Chapter 311: Preparing to Set Off
About the arc title (mild spoiler for future chapters) 和合actually has a multitude of definitions. I’m translating it based on a definition mentioned by our painting-enterers, which is the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/He-He_Er_Xian 和合二仙. They are two gods that represent family harmony and happy marriage.
“Some force, in some way, during the long Semi-Historical era, completely erased hundreds of years of records of human activity every once in a while. Perhaps to put an end to this, Yu had people cast nine cauldrons, inscribing shamanic patterns endowed with the power of gods and spirits, and placing the shamanic symbol of ‘light’ across the vast land to seal this force.
“Whether it was casting the cauldrons or setting the shamanic symbol, both processes took an exceedingly long time. This act may even take hundreds of years due to various unexpected conditions. Only when it finally succeeded, and the force was completely sealed, did history, led by humans, begin to be continuously recorded.
“However, during the Spring and Autumn period and the Warring States periods, wars broke out and the world was in chaos, the nine cauldrons inexplicably disappeared. Without the mystical artifacts to suppress it, that previously sealed force began to stir, searching for an opportunity to re-emerge in the human world through luring people into paintings.
“And another force, which had been keeping it in check, noticed its disturbance and did everything possible to imprint images representing the nine cauldrons and the Earth Cord onto the painting entrants’ gu-xiang. It continued to suppress that dark force through the entrants, and tried, through each painting, to give clues.
“There may be a cycle to how often this dark force reappears, and we are the people chosen during this cycle. If this theory is correct, just using gu-xiang may only suppress this dark force for a century. To completely and permanently seal it, we likely need to find the actual nine cauldrons.”
Mu Yiran’s analysis clarified the entire chain of clues for everyone, so their focus was now on finding the whereabouts of the nine cauldrons.
After lunch, everyone continued to work based on their previous assignment. Wei Dong continued analyzing the gu-xiang images, Luo Bu delved into “Classic of Mountains and Seas”, and Ke Xun posted on Weibo again to seek information about the nine cauldrons from the powerful online community. Zhu Haowen was responsible for posting on popular online forums and message boards, while Mu Yiran typed continuously on his laptop—Ke Xun guessed he was using his connections all over the world to find clues.
The remaining members went to the library.