Chapter 41: Chapter 41: The World in the Pot
Gao Tian placed the pot in a brightly lit spot and leaned in close to inspect the inside.
The third floor of the Living Human Apartment was itself the biggest paranormal phenomenon, one that could suppress the killing patterns of other ghosts. Gao Tian didn’t have to worry about a backlash from within the pot.
He could barely make out that the scenery at the bottom of the pot looked like a miniature cave floor. A delicate, figurine-sized skeleton sat before an uneven rock wall, its clothes long since tattered and torn, posed in meditation as it was at the moment of death. The ground was covered in weeds and a small stream, and the wall behind it was densely carved with tiny characters. But the cave itself was already so small that it was impossible to make out what the writing on the rock wall said.
’What is this?’
’Did Xu Yuan buy a figurine of a cave-dwelling Immortal and put it at the bottom of the pot?’
Gao Tian changed his angle and turned on his flashlight. Even so, he could only just make out the four largest ancient words: "Left by Master Yunshan."
’Master Yunshan?’
That must have been this skeleton’s name in life—his Daoist title was likely Master Yunshan.
’The name sounds impressive.’
’No, that’s not right.’
Gao Tian had a nagging feeling that everything at the bottom of the pot—the dead man, the inscriptions on the rock wall, the rippling water, the waterweeds—was simply too exquisite.
At a glance, it looked completely real, with no discernible difference. The closer he looked, the more lifelike it became, almost to the point of being indistinguishable from the real thing.
This wasn’t a model at all; it was a real person and real objects. The entire cave, the corpse of the master sitting within his grotto—it had all been shrunk down to the size of a trinket by some kind of Secret Technique and placed at the bottom of this pot.
’If Master Yunshan was really shrunk and put inside, then what was Xu Yuan’s purpose in collecting this pot? He couldn’t have really wanted it just for the pleasure of looking at it like a figurine.’
There had to be a secret hidden here, one related to the man called Master Yunshan.
Because he was in the Living Human Apartment, Gao Tian felt a bit braver. He tentatively reached his hand toward the bottom of the pot, trying to scoop out Master Yunshan’s complete skeleton from the cave.
But the moment his fingers touched the skeleton, they passed straight through its body and the rock wall behind it, touching the cold inner wall of the pot.
The moon in the water, a flower in the mirror.
The cave at the bottom of the pot was like a projection. It could only be seen with the naked eye; any attempt to touch it would pass right through.
Now he couldn’t touch it at all.
Gao Tian wasn’t ready to give up. Master Yunshan’s title, his seated posture, and his rotting clothes all pointed to him being an ancient.
He’d read his share of Qidian novels, where some mysterious old master would live inside a ring, waiting for a fated person to wear it so he could immediately bestow peerless techniques and transmit spiritual energy.
But he had never heard of anyone storing a master’s secret manuals and corpse inside a pot.
Besides, this era was far crueler than any web novel. Even if a true celestial Immortal descended, they likely couldn’t solve the predicaments they faced.
Still not giving up, Gao Tian slowly lowered his phone into the pot, trying to adjust the camera angle to capture the tiny characters on the rock wall inside.
With the phone screen inside the pot, Gao Tian moved his arm by feel, snapping several photos from different positions before pulling it back out.
He opened his photo gallery. Just as he’d expected, although his phone had captured an image of the text on the pot’s wall, it was blurry due to the lighting. Aside from a rough outline and a few characters, he couldn’t make out what it said at all.
Fortunately, this was the age of AI. He immediately fed the photos into an AI restoration program. It quickly completed the characters that were incomprehensible to the human eye, generating a restored version of the ancient text. It even conveniently translated the contents into modern language.
Now, he could finally see what was written behind Master Yunshan in the pot.
’Thank God for modern technology.’
Original Text:
When I was seven, everyone in my village was slaughtered by a vengeful ghost. I was the sole orphan left. Though I reported it to the Government Office, the officials were all ignorant fools who refused to acknowledge the existence of ghosts and ghouls in this world, or perhaps they feared its ferocity and dared not confront it.
That ghost, with its many eyes and long arms, murdered more than thirty of my kin. This hatred is etched into my bones, a memory I can never forget.
Afterward, I drifted alone and destitute, and took the greatest hero of the martial world as my master. I trained arduously for thirty years and mastered the ultimate technique of the Red Sun Palm. The force of my palm could shatter monuments and split stone as if cutting through lard. I surpassed my master, and the people of that time were all astonished.
Just as I was about to seek out the vengeful ghost to avenge a twenty-year-old grudge, a drastic change occurred—
One day, I returned from slaying a villain, carrying his head to report my success, only to find everyone within the Sect, from my respected master and fellow disciples to the hundred-odd handymen, all dead overnight. Their heads were half-severed, dangling from their necks. The scene was just like the ghost’s handiwork from all those years ago.
I sat alone amongst the severed limbs, thinking all through the night. Twenty years of hard training, my will for revenge—before a true vengeful ghost, it was all as pathetic as a child swinging a twig, utterly useless.
Yet my spirit was not dead. If martial arts cannot vanquish evil, could there not be a path of the Immortals in this world? Though I knew this path was harder than ascending to the heavens, my hatred filled the skies. How could I give up? If ghosts exist, then sects that subdue demons must also exist. Only the True Immortal Path can suppress the netherworld.
I vow to suppress all vengeful ghosts in the world, to return yin and yang to their rightful places, and to separate the realms of the living and the dead. May the Nine Netherworld reclaim all evil spirits, and clarity be restored to the human realm.
Translation as follows:
When I was seven years old, everyone in my village was killed by a vengeful ghost. I was the only one left, a lonely orphan. But even when I reported it, the people at the Government Office were all ignorant fools who refused to admit that things like ghosts and monsters existed in the world. Or perhaps they just didn’t dare to fight a ghost.
The ghost that killed my entire family of more than thirty people—it was covered in eyeballs, and its arms were so long they dragged on the ground. I’ll never forget it as long as I live.
After that, I suffered greatly and became the disciple of the greatest martial arts hero in the land. I spent about thirty years learning an extremely profound skill, the Red Sun Palm. A single strike from my palm could split boulders like they were tofu. I surpassed my master, and everyone at the time was shocked.
Just when I was feeling proud and ready to start my plan for revenge—to find the vengeful ghost that killed my village twenty years ago—something completely unexpected happened.
After a sect mission to hunt down a villain, I returned to the Sect with his head, ready to make my report. But what awaited me was a massacre. Everyone, up and down the mountain—my master, my martial uncles, my martial brothers, even the ordinary handyman disciples and outer disciples, over a hundred people—had all been killed in a single night. Their heads were hacked halfway off, with the other half still attached to their necks.
I was all too familiar with this scene; it was my nightmare come to life again. It was the exact style of the many-eyed, long-armed ghost that had killed the thirty-plus people in my village all those years ago.
I sat alone among the severed limbs of my countless martial brothers and thought for a long, long time. It took me a long time to accept this reality.
The profound martial arts of the martial world might be effective against ordinary people. But in front of a real vengeful ghost, they’re as laughable as a child with a dry stick.
After twenty years, my peerless skills and my dreams of revenge had all burst like a bubble.
But I still didn’t give up.
If... if martial arts weren’t enough to fight vengeful ghosts, then were there Immortal sects in this world? Was there a way to become an Immortal?
Even though I knew this path was even more arduous than practicing martial arts, I just couldn’t accept it. If there are ghosts in this world, there must also be cultivation sects. Only a true Immortal can deal with a vengeful ghost.
I swear that one day, I will suppress every vengeful ghost in this world. I’ll make the underworld stay in the underworld, and the living world stay in the living world.
...
...
The text cut off there. In fact, judging from the state of the stone wall, there was clearly more that followed; the story wasn’t finished.
But the rest of the story, the characters carved on the stone wall, had sunk deep over the long years, blending completely with the stone disk beneath the White Bone Master, making them impossible to photograph and even harder to see.
From the skeleton’s meditative posture and the words carved on the wall, it seemed paranormal events weren’t just a modern phenomenon. Even back in the age of feudal dynasties, prominent families and Martial Arts Sects could fall victim to ghosts.
It’s just that in their era, the supernatural hadn’t fully resurged and run rampant yet. Whether in court records or history books, such events were only mentioned in passing with a few brief strokes. Records left in village and family genealogies were dismissed by later generations who hadn’t witnessed them as nonsense and feudal superstition.
’So, did Master Yunshan ever find the way to become an Immortal?’
’If he had found it, how could he have turned into a pile of yellow earth and a set of dry bones centuries later, just like a mortal?’
In the centuries and millennia after his death, not only were the world’s vengeful ghosts not suppressed, but upon entering the modern era, paranormal events had swelled and surged, showing signs of a full-scale resurgence.
’It seems there are only ghosts in this world, and no Immortals. His final outcome must have been complete failure.’
Gao Tian stared at the miniature scene in the pot, seriously considering if there was any way to see the rest of Master Yunshan’s life story.
His mind wandered for a moment, and his gaze shifted to the ceiling. When he looked back at the pot’s opening, Gao Tian was suddenly shocked to find that the reflective scene within—the cave, the person, the water—had all changed drastically, transforming into a completely new world.
A concrete road, flanked by the towering silhouettes of skyscrapers in the darkness.
"How is this possible?
"No, this can’t be."
He saw that the pot had simulated a new image, but he found it hard to believe that the scene before his eyes was real, no matter how he looked at it.
A bus was driving down a deserted road. The world inside the pot seemed to be set at night. Besides the bus itself and the area illuminated by its headlights, the darkness on either side of the road was an absolute void.
If that was all the image in the pot showed, it wouldn’t have shocked Gao Tian so much.
The outer metal shell of the bus was semi-transparent, allowing an observer to see the scene taking place inside the vehicle.
It was as if the pot was deliberately displaying it this way, sending some kind of signal to the person outside.
On the seats inside this miniature bus, besides the driver, sat a total of five passengers.
No, strictly speaking, one of them was a highly decomposed corpse, nearly mummified, so it was hard to say if it could be counted among the "passengers."
And the one sitting behind it—the moment Gao Tian saw him, his mind went blank. For an instant, he even forgot to breathe.
