Pei Li let time continue to flow, but the man's figure was still in the cave where a candle flickered, for a long time, he slowly put the note in his sleeve, lifted his sword and wanted to go out, but moved twice and then stopped again, and the light from the cave opened up half of his silent face.

Until it was dark, a footstep ran over, and Yang Yan's face poked out from outside the cave: "Senior brother, are you really here?" It's time for you to try your hand at the sword tonight, everyone is waiting in the sword field! ”

"Oh." Meng Li came back to his senses, "I'll go over now." ”

"Senior brother, your face is so white, what's wrong?"

“.” Meng Li lowered his head and silently drilled out of the cave, taking a deep breath of the air in the forest, "It's nothing. ”

Pei Ye came to Meng Li's courtyard, took out a calendar from the bookshelf, slowly flipped a few pages to the calendar, and pressed it on the nearest page.

Four days later, the rain.

Pei Ye walked out of the courtyard, and on the mountain road, the tall figure of the man was staggering towards the mountain.

Qu Zhoufu didn't go down the mountain as usual today, Meng Li was drunkenly carrying a pot of old wine, he stopped several times along the way, Pei Li suspected that he was going to turn back three times, but finally the man still stood in front of the door of the main hall, paused, stretched out his arm and pushed in.

"Master!" Meng Li shouted with a red face, and in the empty hall, the old man's thin figure sat quietly with his back back.

"What for?" Qu Zhoufu turned his head, his face was the same as usual, and when he saw his drunken appearance, his brows furrowed impatiently.

Meng Li stumbled towards the old man, with a strong momentum, but the next moment he was held up by a soft energy.

Meng Li stood up, shook his head a little unconsciously, and tugged at the old man's sleeve: "Master. Don't sit still, there's an empty city plan in the city down the mountain."

"Look at yourself, don't bother me."

"I've finished reading," Meng Li gestured vaguely, "I saw that Kong Ming killing in the dark of Changban Slope. Kill a fat-headed pig's head with big ears in the oblique stab, and lift the rake up, like this - Sima old thief, suffer death!! ”

True Qi fluctuated suddenly, Meng Li pushed out like a thunderbolt with a palm, Qu Zhoufu was caught off guard and hit his elbow, and flew out like a thin paper body broken paper kite, crashed into the palace wall, stumbled twice, and barely landed calmly.

"What a sudden smoking!" Qu Zhoufu gasped twice and raised an angry face, "The skin is itchy again, isn't it?!" ”

Meng Li stood in place in a daze, unable to say a word.

You don't have to pretend to be a picture of wine being scared awake.

In this palm, he only used half of his strength.

Meng Li left the main hall with a heavy heart.

For many days afterward, he searched the empty hall between some of his older uncles and uncles, searching the empty hall in the space where the master had left for a short time. But there was no trace of the so-called "star worm".

He often went to the library pavilion, and Pei Li took out the books he was reading, most of which were all kinds of strange beasts and monsters. After he left the valley, Pei Ye sat at the mountain pass and tossed the time, and after more than ten days, the man walked in from the edge of the mist again, his hair was unkempt and rough, there was an extra sword wound on his shoulder, and he held a small magic weapon in his hand.

The shape of the small snake, engraved with "Fusheng Seeking Life", on the night when Qu Zhoufu temporarily left the main hall, the man climbed the mountain in the wind and placed this magic weapon on the top of the mountain.

However, this hard-won magic weapon failed to build the slightest.

The entire summit seemed to be only bronze and white rock, and beyond that, there was a constant cold wind, and there was no living creature of enough size at all.

Meng Li began to turn to the other two routes—the beast was either very small or contained in the human body. But despite his painstaking efforts to search everywhere, he could not find any other extension except for the fact that "Master has indeed sent out his true qi for more than 20 years" which has been constantly confirmed.

In the next solar term, he even accompanied the old man in the temple for twelve hours. But as the hour passed, the old man became weak again, so sluggish that he did not even perceive his temptation.

Meng Li was almost desperate during this time, Pei Ye looked at the man's pursed lips when he did all this alone, and roughly understood what he was thinking at this time-if the master was not controlled by this "star worm", how could he feed each other with his life, and how could he continue to choose the next "ration" from the two beloved disciples?

Therefore, the man did not dare to ask, nor did he tell anyone, he was still the first true biography in front of people, and when he was alone, he held a slightly trembling hand and was silent.

Until he found something in the cavern again, like a hammer striking a beam of light on the black wall blocked in front of him.

Meng Li hadn't forgotten how he had made his first discovery, and he had been going to the cave every chance he had the opportunity these days, carefully sorting out the books. It was obvious that it had been cleaned up, but there were always a few words to be found. It's just that most of them are scattered and difficult to refine, and the content is plausible, and it wasn't until more than ten days later that he found an old fragment that could be read.

It was still the sharp handwriting, but it was scribbled and messy, sketches, zero strokes, scrambled lines, sometimes pages of neat calculations, sometimes a crumbling mess of ink, which was obviously not a notebook of records, but a scribble. But it was at the end of this booklet that the master wrote down the conclusions he had reached with the whole effort.

"The mountains drink the lake, the popularity attracts the stars, and the lake and the mountain sword gate have been for thousands of years. It turned out to be living in a circle. ”

Below is a map between the lake and the mountain, the author spent more than ten pages to dismantle it in detail, I don't know how the person gave birth to this strange idea, and I don't know how long he spent researching and surveying, in short, at the end of the diagram, this unknown person's penmanship firmly classified it as a unique ancient strange array.

Pei Li stood beside Meng Li, watching him close the book and was silent for a long time, knowing that if there was no booklet, the man who didn't know the formation would never think about it.

So from this day on, Meng Li began to soak in the library day by day, studying the principles of the formation path from scratch, verifying the illustrations behind the ancient books page by page of each array book—all he got was a subtle fit.

However, the inference of the ancient book only ends there—it is indeed a array, but what is it? What is the function? What is the relationship between the "Star Worm" and the "Ancient Array"? But they are all missing.

It was from here that the wordless blue booklet was placed on the man's desk, and he began to search for the face of this ancient formation with all his might.

Pei Ye took his hand away from the blue cover, looked at the thick booklet that was almost full, and temporarily stopped going back in time.

Meng Li has gathered all his hard work here, and theoretically speaking, as long as he flips through this volume, he can learn the "truth" that he finally discovered. But Pei Ye couldn't understand it.

There is no shortcut to the formation path, how much time and effort Meng Li spent at that time, Pei Li had to do it all at this time. He obviously didn't have the time, so he had to go back to sorting out the man's experience at this time.

Fortunately, Meng Li did not just read and calculate, at every stage of gain, he would come to the corresponding place in the quiet of the night with the ancient book in his hand, and use the unfamiliar methods he learned to calculate and investigate.

But every time something really happened, it was because of a few words that were newly discovered in the cave.

"Swim in the cliff, see the end in two days; The winter solstice is in Ding, and the summer solstice is in Ding. ”

In the lake and mountain, the "癸" position is where the mountain pass is located, Pei Ye stands in the summer to the night, the man holds a dim lamp, and jumps up the cliff above the mountain pass.

The mountain pass of the lake and mountain is like a real gate, how slippery the plaque on the top of the gate is, how dangerous and boring this cliff is, no one will come to this kind of place, and the two brothers have never been interested in this place where they can see to the end.

Now in the thick of the night, there is only the echo of Gao Lin Xiao's shouting silence, Meng Li dug the place he calculated with a shovel, went to the calcite, and finally in a place nearly two zhang deep, a shovel knocked out a clear sound of gold and iron.

Meng Li held his breath and watched under the lamp as a piece of bronze with a curvature was revealed.

The ancient, mysterious patterns reveal the atmosphere of antiquity. Meng Li lightly touched its cold body, suspecting that it was actually older than the Hushan Sword Gate.

Meng Li did everything he could to investigate, and then covered up the traces here.

"Winter is not dry, summer is not abundant, the lake is the heart, and the forest is the vein."

Verifying this record consumed more time for Meng Li, the place where the disciples often lived, and the lake was ten feet deep. He dived to the bottom of the lake for seven consecutive mornings, and each time he almost exhausted his true qi, and finally dug out a disc-shaped bronze vessel at the bottom of the lake.

Can't take it out, can't move, Meng Li spent a long time to survey its direction, it is to lead to the woods, with the roots of the trees as the connection, and then access to the cliff.

On this night, Meng Li returned to the marked mountain pass cliff to compare, and Pei Li also followed closely - the man's efforts these days have almost touched the entire formation out of the framework, if it can match the initial discovery on the cliff, then the appearance of this formation is basically in front of him.

But Meng Li dragged his tired body up the high cliff, and after digging away the floating soil and gravel, the whole person froze in place, and the huge bronze was gone.

If it was a pillar, it was almost half a cliff wide according to the arc, it was solidly buried in the cliff, and the solid earth boulder almost cast it there.

Because of this, Meng Li couldn't even dig up the full picture of it. Now it's completely gone.

Meng Li jumped down, quietly looking at the huge hole left at the bottom, unable to say a word.

"There is no accumulation, there is no sound for thousands of years, there is no such formation in the world, and there is no old record to be found, there are three ancient characters on the copper engraving, presumably its name, then it is called [Buried Star Mound]. As for the above-mentioned thing, I will call it a 'star bug'. ”

In the calculation of pages and the flipping through of books, in the passage of time, Meng Li finally used these words as the bones to piece together the creepy whole picture of this lake and mountain.

Starworm hugging the grave.

Strange and beautiful array design, after the main hall, no one can set foot on the top of the high cliff, is the mound hall, but it is not the lake and mountain sword gate that guards it, but this ring array that is in harmony with heaven and earth.

The bronze python body, buried in the cliff, it surrounds the [buried star mound], just like a snake around a fruit, with the true qi of the human as the guide, and the starlight in the sky as the blood, the residual word says that it "swims in the cliff", because it is such a one. The Living Ancient Formation.

The people of Hushanmen are just the nourishment for maintaining its operation.

Even if the immersion formation path is still short and the knowledge is shallow, Meng Li also knows what an amazing formation technique this is, it must be the blood-draining work of the ancient sages, and if you want to cast it, you must pour out half of the city's assets.

So, what is the purpose of such an array operating here in secrecy for thousands of years?

Pei Ye thought about the same problem as Meng Li at this time, and came to the bronze hall on the third day.

It was already the end of spring for another year, and Qu Zhoufu's body was getting weaker and weaker, and Meng Li finally decided to ask the master with all this.

It was at this meeting that the first quarrel broke out.

But the reason for the quarrel was beyond Pei Li's expectations, and Meng Li didn't have time to ask his questions one by one, because in the first sentence of the meeting, Qu Zhoufu first told him what he thought in his heart.

"I want Xiao Yan to be the head." The old man said softly.

“.” Meng Li's words choked suddenly, and the words "insect rations" and "premature aging of life", which had long been pressed in his heart, swelled up suddenly at this time and burned into a flame.

"." He said softly.

“.”

"Let him be like you, and he doesn't want to cultivate or die. Feed the bugs here for the rest of your life? ”

“.” Qu Zhoufu looked at him quietly, and suddenly lowered his head and smiled, "I knew it. You've been investigating these early. ”

Meng Li only pursed his lips and looked at him.

Qu Zhoufu let out a long sigh of lightness: "But I think, there's no need to stop you from knowing sooner or later anyway." ”

"Answer my question."

"You have to do something in your life."

“.”

"A sect must always have its own mission."

"What mission?"

Qu Zhoufu said softly: "When I took over the position of head of the sect, your ancestor told me, 'Secretly guard the heart of heaven, one day, the lord of the West Court will come and take it'. ”

"What is 'Tianxin', and who is the 'Lord of the West Garden'?"

"I don't know."

"Then what if he takes it?!"

"Legend has it that the world will return to the shadow of the fairy court." The old man sighed softly, "It was a wonderful world. ”

Meng Li showed a look of incredulity: "Do you believe this kind of words? ”

"Why don't I believe it?" Qu Zhoufu looked at him calmly, "I've been believing it for twenty-seven years. ”

Xiao Yan can't be the head of this house." Meng Li took a deep breath and said, "He hasn't grown up yet, and he's not prepared. ”

"But you have great ambitions and amazing talents." Qu Zhoufu looked at him, "Xiao Meng, I don't prefer one or the other, but if you are the head, you can't ascend to the Xuanmen, and if you are more qualified to leave the nest, you will fly." ”

"None of us do it!" Meng Li cut the railway, pointing out the high cliff outside from the top of the hall, "Or any of us can do it, but never give everything for this inexplicable thing!" ”

"And what are you going to do?"

"Figure out what it is, unravel it. Or ruin it. ”

"I knew it." Qu Zhoufu sighed hoarsely, as if he was not surprised, "How can the guards ruin the whole world's plans for their own selfishness, Xiao Yan will listen to it." ”

"I said no."

"I said, no." Qu Zhoufu looked at him calmly.

(End of chapter)