In a small temple in Jin Province, the abbot monk, in pursuit of lamp oil and incense money, would specifically seek out handsome and delicate boys from poor families. He would give them some money and take them back to the temple as his disciples.
These kids were well-fed and well-cared for in the temple for a while. Seeing that the masters were extremely kind to them, they would obediently follow the masters' instructions. Most of them didn't even know who the real murderer was when they were turned into living Buddhas!
Therefore, the temple had been making a fortune from the corpses of these children. The temple halls were continuously expanded, and the number of meditation rooms also increased.
Those living Buddhas were not naturally formed after all. As time passed, the tung oil lost its efficacy, and the stench of the corpses could no longer be contained.
Whenever this happened, the senior monks would secretly drag the decayed living Buddhas to the barren mountain behind the temple and burn them in the dead of night. However, one year, a living Buddha decayed at an inopportune time. It was the Ullambana Festival, and there were so many pilgrims in the temple that the monks were overwhelmed. The abbot monk was afraid that if he disposed of the corpse in such a crowded situation, he might expose the truth. So he decided to wait a few days before dealing with it.
He then ordered the monks to replace all the cheap straw incense with high-quality sandalwood incense and told the young novice monks who had been in the temple for more than a year to burn the incense day and night to mask the stench of the decaying corpse.
During the day, even if the novice monks were lazy and forgot to burn the incense, the high-quality tribute incense offered by countless pilgrims would fill the main hall with a strong and pungent fragrance, almost completely covering up the stench.
However, at night, whenever a novice monk dozed off and stopped burning the incense, the indescribable stench would drift around the magnificent main hall like a ghost...
This strange smell caught the attention of a novice monk on night duty. He followed the stench and finally found a living Buddha. The Buddha, sitting on a five-colored lotus throne, hung its head compassionately, with its slightly closed eyes looking as if it were secretly peeping at the novice monk looking up at it.
Then, the novice monk looking up at the golden statue felt as if the Buddha's face was moving. He couldn't help but get closer. A drop of water fell on his face. Then, one of the Buddha's eyes suddenly bulged, as if something alive was about to crawl out. The novice monk was both terrified and curious. He widened his eyes, wanting to see if the Buddha was about to reveal its miraculous power!
"Plop!"
The Buddha's eye, painted with gold powder, opened. Then, a mass of rotten flesh and a section of blood vessel fell on the novice monk's face.
Before the novice monk could scream, he was hit on the back of the head with a stick. Before he fainted, he finally saw the person who had hurt him... It was his master, who had always been kind to him!
Unwilling and angry, the novice monk didn't want to die in such an unclear way. He hid.
Then he saw his own corpse being coated with tung oil and turned into a living Buddha sitting on a lotus throne, smiling with a flower in its hand!
The novice monk didn't want to disappear silently from this world. He had a younger brother who was also a novice monk in the temple. He was afraid that his younger brother would meet the same fate as him!
So he ran around the temple. Some pilgrims with weak constitutions would see a novice monk with a bleeding head and a sunken skull crying and trying to grab the pilgrims who came to offer incense...
Thus, the story of the haunted temple spread.
My Taoist master from the Maoshan School went to that temple. At first sight, he saw the dead novice monk. Then, led by him, he found the casually buried bones of those who had been burned.
My master immediately reported the case to the authorities, and all the monks in the temple were arrested.
My master also sent the novice monk's soul to the underworld for reincarnation...
Now, there was actually something like a living Buddha under the Hongluo Temple. How could I not be shocked?
The hideous statue of the God of Wealth, standing more than two meters tall against the wall, had its golden skin peeled off, revealing a shriveled and dehydrated corpse inside.
In the moment I was in a daze, I saw the corpse struggle out its hands from the statue and grab my neck. Could this thing still move? Was it a kind of zombie?
Surprised as I was, my hands didn't stop. I slapped a corpse-suppressing talisman on its forehead.
The corpse immediately stopped as if it had been paused.
"You... Do you recognize him?"
I pulled myself out of the corpse's claw-like hands and glanced at Si Jiangchen.
Si Jiangchen nodded. "Xiao He, your shop was taken over from him. He was the previous owner of your shop."
"No... It can't be!"
I was even more incredulous.
The shop we rented from Aunt Xu was said to have been owned by a man who went to the Tibetan area to purchase goods. He met the girl he loved during the epidemic and settled down there. It was said that he was living a happy life. How could he turn into a dry corpse in the Hongluo Temple?
If we hadn't broken this fake bronze statue today, he might have been trapped here for who knows how many years!
I knew that Si Jiangchen was always extremely powerful, but I still underestimated his ability. He even found out all the details about such an unknown person!
"When we first met, didn't you always avoid me?"
Now that the crisis was temporarily resolved, Si Jiangchen said, "I sent someone to investigate your backgrounds and found out about this man..."
He glanced at the stiff corpse standing in front of us. "He made some money after going to Tibet, but he was cheated by a woman who also did business there. He was left penniless and went to a temple in Danba to practice. Danba brought him back to Beijing but didn't let him go home. Instead, he was made into a statue of the God of Wealth."
After hearing Si Jiangchen's words, I couldn't help but feel a chill run down my spine.
The story we heard from Aunt Xu was like a fairy tale. In a distant place, the romantic man who pursued poetry and a faraway land finally found his true love and lived a happy life ever after...
But in reality, it was completely the opposite. He was cheated out of all his money, and in the end, even his bones were used by others to make money!
"We can ask him to lead us to find Danba and the others!"
We had already explored this small secret room, and there was no sign of Danba or Lin Ruhu. I'm afraid they were already in the same space-time as the One-Eyed Buddha Mother possessing Xue Shuo...
Si Jiangchen naturally had no objection to my suggestion.
I thought for a while and took out a mind-purifying talisman and handed it to Si Jiangchen, asking him to fold it into a little bird for me. Then I bent down and gave it to the woman who was almost scared to death.
"This talisman will lead you back."
I gently flicked the little yellow bird, and it flapped its tiny wings and flew up as if it were alive. "No matter what happens, don't stop walking, and don't look back. Just follow it, and you'll reach the ground. Take this little yellow bird and find Master Zhebu. He will help you leave this dangerous place!"