The paper crane came to a stop at the edge of the copper coin. Its beak clutched one side of the coin as it tried to drag Xun Ruosu a couple of steps, but being so small and weak, it made no progress. In an instant, it looked rather aggrieved.
“You fly ahead. I’ll keep up,” Xun Ruosu said softly.
The paper crane shared a spiritual connection with its master and understood her words perfectly. It flapped its wings, urging her to hurry.
Though this little thing had been unearthed from a pile of corpses, its body wasn’t stained with much blood. The place it wanted to take her to wasn’t far away. After circling once around the massive Bodhisattva statue at the center, Xun Ruosu spotted the enormous “cage.”
To call it a cage wasn’t quite accurate. It was more like eighteen golden bars plunged deep into the ground. The gaps between the bars were wide—not just enough for a figure like Xun Ruosu’s, but with plenty of room to spare even for a stone malicious ghost statue over two meters tall and half a meter wide.
Corpses were piled high both inside and outside the bars, spanning every age group. But…
“They all seem to have died in the same way,” Xun Ruosu said.
Xue Tong had circled around from the other direction and was now standing beside her. “Encircling the Bodhisattva statue are eight other Buddha statues, representing plague, starvation, natural disasters, execution by axe, self-inflicted wounds, greed, lust, and the ‘retribution’ you see right here before you. Eight methods of death in total.”
The paper crane had likely escaped from this massive prison. It kept hovering around the perimeter, trying to slip back inside. But though the bars appeared widely spaced, some other force was blocking the way. No matter how hard the paper crane tried, it couldn’t squeeze through.
Xun Ruosu let it struggle for a bit longer. Soon enough, the paper crane was exhausted and flew back to her side, perching atop her head.
“Yuan Jie and the others should be inside. The paper crane isn’t splattered with fresh blood, so even if it’s injured, it shouldn’t be anything serious,” Xun Ruosu said, far calmer than one might expect. She was genuinely worried about Zhong Li in an environment like this, but the Zhong family was known for their unyielding resilience. Zhong Li surely had ways to hold out for a short while. Xun Ruosu’s anxiety would only breed panic, which was useless when it came to mounting a rescue.
Sometimes, a lack of conscience came in handy. No matter how perilous the situation or who got caught up in it, Xun Ruosu could swiftly find her emotional balance.
Xue Tong shot her a sidelong glance and chuckled under her breath. “Cold and ruthless.”
“Isn’t that a good thing?” Xun Ruosu replied, puzzled. “Would you rather I act rashly and wallow in sentimentality?”
“…”
Xue Tong fell silent for a moment.
Inwardly, she murmured, Not bad at all. Just too much like the old you.
Seeing Xue Tong say nothing, Xun Ruosu took it as tacit agreement.
The radish-shaped Bodhisattva statue had previously been facing sideways toward Xun Ruosu and Xue Tong. At some point, however, it had turned to face them directly. Its gaze of compassionate sorrow hung low, quietly encompassing the two women who remained oblivious.
“Keep staring, and it’ll poke your eyes out,” Xue Tong said.
The jade statue: “…”
Unreasonable.
“This cage looks sturdy enough to withstand a beating. No need to break it in a hurry. Let’s clean up this mess first, then let them out,” Xun Ruosu suggested. She was adept at capitalizing on conveniences others had created.
Even if they freed everyone right now without understanding what had happened, they still couldn’t escape the Ten Thousand People Pit. For the sake of safety, it was better to leave Yuan Jie and Zhong Li inside the cage for the time being, sparing themselves the dual assault on mind and senses.
Xun Ruosu walked up to the golden cage. For some reason, the cage seemed exceptionally welcoming to her. The little paper crane hadn’t been able to get within half a meter of it, yet she could press her palm right against the golden bars. “Wuchang, are you in there?”
A long moment passed before a cat’s meow echoed from inside.
“Are you injured?”
The sound shifted to a whimper. Then Zhong Li’s voice emerged. “A little scrape on the hind leg.”
“Are you two in any danger inside?” Xun Ruosu asked next.
“Not for the moment,” Zhong Li replied. “That thing was about to kill me, but Wuchang bit it once and it suddenly changed its mind. Though Wuchang’s bite wasn’t that deep… Oh, right—Yuqin. That female ghost isn’t harmless. That’s what ambushed us.”
“Xue Tong and I already know. Her soul isn’t the original; someone’s tampered with it.” Xun Ruosu paused before continuing. “Since there’s no immediate danger, you and the abbot should stay put inside. Once we’ve sorted things out, we’ll figure out how to get you free.”
“…”
Zhong Li hesitated for a moment before murmuring an “Mm.” “Just don’t forget about us.”
“You won’t forget about my cat, will you?” Xue Tong called out from a distance.
Far from comforting her, the remark left Zhong Li too disheartened to respond.
Xun Ruosu chuckled as she stepped away from the cage. Earlier, when she’d drawn close, she’d noticed that the corpses here displayed a variety of death poses. According to Xue Tong, this particular pile represented “retribution.” Protruding from the mound of bodies was a Buddha’s palm clutching a three-edged vajra mace—a weapon of devastating power, shrouded in countless legends.
Yet if the goal had been to kill Zhong Li, why classify her under “retribution” out of options like plague or execution by axe? Did it really have something to do with the Zhu family?
Xun Ruosu had just made her way back from the corpse pile to the open ground when a figure materialized before the white marble Bodhisattva statue. It was Yuqin from before, looking much the same—except now a hyacinth flower garland adorned her head. Her expression was calmer than earlier, and she stood precisely in the center of the Buddha statue, gazing straight at Xun Ruosu.
“I didn’t expect to see you here.”
Yuqin’s words reverberated across the clearing, booming and echoing like sacred chants.
Her statement was an odd one. Back in the abandoned building site, she had ambushed Xun Ruosu first and been caught by Wuchang because of it. Then she’d dragged Zhong Li and Yuan Jie here. Even if Xun Ruosu truly was as aloof as they came, she wouldn’t have abandoned the pair and left outright. How could she not have anticipated they’d meet again?
This entity was shrouded in far too many mysteries. For a moment, Xun Ruosu found herself at a loss for where to even begin unraveling them.
And yet, the truth was staring her right in the face.
Yuqin continued to stare directly at Xun Ruosu, her eyes filled with some indefinable emotion that made Xun Ruosu’s scalp crawl. She was just about to nudge Xue Tong forward to draw some of the attention when Xue Tong stepped up on her own, shielding her from behind.
Xue Tong wasted no time on pleasantries. “She’s not like you. You had better not get any ideas about her.”
“…”
The conversation was growing more baffling by the second.
From behind, Xun Ruosu tugged at Xue Tong’s clothes, her breath brushing against Xue Tong’s ear. “You really are keeping a lot from me.”
“Are we close enough for me to report every little thing?” Xue Tong’s tone turned sharp, but she regretted the words the instant they left her mouth. Xun Ruosu had a knack for maintaining distance from others, after all. Sure enough, the hand clutching her clothes stiffened for a moment before letting go—and Xun Ruosu even took a step back. “Sorry. I overstepped.”
Xue Tong’s unexplained irritability was directed at the massive Bodhisattva statue before them. Though it appeared benevolent and pure, it put her deeply ill at ease. Sinister crimson bloodlines writhed demonically behind it, seemingly still in the process of growth—what they could see was likely just the tip of the iceberg. No one knew what monstrous form the buried portion might take.
Moreover, it had shown an unusually intimate fondness for Xun Ruosu. And Xue Tong knew exactly why.
Xun Ruosu was one of its kind.
A lifeless object animated by borrowed three souls and seven po. Xue Tong couldn’t craft a lamp vessel suited to it, but she could target the woman with the flower garland. Earlier, Xun Ruosu had removed the silver lock hanging from the woman’s chest and tucked it into her pouch for safekeeping. Now, as Xue Tong slipped a hand behind her back and crooked a finger in silent request, Xun Ruosu handed over the silver lock without a second thought.
“Why did I know she wanted the silver lock?” Xun Ruosu wondered aloud, her gaze fixed on her pouch. It held all sorts of odds and ends, from copper coins and vermilion brushes to yellow talismans—and even a pair of sunglasses. The shades were for nighttime use; in crowded places, they let her pass for fully blind among the living.
She could have just handed over the entire pouch and let Xue Tong rummage through it herself. Instead, instinct had guided her hand faster than thought. By the time she paused to question it, Xue Tong had already extracted a tiny lotus lamp from the silver lock—no bigger than an eyeball, barely filling a palm. Blood-red in hue, the lamp lasted less than three seconds before scattering into smoke and dust right before Xue Tong’s eyes.
“You’re destroying a soul-guiding lamp!” Xue Tong’s temper flared instantly. “Do you have any idea how much merit is contained in that one lamp?!”
“Merit?” Yuqin—or rather, the Bodhisattva—burst into laughter. “In this world, there’s merit and there’s karmic obstacles. Some accumulate merit; others dispel it. But human hearts harbor more malice than kindness, more hatred than love. How much merit does a single lamp hold? Cast your eyes across this Ten Thousand People Pit—how much karmic obstacles do you see?”
Even if the three souls and seven po were sent into reincarnation, the karmic obstacles could linger in the mortal realm. One hatred birthed a thousand vendettas; one love spawned ten thousand resentments. The souls Xue Tong exorcised tended to be the benevolent ones, their lingering obstacles still manageable in scale.
The joys and sorrows of the departed were karmic obstacles too. In guiding them to reincarnation, Xue Tong shouldered every last remnant they left behind—and thus often found herself entangled as a result.
But who could possibly resolve the karma and karmic obstacles of tens of thousands here in the Ten Thousand People Pit?
“If I’m not mistaken, the Zhu family buried you here all those years ago not to suppress malicious ghosts, but to harness Buddhist qi and purify the pit,” Xun Ruosu said at that moment. “It worked at first, but eventually, something must have happened—or perhaps the sufferings of the mortal world finally wore you down. And so you cast aside your Buddhist path in favor of another.”
Yuqin’s gaze turned icy as it settled on Xun Ruosu. Her appearance was unchanged, but the impression she gave had subtly shifted. The aura of gentle compassion was gone, replaced by the sharp edge of a blade meant to wound. She said, “You should understand. You should know how I feel. You’re the only one in this world who truly ought to comprehend me.”
“Me?” Xun Ruosu was utterly bewildered.
“If you hadn’t been swayed by outside influences and abandoned your cultivation just like I did, how could you have fallen this low?” Yuqin stared at Xun Ruosu unrelentingly, as if searching for a piece of driftwood amid stormy seas to cling to. “Had you not tumbled into reincarnation, there would be no place for me in this Ten Thousand People Pit. The myriad karmic obstacles should have all rushed toward you—you’re the true repository for them!”
