Chapter 160 The Emptiness of Dependent Origination

It was a bone dragon, the size of a mountain, crawling on the top of the bronze palace. It seemed that it would cross the boundary between life and death in the next second, spitting out blue dragon breath, and spreading its bone wings that covered the sky and the sun.

It lay there as if sleeping. There were two long bone horns extending from the side of the skull. The two rows of ribs opened to both sides like a bloody mouth, revealing the empty cavity inside. The vertebrae were connected together, like It was a winding snake, with ferocious bone spurs and bony protrusions extending from the joints. Compared with it, Lu Mingfei was like a small ant. If he threw it into his mouth, it would fall from the gap between his teeth.

The ancient dragon we saw in the Three Gorges last time was like an immature child in front of this big guy. It was hard to imagine how it would fly in the sky when it was alive.

Lu Mingfei immediately understood where to look for dragon scales. He had already seen some kind of immortal scales emitting bronze light scattered on the top of the bronze palace.

This is a completely different bronze palace than the one buried in the Three Gorges Dam. Huge copper pillars support the dome. There are no walls and the whole is hollow, as if it is newly built. The surface is smooth and there is no rust at all. Only the dome extends to both sides. It was like a super large altar, carrying the dragon body of death.

Lu Mingfei looked away. His destination was the top of the palace, where he wanted to retrieve a dragon scale. He looked down. His whole body had accelerated to the extreme under the influence of gravity. He still had at most ten seconds before falling. He had to be there. Before opening the parachute.

But there is no place to stand under your feet, and everything you can see with the naked eye is gray water. If it is true as recorded in ancient books, then this water has no buoyancy. If you fall into it, it will just keep falling. No matter how hard you struggle, it will have no effect. , drowning is the final outcome.

The only place that seemed like a foothold was the golden pilgrimage road, but that road was not directly below Lu Mingfei.

In short, he had no choice but to open the parachute first. He pulled down the control line of the parachute bag, and the parachute immediately opened and expanded. Lu Mingfei's figure suddenly stopped. Then, under the resistance of the air, his speed dropped sharply, and he continued to face diagonally. Floating into the distance.

He manipulated the angle of the parachute and gradually moved himself towards the golden road.

This is a very delicate job. Fortunately, Lu Mingfei has many experiences of falling from high altitudes. With his experience, he can understand what kind of movements will cause the drift to the left and what movements will cause the drift to the right. Through a little bit of fine-tuning, he Successfully arrived at the top of the golden road.

After getting closer, he discovered that the road was made up of huge golden pillars, like Sun Wukong's sea-fixing needle, standing forever in the gray ocean.

Lu Mingfei stepped on the golden pillar, and the parachute landed on the water. It began to sink slowly at the moment of contact. Lu Mingfei took off the parachute bag and threw down this thing that was not conducive to movement. He took out the Markov pistol from his waist.

At this time, the parachute had completely sunk to the bottom of the water, and Lu Mingfei aimed at the water and fired a shot.

The ice flowers bloomed, and the condensed ice blocks spread immediately, but after a while, the ice blocks began to sink at a constant speed like a parachute.

Lu Mingfei took another bullet from the magazine, walked to the edge of the golden pillar, squatted down, and carefully placed the bullet in the water. Even a metal object sank at the same slow speed as a light parachute.

This gray sea doesn't seem to pay attention to physical properties. As long as you fall into it, it will treat everyone equally and swallow you up.

There is no place on the golden pillar that the hook can draw strength from. It is all smooth wall, so you must be careful.

Lu Mingfei stood up and looked at the end of the Golden Road, the copper pillars that reached into the sky.

Only a small section of these golden pillars is exposed above the water. There is a gap of about two to three meters between each golden pillar, which is filled by the gray sea, and the diameter of a golden pillar is about two meters.

If you want to reach the Bronze Palace, you can only jump over it step by step like a frog jumping on a lotus leaf. One mistake can be fatal.

Lu Mingfei made a rough visual inspection, slightly bent his knees, and jumped to the surface of another golden pillar.

"Is it about this strength?" He looked back and started a series of jumps.

The speed was very fast. After he became proficient, he even had to cross two or three golden pillars in one step. Time passed minute by minute. The timer on his hand had reached the 15th minute. He finally arrived at the palace gate.

This is a completely dead world. Lu Mingfei couldn't hear any other sounds while he was on the road. The sound of the waves and the sound of the wind. There was nothing. Everything was dead, which made people feel depressed.

He looked up, and the majestic bone dragon was right in front of him. His empty eyes stared into the distance, filled with nothingness.

The entire palace is supported by forty-eight copper pillars, each of which is engraved with pictures, complex symbols and words.

There is no doubt that these are precious materials that have not yet been discovered, and may record the history of the dragon clan that humans have never understood.

Lu Mingfei paused at the door for 2 minutes to observe the pictures on the two thickest copper pillars at the door.

He didn't bring any photography equipment. He couldn't share these things with the academy. He couldn't explain where he found them, which would only cause trouble. With his shallow knowledge, he couldn't read these ancient characters at all.

But the images can be understood by everyone. Even a three-year-old child can read the comic strips with gusto.

The first copper pillar is painted with a giant dragon, with a man standing on top of the dragon's head, and crawling humans and other dragons at its feet, surrounded by flames.

The dragon should be "Norton", and the only one who can stand above him is his brother "Constantine".

This should record the prosperous scene when Norton ruled the territory, but there is something very strange about those humans. Everyone has a third eye on their forehead, which is similar to "Constantine" and "Norton" when they were in human form. Looks the same.

What is recorded on the second copper pillar is "Norton" flying in the sky. Under his feet are gushing volcanoes and lava. The prototype of a bronze pillar can be vaguely seen in the mountain.

This should be the scene when "Norton" used the "Candle Dragon" to cast this bronze palace, showing the great power of the Lord of Bronze and Fire.

One represents the power of domination, and the other represents supreme power.

From this point of view, the ruins of the prosperous ancient dragon civilization all exist, but they are hidden in the Nibelungs. Lying on the bronze palace should be the corpse of "Norton", which should be his original true body.

His former residence should be in Northern Europe. Did he voluntarily abandon this huge dragon body? What is the purpose of traveling across the continent to China with Constantine? What kind of important thing is it that makes him and his brother remain anonymous and serve as ministers under Gongsun Shu?

There seem to be more and more mysteries, but the decline of dragon civilization is a mystery. The existing conjectures are all assumptions. When the hybrids started to fight, the black king and the white king were already dead, and the dragon civilization It has long since declined, and people know almost nothing about the history before that time, and can only make guesses from myths and legends.

Lu Mingfei continued walking inside, and darkness enveloped his vision. He was wearing goggles with night vision function. To his surprise, when entering the entrance, there was an upward spiral staircase. It was not big, just enough for a human to pass through. .

He stepped on it and tried hard. The steps had not fallen off due to disrepair and were very stable.

It must have been cast for Constantine, Lu Mingfei couldn't imagine that picture.

When the sky is clear, the giant dragon lies on the top of the palace enjoying the lazy sunshine, and the young man in white goes up the stairs and takes a nap on the dragon's neck. Under the palace are thousands of people admiring him. Worship them as gods.

Lu Mingfei walked up the spiral staircase without handrails and climbed up step by step while observing the layout of the entire bronze palace.

A very empty hall, nothing, dead and dark.

Living here is not comfortable at all, there is draft when it rains, and there is not even a bed. Or is it that creatures like dragons like to sleep in the open air and absorb the essence of the sun and the moon?

Lu Mingfei shook his head and looked up at the only hole with light shining down. That was the end of the stairs, and the top was the destination.

He glanced at the timer and saw that another 5 minutes had passed. There were still 40 minutes left. It seemed to be plenty, but he had to consider the return trip. He could still spend 10 minutes here at most, so he accelerated his pace and headed there. Run up.

After passing through the hole, the view finally opened up, and a huge dragon rib stood in front of Lu Mingfei.

The surface is as transparent as white jade, without a trace of flesh and blood. It stands to reason that even if such a large body dies, it will only become a mummy, but now all that can be seen are bones and very few scales. Only a few are scattered on the bronze wall.

Around the dragon's body, there are various weapons inserted, including spears, swords, knives, and maces scattered haphazardly around the edge.

Lu Mingfei ignored those things and picked up a piece of scale. It was as big as a washbasin. It felt heavy in his hand, like holding a large piece of lead. He had to use two hands to hold it.

He glanced at the corpse again before going down. Even if it was dead, the bone dragon still had the majesty of a king. It had a great sense of oppression just because of its size. It was completely different from that funny guy who was full of nonsense.

So which side is the truth?

Old Tang probably regained his memory at the last moment, but committed suicide willingly.

Standing alone at the highest point of the palace, it must be very lonely. He only has his younger brother to accompany him. After thousands of years, his only younger brother has died. No wonder he gets angry.

I don’t know if he ever felt a little happy and happy when he thought about his experience as "Ronald Don" to relieve his loneliness of being immersed in the gaps of time.

"I hope we can meet again." Lu Mingfei fixed the scales on his back with a rope and waved to the bone dragon's head.

"Potato chips, how's it going?" Mai Shutoku sucked the juice straw.

Su Enxi frowned and tapped her fingers quickly on the keyboard, "Lu Mingfei disappeared too quickly. The signal disappeared within 10 seconds of landing. If he didn't take the initiative to crush the signal, then he should have successfully entered Nibel." Dragon root.”

"So how does he get out after going in?" Mai Shutoku came over curiously: "It's a different space, it's like parallel time and space. How can he come back?"

"The boss said the key lies in the connection with the present world." Su Enxi said: "There is a saying in Buddhism called 'Dependent Origination and Emptiness'. According to the Western point of view, the most basic existence of matter is basic particles, which have their own entities. But there is no such thing as the Buddhist point of view. For example, Westerners would dismantle a pebble into atoms and quarks, but Buddhists believe that it does not have an entity in itself, but is 'empty in nature', composed of various elements. All kinds of causes and conditions come together.”

"Does it mean that various conditions converged to form this pebble? For example, the erosion of water flow and the erosion of wind and sand?"

"That's almost the meaning." Su Enxi nodded, "Buddhists believe that when fate comes together, it will disappear when fate separates. This is the case for everything."

"Then what should we do? Find out what conditions constitute Lu Mingfei? Is it his parents or brothers and sisters?"

"Who knows!" Su Enxi complained, "I'm not a Buddhist, I can't even get the signal from the signal transmitter!"

Philosophy always makes people collapse. It is said that the philosophy and mathematics departments are rife with mental illness. Because they cannot bear the torture of thinking, they fall into a strange circle.

Su Enxi is young and naturally would not have become a monk so early to study philosophy. She wrote down the above passage from the Internet. She can understand this statement logically, but she cannot apply it in practice. .

She was a little crazy. It had been 50 minutes. She had been trying to connect to Lu Mingfei's signal. She was typing on the keyboard to adjust the frequency, but Lu Mingfei was really like entering a black hole, even the electromagnetic signal was sucked away.

"Twilight is almost over." Mai Shutoku glanced at her watch, "So you've been typing on the computer for so long and you haven't made any progress at all?"

"Do you think typing on the keyboard is easy?" Su Enxi glared at Jiude Mai, "You know nothing! You can't even write 'hello world' if I ask you to."

"I'm a ninja, so of course I don't understand 'hellow kitty' or 'hellow world'." Mai Shutoku said, "But you are the one who is helpless now. You can't do anything. We don't even know what to do."

"Are you a stress monster? You know I can't help it, but you keep saying it! At this time, you should say "come on, come on, you know!" Su Enxi said through gritted teeth.

Mai Shutoku shook her head and sighed.

Su Enxi's blood pressure suddenly rose again. She was just about to apply honey with her mouth when a voice suddenly attracted her attention.

"Connected." Zero pointed at the computer screen and said calmly.

"What!" Su Enxi immediately turned her attention back to the computer and tapped the keyboard again: "It's really connected! What did you do, Sanwu!"

"Press enter." Zero said.

"Enter? But that key?" Su Enxi frowned.

"Wait. I know! The emptiness of dependent origination! This is the emptiness of dependent origination!" Su Enxi suddenly realized, took Ling's hand, pulled her to the computer, and said happily: "Dependent arising and annihilation, we are here and on the road. The person most involved in the cause and effect is you! Zero-san!"