Back in Place ≽^⚈⩊⚈^≼
When they returned to the stone house, dusk had already faded, leaving only the last vestiges of light. Long Tieshan sat on the threshold, an unlit oil lamp beside him. Seeing them enter the courtyard, he stood up and took the lamp inside. Long Tian squatted down by the well, scooped up water to wash his face, and the evening breeze continued to blow in the courtyard, like the slow, rustling of an old book being turned under its own weight.
After dinner, Long Tian spread out the silk map on the table and drew an arrow at the end of the long wall, pointing southeast. He drew a circle at the end of the arrow, the diameter of which matched the size of the circular mark on the edge of the map. After finishing, he put the map away, walked to the threshold, squatted down, and went through everything he had felt inside the cavity during the day, confirming that all the information had been categorized in his memory without any new discrepancies or gaps. He stood up, went back into the room, sat on the edge of the bed, took off his boots and placed them at the foot of the bed, and lay down fully clothed.
The next morning, Long Tieshan was washing vegetables by the water vat beside the house when he saw Long Tian come out. Long Tian placed the last vegetable on the rim of the basin, shook his hands, wiped them on his apron, and asked, "How much deviation is there between the direction that end faces and the end of the truncated path on the silk map?"
Long Tian squatted by the well, holding a bowl of freshly ladled porridge. "The deviation is gone. The direction the end face is pointing coincides with the extension line of the end of the map path."
After listening, Long Tieshan didn't ask any further questions. He brought the washed vegetables into the house, squatted down by the stove, and began chopping them, the blade making a steady sound on the cutting board. Long Tian finished the whole bowl of porridge by the well, rinsed the bowl in the bucket of water, and put it back by the stove.
Yu Jin squatted down by the side of the house to re-examine the ties on his old bundle. He tied a reinforcing knot at the joint of the thinned ties, then stood up, took a few steps to test the tension of the ties, and squatted down again to adjust the position of the ties so that they fit his body better.
At noon, Shen Mo walked from the fork in the road. He still carried the dusty smell of his journey when he reached the stone house. He stood by the door without entering, and said, "I compared the ancient characters on that dome map with another incomplete copy and confirmed its arrangement. That incomplete copy is an old manuscript passed down through generations of fishermen from the East Sea, copied on fish skin paper, and it's much better preserved than the one from the Spirit Hall. The stroke order of the manuscript matches the line of characters on the wall of the chamber you mentioned, and there's a small extra section at the end—two more characters after that line, roughly meaning 'entrance'."
Long Tian stood up from the well platform, walked to the door frame, looked at Shen Mo, and asked, "Where are those two characters located on the wall of the chamber, in which direction are they?"
"After the end, on the same line, the fragment records that those two characters are followed by a set of wavy lines—a variation of the wavy lines at the end of your silk map, in the same direction, only with slight adjustments to the thickness and spacing of the strokes."
Long Tian stood by the doorframe, mentally aligning the meaning of the two characters and the direction of the wavy line variation with the end face of the long wall. He placed them side-by-side on the same coordinate system, confirming the coordinate point they pointed to—somewhere on that open sea, a short distance from the intersection of the extended line of the wall and the sea surface. He repeatedly checked this location in his mind, confirming there were no misinterpretations or deviations, before saying to Shen Mo, "I plan to go and see that open sea soon."
Shen Mo nodded, stepped back from the door frame, and turned to walk back the way he came.
Long Tian stood at the doorway, watching Shen Mo's figure disappear at the turn of the fork in the road. Then he turned and went back into the house, reconfirming the position of the Imperial Seal in his chest cavity. It had been completely returned to its place, with no repulsion between it and the Origin Return Pearl and the new core. They were all pulsating synchronously on their respective channels, operating at their own frequencies, coexisting in the same cavity without interfering with each other.
He examined the silk map again, folded it neatly, put it into his leather pouch, and tightened the strap. Yu Jin squatted in the corner, untied the dark gray bead from his collarbone, hung it back up, and adjusted the strap to a more comfortable position. Long Tieshan squatted by the stove, and after the continuous chopping sounds stopped, he put the chopped vegetables into a basin, stood up, stood at the door for a moment, looked at Long Tian, Yu Jin, and the already packed bundle, then turned and went back into the house without saying a word.