Free Web NovelChapter 122: Chapter 40: Major Discovery
Amidst a gory mess of flesh and blood, the Mirror Ghost’s bloody hand dragged Wang Wenbo inside.
All around them, hungry ghosts bared their bone-white teeth, bloody gore dripping from the corners of their mouths as they made sickening, grinding chewing sounds.
Gao Tian wasn’t sure if Wang Wenbo was still alive in the mirror. And now, there was no time to find out.
Below the tree, countless hungry ghost Monks paced back and forth. They continued until the last hungry ghost had descended from the main hall, completely filling the central plaza of Longshu Temple.
Fortunately, the Vajra Tree, carved with the Diamond Sutra, had a protective effect. Hiding in its branches was temporarily safe; not a single hungry ghost dared to get too close.
But stalling like this wasn’t a solution. The sky in the Inner World was growing dimmer by the second. Sooner or later, night would fall, the bear roar would sound, and everyone would be wiped out for a second time.
Trapped in the tree, Gao Tian and the others were at a complete impasse.
Lan Chu held a dog chain in one hand. As if lifting a chicken, she forcibly hoisted up a hungry ghost and pressed it against the scripture-inscribed bark, testing the sutras’ effects.
The poor ghost, once snared, had no strength to fight back. The moment it touched the scriptures, its already emaciated body began to sizzle like meat on a hot grill. The hungry ghost opened its bloody mouth and let out a silent scream.
It was already a ghost, so it couldn’t truly die. But it could still experience the very real, very tangible pain.
Lan Chu "roasted" the ghost with the scriptures for a while, but when it failed to die, she grew bored.
Gao Tian called out to Jiang Yang in the opposite tree.
"Do you have any ideas?"
"If not, we’ll have to restart this run and begin our third attempt."
But they hadn’t gathered any useful information on this second attempt, which meant they had wasted an entire day.
’What else could we even do on a third run at Longshu Temple? Topple the Great Buddha, and we die. Don’t topple it, and we just wait for nightfall to die anyway.’
Jiang Yang narrowed his eyes and pointed into the distance, as if he had discovered something.
Gao Tian followed his gaze to the main hall, to the Great Buddha with the gaping hole in its belly from which countless hungry ghosts had crawled.
’What’s so interesting about this dilapidated statue?’
’It sure could hold a lot. The belly might have had space for twenty people at most, yet somehow at least eighty or ninety hungry ghosts had emerged from the mural to overrun the entire temple. It was like a clown car.’
Wait...
Gao Tian suddenly realized what Jiang Yang was pointing at.
Inside the Great Buddha, the original mural had depicted other hungry ghosts devouring one another.
After all the hungry ghost Monks had materialized, walked out of the mural, and left the main hall, what had been hidden behind the painting was finally revealed.
Densely packed.
Line after line of... text.
But from this distance, it was hard to see clearly.
Someone had covered the inside of the Great Buddha with writing, but it had been hidden by the mural of hungry ghosts.
Now he finally understood why Jiang Yang had been squinting.
Gao Tian stared for a long time but still couldn’t make it out. His eyes grew sore and started to ache from the effort.
’If only I could walk into the main hall and examine the Great Buddha up close,’ he thought.
"It’s scripture," Jiang Yang said suddenly.
"Scripture?" Gao Tian asked in disbelief.
Jiang Yang rubbed his eyes; staring from such a distance was making him feel like he was going blind.
"I can only barely make out that it’s carved with lines of small characters."
"I caught a few keywords."
"Words like ’karma,’ ’sea of suffering,’ and ’the other shore’—they’re all from Buddhist scriptures."
"The Monks of Longshu Temple actually carved Buddhist scripture inside the Great Buddha. I just don’t know which sutra it is, or why they insisted on carving it inside the Buddha’s stomach. Who was it for?"
How bizarre.
’What normal person would ever think to fill the inside of a statue with scripture?’
But even if you figured it out, to see the text inside, you had to shatter the Great Buddha. That meant releasing all the hungry ghosts within, which was the only way to make the mural disappear and reveal the true scripture.
And after releasing a temple full of hungry ghosts, all the explorers had to hide in the Vajra Tree to escape being hunted down.
It was a vicious cycle. They couldn’t see the text without releasing the ghosts, but releasing the ghosts meant getting trapped outside the hall.
He wondered what the person who carved the scriptures in there had been thinking.
Jiang Yang was completely captivated by the scriptures that had appeared in the main hall.
"No Monk would go to the trouble of deliberately carving scriptures inside the Great Buddha for no reason. It’s such a thankless, arduous task."
"We have to find a way to read what’s inside. I have a feeling this is absolutely key to the secrets of Longshu Temple."
Gao Tian asked,
"Did you bring binoculars?"
At this distance, a normal pair of household binoculars would have been more than enough.
Jiang Yang shook his head.
"No."
True enough. Before they left, they had packed all the standard tools for dealing with the supernatural. No one had anticipated a need for binoculars.
He glanced over at Lan Chu, who was dangling her dog chain down like a fishing line, preparing to reel in another hungry ghost. He figured there was no point in asking her.
In the distance, the sun was sinking, and the sky was turning gray.
In truth, if this weren’t a life-or-death situation, the view of the horizon from the trees of Longshu Temple would be quite beautiful.
’I can’t drag this out any longer. On this run, I have to at least see the scripture inside the Great Buddha.’
’Even if it means dying.’
Gao Tian checked the Luck Jar in his hand.
On the previous run, spurred on by the terrifying whispers, he had used up most of the Luck Jar. But in this timeline, everything had reset, so the Luck Jar was full again.
Without hesitation, he slid down from the great tree, opening the Luck Jar as he moved.
"I’ll handle this!"
He had to be fast.
In Longshu Temple, the black luck from the jar was being consumed several times faster than usual. He had to reach the other side before it all ran out.
"Gao Tian, you—!"
Jiang Yang cried out in alarm. In his eyes, Gao Tian had just jumped down from the Vajra Tree—an act no different from suicide.
The instant he left the safety of the Vajra Tree, the surrounding hungry ghosts went into a frenzy. Their eyes turned red, drool pooled on the ground, and they stretched out their hands, grinning wide as they scrambled to grab him.
With the black luck swirling over his head, Gao Tian paid the swarming ghosts no mind and broke into a sprint toward the main hall.
A strange thing happened. The hungry ghosts right on his heels were either tripped by their own kind or shoved aside by others. The few that managed to struggle to the front were pulled back by the ones behind them before they could even touch the hem of his clothes.
The horde of hungry ghosts descended into a chaotic brawl, inexplicably getting in each other’s way. Not a single one of them could manage to touch Gao Tian. The coincidences were piling up to an absurd degree.
They were like crabs in a bucket; any that tried to climb out would be pulled back down by the others.
The whole chaotic scene took longer to describe than it did to happen. In a flash, Gao Tian was already across the ghost-filled plaza. The black luck above his head, spurred on by the terrifying whispers, was already more than half gone.
Success.
Riding his wave of powerful luck, he made it to the main hall. The first thing Gao Tian did was squeeze inside the Great Buddha and begin examining the lines of text.
"First, step with the left foot into the shadow of the Buddha’s pedestal. Retreat three paces, then advance three paces. Each step should be no more than a foot, and the body must not rush forward."
...
"Upon completion, face north and stand perfectly still. Visualize the golden light of the Buddha’s body enveloping and protecting your own."
...
"Press your back against the inner wall of the Buddha’s pedestal, place both palms over your dantian, and close your eyes. Rest quietly for three breaths, holding one single thought in your mind. If you feel a sudden chill, recite the nine-syllable mantra one more time, then rest for another three to five breaths."
...
As he scanned the text, he realized it wasn’t a scripture at all, but a set of strange instructions. It taught anyone who entered the Great Buddha how to use its outer shell to ward off external evils and survive the long night.
This was...
Gao Tian’s pupils contracted to pinpoints.
What "external evil" could it be referring to, other than the bizarre bear roar that sounded at nine o’clock on the dot?
So, a master at Longshu Temple had long ago figured out how to counter this deadly, inevitable rule and survive past nine o’clock.
The method was to hide in the belly of the Great Buddha and perform the series of strange, yet ingeniously subtle, movements as instructed.
The person who devised this method had a truly inscrutable mind. If they wanted to save people, why hide the true instructions inside a Great Buddha teeming with hungry ghosts?
Any ordinary person would have been killed by the hungry ghosts immediately after smashing the Great Buddha. They would never survive long enough to see the instructions.
But on second thought, these instructions were probably originally intended for the Monks of the temple.
The person who wrote the text could never have imagined what would happen. For some unknown reason, a group of Monks who entered the Great Buddha failed to discover the instructions within. After being killed by the bear’s roar at nine o’clock, they were reborn, cycle after cycle, as the countless hungry ghosts inside the Buddha’s belly, completely blocking the path for anyone who followed.
If he hadn’t been able to exploit the time loop, and if not for a whole series of coincidences, Gao Tian would have died a thousand deaths before ever discovering this scripture that had not seen the light of day for so long.
When Gao Tian finally snapped out of his trance, he realized the sky outside the main hall had already grown dark.
’Crap, I was so engrossed I lost track of time.’
Gao Tian looked up. The black luck above his head was almost completely gone, with only a tiny wisp remaining.
In the distance, the terrifying bear roar sounded. Wave after wave of sound washed over everything, sweeping across the entire Inner World, both inside and outside Longshu Temple.
"The bear roar... it’s early..."
At this moment, Gao Tian had no time to perform the complete set of actions in the Buddha’s belly as described in the instructions.
Besides, he wasn’t willing to be the sole survivor. His goal was to find a path that would allow everyone to live.
"Looks like I’ll just have to die here a bit early today."
"Everyone, see you tomorrow."
Gao Tian turned his head. Outside the main hall, beyond the countless wandering hungry ghosts, Jiang Yang and Lan Chu watched him in silence from their perch in the Vajra Tree.
When the next wave of the bear’s roar hit, the first to fall from the Vajra Tree was Jiang Yang.
Lan Chu held on for a while longer, but soon she too began to falter, her body turning stiff as a corpse amidst the sonic waves.
The third was Gao Tian.
Blood trickled from his nose. His vision went black, and he lost all control of his body.
...
...
This death would draw the sixth Ghost Card from his soul.
However, just before he died, he still had a little of the black luck left above his head.
On top of that, with three people dying in the temple grounds, the Black Tie activated.
Gao Tian’s last thought before dying was that, with all this, he probably wouldn’t drop dead just from drawing a sixth Ghost Card.
