Chapter 119: The Lotus Bodhisattva

Seeing that he was awake, I crawled over. Lu A’yao was leaning against the deepest part of the tomb robber’s tunnel. This tunnel was only a small section leading to the waterway below. When I first entered, I noticed a shovel head lying near Lu A’yao’s backpack, but the thing was completely ruined. I suspected he had dug this section of the tunnel himself, working from the bottom up.

He had rested for two hours. We had applied anti-inflammatory medicine to his wounds, and the bleeding had gradually stopped. The cessation of bleeding meant his condition would improve slightly.

I unscrewed the half-finished bottle of mineral water He Yu had left and went to ask him, “How are you feeling? Can you move your hand?”

Lu A’yao slowly raised his right wrist and rotated it. It seemed to move normally, so there shouldn’t be any major issues. He shook his head at me to indicate he was fine. I silently praised He Yu’s skills as a divine doctor for being quite reliable.

“If there’s no problem, come over and eat! Stop dawdling or the noodles will get cold!” He Yu urged from behind.

I quickly backed away. To make a small space for Lu A’yao, I had to squeeze in next to Chen Canghai. However, the space inside this tunnel was excessively narrow. When Lu A’yao moved over, I found that the space I had cleared was still not enough to accommodate an adult man.

Lu A’yao propped himself against the wall and looked at me, then shifted his gaze to Chen Canghai, who was closest to the pot. His expression clearly carried a “Why are you here too?” vibe. The two of them exchanged looks for a long time, and I couldn’t find a way to cut in.

He Yu finally couldn’t take it anymore. Holding a bowl of noodles, he pushed me and said, “Are you two playing human pyramid here? Don’t you know how to switch places? You’re all squeezed together. Why don’t you just squeeze right through the tunnel wall?”

Seeing the situation, I quickly tried to move aside, but Chen Canghai beat me to it. This time, he didn’t exchange any looks with Lu A’yao. Clutching his backpack that contained the head, he quickly moved past me and deeper into the tunnel. Lu A’yao naturally took his place.

I asked curiously, “Do you two have some kind of private grudge?”

Lu A’yao took the noodles from He Yu and replied, “No.”

After saying that, he began to eat. Lu A’yao must have had a good upbringing, as he didn’t make much noise while slurping his noodles, but he was clearly quite hungry and ate quickly. As he ate, I saw He Yu winking at me from the side. I knew what he meant and nodded back.

When Lu A’yao finished eating and put down the bowl, He Yu flatteringly handed him some water. Lu A’yao didn’t refuse, taking the water and drinking a few gulps.

“What do you want to ask?” Lu A’yao said.

He Yu immediately raised his hand. “Me! I’ll go first! Why did you dig a tomb robber’s tunnel? What kind of water is down there? What exactly is this place? Even if it’s the sewer of an underground palace, it shouldn’t be this foul.”

Lu A’yao glanced at my pant legs, which still had some black water residue on them. He frowned and said, “That isn’t water. It’s corpse oil.”

As soon as he said this, the rest of us were horrified. Goosebumps broke out all over our bodies. The fragrant aroma of the noodles was instantly ruined by Lu A’yao’s words, making us feel nauseous enough to vomit.

“C-corpse oil?!” He Yu instinctively began rubbing his sleeves against the walls and rocks. “What a damn pervert! Who builds an underground palace and pours corpse oil into the gutters?! Did he want to end his own bloodline?!”

“It wouldn’t end his bloodline,” Lu A’yao said, rubbing his arm through his sleeve, likely because the wound left by the Infant Corpse was starting to itch. “The underground palace here isn’t a tomb. It wasn’t primarily built to gather Qi or house a corpse, but was a large-scale sacrificial site from the Shang-Zhou Period.”

“A sacrificial site?”

I lowered my head in thought. Since Lu A’yao said the waterway we passed through was filled with settled corpse oil, then the area for human sacrifice here must be enormous. Only with a sufficiently large sacrificial area could there be enough human corpse oil to contaminate the entire waterway.

Hearing him say this, I understood instantly. “You mean the center of this underground palace is actually a sacrificial area as large as a football field used to place human sacrifices?”

Lu A’yao nodded at me.

“Then how many people did they have to kill? How many people does it take to contaminate this entire waterway? Tens of thousands? Over a hundred thousand?” He Yu’s jaw nearly dropped in shock.

I remained more rational. Lu A’yao said the construction period of this underground palace was no later than the Shang-Zhou Period. This meant the underground palace was likely built by a feudal lord of the Xia or Shang dynasties. However, regarding the Xia Dynasty, there is currently no existing archaeological evidence in our country. There are records, but they are highly controversial and cannot be verified.

“The statues here are very similar in carving style to the divine statues placed in the bronze pillars at Shennongjia. You warned us not to touch those statues back in Shennongjia, and now you’re blowing up Buddhas and pagodas. Does it also have something to do with these statues?” I asked.

Lu A’yao nodded and said, “That’s right. The statues here are basically identical to the ones in Hubei, but this place is a hundred times more dangerous than those in Hubei.”

I listened with bated breath as Lu A’yao revealed what he had investigated about this underground palace before coming here.

He had spent several weeks investigating the local county gazetteers, pulling out some clues with mythological overtones from extremely scattered and trivial notes.

The entire record was quite brief. The person who recorded this entry in the gazetteer was named Jiang Qiaozi. When I heard the name, I thought it didn’t sound like a real name, but more like a nickname from the martial world.

Jiang Qiaozi was a boatman, but he was different from the other boatmen here. He didn’t work during the day and only sailed at night, so he had very few passengers. One day, as usual, he set sail at night and headed downriver, only to find to his surprise that a towering Buddhist Pagoda had appeared out of nowhere in the river he traveled every day.

This Buddhist Pagoda blotted out the sun and sky, its Sanskrit bells drifting in the wind. Jiang Qiaozi thought it was a manifestation of a Bodhisattva. Driven by curiosity, he moored his boat next to the Buddhist Pagoda and walked in alone. The pagoda was a full eighteen floors high. Jiang Qiaozi climbed to the top floor by floor and saw a veiled Buddha statue identical to the one we had seen before.

If it had been me, I might have hesitated, but Jiang Qiaozi didn’t. He immediately knelt on the prayer mat and kowtowed several times. But just as he finished his worship and was about to stand up, something unexpected happened.

The long bead curtain that had been lowered to veil the Buddha’s face actually lifted slowly on its own. However, hidden behind the bead curtain was not a normal, kind-looking Buddha face, but a blooming lotus flower carved onto the Buddha’s face.

The face of this Buddha was a lotus. It actually had no face of its own!

Jiang Qiaozi had heard some strange legends about illicit shrines and wild sacrifices. Thinking he might have worshipped the wrong Buddha, he prepared to leave the pagoda immediately. But as soon as he stepped onto the first stair, that section of the staircase collapsed. He fell from the stairs and lost consciousness.

“What happened next? He wanted to worship a Buddha but ended up worshipping a ghost. That’s unlucky enough,” He Yu asked.

Lu A’yao continued. The Buddha warned Jiang Qiaozi while he was unconscious that he had to come and give an offering once every seven days. But when he woke up, he was already in his own home. Jiang Qiaozi treated it as a nightmare and thought it was over. Because of this incident, he stopped being a boatman and changed professions to do some small business traveling through streets and alleys. Later, he married a wife, and his life was fairly manageable.

But that peaceful life soon vanished. Jiang Qiaozi’s wife went into premature labor at eight months. She labored all night without giving birth, leaving him frantic outside the door. Finally, he heard the midwife scream. He burst through the door, and the moment he saw the newborn, he nearly collapsed to the floor in terror.

What was born wasn’t a baby at all; it was clearly a monster with a face like a lotus!

Lu A’yao stopped there. Chen Canghai was the first to react, saying, “It’s a curse.”

A chill ran down my spine and straight to the top of my head. My reaction was even more visceral than He Yu’s or Chen Canghai’s because, in that eerie illusion, that monster had also tried to drag me onto the prayer mat. It had tried to force my head down to worship the Buddha. I didn’t dare imagine what would have happened if I had actually bowed in that dream. Would I have ended up just like Jiang Qiaozi in the story?

Noticing my state, Lu A’yao reached out and patted my back to comfort me. “We shouldn’t jump to conclusions about whether it’s a curse just yet. After all, you’ve traveled this far without any issues. Most of the Buddha statues here are headless, and only the largest one inside the Buddhist Pagoda still has its head. I suspect someone might have deliberately decapitated them all before we arrived.”

Suddenly, a crucial point occurred to me, making my skin crawl. I hurriedly asked Lu A’yao, “If this really is a curse, what about you? You climbed up the statue to look at the Buddha’s face. No, wait, you even used explosives on it. Won’t you be affected?”

Hearing my question, Lu A’yao gave a rare smile. “No, I won’t be affected.”

The lotus face design is inspired by the movie Incantation. The original appearance is quite disgusting, so I don’t recommend looking it up.