By four in the morning, Daoist Baiyun still showed no sign of fatigue, his tone remaining as gentle as ever. Ding Shi was the first to give in and asked where the bathroom was.
The bathroom was outside the front entrance to the left. A door was set into the wooden wall; stepping through led right to the edge of a sheer cliff. Squatting near the precipice, there was a man-made handrail fixed to the rock face. Directly beneath the rail, a hollow had been carved out, covered by an iron plate. Sliding back the plate revealed a roll of toilet paper inside.
Needless to say, not just anyone got the chance to relieve themselves in such a grand, top-tier venue.
Ding Shi had not actually come out to relieve himself. Taking out the Luggage Card, he conjured up his baggage. Speaking of which, he had to feel ashamed for three seconds—originally, he had intended to use the supplies to coerce Daoist Baiyun into teaching him a few skills.
Ding Shi couldn't let his conscience trouble him, at least not right now, because he still planned to ransack Baiyun Temple. He wasn't looking for wealth, nor was he looking for women; what he wanted were the martial arts manuals or immortal Daoist arts that Daoist Baiyun kept hidden inside Baiyun Temple.
Ding Shi carried the luggage before Daoist Baiyun. For a moment, the Daoist was visibly stunned, unable to fathom when such heavy baggage had been hidden out by the latrine.
It didn't matter if he didn't understand. Ding Shi stated the purpose of his trip: "There's been an unforeseen development with San Niang's sacrifice. The village chief asked me to invite you down the mountain."
Daoist Baiyun, who had been cultured, refined, and exceptionally composed for the past several hours, sprang to his feet the moment he heard this. "What?" he asked.
Clutching his stomach, Ding Shi repeated his words.
Daoist Baiyun's expression turned grave. "I shall go down the mountain with you at once."
"Is it very urgent?" Ding Shi asked.
Daoist Baiyun nodded, a hint of guilt in his heart. "I know I ought to let you rest for the night, but this matter is of grave importance. We must return to the village as soon as possible."
Ding Shi agreed. When the two reached the temple entrance, Ding Shi said, "Daoist, my stomach is killing me. Please wait a moment." Giving Daoist Baiyun no chance to refuse, he scampered off toward the cliff's edge in a frantic rush.
Twenty minutes later, Ding Shi returned from the latrine. An impatient look had crept onto Daoist Baiyun's face. "Let us go," he said.
After just a few steps, Ding Shi slipped and stumbled, only avoiding a tumble down the mountain by grabbing a sapling by the trail. Daoist Baiyun glanced down the slope. Navigating mountain paths at night was treacherous, even more so going downhill. After a moment's hesitation, Daoist Baiyun said, "This poor Daoist shall go ahead. You may rest at the temple for the night and make haste back to the village tomorrow morning."
"Thank you, Daoist," Ding Shi said gratefully.
Daoist Baiyun instructed, "This poor Daoist has an evil spirit suppressed in the back hall. You must not go there under any circumstances."
"Understood," Ding Shi replied. *I was raised on frights—the more someone tries to scare me, the bolder I get.*
Without another word, Daoist Baiyun drifted down the hillside, his feet tapping lightly along the path, and soon vanished into the dark night.
Ding Shi returned to Baiyun Temple and lay down on the stone bed. Ten minutes later, he rolled off onto the ground clutching his stomach, shouting at the top of his lungs, "Help! Help! Daoist, save me!"
After rolling around for three minutes, Ding Shi stood up and patted the dust from his clothes. It seemed the old Daoist had truly left.
A dozen or so oil lamps lit the front hall, making everything visible at a glance. The statues of the Three Pure Ones were stone carvings, completely worthless. Neither the stone bed nor the stone walls could conceal anything.
To the left of the main entrance was the latrine; to the right was what passed for a kitchen, where some honeycomb briquettes were stacked alongside tung oil for the lamps and other sundries. It seemed unlikely that manuals of immortal cultivation would be stashed in places like these.
After searching all over, Ding Shi turned his eyes toward the winding cave leading into the depths. The cavern was circular, over two meters high, and quite twisting. Ding Shi was reminded of a phrase: snake path.
Ding Shi switched on his flashlight and stepped inside. Every three meters along the cave, an oil lamp hung high on the wall. These lamps were ordinary, yet quite intriguing.
The lamps were embedded in the stone walls, connected to one another by small flexible tubes. Because the terrain sloped steadily downward, pouring tung oil in at the cave entrance would allow it to flow down and fill each lamp in sequence.
Ding Shi's curiosity deepened. Tung oil was cheap, and the mountain had large groves of tung trees; refining tung oil purely for burning was not a complicated process. But why set up such a contraption? There was only one answer: Daoist Baiyun visited the back hall quite frequently and needed the path lit. Technology was driven by lazy people; after adding oil too many times, a person got lazy and came up with a little gadget like this.
There was plenty of open space in the front hall, so whatever was in the back hall could easily have been moved forward. Why visit the back hall so often?
Descending slowly along the passage, which remained the same size throughout, Ding Shi reached the back hall after about a hundred meters.
The back hall covered roughly two hundred square meters in an irregular circle. A red coffin rested right in the center, surrounded by nine oil lamps and a prayer mat. The flames of the lamps were small, leaving the chamber dimly lit.
Standing at the entrance of the back hall, Ding Shi swept his flashlight across the chamber. He spotted the coffin immediately and guessed that this was the very coffin of San Niang mentioned by Blind Zhao.
Only after confirming there was nothing else besides the lamps and the coffin did Ding Shi step into the inner chamber.
Ding Shi walked two circles around the perimeter of the coffin, carefully checking the inner chamber once more before finally approaching the coffin.
It was a red coffin with four sheets of talisman paper pasted on its lid, arranged in pairs to form two X's—one at the head and one at the foot of the lid.
Ding Shi wondered about an odd detail: why weren't the talismans pasted across the seam between the lid and the coffin itself?
System: *This is a seal of suppression, not a confiscation seal.*
"Hoo, hoo!" Ding Shi hopped in place twice and took a deep breath to steel his nerves. Was he really going to open it? According to Blind Zhao, the immortal treasure was on the underside of the coffin lid. Without opening it, there was no way he could get his hands on the prize. But that raised another problem: if the treasure was inside the coffin, then San Niang would be inside, too.
Feeling uneasy all over, Ding Shi scratched his head in frustration. Granted, he had already come all this way, but that didn't change the fact that San Niang was inside. Who knew what her true body looked like? Had it grown fur? Did it stink? Was the air poisonous?
Ding Shi drew his claw hammer and deftly pried out all the coffin nails. Then he sat down on the prayer mat and stared blankly at the coffin: *Open it? Don't open it? Open it? Don't open it?*
He didn't hesitate for long, because he knew he would definitely open it.
Ding Shi pushed the coffin lid open with force—just a crack at first—and inhaled gently to test the air inside. How to describe the scent? There didn't seem to be any smell at all.
Ding Shi lifted the lid higher, propping it with one hand while shining the flashlight inside with the other. Inside lay a young girl around ten years old, dressed in a red bridal gown, wearing a phoenix coronet, her eyes closed, hands folded over her stomach. This had to be San Niang's true form. There was no fur, no decay, no foul odor. Aside from her pale complexion, one truly couldn't tell she was a corpse.
Ding Shi suddenly shouted, "Ha!"
San Niang didn't budge. Instead, the echo startled Ding Shi so much that he jumped: *Who's there?*
Ding Shi set the flashlight down beside San Niang and lifted the lid further, preparing to poke his head in and inspect the underside. Suddenly, San Niang's eyes snapped open. Terrified, Ding Shi let go, and the coffin lid crashed shut with a deafening bang.
Ding Shi slumped to the ground, patting his chest and gasping for breath, his mind flooding with curses he desperately wanted to shout.
After waiting a moment, there was no sound from inside the coffin. Could he have seen wrong? Had San Niang already sat up, just waiting for him to lift the lid again?
Now that he had come this far, how could he back down?
Gritting his teeth, Ding Shi lifted the coffin lid once more. San Niang's eyes were closed.
Ding Shi reached in to retrieve the flashlight from the coffin, clenched it between his teeth, and kept his gaze locked on San Niang's eyes as he pushed the lid upward.
Then San Niang's eyes opened. This time Ding Shi saw clearly: her eyes had neither pupils nor whites, just a uniform solid black. In fairness, terrifying as it was, paired with her features and attire, it actually looked rather striking.
As the thought crossed his mind, Ding Shi lowered the lid a fraction—San Niang's eyes closed. Ding Shi lifted the lid—San Niang's eyes opened. Lowered it—her eyes closed.
A flash of insight struck Ding Shi. The talismans on the lid functioned to suppress San Niang. When the lid was lifted and the talismans were moved farther away from her, San Niang began to awaken.
To test his hypothesis, Ding Shi raised and lowered the lid right around the threshold between open and closed. San Niang's eyes opened, then closed, opened again, and closed again. As Ding Shi sped up his rhythm, her eyelids began fluttering up and down, moving so fast they could have thrown sparks.
*Heh-heh, this is fun.*
Chapter 22