Shrouding the Heavens Chapter 26 Ancient Map of the Starry Sky

Chapter 26 Ancient Map of the Starry Sky

Holding the ancient bronze lamp in his hand, Ye Fan was like a calm lake with the moon reflecting it, motionlessly standing there. He had an extraordinary air about him, as if he had transcended the dust and dirt of the mortal world. At this moment, he seemed to gracefully place himself above mortal concerns, an exiled Immortal above the mortal plane who came and went with the wind.

But his inner world was not as calm as his body. The heavenly music of a Grand Dao was as profound as the ocean and boundlessly mysterious. Each word shook heaven and earth, like oceans collapsing on themselves.

It sounded like an ancient Buddhist chant, yet it also sounded like the prayers of gods from the time of the Great Desolation. Its origin seemed to come from an eternity ago, piercing through from the ancient skies to slowly enter Ye Fan’s heart. His heart shook as different thoughts surged in his mind, and he had even forgotten himself.

The others saw him quietly and motionlessly standing there, but none of them understand what was happening. They could only feel that he seemed like an exiled Immortal beyond the dust and dirt of the mortal world, and worldly affairs could no longer affect him.

Ye Fan was stuck there. A vast divine music that sounded like bells ringing from long ago passed through his ears, but they were very obscure and he didn’t understand any of their meaning. At one moment, it seemed as if he were overlooking the depths of the underworld. The next, it seemed as if he had entered the holy lands of the gods. All kinds of ineffable meanings rose in his heart, causing him to be alert and perplexed.

This kind of profound divine music was not superfluously long, but instead, each word was as cherished as gold, and altogether it was only several hundred words. It had the simplicity of a Grand Dao, yet each word was filled with meaning. It had a feeling of returning to the simple truth.

The vast heavenly music repeated itself over and over, each word sinking into Ye Fan’s heart. At first, they would be as momentous as the mountains and rivers shaking, and then they would be as quiet as the moon shining on the sea. The hundreds of ancient words were all clearly imprinted into Ye Fan’s heart, but the divine music continued to unceasingly resound within Ye Fan’s ears.

Throughout this whole course of events, the Bodhi seed in Ye Fan’s chest continued to heat up, so much so that his whole body warmed up. It was also the reason why Ye Fan could hear this profound music.

Legend was that the Bodhi tree opened up man’s divinity, allowing them to achieve self-enlightenment and seize the Dao of heaven and earth. Obviously, this seed that had been buried under the Bodhi tree of the Great Thunderchant Temple was no ordinary thing.

While Ye Fan continued to motionlessly and silently touch the inner coffin, everyone else started to have some doubts. Some people proposed pulling him away, as they didn’t like the idea of him touching that coffin.

Pang Bo circled around Ye Fan a couple times and saw that he didn’t have an expression of pain or suffering. On the contrary, he seemed to have an air that he was above the dust of mortality. In addition, the inner coffin seemed to possess a divine air that would appear off and on.

In the end, Pang Bo didn’t act blindly without thinking and instead stood beside him, quietly waiting while protecting him.

“There won’t be any evil spirits that’ll climb into his body, will there?” asked Li Changqing as he stared back and forth between Ye Fan and the coffin.

When the other people heard this, their grip tightened on the divine relics and some of them couldn’t help recoiling a couple steps. The mysterious ancient coffin was full of unknowns, causing people to feel nervous.

“Is your butt your brain? It’s not like you’ll die if you don’t insult Ye Fan. Just what sort of thoughts run through your head?” Pang Bo truly disliked him from the bottom of his heart. Ever since the issue on the five-colored altar, this person had constantly been fighting against him and Ye Fan, so his words didn’t have the slightest trace of politeness.

“Ok, don’t fight,” Zhou Yi faintly frowned. Sweeping his eyes around, he said, “We still can’t be certain that there are no more divine crocodiles within the huge coffin. We should all try to be a bit more careful and thoroughly check over the whole place. “

After hearing this, everyone’s hearts immediately tensed. Since they’d already encountered one divine crocodile, it was hard to guarantee that there wouldn’t be a second, or third, or even more. After all, this was something that concerned their life and death. Fourteen of their classmates had already lost their lives to the divine crocodiles; these sinister and malevolent creatures terrified people.

People didn’t split up into too many groups. For the sake of helping each other, they only became two groups. Using their cell phones, they tightly held their divine relics as they carefully searched through the dark.

However, even after searching every nook and cranny and once again rejoining, they still hadn’t found anything. Even if it was like this, none of them dared to lower their guard. The bronze coffin was huge and spacious, so it was perfectly reasonable for some divine crocodiles to slip past them. Plus, who was to say that the divine crocodiles hadn’t climbed up the walls, a place where there was no light to search by.

“Be a bit more on guard; no matter how careful we are, it won’t be a mistake,” reminded Lin Jia. At the same time, she also consoled everyone, saying, “Even if there are divine crocodiles, they’ll still be afraid of the Buddhist items in our hands or they would have already attacked us.”

Suddenly, everyone heard a bizarre sound. Although it was very weak and almost imperceptible, it still shocked people’s minds! The sound appeared to be a drumbeat that came from a distant space and time. It was filled with a depressed grief, and then a bell rang that filled the air with endless sorrow.

“Where is that sound coming from?”

Everyone was surprised as they surveyed their surroundings, but they didn’t find anything.

The deeply lethargic drumbeat and the sorrowful ringing of the bell appeared to penetrate through the coffin walls, causing people’s hair to stand on end.

“This should be…the requiem for when they buried the ancient emperors, right?”

Suddenly, even more sounds came, sounds that seemed to contain endless grief, the sound of countless thousands of people worshiping and praying at a person’s funeral.

The tolling of the bell and the mournful drumbeat seemed to bring the scene of a vast funeral before people’s eyes, and the world seemed to be covered with an endless sea of people in mourning and prayer.

Just at this moment, nine consecutive dragon roars resounded through the sky, shaking the rivers and mountains and spreading throughout the world like it was a scene in history engraving itself into the starry sky.

In this split second, everyone felt a bizarre feeling, as if they were personally standing there as an ancient emperor overlooked the boundless earth and heaven before then being transported to the scene of an unprecedentedly large funeral.

In reality, they couldn’t see the scene, it was simply the connection people made when they heard the dragon roars along with the vast sea of people praying. Everyone quickly regained their clarity, but the mournful sound continued to linger around, causing people to feel like a cold breeze was blowing across their back.

“Our divine relics are once more glowing….”

At this moment, divine light spilled out as everyone’s Buddhist items began to blossom with radiance. But it wasn’t their divine light returning, but the last burst of the almost dried-up items. Thousands and thousands of divine rays sprinkled out, all rushing towards the huge bronze coffin’s walls. They sank into the ancient bronze carvings.

Although the coffin walls were covered with green rust, they still couldn’t conceal these images of the ancient civilizations and gods. At this moment, they all lit up as if they were about to be resurrected. Even those carvings of the fierce beasts and divine birds became much more vivid and lifelike. All these carvings from the time of the Ancient Desolation were infused by a mysterious force.

“Quick, look! The carving of the map of the starry sky is glowing…”

Everyone felt that place was very abnormal. It was the largest carving of the Ancient Desolation, a boundless image of the starry sky. At this moment, all the stars were sparkling, but the background coffin wall was black like the night sky, making it appear just like real stars were sprinkled into the vast night sky.

“This map of the starry sky has a line that is flickering. Do you think this is the path of the starry sky that we’re taking?”

Everyone crowded over to look,  and revealed surprised expressions.

This map of the starry sky was as boundless as the ocean. All the stars were as minute as pieces of dust, but some of the stars were slightly brighter than the others, making them much more eye-catching.

“These seven stars are exceptionally bright; that should be the Big Dipper!”

Hearing Wang Ziwen explain it this way, everyone carefully took a second look. The suspected ancient path of the starry sky was in front of them. The seven stars of the Big Dipper sparkled brightly, making them conspicuous.

There were also many other stars that were just as bright as the seven Big Dipper stars. After carefully looking at them, several people revealed surprised expressions. Zhou Yi not only appeared scholarly, he also had read many books, and he recognized those special stars on the spot. “These are all constellations from ancient China.”

In ancient China, the stars were split into certain regions, and different regions had different names. The sky was split into Three Walls, Four Beasts, and Twenty-Eight Constellations.

The neglected ancient bronze carving in front of them was also split in such a manner. It especially marked out some of the more famous stars.

“Looking at the map of the starry sky, if we carefully look at the route it really is surprising. The ancient people didn’t split the stars up by superstition, but due to being in different star fields. Apparently, there is some extremely special and significant meaning to this…”

“Right, just looking at it, we can tell that it’s related to the ancient path of the starry sky. Maybe it’s even related to the origin of life…”

Everyone was shocked completely speechless for quite a long time.

“Look, the line on the map of the starry sky is slowly growing. Do you think it represents us moving forward?”

“The line is approaching the Big Dipper!”

Everyone went through a brief spell in which they were lost in thought. They had originally been on the Earth’s Mt. Tai, but in just such a short time they were now almost at the Big Dipper! This made them feel as if they were in a dream or fantasy, a sense of make-believe.

With mankind’s current technology, they wouldn’t be able to get near the Big Dipper in even hundreds of years. It was hard to imagine just how far such a distance was!

Everyone was dumbstruck, and their hearts were extremely shaken.

“There’s another bright star before the Big Dipper- the Emperor Star. Is our destination going to be one of the planets around that star? The Emperor Star had a special meaning in ancient times.” People brought up all kinds of conjectures like this because the Emperor Star was the brightest of all the stars on the map.

“It’s difficult to tell. It’s also possible we’ll be going off into further star fields.”

Just at this moment, one person cried out in shock, “That bright line is no longer extending! It’s now stopped in the star field of the Big Dipper!”

At the same time, everyone felt the huge bronze coffin violently shake.

“We might have reached our destination…”

“Have we really reached the place where gods went…?”

“It might be the immortal world from the legends…”

“We still don’t know that it’s not an extremely glorious world where science and civilization have grown.”

“If there really are immortals and Buddhas, we might even meet up with people from the legends.

“After following the ancient path of the starry sky left by the gods, just what sort of world will we reach now that we’ve reached the end?!”

Everyone’s heart was filled with trepidation, but was also full of expectation. None of them wanted to stay in this coffin for any longer.

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Translator notes:

三垣四象二十八宿 Three Walls, Four Beasts, and Twenty-eight Constellations. Here’s what my research shows me: The Three Walls are the Ziwei (tiny/profound purple) wall, the Taiwei (most tiny/profound) wall, and the Tianshi (heaven city) wall. The four beasts are the Azure Dragon, White Tiger, Vermilion Bird, and Black Tortoise which represent respectively the East, West, South, and North regions of the sky. Each beast is split into seven constellations to make up twenty-eight constellations. Due to where they studied this astronomy in ancient China, they were at 35 degrees north latitude, so observers attached special importance to the region around it, splitting them up with the three walls.

荒古 Ancient Desolation might be an actual term in Chinese, but it doesn’t have an official translation so I just translated it literally. It should mean long ago when there was nothing.

Chapter end