Chapter 39 The Nine Gates and the Zhang Family

Here is a figurative discussion of Er Yuehong’s prediction from that time. If you don’t understand it, you can skip this section directly since not all situations need to be understood in order to make sense of this matter.

Poker-Face and the Nine Gates came to an agreement back then, but in the end, the Nine Gates didn’t abide by this agreement and Poker-Face did. This breach of trust eventually led Poker-Face to entering the bronze door. I always felt that if I hadn’t used the remaining power of the Nine Gates over the past ten years to finally honor this agreement in another way, Poker-Face might have been forced to serve as a gatekeeper for generations.

With his character, he might have really borne that burden for eternity.

In the Nine Gates, Er Ye was a relatively soft person while the women were very tough. In fact, Er Ye’s character was far different from others. Even Xiao Hua had been influenced when he studied under Er Ye, because his style was also geared more towards self-sacrifice and heavy commitment.

Er Ye’s heavy commitment was an excellent story, so during those ten years, I wasn’t the only one who worked hard. It’s very difficult for me to describe exactly how much Xiao Hua had helped me during that time, but he never hesitated even though he always had a pessimistic attitude during the whole process. This was all because Xiao Hua also acknowledged the promise made with the Zhang family at that time.

But I didn’t blame the other families, either. The relationship between the previous generation of the Mystic Nine and the Zhang family brought about a nightmarish experience. Zhang Qiling’s great power didn’t protect them, so it was understandable that they felt differently than I did and came to a different decision than I did.

At that time, it was speculated that the Zhang family maintained the world order through some strange mechanism, and the Wang Family destroyed the Zhang family through artificial means so as to return free will to the world.

After that, people from the Wang family tried to replace the Zhang family, but they didn’t achieve great success. I felt like the last thing the Wang family did was more like playing house. They deceived themselves into thinking that they were interfering with everyone’s fate, but in fact, I personally felt that a sense of freedom had returned to the world.

But no one had ever addressed a certain question: if, like elementary particles⁽¹⁾ being destroyed, both the Wang and Zhang families disappeared and Wang Zanghai’s dream came true, what would happen next?

To put it simply, what would happen when no one guarded the door anymore?

At that time, I honestly never thought about the problem of what came next; I only focused my attention on that first level. After all, the biggest problem was obviously the Wang family, so after they were taken care of, Poker-Face didn’t have to go inside the door.

In any case, Poker-Face’s attitude seemed to be the same and I hadn’t noticed anything strange happen after so many years had passed.

But Er Yuehong believed that there must be a huge and unknown mechanism behind the relationship between the Zhang family’s magical mechanism and the bronze door.

This was also the reason why the Zhang family’s archives mechanism was so strong back then. The Southern and Western Archives, along with the overseas Zhang family system, still operated for many years even after the main branch of the Zhang family disappeared completely. Even Zhang Da Fo Ye, who originally left the Zhang family, assumed responsibility for his lineage and took over the Central Archives, which showed that the Zhang family members knew in their hearts that something would happen.

The mission of these Archives was to indiscriminately wipe out all the bizarre events in the world, which was obviously an attempt to prevent something from happening.

As a result, Er Yuehong believed that there might be one final event.

Not only did this whole matter have something to do with the Zhang family’s origins, but it also had something to do with the bronze door. But it happened so long ago—probably at least 3,500 years ago—that no one could describe it clearly.

It could be said that the whole story had an absolute cause, and when everything fell silent, this cause would slowly appear. In fact, the first signs of it could appear in any situation. Every single one of the Zhang family’s Archives were still operating during that period of time when the Wang family completely destroyed them because they were monitoring any situation in the world that might be a sign of this cause.

As a matter of fact, it should have already begun by now.

Xiao Hua told the Mongolian woman that he had been using Qimen Dunjia to look for the “location of the cause” and discovered that it was in the world’s second most valuable tomb.

At that time, three of the nine families thought that the Nine Gates should set up an early warning system for this matter, and the key player would be the Qi family. But the situation was extremely confusing at that time, the Zhang family seemed invincible, and the Wang family was only a concept. As a result, this matter wasn’t discussed too much.

Those three families—led by Er Ye, Ba Ye, and Jiuye—were the gentlest families in the Mystic Nine. As a matter of fact, only Jiuye and Xiao Hua were the talents of their generation and the last person in Ba Ye’s family line had long lived overseas, so this alliance should exist in name only.

But did the alliance from that time still play a role today? Was this the reason why Qi Yu came back? What did they foresee?

I figured Qi Yu was the one who knew the most, so did he come back to solve this problem? Or, did he want to use this problem to achieve his own goals?

What was the final event? Why did Xiao Hua have to wear gorgeous clothes like he was in a bridal procession or about to be interred? And why did he use a primitive religious ritual for sacrificing to the gods in order to send himself to the depths of the mountain? The primitive Bon religion entertained gods in an extremely bloody way—internal organs and human heads were the main sacrifices—so was that gorgeous costume what the shaman used to wear?

If we followed the classification of the primitive Bon religion, this ancient god related to mountains was called Nyian in Tibet.

For example, Nyainqentanglha Shan.⁽²⁾

Was sacrificing yourself the only way to come face-to-face with this Nyian god?

What about the three of us?

There were many questions floating around in my head, but in the end, this Mongolian woman who was just an outsider to this whole thing clearly wrote the answers in her notes, which made me feel very at ease.

If it were my Uncle Three, I figured I’d be even more confused after reading it.

Anyway, I really hoped that my friends would turn out to be fine. I actually felt a little relieved since Xiao Hua and the others were so well prepared, but with such a direct way of offering sacrifices to the head god, I couldn’t help but think that Xiao Hua had made a desperate move. Black Glasses, this is your absolute domain. According to you, your ability surpasses Poker-Face in this kind of place. I hope you weren’t lying.

Then, Xiao Hua and his team went deep into the gap and began to move forward in the dark. Xiao Hua left that walkie-talkie behind with the recording on it, but the woman didn’t know why. Shortly after that, they entered the dragon vein and encountered something extremely strange.

When the woman was keeping watch, she always saw her feet hanging in the air, floating in one place.

It seemed as if the darkness under her feet was a deep abyss.

She would find herself in this state when she was absent-minded, but she would quickly recover when she came back to her senses.

She thought that it was too dark here, which made her feel like she was flying.

Only someone who read this notebook now would know that that wasn’t the case. In fact, I believed that what she was seeing was the situation that would happen after she was hanged.

<Chapter 38><Table of Contents><Chapter 40>

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TN Notes:

(1) Ugh, science. In particle physics, an elementary particle is a subatomic particle with no substructure, i.e. it’s not composed of other particles. It’s as basic as you get.

(2) What I have is the Chinese spelling for it but it can also be “Nyenchen Tanglha Shan”. In the Tibetan language, Nyenchen means “big god” and Tanglha means “mountain on the highland”. “Shan” in Chinese just means mountain by the way.