Chapter 231: Chapter 196: Flesh Lama
The illusion shattered with a loud crash, and by the time Yang Xiao regained his senses, he was back in the familiar room. Fu Qingzhu, the girl, and Black Sunglasses were each clutching their chests, slumped on the ground, their expressions of lingering fear indicating that they had encountered the same terrifying event.
"That was... that was close," Fu Qingzhu tried to get up, but after several attempts, he couldn’t manage it. His legs were weak. The overwhelming presence of the Great Black Bodhisattva, looking down on all beings, had almost crushed his soul. That being was not of this plane of existence.
Wiping the cold sweat from his forehead, Black Sunglasses was breathing heavily. "It was the Great Black Buddha Mother, it had to be! How... how did we escape?"
Once calmed down, they all realized something: the chanting outside the door had disappeared at some point, the corridor eerily silent.
Letting out a sigh of relief, the girl got up and walked towards the door. "The guy outside is gone. The man called it the Little Holy Spirit White-Robed Mother."
Yang Xiao grabbed the girl’s arm, "Don’t open the door, it could be a trick!"
"I know," the girl said, pulling out a device similar to a walkie-talkie from the inner pocket of her suit, and began typing on it.
Yang Xiao, who was close by, saw what the girl was writing: I’m in room 2336. There might be danger outside the door, send someone to lure that thing away.
After a brief hesitation, Yang Xiao couldn’t help but admire the girl’s cleverness. Their actual room was not 2336, but nearby. In this way, if the message was intercepted, they would not be found by those evil cultivators immediately.
If it was indeed one of their own who responded, and there really was danger outside the door, being so close wouldn’t delay the rescue.
"Big families do have their perks, getting their hands on such devices," Fu Qingzhu said, eyeing the girl’s communicator with envy. Compared to it, their mobile phones were no better than bricks in this environment.
The girl quickly received a reply, a simple and clear "Understood."
"Why can these people move around so freely without being killed by that thing outside? Just because they’re believers?" Yang Xiao looked towards the man who had been throat-slit in the chair, a sinister smile still on his face in death.
Black Sunglasses shook his head, "You’re overthinking it. Those creatures don’t care about the lives of their believers. We’ve speculated that perhaps you can escape being pursued if you... castrate yourself."
The cost was too high, both Yang Xiao and Fu Qingzhu automatically dismissed the idea.
"They’re almost here, get ready." The girl stowed the communicator and quietly signaled to the three.
Soon, there was a faint noise from one side of the corridor, but before it got close, it seemed to discover something, and suddenly the footsteps grew louder, turning into running—but in the opposite direction.
The next second, something that sent chills down the spines of Yang Xiao and the others occurred; chanting suddenly rang out in the corridor, so close it felt like it was right outside the door.
The running person had drawn the chanting away, the sound of it gradually diminishing until it became indistinct.
Soon, a few faint footsteps approached from another direction. After verifying identities through the communicator, the girl quietly cracked the door open a fraction.
Peeking through the gap, they saw several shadowy figures not far away, lurking outside a door as if discussing something.
"It’s them, no doubt," the man with Black Sunglasses who was also peering through the gap, nodded.
As the two groups joined forces, they hadn’t exchanged more than a few words when they suddenly heard heart-wrenching screams from far away.
"It’s Sun Qiang!" one of the men, wearing a duckbill cap, instantly turned pale.
It wasn’t hard to guess that Sun Qiang was the unfortunate one who had lured the ghost away.
"The screams are coming from downstairs, we run upstairs," they said. Without a way to deal with the ghost, all they could do was flee.
Taking the safety passage on the right, the group made it to the 24th floor. Even with two floors between them, Sun Qiang’s screams were still piercing, and it was hard to imagine what torment he was enduring now.
The man with the communicator was pale, his eyes filled with confusion, "Strange, all the people who were affected died in the same way, dying in their own desires, very satisfied. Why is Sun Qiang different?"
This question echoed Yang Xiao’s own confusion. The bodies they had seen before were naked and smiling, completely satisfied. But judging from the screams, Sun Qiang’s fate seemed to be unlike anyone else’s.
"What about the video? Sun Qiang should have had a camera on him," Black Sunglasses looked anxiously to the man with the communicator, the leader of their small team.
Hearing this, the man looked troubled, "Mr. Chen, we’re experiencing some problems with video transmission. We’re working on it."
With the situation critical, there was no time to fuss over this; finding a safe place to hide was their top priority.
Reaching a corner near the safety door, a room door suddenly opened, and a gleaming samurai sword thrust out, piercing the man with the square face who was nearest, leaving him chillingly cold.
The samurai sword penetrated the square-faced man’s body, also leaving a wound on the girl’s arm. Black Sunglasses reacted quickly, pulling the girl out of the way and flinging her behind him as he drew his dagger and threw it towards the door.
The hasty strike missed its mark, only striking the shoulder of the sword-wielding person. Struggling, the attacker rushed toward them, but Fu Qingzhu lifted his foot and kicked him hard, sending him tumbling to the ground.
Suddenly, three more people emerged from the room, joining the man on the ground to make four in total. All of them wore black suits and held various weapons, their faces fierce and terrifying; they were clearly infiltrators from the Black Buddha Mother Sect.
"Bang!"
"Bang! Bang! Bang!"
"Bang! Bang!"
...
The doorway was narrow, perfect for shooting. Yang Xiao drew his gun and fired wildly, taking down four people. Concerned there might be an ambush, he held onto a few bullets and did not immediately finish them off.
Black Sunglasses stepped forward and plunged a knife into the heart of the knife-wielding man. The man struggled a few times, and the liveliness in his eyes slowly faded.
The remaining few followed suit, and after a short moment, they had dispatched the people lying on the ground.
Yang Xiao, gun in hand, led the way. Inside, the bedroom door was ajar, and a muffled chanting could still be faintly heard. With a "bang," he kicked open the door to see an old person sitting cross-legged on the bed.
The old person had no eyebrows or beard, and due to extreme old age, their sagging skin made it impossible to tell if they were male or female. Their body was as thin as skin and bones, draped in a gray coarse cloth, dressed oddly, twirling a rosary in hand, with sparse white hair combed into a Taoist’s topknot.
Below, they were wrapped in a dirty yellow cloth covered in chaotic scripture, with both bare feet painted a pitch-black ink color.
In front of the old person, a black Buddha statue was set, beneath which a blood-red lotus seat was carved with countless struggling bodies.
The old person completely ignored their arrival, still closing their eyes, with dry, cracked lips moving rapidly, spouting one arcane scripture after another that burrowed into everyone’s ears.
Having learned his lesson, Yang Xiao aimed the gun at the old person’s head. Just as he was about to pull the trigger, someone stopped him.
"Wait!"
Black Sunglasses stepped forward and used the back of the captured samurai sword to knock the old person down, and a black foot actually rolled onto the floor.
This scene truly startled Yang Xiao, but upon closer inspection, it became clear that the old person had no feet—both were made of wood, coated with a layer of black lacquer.
As if confirming a suspicion, Black Sunglasses was filled with fury, "No wonder these demons could awaken the Magic Artifact, they actually brought this filthy thing in!"
"Is this person also a follower?" Yang Xiao began to sense the old person’s unusual identity.
"This thing, they call a Flesh Lama, we call it a Human Flesh Gourd. How they managed to create it, I don’t know, but its evil power is remarkable. It’s said that through them, it’s possible to perceive the supreme will of the Great Black Buddha Mother," said the girl, who came from a noble family and naturally had a broader knowledge than Yang Xiao and Fu Qingzhu.
The old person did not resist at all, nor did they open their eyes, lying on the ground, their lips still moving, their face showing neither sadness nor joy.
"Chanting? I’ll give you something to chant about!" Black Sunglasses loathed these filthy things, ruthlessly jabbing the sword handle into the old person’s mouth, causing the remaining few yellow teeth to fall out.
Then Yang Xiao and the others noticed that the old person did not have a tongue, yet they were able to recite the scriptures so proficiently without one.
A chill crept up everyone’s spines, and Black Sunglasses ordered the old person to be tied up and gagged with a cloth.
Yang Xiao helped out, but he was more interested in observing this so-called Flesh Lama up close. The old person’s body was so skinny that there was hardly any flesh left, and the little skin that remained had lost its elasticity. Pressing a finger against it would leave a small pit.
This... This simply didn’t seem like a living person.
Before they had time to decide how to handle the Flesh Lama, the man with the signal device came quickly with an odd, fearful expression, "The video... The video is fixed."
The girl took a tablet connected to the signal device. The video showed a hallway, the image shaking violently. From experience, it seemed to be shot with a motion camera attached to someone’s body.
Sun Qiang stopped at the corner, paused, then slowly peeked out towards the other side of the hallway. Before the image could stabilize, Sun Qiang seemed to have seen something extremely horrific and turned to run. A few seconds later, the screen went completely black and never lit up again.
"What’s this?" Black Sunglasses glared at the man, "What can you make out from this? Where’s the sound, why is there no sound?"
The man didn’t argue but took the tablet and operated it quickly, dragging the progress bar until the image finally stabilized.
The next second, Yang Xiao and the rest were stunned. Although the image was still blurry, they could see a gigantic figure standing at the end of the corridor, nearly as tall as the ceiling, blocking a door.
The figure was dressed in white, the head hanging down slightly.
The man kept zooming in on the figure, trying to see it more clearly, but due to the quality of the image, the figure only became more blurred. And then, in the next second, the figure shook violently and then twisted its head to look outside the screen at them.
The man holding the computer’s hand shook, and the computer fell to the floor, the screen instantly going black.
"Om Benza Wiki Bitana Soha... Om Ami Dewa Hrih..."
"Om Mani Padme Hum... Om Ah Ra Pa Tsa Na Dih..."
Before everyone could recover, chanting suddenly echoed outside the hallway, carrying an indescribably weird sensation, charging straight towards them.
