Chapter 192 The Dragon's Trap
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Chen Mo didn't want to waste words with the group, so he led them into the store and called Chen Dachuan out.
"A few of my classmates are coming to buy eight essential items. Could you arrange it for them?"
Chen Dachuan came out of the inner room, his apron still stained with paste. He glanced at the group of people and immediately put on a businessman's smile.
"Oh, it's Chen Mo's classmate! Please come in, please come in."
"The eight main dishes, right? Yes, yes, yes, please come in and have a seat."
As he greeted them, he stepped aside to let the group inside, then glanced back at Chen Mo, "Aren't you coming with us?"
"I have something to do, I'll be going now." Chen Mo said and turned to leave.
"Hey, wait a minute." Sun Wenyuan called out to him, his tone carrying a hint of reluctance. "What's the rush? It's not easy to run into each other, chat for a bit before you go. It's not easy for old classmates to meet up."
"Exactly, exactly," Li Weizhou chimed in. "What are you busy with? It's the middle of the day, and the sun is scorching outside."
Chen Mo stopped and looked back at them.
"I really have something to do, let's do it another day."
Sun Wenhui tugged at Xu Wanqing's arm and whispered something, but Xu Wanqing shook her head and didn't say anything.
Chen Mo noticed, but didn't say anything. He simply nodded to the two of them as a farewell.
"Alright then, you go ahead and do your thing."
Sun Wenyuan waved his hand, "Let's have dinner together another day when we're free, it'll be on me."
"it is good."
Chen Mo responded and turned to leave.
Behind him, Chen Dachuan was already gesturing for people to enter the inner room. "Please come this way, everyone. All eight of my tools here are made with traditional techniques. The paper is top-quality Xuan paper, and the frame is made of bamboo splits, so it's sturdy and the pasting is smooth. You'll see for yourselves when you take a look..."
It takes about an hour to drive from the county seat to Qingshan Town.
Yue Shan said that you have to cross two ridges to get to Qinglongtan, and it's definitely not possible to drive there by car.
He hesitated for a moment, then walked out of the east gate instead of driving.
Once outside the city gates, the houses along the streets gradually thinned out, replaced by vast fields of farmland and scattered adobe houses.
The afternoon sun was scorching, and the crops in the fields drooped, looking listless and lifeless.
There were few pedestrians on the road. Occasionally, a farmer driving a donkey cart would pass by, glance at him, and then walk away.
Chen Mo walked for about two miles and then turned onto a small path leading to the river.
The road was lined with waist-high weeds, and not far ahead was a grove of poplar trees. The grove was not large, but it was enough to block the view from outside.
With a thought, he took out a large paper kite, two meters wide, from his storage space. It was the same kite that had previously carried gunpowder and blown up the Hou family's house.
Infused with the yin energy, the kite glowed with a faint purple light and hovered steadily in mid-air.
Chen Mo flipped himself up, and with a slight shift of his mind, the kite lifted three feet off the ground, gliding away while brushing against the tips of the wild grass.
The wind blew past my ears, carrying with it a wisp of steam rising from the riverbed.
The kite flew faster and faster, and higher and higher off the ground.
Chen Mo adjusted his posture and looked down. The poplar grove had shrunk to a small patch of dark green.
At this point, the distance from the ground was already forty or fifty feet.
He dared not fly too high, as the wind at high altitudes was harsh and fierce. This height was just right, as he flew close to the ridges of the mountains, where the wind was mostly blocked by the mountains, making the journey much smoother.
Looking down from the sky, the two mountain ridges were even more difficult to traverse than Yue Shan had described.
There was no road, not even a narrow path; only dried-up gullies and half-collapsed stone dams.
No wonder Yue Shan said that cars can't drive in, and even if you walk in, it would take half a day to get there.
Chen Mo estimated the distance; it had only taken the time it takes for an incense stick to burn to fly over the first ridge.
The Yin energy wasn't consumed much; even with this low-speed flight, the energy consumed wasn't as much as the true seed recovered.
The second ridge is much higher and steeper than the first, and its north slope is covered with dense pine trees.
A kite swept across the treetops, startling a flock of gray tits that scattered in a flurry.
After crossing this ridge, the mountain range suddenly narrows, and the view opens up before you.
We've arrived at Qinglongtan.
Chen Mo slowed down the kite's speed, hovering in mid-air and looking down.
Qinglongtan was far more treacherous than he had anticipated.
When he heard it from Yue Shan, he thought it was just a deserted riverbank, at most a bit difficult to walk on the mountain road.
But now, looking down from above, the treacherous nature of this terrain becomes apparent—
The beach was nestled between two mountain ridges, leaving only two narrow openings to the north and south. To the north was the direction he had come from, while to the south was a deeper, dark canyon with no bottom in sight.
The beach itself is not flat.
The area near the north entrance was relatively open, covered with reeds and wild grass, but less than a hundred steps south, the terrain suddenly collapsed, forming a depression shaped like the bottom of a pot.
Right in the center of the depression was the treacherous dragon pool that Yue Shan had mentioned.
The pool was much larger than Chen Mo had expected.
Viewed from mid-air, it is about three or four acres in size, as if it was smashed out of the sky by something.
The water in the pool was black.
It wasn't the clear green of an ordinary pool, but rather an almost inky black.
Not a blade of grass grows by the pool.
Surrounding the pool is a bare, yellow mud bank, about ten feet wide. There isn't even any moss on the mud, only cracks.
Chen Mo rode the kite and circled twice in the sky, but the more he looked, the more he felt something was wrong.
Looking down from directly above, the entire Qinglongtan is not round, but a crooked strip, narrow at both ends and wide in the middle.
Like a snake nailed to the ground.
Or rather, like a dragon.
With one end in the south and the other in the north, and a noticeable bulge at the widest point in the middle, the entire outline is exactly the shape of a dragon curled up.
The shape was somewhat similar to a type of terrain he had seen in ancient books.
"The Trapped Dragon Formation".
Chen Mo muttered a sentence in a low voice, his brows furrowing slightly.
This terrain was not formed naturally.
The so-called "trapped dragon formation" is one of the most insidious layouts in feng shui formations.
Ordinary spirit-locking arrays and spirit-gathering arrays are simply ways to gather the spiritual energy of heaven and earth in one place for people to use.
But the Dragon Trapping Formation is different; it locks away the inspiration in one place, preventing both entry and exit.
A spark of inspiration is clear when it's alive, and murky when it's dead.
The trapped inspiration will not disappear, but will only become murky day by day, eventually turning into malevolent energy.
Chen Mo changed his position on the kite, squinting as he examined the crooked dragon-shaped outline.
Running north-south, with its head to the south and its tail to the north, the raised area in the middle is precisely where the Evil Dragon Pool is located.
If you consider the entire dragon as a living creature nailed to the ground, then that pool is exactly where it is nailed.
Nailed to the spine.
Chen Mo urged the kite to descend, slowly skimming over the reeds at the north entrance.
From a lower vantage point, the traces of human intervention become even more apparent.
On the mountain ridges on both sides of the north entrance, there is a large, protruding rock with a ferocious shape, like two claws reaching out from the mountain.
If you weren't paying special attention, you would think it was just the result of weathering.
But he noticed that the bottoms of the two stones showed signs of being carved, and that they were very old, with a degree of weathering that did not match the rock strata of the mountain itself.
Dragon-Locking Stake.
They took stones from the mountain without moving them, chiseled its roots, and severed its veins. The two stakes faced each other, like two pairs of pliers, clamping the dragon's body from both sides, making it unable to move.
"That's a big investment!"
Chen Mo sighed softly.
The person who could make such an arrangement was not an ordinary stonemason or carpenter, but a cultivator who was proficient in geomancy.
Moreover, mere proficiency is not enough; one must also possess a sufficiently high level of cultivation to mobilize the energy of mountains and rivers in this desolate wilderness and to make incisions on the framework of a mountain beam.
"If that's the case..." Chen Mo suddenly realized a crucial question, "What about the person who raised the evil spirits?"
The "trapped dragon formation" is not naturally formed; it is set up by someone.
Setting up such a formation requires a lot of time and effort, and no one would do something so thankless and exhausting.
Unless he has ulterior motives.
The evil energy is a highly poisonous substance to ordinary people; even a little bit of it can cause them to lose their minds and have their internal organs rot.
However, for some people who practice special techniques, evil energy is a rare source of nourishment.
"Someone raised a ghost dragon here, using the Dragon-Trapping Formation to transform spiritual energy into malevolent energy, and then used that malevolent energy to feed the creatures in the pool."
"Or perhaps we could use that demonic dragon to cultivate a pool of pure malevolent energy..."
As Chen Mo pieced together the clues, the more he thought about it, the more chills ran down his spine.
Who's plotting something...?
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