Chapter 124: Chapter 42: Midnight Visitor at the Temple
As night fell and sunlight faded from the plaza, the starving ghosts in the central square slowed noticeably. They paid no mind to the group that had entered the Great Buddha in the main hall.
Seeing this, Gao Tian knew his gamble had paid off again.
Of course, even if the gamble had failed, it would have just meant another wasted day. He would simply have to continue testing the only way out in the next cycle.
The belly of the Great Buddha could hold more than a dozen people, so there was more than enough room for the four of them to perform the special ritual.
Following their prior rehearsal and the instructions modified from the scriptures on the Great Buddha, Jiang Yang and the others quickly turned, pressed their backs against the statue’s interior, and silently recited the nine-character mantra, completing the entire process.
From the moment the sky darkened, through their entry into the Great Buddha and the completion of the ritual, only a brief moment had passed. Then, outside the temple, that terrifying bear’s roar echoed across the mountains once more. Waves of sound, like a tsunami, washed over Longshu Temple and swept toward the far reaches of the Inner World.
’Will it work this time?’
’By hiding in the Great Buddha and following this ancient method, can we really break past the nine o’clock point of this eternal cycle and reach ten o’clock in Longshu Temple?’
Gao Tian didn’t know. His palms were pressed against the cold ground. There was nothing he could do now but leave it to fate.
He was already considering the worst-case scenario. ’If we don’t make it past nine o’clock tonight, where in Longshu Temple should I look for a breakthrough in the next cycle?’
"Hey..."
"You guys... still alive?"
After an unknown amount of time, Wang Wenbo’s tentative voice cut through the darkness beside him.
He turned his head. The inside of the Great Buddha was pitch-black, but the faint light reflecting in the pupils of Jiang Yang, Lan Chu, and Wang Wenbo was proof they were still alive and well.
At some unknown point, the bear’s roar that had seemed to shake the very heavens—a sound Gao Tian thought would never end—had quietly ceased.
The starry sky of the Inner World was completely silent, no different from the night sky of the real world.
It was over.
It was all over.
The scripture inside the Great Buddha had worked. Relying on the legacy of some enlightened master monk, they had actually broken past nine o’clock.
’No, everything was just beginning.’
The real test would be the return of the "master" mentioned by the starving ghosts. That would determine if they could truly break this curse.
Gao Tian slowly stood up inside the Great Buddha’s belly. When he looked out at the plaza again, he discovered that the starving ghost Monks, who had been scattered in small groups across Longshu Temple, had vanished.
’Makes sense. They’ve been trapped before nine o’clock for decades, maybe even centuries. They’ve never reached a timeline past that point.’
Once the reset point passed, of course they would cease to exist.
This served as double confirmation that Gao Tian’s small team from the apartment had truly broken Longshu Temple’s time loop and returned to the normal flow of time.
"Quickly, we need to prepare for the temple master’s return."
His words jolted them out of their daze. Jiang Yang spoke urgently, directing everyone to leave the Buddha’s belly and find the best hiding spots in the main hall.
The Great Buddha had served its purpose. Its belly faced the temple entrance directly. If the four of them remained hidden inside, anyone pushing open the temple’s main doors and looking up at the main hall would easily spot their silhouettes within the statue.
Right now, no one knew if the master was even human. They had to prepare for the worst and treat him as a hostile spirit.
Beneath the Bodhisattva statue, behind the Vajra statue, at the back of the Great Buddha, in the shadows of a side pillar in the main hall.
The four of them quickly found the best hiding and observation points. These positions ensured they would be the first to see the "person" entering through the main gate, while that "person" would not be able to detect their presence in the main hall.
At the same time, Gao Tian activated his Wind Attendant Buddha. He had the Wind Puppet walk slowly out of the main hall into the temple plaza and sit quietly behind the Vajra Tree, waiting for the ten o’clock visitor.
This way, in the worst-case scenario, even if the master returning at ten o’clock was already a hostile spirit, they could use the Wind Attendant Buddha to bait it into revealing its killing pattern. The four of them in the main hall would get a clear view, and could then devise a countermeasure.
Of course, "ten o’clock" was just an example Jiang Yang had used in his speculation during their second run. The master wouldn’t necessarily arrive exactly on the dot, but it should be sometime around then.
After making these thorough preparations, Gao Tian stood motionless in the shadow of a side pillar, letting his form blend completely into the darkness.
And so began another round of waiting.
In fact, this wait was even more agonizing than enduring the bear’s roar from within the Buddha’s belly.
The bear’s roar had only two possible outcomes: life or death. But with the master’s return, whether he was man or ghost, they would have to be ready to react and proceed with caution.
Hiding on the opposite side, Wang Wenbo began making hand signals. Though none of them dared to speak, Gao Tian could roughly understand what he meant:
It’s been an hour and a half. Why is the entrance still empty? Hasn’t anything come in?
Gao Tian paid him no mind and continued to wait.
The idea that "the long-departed master will return" had originally come from the starving ghosts, which Jiang Yang had then built a hypothesis around.
The green-character mission had never specified what time they needed to wait until in Longshu Temple to trigger the next phase of the event.
Gradually, Gao Tian heard Jiang Yang’s breathing grow heavier from his position diagonally across the hall.
That meant something was happening at the main gate. He immediately shifted his gaze in that direction.
CREAK. The sound of the door being pushed open was exceptionally jarring in the dead silence of Longshu Temple, where only the whistling of the wind could be heard.
A tall, slender black shadow pushed open one half of the door. Maintaining a prayer posture with one hand, it began to walk, step by step, down the central path of the moonlit temple plaza, its tattered Monk’s robes dragging behind it.
"Its" pace was slow and unhurried. Returning to Longshu Temple was like coming home.
’It’s here! The starving ghosts weren’t lying. Around eleven o’clock, a "person" actually pushed open the temple doors and entered Longshu Temple!’
Gao Tian’s heart began to race uncontrollably, pounding like a heavy mallet against a great bell.
No matter who or what had arrived, the mystery of Longshu Temple would be settled tonight.
From this distance, the group hidden in the main hall couldn’t make out the visitor’s appearance, couldn’t tell if it was human or ghost.
But from its Monk’s robes, hand gesture, and bald head, they could tell it was a Monk.
’That’s not right...’
As the figure stepped deeper into the moonlight, Gao Tian noticed more details, he murmured to himself.
’This person’s gait is steady, and they’re not walking slowly.’
’It’s probably not a ghost. Most ghosts have distorted proportions and stumble about erratically, like some kind of freak.’
’It’s not an old man, either. An elderly person’s gait would be less sure, not as steady as this.’
’The one who’s returned isn’t the temple’s head abbot... it’s a young Monk.’
Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Jiang Yang frantically gesturing to him from across the hall. Gao Tian suddenly realized he’d made a rookie mistake—he had been so engrossed in watching the figure enter the temple that he’d forgotten about the Wind Attendant Buddha he had positioned outside.
Fortunately, it wasn’t too late to activate the Wind Attendant Buddha.
With a single thought, Gao Tian had the Wind Attendant Buddha step out from behind the Vajra Tree, blocking the path between the newcomer and the main hall.
The figure, having just entered Longshu Temple, clearly hadn’t expected a "person" to be hiding behind the Vajra Tree and stopped short. Under the faint moonlight, both raised their heads and looked at each other at the same time.
At the same time, Gao Tian, hiding behind the pillar in the main hall, saw the young Monk through the Wind Attendant Buddha’s shared vision.
It wasn’t the master of Longshu Temple.
It was both unexpected and yet, somehow, made perfect sense.
The face and figure were incredibly familiar.
It was Yu Sheng.
But this Yu Sheng, while still wearing his usual expression of worldly compassion, was now blind in one eye. Writhing black flesh had coagulated over the ruined socket, still squirming as if it were alive—a sign of impending zombification.
In that moment, Yu Sheng looked both benevolent and monstrous.
Both were silent for a moment. Unexpectedly, it was Yu Sheng who spoke first.
His tone was as calm as ever:
"Is this your fourth green-character mission, Gao Tian?"
"I’m glad. After we parted ways at the apartment that day, you’ve managed to survive until now. It seems you narrowly escaped the star of death I saw hanging over you."
"After I left, and after you all went upstairs to explore... Zhao Zhenjia is dead, isn’t he?"
Gao Tian froze for a second.
Then he understood. The Wind Attendant Buddha was originally Zhao Zhenjia’s Supernatural Artifact. Seeing it now in Gao Tian’s possession, bearing his likeness, Yu Sheng had subconsciously assumed Zhao Zhenjia had died on the fourth floor of the apartment and passed on all his artifacts to Gao Tian before his death.
Compared to the situation at Longshu Temple tonight, this was a trivial misunderstanding.
The mysteries surrounding both Longshu Temple and Yu Sheng himself were simply too numerous.
He needed to provide some answers tonight. If Yu Sheng was going to be as cryptic as he was back at the apartment, Gao Tian felt he might actually lose his patience and punch him right in that disfigured face of his:
"Zhao Zhenjia isn’t dead. He made a deal with me and willingly gave me the Wind Attendant Buddha."
"Yu Sheng... it wasn’t easy meeting you here."
"It’s a good thing I was the one on this mission. If it had been anyone else from the apartment, this entire team would have become ghosts by now, dying without ever knowing what happened to them."
"Considering the price we’ve paid, you can at least tell us something. What exactly do you know? And what does your past have to do with Longshu Temple?"
Meanwhile, Gao Tian remained on high alert.
Even though the visitor was Yu Sheng, he continued to confront him through the Wind Attendant Buddha. The four team members in the main hall didn’t relax their guard or reveal themselves. Instead, their nerves were stretched taut, ready for a fight at any moment.
Why had Yu Sheng appeared at this exact time? And what was going on with the flesh on his face?
And his seventh green-character mission—had it been a success, or a failure?
In response to the Wind Attendant Buddha’s questions, Yu Sheng simply smiled.
He slowly sat down on the ground.
"But of course."
"I can’t tell you everything right now."
"But I can at least tell you—and only you—part of the truth about Longshu Temple and me."
Comments