Chapter 40: Discovery

The legendary lamp that burns forever, the alchemy of the Taoist masters, I of course know what it is, although I am puzzled as to how Chengxin recognized it, but Lao Zhang’s exclamation undoubtedly attracted my attention even more.

My thoughts were focused on the murals on both sides of the passage. Rather than saying that it was a mural, it was more like a relief. Compared to the big and small strokes of the foxes outside, this relief was truly gorgeous and vivid.

The reason why Old Zhang exclaimed was because the mural depicted a vivid blue-eyed fox. In the mural, the blue-eyed fox had three tails, a charming and lazy expression, but also an indescribable spirit.

Under the fox, there are groups of people dressed in strange costumes, who are now worshipping the blue-eyed fox and offering tribute.

The tribute is a few unusually handsome young men, tied up and fixed to a huge wooden frame, respectfully presented to the blue-eyed fox by the leaders of the group of people dressed in strange clothes.

I don’t know if it’s because the relief is too realistic, but on these reliefs, which may be records, everyone is so vivid, just like the despair and fear on the faces of the young men being offered up.

For example, the people in the strange clothes all wear a strange mask, and the strange expressions on the masks are all so vivid.

I looked at the murals in a daze, and I always felt that there was something very wrong with them. For example, the people in the strange clothes always seemed to have abnormal proportions, and what shocked me even more was the strange mask. I always felt that it was familiar, but with my excellent memory, I was sure that I had never seen this mask before.

“Chengyi, is there really a blue-eyed fox that eats people?” Old Zhang asked me nervously, as if a student who had just finished the college entrance exam was nervously asking about his exam results.

I understand this feeling, because my answer will completely determine whether he still feels safe in this world.

I looked at Lao Zhang and smiled calmly, “Of course it’s fake. These people should be from ancient times. You can see that their clothing doesn’t belong to any dynasty in our history. People at that time were superstitious to the extreme. Sacrificial murals are common in many archaeological discoveries. Moreover, we Chinese have always believed in many things. For example, some villages worship a tree or something. What’s so strange about an exaggerated mural of a sacrificial fox?

In fact, I was calm at the moment, but my heart was already in turmoil. When Lao Zhang said it still ate people, I suddenly remembered a mural I had seen in a closed underground space when I was a child. It was a group of people sacrificing a large snake. The snake was of course not important, because when I saw it, it was already a pile of cold bones.

The key is the location, which is the hungry ghost tomb that I once explored. In the hungry ghost tomb, I once prised off an ancient jade, on which was carved an angry, demonic face. Upon closer inspection, it seemed to be smiling again, mocking something. Later, I gave it to my master, who once asked Yang Sheng to investigate…

These things are not the key, because later we have confirmed that the face is Xiao Chengqian, the symbol of the organization where Lin Chen is located. I didn’t care anymore. What do they use as the symbol of the organization? What does it matter to me?

But now, I can’t help but care, because the masks worn by the embossed people in those paintings are like, I tried hard to organize my thoughts and finally found a suitable word to describe it, and that is like a–antonym!

The symbol on the ancient jade is an angry demon’s face, but the strange expression on the mask is a mocking human face. The human face and the demon’s face correspond, and anger and ridicule correspond.

The most important thing is that when you look closely at that mocking expression, there is a different kind of anger contained within it!

What is going on here? Is it also related to the Hungry Ghost Tomb? My mind was a bit confused and I couldn’t figure it out.

After getting my answer, Zhang was relieved and stopped paying attention to the murals. They were exaggerated and false, so what was there to see? Zhang was a straightforward person, and his curiosity quickly faded after he got his answer.

Wu Lao Gui was impatient and urged, “Chengyi, let’s go. What’s so interesting about these paintings? Let’s get out of here quickly. Maybe we’ll find some gold and silver treasures.”

“Gold and silver treasures?” I was a little slow to react.

“Nonsense, don’t you think we accidentally entered a magnificent tomb? Isn’t it normal to have gold and silver treasures?” Wu Laogui is indeed a “sincere” person, and he doesn’t hide his love for women and his love for treasures.

But is this a tomb? Buried with gold and silver? I think Wu Laogui’s judgment is really unreliable. According to my thinking, this may be a “den,” but I still haven’t gotten an answer as to what exactly it is.

At Wu Laogui’s urging, Lao Zhang walked to the front, and Ru Xue also walked in front. She didn’t care about anything here at all. I was trying to adapt to her “not right,” and I told myself not to ask anything at this time and place, even though this adaptation made me quite uncomfortable.

Chengxin and I walked side by side, deliberately dragging me along. I knew he had something to say to me, so I pretended to look at the murals with him.

These murals are gorgeous, but the content of the successive pictures is very cruel. There are those sacrificed teenagers whose hearts and lungs have been ripped out, and there are blue-eyed foxes enjoying the carefully ‘cooked’ internal organs of the teenagers… In short, the whole thing is a process of sacrifice, as if this is the ‘great achievement’ of the blue-eyed fox, worthy of worship.

“Something’s not right about Xue,” Cheng Xin said to me in a low voice as he looked at the murals.

“I know.” After all, this matter is more than obvious.

“Ever heard of the eternal flame? My master once told me that he had seen one during an excavation of an ancient tomb. He came back and described it to me in detail, so I know what it looks like.” Cheng Xin said this quickly, and Ru Xue, Lao Zhang, and Wu Laogui, who were walking ahead of us, didn’t even look back at us. But that didn’t mean we had time to chat and exchange opinions.

“The point?” I was worried about Ru Xue and didn’t want to be too far away from her.

“The point is that in Western legends there is a sorcerer called an alchemist, and the really capable ones have refined a lot of strange and weird things. The Taoist priests in the East also like to refine whatever they want to refine. The lamp oil for this eternal flame lamp was refined by a very capable Taoist priest, and it can keep the lamp burning for a thousand years. However, this kind of thing can only be found in the tombs of distinguished people. Those that have already been excavated have long been taken away by the relevant departments for research. The key is that you think Taoist priests would serve monsters? Cheng Xin’s few words pointed out his doubts.

What I said about exaggeration was just something I said to comfort Zhang. Cheng Xin is my fellow disciple, so of course he doesn’t believe in that kind of thing. Even we all think that “existence is reasonable.” Some of the magical murals left by our ancestors may reflect an era.

The monster is of course the blue-eyed fox. Taoist priests are much more selfish than Buddhist monks, but they still wear the big hat of “exorcising demons and defending the Tao.” After all, the Tao still follows the right path, and no matter what, there is still a bottom line of justice in the heart.

Chengxin’s topic is obviously very critical! I was a little shocked, but I also calmly used my finger to lightly stroke the mask worn by a man in a strange outfit on the relief, and then said, “Look at this mask. What do you think is impossible? Think about that group of crazy guys? Just like Lin Chen’s group, the evil cultivators in the ghost market, and the group of people refining little ghosts.”

“Mask?” Cheng Xin looked at it. He was more perceptive than I was. I pointed at it, and of course he saw the problem. He frowned slightly, then smiled, then sniffed, and said, “I smell a conspiracy, or a conspiracy that has been around for a long time! We thought it was a simple matter of going into the old forest to find ginseng, but we didn’t expect this to be fate.”

Yes, this is fate, pulling us step by step, and attributing even accidental behavior to the regularities of fate. For example, the entangled organization, for example, Kunlun!

“Look at Ruoxue. If anything happens to her, don’t come face to face with me, after all, she was my goddess. It is a man’s responsibility to protect women. I didn’t do a good job.” After saying this, Chengxin walked forward in big strides.

I know what he is talking about. The most painful thing in his life is that Shen Xing almost died on his back. How can the pain, regret, and guilt be explained in a few words? However, no matter what, when you wake up in the morning after a night of painful dreams, you still have to live on.

Therefore, Taoism says, “cultivate your heart,” and Buddhism says, “let go…”