Chapter 30: Look Up and See All Beings

He Yu sat down by the tomb wall, brushing dirt off his pants. “I told you this was pointless. If you’re going to leave a message, at least make it clear. Writing something cryptic like this is worse than writing nothing at all.”

I was still mulling over the meaning of “Look up and see all beings.” The phrase itself wasn’t hard to translate, but using it in this context felt bizarre. I thought about it for a long time but couldn’t make sense of it, so I shifted my focus to the person who had written it.

I asked He Yu, “Aside from your He family, does anyone else use this Secret Script to pass messages? Or is it possible your ancestors taught it to someone else?”

He Yu shook his head. “That’s where your brother hits a blind spot. Like I said before, this Secret Script is a family legacy. It’s only passed down privately to someone the elders called a ‘fated one.’ I vaguely remember it being passed on to someone, but I can’t recall who! Anyway, in my generation, that kind of thing doesn’t happen anymore. So if someone else did learn it, it would’ve been two generations back at least.”

He suddenly rolled up from the ground and threw an arm around my shoulder. “Stop overthinking it. If we can’t figure out what that line means, then it’s not going to help us get out of this corridor. But look—this mural’s been copied and pasted all the way through, and only here does it suddenly change. That’s gotta mean something. Let’s focus on the mural instead. That’ll probably get us further.”

He was right. His words snapped me out of it. I had a tendency to get stuck in mental dead ends, obsessing over a problem long after it had stopped being useful. I’d waste time and energy thinking in circles while missing the bigger picture. It was definitely time to change tactics.

I turned my attention back to the mural and started examining each one in detail. In every panel, the centipede was hanging upside down. That reminded me of the suspended corpses we’d seen earlier in the Burial Pit. A sudden idea struck me.

I decided to try viewing the entire mural from an upside-down perspective.

Tilting my head and twisting my hips, I held the awkward pose for over ten minutes. My neck ached, my head spun, and I still couldn’t see anything different.

“Got a trowel?” Lu A’yao suddenly turned and asked me.

I was caught off guard—maybe because he was standing so close. The porcelain shards embedded in his skin were painted with intricate red patterns, so beautiful they were practically works of art. I couldn’t help but stare.

When I didn’t respond, he glanced past me and asked He Yu instead. He Yu pulled a small trowel from his bag and tossed it over. It wasn’t the kind used for digging earth, but a delicate tool meant for professional archaeology.

“This is all I’ve got left, man. It’s also our last weapon, so go easy with it.”

Before He Yu even finished speaking, Lu A’yao was already jamming the trowel into the corner of the mural. He didn’t hold back—the force of that one move scraped off nearly half the mural. Dust and wall plaster fell to the ground, revealing a second layer beneath.

“Holy shit! So we’ve been staring at a fake this whole time? This is the real mural!” He Yu cursed.

If this double-layered mural had been discovered in a proper archaeological dig, it would’ve been a huge deal. I should’ve noticed earlier—the outer layer was crude in both technique and style, clearly a protective copy plastered over the original. The inner mural had the same general layout, but the details were far more refined and precise.

The three of us rolled up our sleeves and got to work scraping off the rest. Soon, the final mural was fully revealed. Its content was nearly identical to the copy, so I won’t go into detail, but the real mural included one extra element—a large pool of water at the bottom center. We checked the other eight panels as well, and each of them featured the same pool at the base.

That’s when I realized—the figures in the mural weren’t the focus. The pool was. It took up nearly two-thirds of the entire composition.

In the corner of the last mural, beside the pool, I found a stone inscribed with four seal-script characters: “Nine-Bend Corridor Ruins.”

“What does that mean? I don’t get it,” He Yu said, scratching his head.

Truth be told, I didn’t fully get it either. Was the “Nine-Bend Corridor Ruins” referring to this pool? But then what about the same phrase carved into the stone floor beneath our feet? Were both pointing to the same place?

As I crouched in front of the wall, deep in thought, He Yu gently tapped my shoulder. Since he was standing and I was squatting, I instinctively swatted his hand away. “What? Don’t bother me—I’m trying not to blow a fuse here.”

“Uh, Xiao Yao,” He Yu swallowed hard. “I think I know what that ‘Look up and see all beings’ line means.”

I immediately stood up and looked at him. “What does it mean?”

He Yu stepped back a few paces, his face pale. He motioned for me to dim my flashlight and pulled both me and Lu A’yao down into a crouch. His voice trembled. “I’ll tell you, but don’t panic.”

Just seeing his expression made me want to look up, but he yanked me back down. “Don’t look! I just saw a face staring at us. Right above your head.”

A chill ran down my spine. Goosebumps prickled across my skin. I hadn’t felt anything before, but now that he mentioned it, I could sense it too—a gaze, cold and piercing, bearing down on us from above.

“I don’t know what it is,” He Yu said. “But we used up all our weapons on that centipede. If it hasn’t attacked yet, we need to get out while we still can.”

The problem was, we had no idea where we were. Should we go back, or follow the direction marked by the stone slabs into the darkness? I was still hesitating when Lu A’yao stood up decisively and shone his flashlight into the gloom ahead.

“Going back will just take us in circles. We keep moving forward,” he said.

At least someone had made a decision. We didn’t know what was above us or whether it would follow, but staying here was clearly not an option.

He Yu and I agreed without question. The three of us quickly lined up and pressed onward into the dark.

It’s worth noting that He Yu moved differently from us. He walked backward, afraid the face above might follow. He tied one end of a short rope around my waist and the other around himself, so he could keep his hands free to defend us.

He Yu didn’t crack any jokes this time. The silence around us was suffocating. The farther we went, the more eerie and oppressive the atmosphere became.

Lu A’yao moved quickly ahead. My flashlight flickered and dimmed, and I couldn’t even catch the edge of his beam. That made me even more uneasy. Everything felt wrong, unsafe. More murals appeared along the corridor, but I didn’t want to look at them anymore. The air was so heavy it felt like it was crushing my chest.

I said, “Someone say something, will you? This silence is creepy as hell.”

No sooner had I spoken than Lu A’yao suddenly stopped. I walked straight into him, and He Yu nearly crashed into me from behind.

“Damn it, what’s going on with you two? Can we get some coordination here? Ever heard of tailgating?” He Yu grumbled as he got back up.

Lu A’yao ignored him and shone his flashlight ahead. “There’s no path.”

I rubbed my sore nose and leaned forward. The way ahead was completely blocked by rubble. The corridor walls continued beyond, so there had to be more behind the blockage. If we wanted to move forward, we’d have to clear the stones one by one.

There was no question—we had to go forward.

I untied the rope from my waist, rolled up my sleeves, and picked a spot where the stones were smaller. As I worked, I realized these rocks didn’t belong to the corridor. They must’ve fallen from a trap triggered above.

Which meant someone else had been here before us—and they’d triggered the mechanism.

The first person I thought of was Tian Yuqing. If their group had passed through here and there were no bloodstains or fresh corpses in the rubble, then they must’ve avoided the trap. That would mean we were on the right path.

By the time I moved the tenth boulder, my arms were shaking from exhaustion. He Yu pulled me back just in time as another cascade of stones tumbled from above. A small opening appeared near the top of the corridor—just big enough for one person to squeeze through.

The path was open. The three of us sat on the pile of rocks and shared some compressed biscuits.

“Looks like that thing didn’t follow us,” He Yu said. “And maybe that place back there wasn’t even the real Nine-Bend Corridor Ruins. That name doesn’t sound like something a normal person would come up with anyway. Xiao Yao, eat more—you’re still growing.”

He Yu broke off a big piece of biscuit and handed it to me. Lu A’yao silently gave me an extra piece too.