When Cheng Jiao returned to his room, it was already three o'clock in the afternoon.

She took off her soaked red silk skirt in a panic, changed into a water-red shirt and leggings of the same color, braided it, wiped it with a cotton scarf, and then opened the door and ran out again.

The third courtyard was connected to the second courtyard by a winding verandah, allowing her to walk slowly without getting caught in the rain. The crisp air in the rain swept away the hot and dry heat of the past three months.

Those three hours are undoubtedly the most exciting time of this boring summer vacation! Cheng Jiao ran through the empty Divine Blessing Avenue, passed through the crowded sacrificial square, experienced exposure to the sun and torrential rain, and most importantly, left a handsome back for the geniuses of Jinwu Temple! She felt that her life was busy and fulfilling, and it was no wonder that those three hours were fleeting.

But today's show is not over yet, and cleaning her father's study is also the job she has been looking forward to for a long time.

If Cheng Jiao wanted to pick out her favorite one from the dozens of houses in her home, she would point to this study without thinking about it.

It was a lonely tiled house with windows on the edge of a bamboo forest in the garden.

I heard that when the family first moved into this vast house, the tile house was just a separate warehouse for some miscellaneous items. But my father chose this room at first sight and used it as a place for designing drawings and placing works and books. When she left her grandparents' house and occasionally came to stay with her parents, she was just a four-year-old child with yellow hair hanging down and enjoying herself, and she did not understand the beauty of this study. But as she grew older, she felt more and more that this place was simply a paradise.

In spring, push open the carved wooden window in the east, melt into the sun, a few plum blossoms diffuse the fragrance, in this fragrance to read and learn words, it is wonderful. In summer, in front of the window facing north is a green and cool bamboo forest, and it is a great joy in life to open the window at night to listen to the bamboo leaves. In autumn, put down the pen inkstone to the west window, the bell and drum tower of the hot spring temple in the distance is high, and the maple tree in front of the courtyard gate is like fire, you should enjoy this scene. In winter, when you open the window facing the south side of the courtyard from the south, you can see snowflakes falling in the soft sunlight filling every corner of the courtyard.

This study away from the hustle and bustle is a secret pure land for her and her father. The father draws pictures, the daughter reads, and in this way many leisurely afternoons are spent. Therefore, Cheng Jiao has long contracted the cleaning work here, and the child servants are not allowed to interfere.

Pushing open the door, I saw the sour wood roof of this room, carved window sashes, simple and generous, showing that the owner of the house is not looking for grandeur.

Under the east window, a set of yellow pear tables and chairs, Cheng Jiao wipes the white jade pen holder one by one, ivory pen licking, yellow glaze pastel printing box, jade lotus leaf pen wash, green jade swan paperweight. The bookshelves along the south wall to the roof, because there are too many books, the neatly placed books are messily stuffed with many books, each layer is crowded, Cheng Jiao just wipes some dust on the bookshelf, and does not dare to put the rolled up books flatly, maybe the number of pages that are turned is exactly what Dad needs to get at once. On the west wall hangs a design of the four sides of the base of the statue of Mars on the square of the Isle of Mars. The carving depicts the different fates of the four gods in the war between the gods and the gods - the god of wine, who was killed by the daughters of the Shadow Land, the god of death who was killed by the barbarians of the Shadow Land after ten days and ten nights of fierce fighting, the god of the moon who died of grief after seeing his lover die in battle, and the newborn god of war, Mars, who was pulled out of the body of her sister Almis, the goddess of the sun, by the sun goddess Apollona. This is Dad's proudest work, showing that death gives birth to new life, failure evokes success, and the rotation is endless, as the gods are. It was this work that made my father stand out from the many apprentices of the Bone Craftsman, and took over his golden ruler and inherited his name, becoming the sole heir to his mastery.

In the middle of the study is a round desk made by my father. This piece of fragrant wood is the reward for my father to design and build a temple for a city on Poseidon Island, and it is a good piece of wood that is hard to find. For the sake of his mother's lackluster character, Dad spent two months carving a map of the Divine Blessed Continent on the desktop. This map clearly shows the face of the entire Divine Blessed Continent.

In the middle of the water is the Sun God Island, which is the largest of the five islands in the Divine Blessed Continent. It resembles a sun wheel, but there is a small depression in the direction of Reijin Island, which is where the hot spring castle is located.

The four islands separated by the mighty waters of the Sea of Glory are located in the east, west, north, and south of the main god island, like strong guards.

To the east is the cold and barren Poseidon Island, with its rugged mountains and steep terrain, where fishermen and sea people have a resilient character and revere the powerful sea god and his fickle wife, the goddess of fate. To the east of the island is the rough Strait of Death, and across the strait, the boundless Eternal Forest is shrouded in thick fog that no one can see.

To the south, Reijin Island is the territory of the hard-working and wise Reijin and his beautiful and noble wife, Geisi. When the weather is clear, standing from the tower of Shield City on the south side of Reijin Island, you can see the Crescent Moon Danger at the junction of the Sighing Mountains and the Eternal Forest on the other side of the Sea. That's the most vulnerable part of Kamilu facing Shadow Land, and it's where Grandpa will go tomorrow.

The northern island of Yakujin is the closest to the main god island, and is known for its abundant crops and the warmth of the people on the Blessed Continent, and is blessed by the suspicious god of medicine and his spouse, the kind god of agriculture.

To the west, the Isle of War is the end of the Divine Blessed Continent, the starting point of the Mountain of Sighs, guarded by the young and handsome God of War alone.

Seventeen years ago, the name of the twenty-year-old apprentice shrine maiden ———— "Golden Leaf" in the Thousand Eyes Temple of the God of War Island appeared among the giant swords of the statue of Apollona in the Hot Spring Temple, and Goto was shocked! However, the divine will could not be disobeyed, and the four major families of Shenlu and the head of the Golden Crow Courtyard could only welcome the youngest hot spring hall lord in history to enter the Sun God Island. So Cheng Jiao, who was still in swaddling clothes, came to the center of the five islands of Kamiriku with his mother and father's family———— Sun God Island Hot Spring Temple.

The sacred status and greatness of the hot spring shrine are not only recorded in the "Book of Bright History", but also attested by rigorous historians. After decades of careful measurements, they came to the conclusion that if the four god islands were connected to the east, west, north and south ends of the main god island with iron chains, and then the entire Divine Blessed Continent was lifted into the air, then the central point that would allow the entire continent to rise smoothly and unbiasedly was exactly at the hot spring in the center of the hot spring temple.

On this tabletop map, the purple diamond and golden eyes set in the gentle arms of the golden sun god island are the symbol of the hot spring temple.

The sparkling eyes were completely modeled after the "Eyes of the Downs" cast by the old skeleton craftsman for the hot spring temple. Although the materials used are far inferior to the real thing, my father is strictly scaled down and imitated his master's master's master's masterpieces.

The eye of the Hot Springs Temple is made entirely of rare purple gold mined from the mines of Poseidon Island. The old skeleton ordered dozens of apprentices to take turns polishing it, so that the purple light emitted by this huge one-man eye in the sunlight could be seen by those far away on the Miaofa Mountain. Although this light is dazzling, it is still slightly inferior to the purple diamond that makes the eyes. Those thumb-cap-sized purple diamonds were painstakingly carved day and night by old bones into the most reflective octahedron, and then inlaid densely into the inside of the eye sockets. No sunlight is needed, as long as there is a candle flame to shine these purple diamonds, emitting countless small but dazzling lights. Surrounded by thousands of purple diamonds, in the center is a black pearl the size of an adult's skull. In the dark night without stars and moons, only the pupils made of this black pearl emitted a faint cold light alone.

The eyes of the gods were purple.

No human race can have eyes of this color, and this Chengjiao has read about it in books since he was a child. One hundred and seventeen years ago, the god of war himself appeared in front of the soldiers guarding the Mountain of Sighs. However, it is recorded that the light of the god's purple eyes was too strong for anyone to dare to look up, and those who peeked into the face of the god of war were blind.

But in this case, how can it be concluded that the pupils of the gods are also black like ordinary people?

Cheng Jiao once asked his father why he dared to use black pearls to represent pupils in the "Eye of the Looking Down", which symbolizes the omniscience and omnipotence of the sun god?

Here's what Dad told her: "Master was very distressed by this finishing touch, for fear that he would cause trouble by advocating and casting holy relics. So he wrote a letter to the then head of the Jinwu Academy, Zi Dye Feng Di, and the head of the Zi Dye Yuan saw the god of war coming by a thousand-eyed firebird during the battle of the mountain. The head of the Purple Dye Temple burned the letters, asking for guidance and vowing to build the most magnificent statue in the world for the sun god. Early the next morning, a jet-black giant clam appeared on the altar of the hot spring shrine! No matter how you pry with a knife or a stick, you can't open the shell. When the bones heard the news, they rushed from the God of War Island to the Hot Spring Temple day and night, and the mussel automatically opened its shell to the bones. Inside is a very beautiful large black pearl, with a round shape and a sparkling shape. The bones plucked the pearls, and the giant clam withered to ashes in an instant. No one has ever seen such a miracle! Together with the hot spring hall at that time, the Light Golden Winged Shrine Maiden all held beads and bowed to thank the gods! Sure enough, when this God-given pearl was embedded in the carved purple eye, the perfect fit was beyond words for ordinary people! ”

"That's why," Dad would end the story in imitation of the hoarse voice of the old bone god, "I never dared to claim that the Holy Eye of the Eye was my own hand, that it was a miracle that the gods had driven my flesh to accomplish, and that I had the privilege of being a tool of the gods at the moment of the eye. ”

The Skeleton Craftsman was twenty-five years old at the time, and before that people despised him because of his single name of "Black Feet", the "Eye of the Down" earned him the surname that has been passed down to the generations - Bones! With no heirs, he left his surname to his most proud disciple - Igfi Skeleton, who was Cheng Jiao's father!

When the skeletal craftsman died, he had no worries, no children and grandchildren who had gone before him, and no widow who could not be left behind, and he ascended the mountain of tranquility in the golden light of the gods.

"Is it a curse of the gods to have someone you love?"

Cheng Jiao thought while wiping down his desk. She thought of the separation of tomorrow's Wanyi Temple, and thought of her grandfather's wrinkled smiling face, and she couldn't be happy all of a sudden.

High outside the window, the bell and drum tower of the hot spring shrine is already ringing with a heavy drum. When night falls, a hundred and eight drums are beaten, and the people are closed. The rain outside didn't seem to abate in the slightest, and it was still pouring down.

The layout of this world, whether it is a huge island or a small spring, the bell that urges people to get up in the morning glow, or the drums that persuade people to return home in the twilight, is everywhere a manifestation of the boundless power of the gods. Looking at this vast rain curtain, Cheng Jiao deeply thought that being able to live under the blessing of this boundless divine power was the greatest happiness that a small human being could get in this vast universe.