook like a sieve.

Lin Feng didn't pay him any attention at all.

His brain was working frantically at the speed of a supercomputer.

On his phone screen was a high-definition GPS contour map. He was performing millisecond-level comparison calculations between the rubbing in his hand and the mountain trends and river curves on the screen, stopping to calibrate their direction every few steps.

To others, that ancient map was an undecipherable script, but under his terrifying logical reasoning and spatial visualization abilities, it was being rapidly deconstructed into precise navigation instructions.

The viewers in the livestream watched Lin Feng's glowing focus, not even daring to breathe loudly.

"This is what f*cking technical exploration looks like! The Fatty handles the comedy and acting cute, while Brother Feng handles the intellectual domination!"

"Why do I feel like what Brother Feng is holding isn't a treasure map, but the scratch paper for the final question of the college entrance exam's math section?"

"Shh! Stop the noise, just watch the top student solve the problem live!"

After scaling another steep slope that could break a person's legs, Wang Dalong felt like he was about to collapse. Just as he was about to open his mouth to complain some more, Lin Feng suddenly stopped in his tracks.

"That's not a snake," Lin Feng said without looking up, his tone resolute.

"Huh?" Wang Dalong was stunned. "If it's not a snake, what is it? Is it really an earthworm?"

"During the Han Dynasty, especially in the era of Wang Mang—who was suspected of being a time traveler—society's superstition regarding celestial phenomena and prophecies reached a point of madness."

Lin Feng pointed at the distorted mark on the rubbing and said word by word, "A snake, or 'Xuanwu', is the collective name for the Seven Mansions of the North, representing the 'North'. At the same time, in the Five Elements, it is associated with water, yin, concealment, and death. So, this mark is not as simple as just a snake!"

Wang Dalong was completely lost; he even forgot to steady the camera. "Brother Feng, don't give me all that stuff I can't understand. Just give me the conclusion. Where exactly are we going?"

Lin Feng put away the rubbing and pointed toward a mountain hollow squeezed between two treacherous peaks.

"This mark is a super positioning symbol that combines astrology and Feng Shui! It points to the node in the entire ley line where the Yin energy is strongest and which is most suitable for 'hiding' in Feng Shui terms!"

"If my calculations are correct, the entrance is right on the back of that mountain ridge."

"We're almost there."

Those last three words were like a high-level stimulant injected directly into Wang Dalong's main artery. He let out a strange cry and was instantly revived, charging forward with the camera.

The livestream viewers were also stunned by Lin Feng's professor-level analysis.

"I don't understand the world of top students, but I'm deeply shocked! Just following along is enough!"

"Why do I feel like Brother Feng isn't exploring, but giving us a live public lecture for an archaeology doctorate?"

"Stop the hype, you guys! Can't you see the Fatty is already charging? High energy ahead! I feel like we're about to witness history!"

When the two of them climbed up the ridge using both hands and feet, Lin Feng pushed aside the bushes in front of him—

The sight before them caused the livestream to explode instantly!

Wang Dalong was frozen in place, his mouth hanging open wide enough to fit a fist, and he almost dropped the camera.

"My... my goodness..."

On a relatively open slope, two massive bluestones as tall as three-story buildings stood side by side like two silent prehistoric giants, blocking all paths!

The surfaces of the boulders were covered in mottled traces of wind and rain erosion, overgrown with moss and weeds. They almost blended perfectly with the surrounding mountain, looking as if they had grown there naturally.

But Lin Feng's breath hitched.

It was too fake!

On this slope, surrounded by gravel and low shrubs, these two ridiculously large, intact rocks standing out of nowhere violated the laws of nature!

This was definitely not natural!

"Fatty, drone! Get it up!" Lin Feng's voice was frighteningly calm, carrying an unquestionable command. "Film around these two stones, from all angles, with no blind spots!"

"Oh... oh, okay! On it!"

Wang Dalong snapped out of it and hurriedly took out the drone.

*Buzz—*

The drone emitted a hum and took off.

Under the high-definition lens, the two boulders appeared even more majestic, like two giant divine shields firmly embedded in the earth.

"There's nothing special about them, just two slightly larger rocks..." Wang Dalong muttered as he controlled the drone to circle around.

Lin Feng stared intently at the screen without blinking.

"Lower the camera to the bottom, fly right against the base of the stones," he said in a low voice. "Slowly, scan it inch by inch!"

Wang Dalong didn't dare to be careless and immediately followed the instructions.

The drone's camera flew almost at ground level. In the footage, moss, decayed leaves, and tangled tree roots flashed by.

"Stop!"

Lin Feng's voice suddenly rose, filled with uncontrollable ecstasy.

He jabbed a finger at a detail on the screen.

"Look here!"

Wang Dalong quickly zoomed the lens to the maximum.

At the very bottom edge of one of the boulders, in a spot half-hidden by moss and dirt, a semi-circular hole with extremely regular edges appeared clearly in the frame!

That was definitely a man-made mark!

"Holy crap!" Wang Dalong blurted out. "Is this... a mortise hole used by the ancients for threading ropes or using levers to pry things?!"

"Exactly!"

Lin Feng felt his heart leap into his throat, and his head buzzed. He rushed to the boulder like a madman and began clawing away the dirt and moss with his bare hands.

Soon, he found several similar holes at the junction of the two boulders and on the outer side of the other one!

They had all been buried by two thousand years of time, but they truly existed!

A concept so extreme and mad, spanning two millennia, exploded in his mind!

The craftsmen of that time had first excavated the treasure cave inside the mountain. Then, using a method beyond imagination, they pried these two massive rocks weighing tens of thousands of tons from another mountain!

Then, using levers, rollers, and these mortise holes, they moved them here bit by bit, like ants moving a house!

They were two stone doors so massive they inspired despair, sealing the true entrance perfectly!

Finally, the craftsmen camouflaged the surface of the boulders to make them look like natural mountain rock.

Two thousand years of wind, frost, rain, and snow, along with the growth and decay of vegetation, had almost erased all man-made traces.

If not for the precise positioning of the "Mystic Snake Guidance Map," even if someone passed by here ten thousand times, they would only treat them as two broken rocks and walk around them!

What an earth-shattering feat!

This was practically the ancient version of "moving mountains"!

"Below... the entrance... is right beneath these two stones..."

Lin Feng's voice was trembling.

Wang Dalong was also so excited he couldn't speak clearly. He kept the lens fixed on Lin Feng and those two epic boulders.

The comments in the livestream weren't just dense anymore; they completely plastered the entire screen!

"Found it! They actually found it! Holy sh*t! Holy sh*t!"

"My god! A two-thousand-year-old secret! It's about to be revealed before our eyes! My hands are shaking with excitement!"

"This is a truly massive undertaking! Compared to this, all previous treasures are weak!"

"Brother Feng is the goat (voice cracking)!!!"

Lin Feng reached out, slowly and with a heart full of reverence, touching the rough and cold stone wall.

What his fingertips felt was the texture of the rock, but even more so, the weight of two thousand years of time.

Wang Mang's gold, the ultimate legend that countless people had dreamed of—its true entrance was now right under his hand.

He could feel his heartbeat, the sound of the wind in the valley, and the heavy pulse from the depths of history all reaching a resonance at this moment!

However, just as everyone was overwhelmed by this massive shock, a very realistic question from Wang Dalong instantly brought the atmosphere back to earth.

"We found it, we found it... but Brother Feng, this thing..."

He pointed at those two skyscraper-like boulders, his fat face wrinkled like a freshly steamed bun.

"These are two f*cking mountains! Are we... going to open them with our foreheads? Even if we broaden our horizons, we can't open this thing!"

The livestream comments also immediately went off-topic.

"Right! Here comes the problem of the century: how do you open this door?"

"With this weight, it's gotta be hundreds or thousands of tons, right? An excavator would cry if it saw this!"

"Calling Lanxiang! Calling Lanxiang! There's a job for you!"

"Are they going to use explosives? That won't work; that would be tomb robbing, and they'd end up behind bars!"

Lin Feng didn't answer.

He withdrew his hand and carefully inspected the almost invisible gap between the two boulders.

His fingers slowly brushed across an uneven stone wall. Suddenly, at chest height, his fingertips paused as he touched a completely different, cold texture!

That wasn't rock!

His pupils constricted. He applied force with his fingertips and pulled a palm-sized object directly out of the stone crack!

Opening his palm, it was unexpectedly a cold bronze seal!

On the ancient seal face, four seal script characters were clearly discernible: "protector army zhonglang."

At that moment, his vision blurred, and that incredibly realistic hallucination swept over him once again!