noveltune Chapter 49: 9 Pile Diagrams
Chapter 49: 9 Pile Diagrams
Cheng Xiaojin rode his dilapidated bicycle into the alley, still wearing his cotton-padded coat, his back covered in sweat.
The courtyard gate was ajar. Master Ma sat in a grand chair in the main room, with a teacup on the octagonal table without its lid on.
Zhou Banxian leaned against the door frame.
"photo."
Cheng Xiaojin took out his phone and handed it over.
Mr. Ma took the photos, enlarged them, and looked at them one by one.
Zhenhai Iron, the third of the nine piles.
There are a total of 135 items.
This is the key to locking the city.
The bones of eight arms.
A while later.
Mr. Ma put down his phone, walked to the rosewood bookcase, squatted down, reached into the bottom of the hidden compartment with his right hand, felt around for a while, and pulled out a piece of kraft paper folded into four sections.
The paper is old, the edges are frayed, and the creases are worn white, but the paper is thick and undamaged.
He placed the parchment on the octagonal table and slowly unfolded it.
Cheng Xiaojin leaned over for a look, and his legs went weak.
It was a hand-drawn map.
The outline of Beijing was drawn in black ink, and the second and third ring roads were marked with thin lines, but the most eye-catching feature was the nine dots marked in red ink.
Next to each dot is a tiny, handwritten label with the character "桩" (pole) and a number.
The first incident occurred outside Xizhimen.
The second incident occurred on Deshengmen Inner Street.
The third case is in the eastern part of Panjiayuan.
The location of the third stake was precisely marked near the wellhead in the eastern district, and an arrow pointing towards Mancheng, Baoding, was drawn next to it.
Who drew it?
Master Ma picked up his teacup and took a sip.
"you guess."
Cheng Xiaojin lowered his head and brought his face close to about three inches from the paper to examine the handwriting.
The ink was red, but he was too familiar with the pauses and strokes of the pen.
The way the vertical hook is written, and the ending stroke of the horizontal bend, the structure of each character follows the same pattern as the markings in Grandpa's notes, but not exactly the same.
Grandpa's hand is steady when he writes, and he finishes each stroke neatly.
The characters in this picture are sharper, with the tails of the strokes extending further outwards. The writer is writing in a hurry, with too many thoughts in their mind, and their hand can't keep up with their ideas.
"It's my dad..."
Master Ma scraped the rim of his teacup lid.
"Your father located the nine strongholds twenty years ago, and he surveyed them one by one on-site. This map was drawn by him after two years of searching."
Cheng Xiaojin's finger pressed on the third marker, his fingertips trembling slightly.
"How did he find it?"
"The fragment contains the calculation rules for the nine directions."
Master Ma paused for a moment.
"Your father spent half a year calculating the locations point by point on an old map of Beijing, and then spent more than a year walking around the city before finally settling on these nine locations."
"Master Ma, I've already looked through the scroll, how come I didn't see it?"
"You're interpreting the words literally, but your father is reading the hidden meanings between the lines."
Master Ma pointed to the arrow next to the third stake on the map.
"When the Cheng family reads a book, they can't just look at the ink; they also have to look at the paper."
"There are pinholes on those pages, made with the tip of a needle. If you hold them up to the light, you can see a set of numbers, which are the degrees of orientation."
Cheng Xiaojin opened her mouth briefly and then closed it again.
He flipped through that tattered scroll no less than ten times, never once thinking of holding it up to the light.
"You already knew about the third case in Panjiayuan?"
"We knew there were stakes in this area, but we weren't sure which one it was. The inscription you carved out of the well wall today finally confirmed the number."
Zhou Banxian walked over from beside the door frame and squatted down by the table to look at the map.
"I counted the nine pile positions. Three are in the inner city and six are in the outer city. The layout perfectly matches the skeletal structure of the Eight-Armed Nezha City."
"Nezha has three heads, six arms, and two legs, totaling eleven joints, but the Nine Stances only have nine joints, so two are missing."
"What about the two that are missing?"
"Cheng Shouyi's picture is not labeled."
Zhou Banxian shook his head.
"Either we couldn't find it, or we found it but didn't write it on the map."
Cheng Xiaojin flipped the map over.
The back of the kraft paper is mostly blank, with only a very small mark in the lower right corner.
The vertical hook is a secret mark made by the Cheng family.
He touched the vertical hook with his fingertip, and the sensation from his fingertip was duller than yesterday. He pressed it a couple more times before he could figure out the depth of the stroke.
"When did my dad give you this picture?"
"The third day of the first lunar month in 1997."
Master Ma's voice slowed down.
"He sat here for an afternoon, drank two pots of Biluochun tea, and when he left, he slipped the drawing into a hidden compartment and said one sentence."
"What did you say?"
"If I don't come back, when Xiao Jin grows up, I'll show it to him when it's time."
Cheng Xiaojin's Adam's apple bobbed, but he didn't reply.
He rubbed the edge of the kraft paper on the table between his right thumb and forefinger. The coarseness of the paper fibers was vaguely discernible under his fingertips. Three days ago, he could tell how many layers of glue had been used on the paper, but now he could only roughly determine its thickness.
The main room was quiet for a while. The thrush fluttered its wings twice under the pillar and then withdrew.
Zhou Banxian used his finger to point to each of the marks on the map.
The first incident occurred outside Xizhimen.
The second incident occurred on Deshengmen Inner Street.
The third case is in the eastern part of Panjiayuan.
The fourth location is south of Taoranting.
The fifth site is located on the west side of the outer wall of the Temple of Heaven.
The sixth point is the back street of Yonghe Temple.
The seventh pile.
Zhou Banxian's finger stopped at the seventh dot.
Cheng Xiaojin's eyes followed, and the hairs on the back of his neck stood on end.
The location marked on the seventh marker is 200 paces east of Rongbaozhai in Liulichang.
The stationery and general store is less than 50 meters east of Rongbaozhai.
"Master Ma."
"I know what you're trying to say. The place where that person you mentioned buys bamboo paper is directly above the seventh pile."
Cheng Xiaojin stood up straight and placed both hands on the edge of the table.
"For more than half a year, that person regularly bought bamboo paper and sandalwood essential oil from the same shop in Liulichang. He wasn't just browsing around; he was keeping an eye on the seventh case."
"It's not necessarily watching," Zhou Banxian interjected. "It could also be guarding."
Master Ma scraped the lid of his teacup a second time, making it more sullen than the first time.
"Your father marked the location of the seventh pile very accurately, with an error of no more than ten steps. However, the Liulichang area has been renovated twice in the past twenty years. Whether the underground structure has changed or whether the pile location has been disturbed during construction, no one can say for sure."
"What about the eighth and ninth stakes?"
"The eighth item is outside Andingmen."
"The ninth one, outside Dongzhimen."
After Zhou Banxian finished reading, he drew a large circle on the map with his finger.
"Nine piles circle the inner city, with uneven spacing, but you can see the shape when they are connected."
Cheng Xiaojin stared at the map for three seconds.
The outline formed by the nine red dots is neither a circle nor a square.
It is in human form.
Two piles are positioned at the top, three are laid out horizontally in the middle, and two are supported below.
It has three heads, six arms, and two legs, but only nine points, missing two joints.
"Where are the two missing ones?"
Zhou Banxian did not answer.
Master Ma scraped the lid of his teacup against the rim for the third time, the slowest of all, the sound of metal scraping against enamel lingering.
"Never mind the two fewer ones for now, look at the seventh one first."
Cheng Xiaojin lowered his head and brought his face two inches above the map.
Next to the seventh stake, besides the word "stake" and the number, there was a line of even smaller characters that he hadn't noticed earlier.
Written in pencil, the strokes were more shaky and the force was weaker. The habits of starting and ending the strokes were exactly the same as the handwriting that my grandfather had looked at countless times in his five notebooks.
It is my grandfather Cheng Yannian's handwriting.
He almost touched the paper with his nose, trying to decipher each word.
The pencil marks were very light, with traces of erasure. The eraser marks still left gray scratches on the paper, but after erasing, it was rewritten. The new writing was done with more force, and the strokes were pressed into the paper fibers.
Four words.
This stake has been moved.
"Uncle Ma, this picture was left here by my dad in 97. My grandfather passed away in 2001, so there were four years in between."
Cheng Xiaojin raised her head.
"Did my grandfather see this picture here?"
Master Ma picked up his teacup and took a sip of the now-cold tea.
"Your grandfather last came in the autumn of 2000. He sat in this chair and looked at this picture for a whole afternoon. Before he left, he wrote these four words with a pencil."
"This stake has been moved."
Cheng Xiaojin read those four words aloud.
"What does 'already moved' mean? Who moved it? When did they move it?"
Master Ma put the teacup back on the table.
"I asked, but your grandfather didn't say."