Chapter 5: The Ancient Temple
An abandoned tunnel... Zhang Yuanqing thought as he looked around in a panic.
Being ripped from reality and dropped into an unfamiliar environment without warning would have rattled anyone.
A tunnel? Is this the Sheling Tunnel from the urban legend?
As someone born and raised in Songhai City, he was of course familiar with Sheling Tunnel, one of the Ten Great Urban Legends. When he was little and refused to sleep at night, Grandma would scare him with those stories.
Moreover, setting aside the fact that urban legends were just that—stories—he had actually driven past the real Sheling Tunnel just a few days ago on the way back to his hometown to visit his father's grave.
The real Sheling Tunnel looked nothing like this. It wasn't nearly this decrepit.
Right. I'm in the Spirit Realm. This isn't the actual Sheling Tunnel, Zhang Yuanqing reminded himself.
The cramped environment gnawed at his nerves. Zhang Yuanqing moved forward cautiously, the only sound in the world being the lonely echo of his own footsteps.
As he walked, he considered his situation, turning over the information the voice in his head had provided.
There was no question about it. He had encountered something supernatural. He'd been pulled into the world of an urban legend by some mysterious force and was expected to complete tasks assigned by some unknown entity.
That voice gave me two quests. Survive for three hours, and explore the Spirit Realm. S rank difficulty... Solo, death type... That "death type" part really isn't sitting well with me, mused Zhang Yuanqing.
Having to survive for just three hours meant the danger would be extreme.
Exploring the Spirit Realm... that presumably meant exploring this tunnel. Which meant the tunnel itself was dangerous?
He quietly steeled himself as another question flickered through his mind. What was the reward for completing the quests? After all, when there were quests, there had to be rewards.
Zhang Yuanqing silently analyzed everything he knew.
Based on the attribute panel from earlier, my class is Nocturnal Specter, but my level is 0 instead of 1. Becoming a Nocturnal Specter is probably one of the rewards. But what even is a Nocturnal Specter?
Bro Bing was right. The black card really can change a person's life. But I overlooked the second half of what he wrote. The part about it being hard to master. Was he referring to this danger?
Just then, one of the old xenon lamps along the tunnel wall flickered. Its circuit was probably unstable. In the stuttering dance between light and dark, Zhang Yuanqing caught a glimpse of a figure standing beneath the lamp, wearing a hardhat.
Shit! He nearly jumped out of his skin. Every thought in his head shattered instantly, and he bolted like a startled deer, putting distance between himself and the figure.
He looked back. The xenon lamp had stopped flickering and glowed steadily.
Perhaps the dark silhouette wearing the hardhat might have been his imagination. Even so, that scare was enough. Zhang Yuanqing didn't dare linger in this godforsaken place. He hurried toward the tunnel exit.
His footsteps echoed through the silent tunnel. He didn't dare slow down for even a second. After five or six minutes of speed walking, the old xenon lamps along the arched ceiling flickered again, but this time, no figure in a hardhat appeared.
"It didn't follow me?"
A sliver of relief crept into his chest, but he didn't stop. Head down, he pressed forward at a brisk pace when suddenly, his eyes caught a detail on the ground that made his heart seize.
The orange xenon light stretched his shadow long across the floor. Beside his shadow trailed a dozen others.
They've been following me the entire time?!
Icy chill shot through him from the soles of his feet to the crown of his skull, and goosebumps erupted across every inch of his body. His face went white, and he broke into a dead sprint.
Finally, the mouth of the tunnel appeared ahead. Moonlight spilled in from beyond it, cold and pale as frost.
Zhang Yuanqing burst out of the tunnel in one breath, braced his hands against his knees, and doubled over, gasping.
Once his breathing steadied, he surveyed his surroundings. A full moon hung in the night sky like a pale disc, solitary and silent. Beneath its radiance, the stars seemed to cower and fade.
Bathed in that moonlight, dense clusters of trees cast vast pools of deep shadow across the landscape.
He was standing in the middle of a desolate, uninhabited mountain.
Behind him, the xenon lamps inside the tunnel flickered one last time, then they all went dark. The gaping mouth of the tunnel yawned open, black and silent, like the maw of a beast waiting to devour whoever drew near.
Zhang Yuanqing's scalp prickled. "I'd better get out of here."
He set off, heading up the rugged mountain path.
After a dozen steps, he glanced back and saw a row of figures standing at the tunnel entrance. They wore tattered clothes and hardhats, with heads bowed low. They stood in the shadows where moonlight did not reach, utterly silent, as though seeing him off.
Zhang Yuanqing stumbled backward several steps, then spun around and ran up the mountain.
Thick foliage lined both sides of the mountain path, filtering the moonlight into scattered fragments that gave him just enough visibility to see the road ahead.
The silence in the mountains was suffocating. No insects chirped. No birds called. His footsteps sounded unnervingly loud in the void.
"It's too quiet. There's no way such a mountain would be devoid of even the sound of insects this time of year."
He scanned his surroundings. The full moon hung overhead, and the swaying trees cast shadows that danced gracefully on the ground. And still, the persistent sensation of something watching him from the darkness refused to leave.
He walked for what felt like an eternity, his skin slowly becoming coated in a thin layer of sweat, before he finally emerged from the dense forest.
The view opened up all at once. Moonlight flowed around him like water, silence pressed in from every direction—and at the end of the rugged mountain path stood a derelict ancient temple.
It waited in the darkness, perfectly still.
The temple had been abandoned for who knew how many years. The paint on the front doors was peeling and blackened, riddled with decay. The lanterns that once hung from the eaves had fallen to the ground, reduced to bare bamboo frames.
The plaque, at least, still remained, draped in cobwebs and hanging crookedly beneath the eaves. However, the light was too dim to make out what was written on it.
The stone steps leading up to the temple doors were cracked and split, weeds pushing through every fissure.
He was in the middle of nowhere, miles from any village or road. Why was there a temple here?
Wait... a temple?! A sudden realization slammed into Zhang Yuanqing as the voice from earlier on—the one that had given him an introduction to the Spirit Realm—echoed in his mind.
"Don't go into the temple. Don't go into the temple..."
According to that strange voice's warning, I shouldn't enter the temple. But no, I've already left the tunnel, which means the thing I'm actually supposed to explore... is this rundown temple.
He hesitated at the entrance for a long time before cautiously stepping forward, crossing the threshold of the temple that stood shrouded in darkness.
He was greeted by a broad front courtyard. Wild, waist-high grass grew everywhere, and a half-rotted incense burner, tall as a man's hip, lay toppled in the weeds, weathered by countless years of wind and rain.
Beneath his feet ran a path of green flagstones, tufts of wild grass sprouting from every single crack between them.
His gaze followed the rolling waves of brown grass to the end of the stone path, where a series of six steps led up to a dilapidated main hall standing on a high foundation. A yellowish light bled out through the lattice doors standing at the entrance to the main hall.
"A light?"
Everything was wrapped up in silence, awash in pure white moonlight. Desolation and decay filled the air. In such an environment, that tiny glow offered Zhang Yuanqing absolutely no sense of warmth.
If anything, it made things even more terrifying.
He pushed through the clusters of dry, yellowed grass and advanced toward the main hall, staying alert. Across the empty expanse, every footstep rang out with startling clarity.
Suddenly, Zhang Yuanqing's ears twitched. He detected a second set of footsteps behind him. Something was following him.
He whipped around.
Moonlight, like still water. Overgrown weeds. There was nothing behind him at all.
Am I hearing things? wondered Zhang Yuanqing.
He stood frozen for a moment, heart hammering, before forcing his legs to move again.
The sound of another's footsteps returned. This time he heard them clearly. There really was something behind him.
No way. He'd barely set foot on the temple grounds, and he already had to deal with something foul? He didn't dare look back. He picked up the pace.
The footsteps behind him quickened to match.
Zhang Yuanqing snapped. Goosebumps erupted across his skin, and he launched into a full sprint toward the main hall.
The footsteps behind him clung to him like a shadow, chasing him relentlessly.
Under relentless pursuit, Zhang Yuanqing burst free of the overgrown grass and closed the distance to the main hall. He cleared all six steps in two bounds and crashed through the lattice doors with a thunderous bang.
The footsteps behind him vanished instantly.
"Hah... hah... hah..."
He stood there heaving, and only then found the courage to turn around. Moonlight drenched the courtyard like a flood. An eerie silence enveloped the courtyard, with its flagstones and weeds. There was nothing there.
Zhang Yuanqing sighed. "Thank God it didn't follow me in."
Once his breathing evened out, he gently closed the doors of the main hall, as though shutting away fear itself on the other side.
Then, he took in his surroundings. Atop a tall stone pedestal sat the statue of a goddess dressed in elaborate, elegant robes and draped in a fur-lined cloak. Her face was round and full, with long, slender brows and elegant eyes that lent her an air of benevolence.
She held a horsehair whisk in one hand. Her other hand was empty, but the fingers were curled together as if she had once been holding something.
Flanking her on both sides was a young attendant boy bearing a sword and a maidservant carrying a book.
Before the pedestal stood an altar covered in dust. On it sat a candlestick holding a single candle, roughly twenty centimeters tall and as thick as a baby's forearm, burning in quiet stillness.
The candlelight pushed back the darkness, and it seemed to push back some of Zhang Yuanqing's fear as well. He felt his nerves settle considerably.
On the left wall hung two wooden boards. The paint on the boards was faded and cracked, and they were covered in carved characters written in regular script.
Zhang Yuanqing wandered over and studied them by the dim candlelight. The writing on the boards was in classical Chinese style.
His reading comprehension wasn't half bad. Through a combination of careful reading and guesswork, he pieced together a clear picture of where he was.
This mountain was called Three Paths Mountain, and the deity enshrined in the temple was the Three Paths Mountain Goddess.
She had been a native of Songfu during the early Ming Dynasty, a woman who practiced cultivation on Three Paths Mountain. She had been skilled in talismanic arts, versed in the ways of alchemy, and was capable of summoning rain and banishing ghosts. Under her protection, the region enjoyed favorable weather, and the people revered her as a living deity.
After her ascension, the local magistrate built this temple on Three Paths Mountain, naming it the "Temple of the Three Paths Mountain Goddess." It was managed by the Goddess's disciples, who carried on her legacy and kept the incense burning.
"An early Ming Dynasty temple. That's five or six hundred years old," Zhang Yuanqing muttered.
Just then, his gaze happened to drift beneath the altar, and a chill shot through him. A dark shape lay in the shadows underneath.
His nerves had been too frayed earlier, and the candlelight too dim, for him to have noticed it at first.
Zhang Yuanqing steeled himself and crept closer. When he focused his vision, he realized it was a skeleton. Nothing but bones remained.
A mixture of fear and relief washed over him. Compared to the uncanny horrors of this temple, a skeleton was almost comforting.
He stepped closer, and by the faint candlelight, he could just about make out the clothes still clinging to the bones. It was a work uniform, covered in dust.
A worker? Could this be someone from the construction crew back then? So I really have entered the world of that urban legend.
The moment that thought formed, an even more unsettling possibility occurred to him. Perhaps the construction crew from all those years ago had stumbled into this place the same way he had, which was what gave birth to that urban legend.
If his first conjecture was true, then perhaps this so-called Spirit Realm generated its environments based on existing urban legends.
If the second was true, it meant the ancient temple had always existed, and the construction crew, just like him, had been its victims.
Given the historical records carved into the boards lining the temple's walls, Zhang Yuanqing leaned toward the second explanation.
An entire construction crew died in this temple, leaving only one survivor. People really do die here... And now I've walked into the same temple. I could come face-to-face with some unknown danger at any moment.
He sucked in a sharp breath through his teeth, his nerves tightening up all over again as he instinctively scanned his surroundings.
That was when a horrifying detail struck him: This was a centuries-old temple from the Ming Dynasty. How could a candle from that period still be burning? Who had been replacing the candles in the main hall?
The more he thought about it, the more dread he felt. Even the statue of the goddess with its benevolent face sitting on the pedestal seemed to take on a sinister and unsettling air in the flickering candlelight.
The three clay figures on the pedestal were coated in dust, yet they were astonishingly lifelike. Every detail was carved with uncanny precision, especially the eyes. They stood there in the dim yellow candlelight, gazing down at Zhang Yuanqing from above.
