At first, they thought that Charvis and his gang should have encountered a storm or a tragedy caused by a rock, and after their inexplicable destruction, Cheng Ye and Liu Dahai had to stay on the island to depend on each other. Birds' eggs, seaweed, until they learned to fish simply, waited for a boat to pass by on Xuanwu Island, hoping to go back again.

I don't know why, the busy South China Sea is full of ships every day, but none of them have ever passed through Xuanwu Island, and occasionally one or two can be seen only ten miles away, and it seems that all the ships have deliberately avoided this island.

At that time, Cheng Ye was arranged by his master to stare at the sea, and he spent most of his time studying this island except for basic labor. According to some records that Liu Dahai saw in the palace, it is said that there are reefs all around Xuanwu Island, and the weather is changeable, sometimes one minute the sky is clear, and the next second there are thunderstorms, which is probably one of the reasons why few ships pass here. And there is another record that Liu Dahai did not tell Chalvis, when Zheng He went to the West, the task was not so simple, but about a treasure, and the description of that paragraph was too exaggerated when Liu Dahai first met and just regarded it as a story.

In this description, it is recorded in detail that Zheng He sent a small team to the island on his second voyage to the West and disappeared, and only one of them returned as a crazy fool. Zheng He sent a fleet of treasure ships to surround Xuanwu Island and ordered a bombardment, but at this moment, the sky suddenly flashed and thundered, and a huge wave broke off on the sea, making it impossible to stand on the ship. When the wind and waves were a little less and he tried to get closer again, the same thing happened again.

Zheng He thought that the island was protected by the gods and stopped approaching, but it was also the only volume that mentioned Zheng He's encounter when he went to the West, and the other six times there was no information.

Later, Liu Dahai found that Xuanwu Island is a seemingly simple but peculiar island, it is surrounded by a total of Qinglong, Vermilion Bird, White Tiger three islands are symmetrically distributed in front and back, there is a small island and reef in the center, most of them are submerged under the sea water on weekdays, and only when the low tide and flood come around the Dragon Boat Festival every year, it will be exposed to the water. He believes that this is a natural Four Elephants and Five Instruments Bagua Array, and any living beings who die in this array will be firmly trapped and cannot be separated.

According to this formation, there are eight doors in the gossip: opening, resting, living, wounding, Du, Jing, death, and shock, of which there are three doors of opening, resting, and living; Death, shock, and injury, so Liu Dahai set up some forbidden areas on this island according to the gate of life and death, and built a number of small roads with Cheng Ye to mark them.

Since this discovery, Liu Dahai began to study everything here behind closed doors, and never mentioned returning to the palace again. waited until Cheng Ye was thirteen years old, and one night, Liu Dahai told Cheng Taihe that he was going to give it a try, and gave him something.

Speaking of this, Cheng Ye got up and walked to a small wooden box in front of the bed, on which was an old-fashioned padlock, he opened the box with a slight tremble, and then took out a piece of paper that had long been yellowed and handed it to Wang Ling.

Wang Ling took it and looked at it, there were a total of five lines of words written on it, and Juanxiu's font could be seen that the writer had a very high calligraphy attainment. When he began to look closely, he was shocked by the few words on the first line alone!

He muttered, "How could it be my eight characters!" Wang Ling looked at Cheng Ye, hoping that the lonely old man who was dying of old age could give him an answer.

"Eight characters?" Lao Pi glanced at the lines of words and frowned and asked, "Fourth brother, what is eight characters?" ”

"The eight characters are his birthday," Wang Ling said: "I see that this one below seems to be your eight characters," his face became more and more ugly, and then Cheng Ye said: "I have been waiting for you for a long, long time," and then he got up and said: "That night, the master handed over the eight characters of these five people to me, saying that one day they will come, and I thought at that time that I would still be alive in a hundred years?" I didn't expect that I was really alive...... People, when they are alive, they always feel that death is too far away from them, but when they really live too long, they have some expectations that they can die one day earlier. I still have some things to give you, and this is also my master's request. ”

He slowly got up and lifted the bed board again, and took out something wrapped in old clothes under the bed board, which Wang Ling glanced at at was a blue-gray gown, which looked quite like the daily clothes worn by eunuchs in the old days. The old man took out three things from the bag and handed them to Wang Ling and said, "These things are handed over to you, it's late today, you can go back first, I should also rest." ”

At this moment, there was a slight sound of footsteps outside the house, and the tip of the old leather ear heard it at once, and immediately stood up and shouted, "Who! ”

Hearing the footsteps obviously began to slow down, Lao Pi immediately chased out, Xuanwu Island in the dark night could not see his five fingers, and when he reached the door, only the sound of the whirring sea breeze was left, and he didn't even see half a figure.

"Maybe it's passing by," Wang Ling followed and walked out, handed the pile of things to Lao Pi and said, "This should be a rectangular instrument." ”

"That's right," Lao Pi took one of the things and played with it in his hand, "This is an old antique, who still uses this thing when going to sea now, it has long been a radio." Lao Pi flipped through the other two things, pointed to one of the black things, and said, "What is this?" Compass? ”

Wang Ling picked up the thing and glanced at the dark night sky tonight and said: "This is an astrolabe, which can be used for divination and fortune-telling and as a navigation instrument, and people at that time mainly relied on the stars to identify the direction, this small one is the compass, and these three things can still sail unhindered on the vast sea even if there is no radio." ”

"It's really strange," said Lao Pi, "that we were brought here to fish for socialism, and the farthest from the island is no more than ten nautical miles, so what's the use of asking for this." He turned around and looked back, Cheng Ye's room had already closed the door, and Wang Ling saw that he still wanted to go in, so he dissuaded: "People have already issued an eviction order today, come back tomorrow." ”

"God babbling, I don't think he's finished." "I think it is, too," Wang Ling made a silent gesture and said to Lao Pi: "The wall has ears, and the old man is shrewd." ”

Before returning to the house, the two went to the beach by the sea, where they could be sure that no one would eavesdrop on the empty space around them, Wang Ling looked at the pile of things and said, "If I guess correctly, the remaining three eight characters are the poet, Li Xin and Zheng Jiuwu." Regardless of whether Liu Dahai's speculation about the door of life and death back then was correct, at least in their eyes, we are outliers, able to pass through the so-called forbidden area and come back alive, this island and the people on the island are probably not as simple as they seem on the surface. ”

"Do you really believe that old fellow?" Lao Pi said: "If his words are true, how old is Cheng Ye today?" It's more than one hundred and ten years old. My God, he said that he himself was in the reign of Emperor Xianfeng, and how many years has the Empress Dowager Cixi been dead, and she has traveled through three dynasties! There is a shortage of medicine in this place, I see that he is not deaf and his mouth is not dumb, and his eyes are good, you see that he has a strong body, can you believe that he is more than a hundred years old? It's a big liar, maybe how to get us with Lao Xing! “

"There are no wonders in the world," Wang Ling said: "There are not no old people who are more than 100 years old, Li Qingyuan, a great physician in the late Ming and early Qing dynasties, lived from 1677 to 1933, and lived for more than 200 years, even now there is more than one old man in the country who is more than 100 years old." ”

"You listen to Yeshi's nonsense," Lao Pi still didn't believe it: "Peng Zu also said that he lived for more than 800 years, but that eunuch clothes are genuine, don't forget that Zheng Jiuwu said that there were still Japanese soldiers on this island when the Americans came over, and I don't know how he escaped the devil's butcher's knife." ”

After discussing the matter, the two decided not to reveal it first, and he only told Li Xin, but Li Xin told a piece of information that Wang Ling had overlooked.

"Cheng Ye said that Zheng He went to the West for a treasure, but Zheng He died in 1433, and Wang Zhi began to dominate after nearly a hundred years of him, what was Zheng He looking for back then?"

This question could not be queezed by Wang Ling for a long time...... Such a low-level obvious mistake, is Cheng Ye telling a low-level lie, or? No, Master Cheng really didn't say what kind of treasure Zheng He was looking for, is there so much treasure in this world?

When he was about to come to the birthdays of the remaining three people one by one, and then converted it according to the little knowledge he had learned, he really applied for his own guess, and the eight characters of the five people happened to be on the piece of paper that Liu Dahai gave to Cheng Ye, which became more and more mysterious.

"Lao Zheng didn't do any tricks, right?" As soon as Lao Pi went back, he took the poet aside and whispered, "You can keep an eye on him for me, this guy is not a good bird." ”

"Oh, my head still hurts," the poet complained, "and he has been sleeping there without moving, what are you doing so late?" ”

Lao Pi choked angrily: "Don't ask what you shouldn't ask!" ”

At that moment, there was another knock on the door outside, and someone asked, "The people in the house haven't slept yet, have they?" ”

"Who?" The old leather was lying down and asked the poet to look at the door, and the latter reluctantly got up, and as soon as he opened the door, he screamed: "Oh,! Help! Then he turned around and didn't look back, and suddenly he ran behind Lao Pi and kept shivering, because it was dark here, and Wang Ling only saw a figure outside the house, frowning and asking, "Who, what are you fussing about!" ”

Finally, the poet was trembling and crying, and said, "Hu...... Hu Quan! ”