Free Web NovelChapter 117: Chapter 35: Hungry Ghosts in the Buddha
Gao Tian couldn’t describe the feeling as he looked at the half of Lan Chu’s body hanging from the Great Buddha.
He pretended to keep talking, pretended to be in a conversation with Lan Chu, pretended she wasn’t dead yet.
Finally, Jiang Yang, who was beside him, placed a hand on his shoulder and gave him a shake, as if trying to jolt him back to his senses.
"We have to figure out a way to get Lan Chu’s body down.
"We can’t just leave her hanging up there.
"Lan Chu must have seen something inside that Buddha to cause her death. The wounds on her body are important."
The half of Lan Chu’s body hanging from the dark opening was perfectly still. She was long dead.
Only the dead could hold such an awkward position for so long without reacting.
When he saw Lan Chu’s lower half hanging from the Buddha, Gao Tian’s rational mind already knew the truth. But his emotions refused to believe it, which was why he had subconsciously greeted her corpse.
Not even a full day had passed since they entered Longshu Temple, and two members of their four-person team were already dead.
Both deaths were baffling, and they had no clue what killing rule they had triggered.
The most crucial questions were: what did Lan Chu see inside the Buddha? And what caused her death?
Gao Tian suppressed his grief and asked:
"When you came into Longshu Temple alone before, did you check this Great Buddha?"
Jiang Yang’s expression was relatively calm.
"That dark opening is too high. I couldn’t climb up.
"So I settled for the next best thing. I knocked on the base of the statue several times and determined it was probably hollow.
"To make sure no ghosts were hiding inside, I even pulled out my gun and shot it from a few different angles. See? These are the bullet marks I left..."
Jiang Yang pointed his hand toward the lower part of the statue’s drooping belly, trying to show Gao Tian the bullet marks. But as he pointed, his expression and his hand froze.
They weren’t there.
Although the Great Buddha was faded and covered in dust, the statue itself was perfectly intact. There were no signs of violent external damage, let alone the bullet holes from being shot.
"How is that possible? I’m positive I shot a few holes in the lower part. I even put my eye right up to them and looked inside..."
Disbelieving, Jiang Yang instinctively reached out and touched the spot where he’d left the bullet holes.
His touch was met with nothing but the smooth, cold surface of the statue.
’The Great Buddha... had the bullet holes on it really repaired themselves in just ten-odd minutes?’
’Is this Great Buddha... alive?’
The entire Longshu Temple was becoming more and more bizarre.
A sudden chill swept through the temple.
Of course, Gao Tian believed that Jiang Yang had indeed fired his gun. As a veteran of five missions, he wouldn’t lie about something like this.
It could only mean that there was something wrong with the Great Buddha itself—that it was an evil object.
"Let’s figure out how to get Lan Chu’s body down first.
"Leaving her hanging up there isn’t right."
Gao Tian found a few largish stones on the ground.
His idea was simple. Lan Chu’s corpse was snagged in the dark opening, with her upper body inside, held in a delicate balance.
If he could find the right angle and break that balance, he could knock her body loose, causing it to fall outward.
Though it was disrespectful to the body, they were players in this supernatural game and couldn’t afford to be particular about such things.
He originally expected it would take at least five or six stones to achieve his goal. After all, more than half of Lan Chu’s body was inside the dark opening, wedged in pretty deep.
But after he threw just the first stone, Lan Chu’s hanging corpse lost its balance, tipped outward, and fell to the ground. It was much simpler than he’d imagined.
The two of them took a step back. When the body landed in front of them, Gao Tian and Jiang Yang discovered that only half of Lan Chu’s body was left.
Her upper half, which had been inside the dark opening, had been gnawed on by something inside the Buddha. It was eaten clean, leaving behind jagged bite marks.
Her large and small intestines, a whole mess of viscera, and her waist had been snagged on the edge of the dark opening. From their vantage point, it had looked like her lower half was stuck outside, seemingly maintaining a complete human form.
Who would have thought? Lan Chu, that crazy woman, hadn’t died in all those Haunted Houses in the United States. Instead, she died here, on a green-level mission that wasn’t even hers.
Jiang Yang drew both of his revolvers at the same time. He was done being polite; he was going to shoot this Great Buddha to pieces.
’Whatever’s hiding inside the Great Buddha, feeding it a few dozen bullets should feel pretty damn good.’
Just as he was about to open fire, a strange rustling sound, RUSTLE RUSTLE, suddenly came from the dark opening above. It sounded like something was rapidly climbing up the Great Buddha’s inner wall.
"Something’s about to come out."
Jiang Yang forcefully suppressed his anger and grief, then turned his guns and aimed upward.
Gao Tian also drew his Terror Blade, his other hand pressed on the Luck Jar. As soon as the vengeful ghost of Longshu Temple appeared, he would give himself a boost of good luck.
A desiccated, plant-like face slowly poked its head out of the dark opening, looking out at Gao Tian and Jiang Yang.
Bald, with six scar-dots on his head, and wearing the tattered remains of a gray monk’s robe. The face must have belonged to a Monk when he was alive. But now, the skin on his entire face was so withered and sunken that it hugged the shape of his bones, starved of every last bit of fat. Gao Tian had never seen someone so thin in his life; he was just like the hungry ghosts of legend.
The emerging Monk’s face was filled with terror as he looked at Gao Tian and Jiang Yang. His mouth was constantly chewing something hard, making a CRUNCH, CRUNCH sound, and the corners of his lips were stained with scarlet blood.
Whatever could climb out of the Buddha’s insides was definitely not human. Of that, there was no doubt.
Immediately after, a few more Monks slowly poked their heads out. Though their faces were different, each was emaciated to the extreme. They had skin stretched over their faces, but they were barely distinguishable from simple skeletons.
Like the first Monk to emerge, their jaws worked nonstop, making the sound of something hard being crushed. Every so often, blood would spray from their mouths.
The inside of this Great Buddha must also be an alternate dimension that defies the laws of physics.
Gao Tian had tossed stones inside to test it, and Jiang Yang had shot directly at the Buddha’s belly. There was no way it could hide a dozen people, or ghosts. It was unclear where they were coming from.
Gao Tian could roughly guess what had happened. When that crazy woman Lan Chu stuck her upper body into the dark opening, she must have run right into these Monks, who were like true hungry ghosts trapped inside the Buddha. They had devoured her in an instant, leaving only her lower half hanging outside the Great Buddha.
"Who are you? Outsiders, what are you doing in this temple?
"Our incense money, and the grain and vegetables we stored, it’s all been eaten, all been spent. We really have nothing to give you."
The few Monks in the Buddha seemed terrified of these uninvited guests. They jostled and pushed each other in the dark opening before shoving out a bolder one—who still had some flesh on his face—to question Gao Tian below.
His pronunciation sounded strange, making him very difficult to understand.
Gao Tian gripped his Terror Blade. ’I know these Monks are ghosts, but from their perspective, they don’t seem to realize it. Even though they just ate a person raw, their memories are still stuck sometime after the temple’s food ran out.’
Jiang Yang lightly patted Gao Tian, signaling him to relax.
He turned back, suppressing the hatred in his voice as much as possible, and spoke to the Monks above in a peaceful tone:
"We’re just passersby. Please don’t worry. As soon as we figure out what happened here, we’ll leave immediately.
"What exactly happened at Longshu Temple?
"What are you hiding from inside this Great Buddha?
"Where is the temple’s abbot? Is there a Monk named Yu Sheng here?"
The plan was to avoid turning hostile with these ghosts and try to get as much information out of them as possible.
Since they still perceived themselves as human, it was best to play along for now and figure out what really happened in Longshu Temple.
The living are always more important than the dead.
If Jiang Yang had let his anger get the better of him and started shooting to avenge Lan Chu, he never would have survived to his fifth mission.
Seeing Jiang Yang’s friendly tone, the few hungry ghost Monks hiding in the dark opening looked at each other. Another one mustered his courage and answered him:
"To be honest, we still don’t know what happened.
"It was just a very ordinary day, same as usual—chanting scriptures, cultivating, fetching water, and farming.
"But our master said something had happened outside. He told us to drop everything today and immediately hide inside the Great Buddha’s belly, and not to come out no matter what happened unless we heard his voice.
"After saying that, our master left in a hurry.
"We’ve been hiding here obediently ever since, not daring to disobey our master’s command. Everything else is fine, but for some reason, we’re getting hungrier and hungrier. It feels... like we haven’t eaten in a lifetime.
"Sometimes, when we see something poke into the dark opening from outside, we’re so frantic we don’t even care if it’s a small animal or an inanimate object. We just grab it and start chewing. After we’re done eating, our stomachs feel a tiny bit full, and we regain some of our senses.
"We just don’t know when someone will ’deliver food’ through the dark opening again."
From this skeletal Monk’s account, he really didn’t seem to know he had become a ghost. From his perspective, eating a person alive was just a matter of eating too hastily to see what the food was.
As for the name Yu Sheng, it didn’t elicit much of a reaction from the Monk:
"Yu Sheng?
"I feel like I’ve heard that name before.
"Even if I have, it feels like it was many years ago. I can’t remember."
Hearing him mention a master who had left the temple, Gao Tian pressed on:
"How many years has it been since your master left?
"Did he say when he would return, or when you could leave the Great Buddha?"
Seeing that the Monks were as thin as dried corpses, Gao Tian naturally assumed they had been trapped inside the Great Buddha for at least several years.
But unexpectedly, hearing Gao Tian’s words, the Monk seemed confused:
"What do you mean, ’how many years’? Didn’t our master just leave this morning?
"He promised he would definitely be back tonight. He’s only going to be outside for a day."
