Locating the Lair

The exact place of the lair is found with an old sighting method: two lines of sight cross at the lair, and the height of the table mountain in front corrects it. Once the lair is fixed, the color and texture of its soil are read, and only the right soil makes a true lair.

Two lines of sight

Feng shui masters of old fixed the lair (穴) with a sighting method in three steps:

1. First, take the facing of the dragon vein itself with the compass, and draw a straight line.
2. Then stand at the water mouth, look toward the dragon vein, take the center point of the embrace of the Green Dragon and White Tiger, and draw a second line. The point where the two lines cross is where the lair lies.
3. Then stand on the lair and look ahead: the height of the table mountain in front must fall above the navel and below the shoulders of the person taking the sighting. Adjusting the height in this way finds the true lair.

The soil in the lair

The color of the soil in the lair must be the same as at the narrow pass where the ridge runs between two large mountains; only then does the lair keep to the true vein.

Color: red or yellow with a moist sheen is the best; dry, withered and black marks an ill-fated site.

Texture: the soil should be deep. Hard and stony is ill; neither too hard nor too soft, warm and moist to the touch, is good; dry and gritty is ill.

When the soil across the whole mountain is the same color as the soil of the lair, the lair is an ordinary one. When the soil in the lair is special and fine, unlike the soil of the mountain around it, it is sure to be a fine lair.

The land outside, the soil within

In fixing a lair, feng shui masters read the lie of the mountains and rivers and the course of the water outside, and whether the soil is good or poor within. Neither can be left out, and so a fine lair is hard to find.

Source: The Way of the Earth's Veins (天纪：地脉道)