Chapter 6: Inquiry of Nuo

Chapter 6: Asking the Nuo

After a two-hour rest, everyone resumed their journey. Ye Xin, hindered by his injured foot, was alternately carried by Sang Xu and Han Rao. Along the way, they occasionally stumbled upon skeletal remains. Ignoring them, the group focused on walking. About an hour later, a sliver of light appeared ahead. Shen Zhitang, thinking it was the exit, dashed forward, only to freeze at the mouth of the passageway.

Sang Xu followed Han Rao out of the passage, and the space before them suddenly opened up. They appeared to be inside a pagoda, its stone walls intricately carved and dotted with numerous large and small niches. Within these niches sat countless ancient corpses, dressed in period attire, all posed in meditative mudras. At first glance, it seemed as though they had stumbled into an underground Buddhist grotto, and these ancient corpses were enlightened beings who had achieved nirvana there.

Upon closer inspection, each niche bore carved inscriptions. Sang Xu glanced at the inner walls of a few lower niches, where he read:

Sang Liruo, Sang Huanzhen, Sang Zhengnan…

Weren’t these the very Sang family members listed on the ancestral tablets at the old man’s house?

Was this the Sang family’s ancestral tomb?

"Elders and ancestors of the Sang family, we are all good people," Ye Xin mumbled incessantly. "Please don’t make things difficult for us, don’t reanimate, don’t speak, don’t move. Just let us safely retrieve the Heaven-Mending Pill and return home…"

Shen Zhitang shot him a glare, and Ye Xin clapped a hand over his mouth, daring not to utter another word.

As if fearing to disturb the Sang family spirits within, the group tiptoed to the opposite side. There stood an ancient, imposing gate, flanked by two-meter-tall stone statues. These statues were clad as armored generals, their heads bowed slightly as if gazing down upon those below.

Above the gate hung a large plaque, inscribed with:

Ghost Gate Pass

Ye Xin felt a chill creep up his spine. "This isn’t the real Ghost Gate Pass, is it?"

Shen Zhitang whispered, "You might not believe it, but I think it truly is. Doumu Yuanjun is the deity who presides over the underworld. It’s perfectly logical that she could open a path to the Ghost Gate Pass."

"Holy hell, can we even come back out if we go in?" Ye Xin’s eyes widened.

"Ghost Gate Village, Ghost Gate Pass. Don’t you think these corpses look like door gods?" She gestured back at the ancient corpses. "Look, they’re all facing us."

Sang Xu turned to look. Indeed, the heads of the ancient corpses were all tilted at an angle. If their eyes were still intact, they would be staring directly toward the Ghost Gate Pass.

Sang Xu had a distinct feeling that they seemed… to be guarding the Ghost Gate Pass.

"I suspect the Sang family are devotees of Doumu Yuanjun, guarding the underworld she oversees," Shen Zhitang observed, surveying their surroundings. "In fact, the Sang family might very well be Doumu Yuanjun’s earthly representatives."

"Then why did the Sang family on the surface end up in that state?" Ye Xin asked again.

Shen Zhitang shook her head. "I’m not sure. Perhaps they encountered some calamity, or perhaps Doumu Yuanjun abandoned them. If the calamity came from outside, it’s good that we’ve descended here—we’ve escaped the danger. But if the calamity originated from Doumu Yuanjun herself…"

Then they would need to be extremely cautious.

"However, I lean towards the calamity coming from the outside," Shen Zhitang shrugged. "After all, as soon as we offered our blood, Doumu Yuanjun opened the door for us, didn’t she? In this dream, we are all members of the Sang family. This suggests that Doumu Yuanjun still favors her followers."

Han Rao and Ye Xin nodded in agreement.

Sang Xu looked around, finding no other path.

Entering the pass seemed to be their only option.

Han Rao posed a new question: "Don’t you think it’s strange? The ancestral precept says, 'No lighting candles after dark, no seeing people under the moon. Worship the Heavenly Maiden in the temple, offer blood and food. Cross the bridge without looking back, return home in ten days.' We’ve worshipped the Heavenly Maiden, offered blood and food, and crossed the bridge. Shouldn’t the next step be returning home? Why do we still need to enter the Ghost Gate Pass?"

Sang Xu’s eyes narrowed sharply. He keenly realized that they might have made a fatal mistake.

"We worshipped the wrong one," he said.

"What?" Ye Xin dreaded such sudden bad news. "What do you mean, worshipped the wrong one?"

"The ancestral precept didn’t tell us to worship the Heavenly Maiden. We worshipped the wrong deity." Sang Xu turned to leave. "We can’t enter the pass. Let’s go back quickly."

Everyone was shocked and confused but followed him back to the entrance of the pagoda, only to find that the passageway had vanished. They were all bewildered, thinking they might have taken a wrong turn, but after circling the base of the pagoda, they still couldn’t find the passageway entrance.

Ye Xin began to panic. "Am I hallucinating? Didn’t we come in through a long, dark passageway?"

Shen Zhitang said, "Worshipping the wrong deity is just Jian Guo’s guess. Why don’t you believe my analysis? I think the path Doumu Yuanjun opened for us is passable."

The words "Ghost Gate Pass" were truly terrifying, and no one wanted to enter and meet ghosts unless absolutely necessary. Han Rao said, "Shouldn’t we first analyze why the entrance disappeared out of thin air?"

"There must be an entrance here. We couldn’t have just appeared out of nowhere," Ye Xin raised his hand. "Could there be some hallucinogenic gas in the air causing us to have a collective hallucination?"

Assuming his eyes couldn’t be trusted, Sang Xu closed them and felt his way around the base of the pagoda but still found no entrance.

He stood still, his heart growing heavier.

Since arriving at Ghost Gate Village, everything that had happened defied all scientific explanation, and they couldn’t explain what they encountered using scientific principles. The only somewhat reasonable explanation was that a ghost had followed them and had concealed the entrance.

Wasn’t the ghost following them Zhou Xia? But Zhou Xia had no reason to mess with them.

"Heh heh heh…"

Suddenly, they heard a sound coming from diagonally behind them.

Everyone turned around simultaneously and saw an ancient corpse sitting in one of the niches trembling slightly. The laughter emanated from its direction. It shook its shoulders as if letting out a sinister, eerie chuckle.

"It’s over. It’s risen from the dead after all."

Ye Xin was so scared his teeth chattered. Earlier, Han Rao had set him down to search for the entrance. Ye Xin quickly clutched onto the nearest person, Sang Xu, afraid they might leave him behind if they had to run.

"It’s not one of the Sang family corpses," Sang Xu said. "There’s something behind it."

Han Rao raised the candle, and its light spilled over the ancient corpse’s shoulder. Sure enough, there was a dark figure behind it. The shadow slowly revealed its head—it was unmistakably An He’s face, which had been riddled with bullets. However, her face now looked grotesque. If not for recognizing her clothes, they wouldn’t have been able to tell it was An He.

As soon as her face appeared, Sang Xu felt a slight pain in his head upon seeing her features.

"Holy hell," Ye Xin shouted, "When did she follow us in?"

"Don’t look at her! Run!" Han Rao raised his gun and fired a shot toward An He. "You guys open the door! I’ll cover the rear!"

Looking at his face, they saw streams of blood flowing from both eyes.

Shen Zhitang turned and ran straight toward the Ghost Gate Pass.

Sang Xu took off his coat and threw it with all his might, covering An He’s head. Han Rao gave Sang Xu a grateful look and continued aiming and shooting at An He. Sang Xu pulled Ye Xin along and followed Shen Zhitang to open the door. The three of them used every ounce of their strength and finally pushed the stone door open a crack. Shen Zhitang slipped through first, followed by the limping Ye Xin. An He was still persistently engaging Han Rao, who kept shooting as he retreated. Sang Xu told Han Rao it was done, and Han Rao yelled, "You go first!"

Sang Xu nodded, turned, and slipped through the crack. Inside the Ghost Gate Pass was pitch black. Without a candle in hand, he couldn’t see anything. Ye Xin and Shen Zhitang were nowhere to be found. Sang Xu called out a few times, but no one responded. Moments later, Sang Xu realized he had become separated from them.

Being separated from his teammates in such a place was not good. He quickly felt his way back to the stone door, but his hands touched something rough and cold—nothing like the smooth surface of the stone door.

Not only could he not find the stone door, but Han Rao’s gunshots had also vanished at some point.

He realized that something strange had happened again—the entrance had disappeared once more.

He took a few deep breaths to stay calm, listened quietly for a while, and confirmed that there were no other living beings in the space he was currently in. Then he took out the candle he had taken from Doumu Yuanjun’s altar earlier from his cloth bag and lit it with a lighter. As the flame flickered, light spread around him. He saw that he was leaning against a stone tablet inscribed with the words "Meng Po’s Shop," and below it was a line of smaller characters:

Eight li ahead to the Stripping Clothes Pavilion.

"Meng Po’s Shop" and "Stripping Clothes Pavilion" were two of the Eight Scenes of Mount Yin, both landmarks of the underworld. Sang Xu frowned in thought. So beyond the Ghost Gate Pass was truly the underworld… Turning around, he saw a coffin resting behind the stone tablet.

"Ugh, this can't be Meng Po's coffin, can it?"

Feeling that he probably wasn't that unlucky, Sang Xu took a closer look at the patterns on the coffin. He didn't know much about artifacts, but he had a good memory and remembered that these patterns were the same as those in the caves before the Ghost Gate Pass. The coffin most likely contained a Sang family ancestor, not Meng Po.

This thought calmed him down quite a bit.

Just as he was about to leave, he suddenly heard a click from the coffin, and a few bluish-purple fingers emerged from the gap in the lid.

These fingers clearly didn't belong to a human. Sang Xu’s scalp prickled with dread, and he quickly moved a large rock to press down on the coffin.

The fingers could no longer get out, but he could hear the sound of nails scratching against the coffin from inside—a chilling, grating noise that made his hair stand on end.

"Hah." A cold laugh came from behind him.

He turned to look but saw nothing. Taking off his glasses, a blurry figure in red wearing a Nuo mask appeared in his vision.

It was Zhou Xia.

The ancestral precept stated: "The temple enshrines the Heavenly Maiden; worship and offer blood sacrifice."

Due to the heavy local accent, when they translated these words into Mandarin, some characters were misinterpreted.

The ancestral precept should actually be: "The temple enshrines the Heavenly Maiden; worship the Nuo and offer blood sacrifice."

They should be worshipping not Doumu Yuanjun, but Zhou Xia.

"I'm sorry for offending you earlier," Sang Xu apologized sincerely.

Zhou Xia narrowed his eyes and scrutinized him. "I don’t see a hint of remorse in you."

Sang Xu continued to apologize. "I was wrong."

"Hmph."

"Do you know how to get out?" Sang Xu asked.

Zhou Xia crossed his arms and tilted his head, looking at him. "Why should I tell you?"

Sang Xu fell silent for a moment before asking, "Aren’t we married?"

The red figure in the distance vanished, and in the next moment, the fierce Nuo mask appeared right before his eyes.

Sang Xu’s long, upturned eyelashes trembled slightly. He could feel Zhou Xia examining him. This arrogant man seemed to be studying him like a piece of jade—carefully, intently, his gaze burning like fire, scorching Sang Xu’s face.

"I remember, you weren’t willing to marry me," Zhou Xia scoffed. "It doesn’t matter if you were unwilling. The Sang family offered you to me; you have no right to resist."

Hearing this, Sang Xu suddenly remembered that the mysterious caller had mentioned a certain family offering someone to him.

Could Zhou Xia be that caller?

Sang Xu’s heart tightened. "Was it you who called Nightmare Radio?"

"What radio call?" Zhou Xia looked at him, baffled. "What are you talking about?"

Sang Xu: "…"

It seemed it wasn’t Zhou Xia. That mysterious caller had sounded utterly sinister, completely different from Zhou Xia’s style.

"Never mind. What I meant to say is…" Sang Xu fixed his gaze on the fierce Nuo mask. "I am willing to marry you."

Zhou Xia clicked his tongue, seemingly unconvinced. "Oh, really?"

Sang Xu’s eyes were dark and clear, transparent and sincere.

An ordinary person lying wouldn’t have such clear eyes—unless they were a natural-born liar.

"I’ve come to recognize your power," Sang Xu said, adopting the attitude of flattering a boss. Regardless of whether he was actually at fault, he first had to admit his mistakes. "I apologize for my past ignorance. You’ve shown me such care, protected me, and tolerated my rudeness, yet I turned a blind eye to it all—I was blind and foolish."

Zhou Xia let out a cold laugh.

He clearly didn’t believe it.

Sang Xu hadn’t expected him to believe it either. He simply said, "Please give me the chance to serve you. I will cherish it doubly."

"Your words sound sweet," Zhou Xia said, his deep black eyes behind the Nuo mask gleaming dangerously. "But let me remind you: worshipping the Nuo requires a blood sacrifice."

"What kind of blood sacrifice does our ancestor desire?" Sang Xu asked humbly.

Zhou Xia chuckled softly, and Sang Xu suddenly felt a sense of foreboding.

He slightly lowered his head, the tassel on his right ear trembling faintly. In a low voice, he said, "What do you think?"

Sang Xu instantly understood—he himself was Zhou Xia’s blood sacrifice.

His throat tightened, and he hesitated.

The sound of nails scratching the coffin had long since disappeared. Since Zhou Xia appeared, whatever was inside the coffin had fallen silent, as if dead. In the quiet cave, only his own heartbeat remained, pounding loudly.

Life was more important than chastity. In this eerie place, he didn’t believe he could escape safely without Zhou Xia’s help.

Appeasing Zhou Xia and escaping this nightmare had always been his plan.

It took him five seconds to make up his mind.

He took a deep breath, raised his head, closed his eyes, and gently rose on his tiptoes. Zhou Xia stood motionless, his playful gaze fixed on the young man’s face—watching him, his moon-pale face tense, with a hint of caution and barely perceptible fear, slowly drawing closer.

A chill brushed against Sang Xu’s face. He knew he was very, very close to Zhou Xia. Although the other was an unseen, unknown entity, he could almost feel his icy breath.

In that moment, a second felt longer than a century.

The cold air felt tangible. Sang Xu felt his lips touch the icy surface of the Nuo mask.