Chapter 119: Lotus Bodhisattva

Seeing that he was awake, I crawled over. Lu Ayao 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 Ayao’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. Now that the bleeding had ceased, his condition was bound to improve a bit.

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

Lu Ayao slowly raised his right wrist and gave it a turn. Movement seemed normal, so there shouldn’t be any major issues. He shook his head at me to indicate he was fine, and I silently praised Divine Doctor He for his reliable skills.

“If you’re fine, come over and eat! Stop dawdling or the noodles will get cold!” He Yu urged from behind.

I quickly backed away. To make a little room for Lu Ayao, I had no choice but to squeeze up against Chen Canghai. However, space inside the tunnel was excessively tight. By the time Lu Ayao shuffled over, I realized the space cleared was still not enough for a grown man.

Lu Ayao 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 Ayao. Clutching his backpack that contained the head, he quickly moved past me and deeper into the tunnel. Lu Ayao naturally took his place.

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

Lu Ayao took the noodles from He Yu and replied, “No.”

After saying that, he began to eat. Lu Ayao 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 Ayao finished eating and put down the bowl, He Yu eagerly handed him some water with a flattering grin. Lu Ayao didn’t refuse, taking the water and drinking a few gulps.

“What do you want to ask?” Lu Ayao said.

He Yu immediately raised his hand. “Me! I’ll go first! Why did you dig a 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 Ayao glanced at my pant legs, where some black water still clung to the fabric. 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 breaking out all over our bodies. The delicious aroma of the noodles was instantly ruined by Lu Ayao’s words, leaving us so nauseated we felt like throwing up.

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

“It wouldn’t end his bloodline,” Lu Ayao 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 built primarily to gather Qi or harbor corpses, but was a large-scale sacrificial site from the Shang-Zhou period.”

“A sacrificial site?”

I looked down in thought. Since Lu Ayao said that settled corpse oil filled the waterway we had passed through, the area for human sacrifice here must be enormous. Only with a sufficiently large sacrificial ground could there be enough human corpse oil to contaminate the entire waterway.

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

Lu Ayao nodded at me.

“Then how many fucking people did they have to kill? How many bodies 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 Ayao said the construction period of this underground palace was no later than the Shang-Zhou period, meaning it was likely built by a feudal lord of the Xia or Shang dynasties. But when it comes to the Xia Dynasty^[1], our country currently has no physical archaeological evidence. Written records exist, but they are highly controversial and cannot be verified.

“The statues here are very similar in carving style to the divine statues inside 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 Ayao 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 Ayao revealed what he had investigated about this underground palace before coming here.

He had spent several weeks investigating local county gazetteers^[2], pulling out clues tinted with myth 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 pagoda had appeared out of nowhere in the river he traveled every day.

This pagoda blotted out the sky, its wind bells drifting in the breeze. Jiang Qiaozi thought it was a manifestation of a Bodhisattva. Driven by curiosity, he moored his boat next to the pagoda and walked in alone. The pagoda was a full eighteen stories 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, benevolent 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^[3]. Thinking he might have worshipped the wrong deity, he prepared to leave the pagoda immediately. But as soon as he took his first step onto the stairs, that section collapsed. He fell from the staircase and lost consciousness.

“What happened next? He wanted to worship a Buddha but ended up worshipping a ghost instead. That’s rotten luck,” He Yu said.

Lu Ayao continued the story. While Jiang Qiaozi was unconscious, the Buddha warned him that he had to return and present an offering once every seven days. But when he woke up, he was already back in his own home. Jiang Qiaozi treated it as a nightmare and thought it was over. Because of this incident, he gave up being a boatman and switched to running a small peddling business in the streets. 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 had been born wasn’t a baby at all; it was clearly a monster with a lotus for a face!

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

A chill ran down my spine 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, forcing 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 distress, Lu Ayao 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 safe and sound. Most of the Buddha statues here are headless, and only the largest one inside the 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 Ayao, “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 me ask this, Lu Ayao gave a rare smile. “No, I won’t be affected.”

The lotus face design was inspired by the movie 《Incantation》. Its appearance in the original film is quite disgusting, so I don’t recommend watching it.