Chapter 96: A Mortal’s Path to Cultivation

Xu Chuyin switched on his phone’s flashlight and, in its pale beam, first made out the place they were in. It did not seem like an ordinary hidden compartment. The walls were all made of the simplest black wooden planks, perpetually veiled in mist, and the floor was scattered with white ash.

Beside them was not a bed, but a paper sack stuffed with cotton. The walls were covered with densely packed runes, carved into the wood little by little with a knife, their age already apparent.

“I’m afraid we won’t be getting out anytime soon.”

“You’re joking, right? This is your family’s restaurant. Besides, if you didn’t know about the mechanism just now, how did you react so quickly and shove me into the crack in the wall beside us?”

Xu Chuyin began searching for more light, and first seized the woman’s hand, not allowing her a chance to pull away, while explaining, “This is my family’s restaurant, but it wasn’t always a restaurant. It used to belong to my mother. Once, by accident, I saw the hidden door, and she told me that if anything happened, we could hide inside it at once. We must never fall through; only the space inside the wall is safe.”

“We triggered the mechanism just now?”

“I find that strange too. This hidden door normally never opens.”

“Then can you let go first?”

In the faint light, Zhong Huayan could only dimly make out the man’s features. Apart from those sharp, foxlike eyes that looked somewhat wicked, the rest of him seemed even cleaner than an ordinary person. He rubbed at his hair with some vexation, then spoke in a furtive voice.

“No. What if the mechanism starts moving again in a moment?”

No sooner had he said that than the entire room began to rumble, with the harsh grinding sound of machinery at work.

The two stared at each other.

Zhong Huayan nearly cursed him for tempting fate, when the thought suddenly struck her: “Could it be voice-activated? That advanced?”

After the noise, there was a brief pause.

Then the wooden planks beneath them began to turn. Frightened, the two of them hurried into the corner, and then dust and smoke billowed up as the entire underground chamber began to rotate violently.

With their phone lights, they watched the runes on the walls shift into countless new forms, while the sound of machinery clattered and whirred in their ears.

Zhong Huayan was so scared she did not dare move. She was terrified of the dark, and cold sweat had already broken out in her palms, yet in such a situation she still did not dare act rashly.

“Don’t be afraid. I’m here.”

Xu Chuyin tried to comfort her, though even he was beginning to feel puzzled. What secret was hidden in this restaurant? Why had such a vast underground mechanism been built beneath it?

Then, bluish light began to appear on the walls, like the eyes of evil spirits demanding a life in the dead of night.

“Aaaah! Xu Chuyin, what on earth is your family up to!”

Zhong Huayan was nearly frightened senseless by the blue lantern light that appeared out of the darkness. As the walls spun faster, sheets of yellow talisman paper drifted toward them...

Some even flew straight onto her hands and face. In an instant, the scene spun out of control.

With a strange, sharp crack, a vivid smear of blood appeared in the reach of the phone’s light, and the stench of blood spread through the dust-choked mist.

The blood had not yet congealed. It was fresh. That meant the sharp crack just now had come from the dark room behind them, and this blood might even have belonged to the mercenary from before.

“Hurry... hurry, we need to go! If there’s something back there killing people, we run forward.”

Zhong Huayan and Xu Chuyin whispered their plan to each other.

At this point she no longer cared whether they were enemies or allies. The scene had left her stunned senseless. Lately, it seemed as though she had somehow run afoul of bad luck, constantly running into one bizarre thing after another.

The two of them began searching for an exit amid the rotating, shifting mechanism.

The bluish glow on the walls came from the lit talisman papers, which in such a space cast a faint blue sheen. The black wooden floor was oppressively dull, and staying in here too long even made one feel drowsy-headed. She let him lead her by the hand, inching forward step by step.

“Watch the walls carefully. See if there’s any special hidden switch.”

“What if I see something terrifying...?”

“Don’t think too much. Freedom, democracy... it’s the age of technology now. What dirty thing could there be?”

He had only just finished speaking.

The scene before them utterly stunned both of them, and they immediately took two steps back.

The wall had vanished, or rather, been carried away into the darkness by the turning mechanism.

Before them lay a Taoist temple of several hundred square meters. The flashlight had just caught sight of a few incense sticks and, on the plaque, the faint outline of the words Taoist Temple.

What made their blood run cold was that the room was filled all around with a ghostly blue glow, faintly illuminating coffins.

And not just one coffin. There were as many as forty or so if one counted carefully. Forty-some coffins formed a circle, surrounded on every side by that eerie blue light.

Only at the very front was there a pile of rotten incense stubs and an altar with a seated Guanyin statue.

Good heavens... both of them were dumbfounded. They had never seen so many coffins before. All around them drifted a nauseating stench of decay.

“What... what kind of setup is your family running? I almost thought I’d stumbled into a tomb robbery. To build a mechanism like this back in the day would have cost not just a hundred thousand, but millions. What a tremendous fuss to make over something like this. And there’s no way that fire has just been burning unattended all this time; someone must have been tending it for years. Xu Chuyin, give me your phone. You take that oil lamp and go look around. See if there’s anyone else here.”

Xu Chuyin’s phoenix eyes narrowed slightly; he was clearly puzzled too, wondering when such a vast underground palace had been buried beneath his own family’s restaurant.

“Don’t you know antiques? Aren’t you supposed to be afraid of these old relics? Wait here. I’ll go up and take a look first.”

“I’ll give you credit for being a tough one. Still, whatever your family left behind, it’s not likely to harm one of its own descendants.”

Xu Chuyin handed her the phone, then casually picked up an oil lamp and looked over the altar webbed with spider silk. Though the Guanyin statue was badly worn and fractured by dust, its shape was still just discernible. The pillars were black wood, and the coffins were indeed all closed, arranged in a full circle. The center, however, was completely empty, with nothing placed there at all. Then he noticed a sheet of paper beneath his foot. He picked it up and softly read the words written on it.

“The Great Way numbers fifty, but Heaven’s changes amount to forty-nine, leaving one path for man to escape.”

Xu Chuyin glanced at the woman not far away. Though he did well in school, he knew nothing at all about this sort of thing.

“Huayan, come here. If that mechanism moves again in a moment, we’ll be separated.”

At that, she felt a chill run through her entire body.

Thinking it over, it would be better not to be alone. If something happened then, it would be even worse.

She walked over to Xu Chuyin’s side and saw the paper in his hand.

“You’re good at identifying antiques, so you should know more about things like this. What does this sentence mean?”

After silently repeating the line, Zhong Huayan began to tremble a little.

“It comes from the Commentary on the Appended Phrases in the Book of Changes. It means the Way of Heaven is divided into forty-nine parts, with only one path of reincarnation missing. It implies that there is always a sliver of hope in all things. Quick, count how many coffins there are in all.”