Chapter Ninety-Six: Stone Pillar

The more I looked, the more I felt that the principal deity enshrined in this temple was outrageously arrogant. If his true divine form really sat atop that pillar, then he truly gave off the air of one looking down from on high, forcing the other gods to kneel in shackles before him while he gazed upon them from above.

“Who on earth is this guy, and why is he so cocky?” I muttered. Even if it were the Jade Emperor, the other statues in his temples would only stand a little lower than he did. I had never seen one seated so high. It even seemed deliberate, as though he meant to look down on the gods themselves.

“I don’t know,” Li Qing said. “But it feels damned strange. Do you want me to go up and take a look?”

I wanted him to, but I still shook my head. “You already sense danger. I trust your instincts. Don’t go up there. Curiosity killed the cat.”

Li Qing shrugged. “Truth be told, I’ve never fought a god before. If I really died in their hands, it would still be worth it. We’re already this far in. If I don’t go up and see, I probably won’t be able to sleep for a long time. If something happens to me, you figure out a way to get out.”

Hearing that only made me more unwilling to let him climb. This underground temple was strange everywhere you looked, but before I could stop him, Li Qing had already gone to the base of the pillar, adjusted his belt, and began climbing up in a bizarre posture.

His hands and feet clung to the stone column, but there was nothing on it to grip. From where I stood, he looked almost like a gecko crawling upward. I had once seen on television people talk about a martial art that let you scale walls and walk on eaves, called gecko climbing; this must have been something like that. It seemed Li Qing’s greatest skill was not his spinning kick after all, but his movement technique. Whether it was the Eighteen Tumbles of Clothes-Brush or this gecko-like wall climb, it was all so graceful it was almost showy.

His movements grew faster and faster. I watched as, in the end, his hand caught the lotus edging near the top of the stone pillar, and he hauled himself up. My heart was already in my throat. Only then did I remember there was a rope in my backpack. I nearly slapped myself. I should have had him take the rope up and pull me after him.

I stared upward anxiously, but just as before, from where I stood I could not see what was above. I stepped back a few paces, yet it was the same. The lotus petals along the edge of the pillar completely blocked my view. No matter how anxious I was, there was nothing I could do but wait.

The pillar was not especially huge; it only seemed large because of the temple around it. Li Qing could probably make a circuit around the top in a few minutes. Yet ten minutes passed in a blink, and there was still no sound from above.

I did not even hear a struggle. I thought to myself: was there really a god up there, one as powerful as the Jade Emperor? Had Li Qing been no match at all, crushed to death by just two fingers? I shouted upward, “Li Qing, are you all right?”

There was no answer. I called again and again, and still there was none.

This time I was truly panicking. I wanted to go up and look, so I tried to climb the way Li Qing had, but I found I could not get even a little way up.

By then half an hour had passed, and the ominous feeling in my heart only grew stronger. It was not only because if Li Qing died I had lost my only protector; I was also genuinely afraid that a living person could simply vanish here without a trace. I shouted a few more times, but there was still no response.

Gradually, I began to feel hopeless.

I stopped calling out. By then, shouting was useless anyway. But once I fell silent, the temple grew eerily quiet, and I kept feeling as though a pair of eyes were fixed on me from behind. I turned around and saw only the rows of kneeling statues on both sides, all still bearing their shackles. Earlier I had found them pitiful; now they looked terribly sinister.

At that moment, the only thing with me was the little creature curled in my arms. It seemed to sense my tension and poked its head out to look at me. I stroked its head and said, “Little one, I think I’m going to die here too.”

Clenching my teeth, I took a knife in one hand and a flashlight in the other. I could not just wait for death, and I could not save Li Qing now. The only thing I could do was try to get out, then bring someone back. I swept the flashlight around the area, fighting the fierce fear in my chest, but found nothing. Apart from the stone gate through which we had entered, there was no other exit. And if I did go out through that gate, the only way was blocked by that bastard Chen Shitou.

Was Heaven determined to wipe me out?

In the end, I sat down beside the pillar. My older brother still had not arrived, and I even worried something might have happened to him as well. As for Li Qing, my pillar of support inside this place, his life or death remained unknown. I stroked the little creature’s head and asked, “Do you know where the exit is? If we don’t get out soon, I may not be smothered or starved to death, but I’ll definitely be scared to death.”

The little creature stretched out a forepaw and pointed upward. The direction it indicated was the top of the pillar.

“You mean the exit is up there? I thought of that too, but I can’t get up. Even if I could, Li Qing was killed so easily. Let alone me,” I said.

Who would have thought that the little creature kept pointing upward, tugging anxiously at my collar? Only then did I realize it was telling me to look up.

I shone the flashlight upward. In the beam of light, among the lotus petals, I saw a human face emerging. For a moment, it startled me, but then I was overwhelmed with excitement, because I saw that face belonged to my older brother.

I opened my mouth to call out, but my brother made a gesture from above for me to be quiet. Then he said softly, “Throw the rope up here. I’ll pull you up. And remember, don’t look back.”

He had told me not to look back, but damned if it wasn’t true that the moment I heard those words, I idiotically turned my head on reflex.

And when I looked back, I saw two figures standing in the passage behind me. Those two were the human-shaped guards from the stone gate.

Even more terrifying, the kneeling statues had all begun to bleed from their eyes.

That sight was exactly the same as the blood seeping from the dragon’s eyes on the dragon-head stele at the geomantic eye. The scene almost froze me in place.

“Hurry and throw the rope up here, now!” my brother shouted from above.

I fumbled out the rope from my backpack and tossed it upward, but the rope was too light and would not go high at all. I wanted to tie a stone to it, but there was not a single decent stone nearby. There was only an incense burner, but I couldn’t even lift that, let alone throw it.

Yet those two guards were already coming toward me. Their eyeballs had turned red. I had no idea what was going on—why had stone statues suddenly started walking like corpses? But whatever the reason, with my slight frame, if one of those statues landed a punch like a real man, it would beat me to death.

But I really had no way to get the rope up there.

I was so frantic that tears were about to come out, and then the little creature in my arms suddenly sprang free. It looked at me, then bit hard onto one end of the rope and tugged with all its strength, signaling me to untie it. Fortunately, though I was terrified, my mind was still clear. I realized it wanted to carry the rope end up to my brother. I hurriedly untied it. Sure enough, the little creature clamped down on one end of the rope, gritting its teeth as though it had made up its mind, and began climbing the pillar.

I did not know whether a weasel could climb trees, but climbing this stone pillar was clearly difficult for it. It got up a few steps, then slid back down, charged again, and slid down once more. By then I could already smell the strange odor from the stone men. It was an awful, oppressive smell.

Its inability to climb nearly made me give up right there. Then the little creature’s eyes hardened, it backed up a few steps, and suddenly broke into a run. This time, it seemed to have figured out some trick, because it was finally able to sprint swiftly up the pillar. In the end, it handed the rope end to my brother. But just as my brother reached out to pull it up, it shook its head, slid back down along the rope, and dropped to the ground.

It stood there on the floor and looked up at me with pleading eyes.