Chapter 133: Eighteen Pieces

Though my eyes were sightless, I felt as though someone were leading me with every step I took. I even knew precisely where there were steps to navigate and where stones lay in wait to be avoided; every turn and every pause was executed with impeccable timing. The Three-Pure Exorcism Bell in Zha Wenbin’s hand chimed roughly every three paces, each note ringing out like a strike against the deepest recesses of my soul.

I know not how long or how far we walked, but when the bell finally fell silent, my footsteps came to a halt. At that exact moment, a flash of blinding light bloomed before my eyes, instantly followed by a surging wave of blistering heat. A piercing, scorching sensation flared across my skin. Someone seemed to give me a sudden yank, and I abruptly blinked my eyes open. Looking down, I found that I was holding a ball of fire in my hands.

Zha Wenbin was busy slapping at the flames licking at my clothes as he shouted, "Throw it away quickly!"

The straw man had caught fire at some unknown point. Could this fellow Zha Wenbin please refrain from constantly trying to do me in? I hopped about on one foot while frantically swatting at the fire, desperate to rid myself of the blazing thing in my hands.

"Old man, what on earth is going on here? Have you finally lost your mind and decided to burn us all to cinders?" I tossed the burning effigy to the ground, where it instantly flared into a roaring inferno, casting a brilliant glow across the surrounding darkness. Only then did I realize we were standing in an unfamiliar place. Before me stood a wall; when I spun around, there was another wall behind me, flanked by a pair of narrow pathways on either side.

"Where is this?" I asked him.

"Between the back courtyard and the outer wall. I never imagined there would be an open patch of land hidden right here, tucked behind an inconspicuous pillar. You truly wouldn't notice it unless you searched with meticulous care." This was the rear of the grand temple, directly behind the third room in the middle, where a massive pillar stood. Zha Wenbin explained that we had slipped through a gap right there, though he had never anticipated such a vast space lying beyond. If you looked up, the eaves of the roof extended precisely over this spot; viewing it from the top down, this narrow passageway was completely obscured and thoroughly concealed.

"This is certainly bizarre. What happened to that straw man? How did it spontaneously combust?" I inspected my hands, which were charred black; had I not tossed it away so swiftly, massive blisters would have been completely unavoidable.

"I didn't set it on fire; it ignited all by itself. I find it rather baffling as well, especially since the time hasn't even come yet." He turned and cast his gaze about. By this point, my headlamp was fully illuminated. How could such a confined little alleyway have led us directly to this place?

This alley was barely ten paces long, with both sides completely sealed off. It resembled a drainage ditch behind a house, yet the ground was paved entirely with elongated flagstones that stretched from end to end. The stones were exceptionally flat, bearing no signs of damage whatsoever. Zha Wenbin and I walked back and forth twice. He measured the distance with his strides—precisely eighteen paces, neither more nor less. The stone slabs beneath our feet were even more peculiar, each one carved with distinctly different patterns.

The first flagstone bore an engraving resembling a farming scene. Upon it was depicted a ferocious beast, resembling an ox yet not quite an ox, with a rope trailing from its back to a plow. Beneath the plow was pinned a human figure, the iron teeth of the agricultural implement slicing directly across the person's back, mangling flesh and exposing bone in a manner most agonizing. Below the carving were inscribed a few scrawled, crooked characters. I had never laid eyes upon such script before; it resembled crawling insects, yet possessed a hint of bird tracks.

The longer I gazed at that flagstone, the more I felt as though something was uncomfortably blocking my throat, an indescribable sense of misery. Thus, I said to Zha Wenbin, "Such a bizarre illustration, and so utterly spine-chilling to look at. Let's stop staring at it."

"Don't rush." He squatted on the ground, holding a flint striker as he inched forward by one step. This flagstone was carved with yet another image, entirely distinct from the preceding one. The picture depicted a mountain completely bristling with various weapons, from which countless corpses were suspended, their deaths looking utterly wretched. The same strange symbols appeared here as well.

Zha Wenbin stared in rapt fascination, while my heart twisted with dread. Who on earth would install such deeply malevolent curiosities in their backyard drainage ditch?

At that moment, he spoke up, "Go and check whether the third illustration resembles a volcanic crater, with people placed atop it to be roasted."

I stepped forward and peered at it. Well, what do you know? It truly did. Could it be that Zha Wenbin actually recognized the origins of these artifacts?

"Indeed. The fourth is quite similar to the third, the only difference being that the victims are boiled in a massive cauldron. Damn it all to hell, this is thoroughly wicked. What on earth are these things?"

Zha Wenbin did not answer my question. He studied the drawings one after another, from start to finish, until he came to a halt before the final panel. That image depicted a lake, in the center of which stood a monstrous entity with the head of a sheep and the body of a man. The creature gripped a human child in its grasp, poised to tear it into two halves and convey it to its maw. On the shore not far from the lake, another human figure appeared to be kneeling before the monster, seemingly pleading with the beast not to devour the child. The expression on that figure's face was rendered with vivid intensity; a look of utter despair and helpless impotence was captured to perfection, prompting me to steal a few more glances at this concluding illustration.

Suddenly, a thought popped into my head: the person in this drawing looked remarkably familiar!

I lowered my head to glance down at Zha Wenbin. That was it—the space between the eyebrows, the nose and mouth, the very expression—it was carved precisely in Zha Wenbin's image! I have a rather unfortunate flaw: I cannot keep secrets in my heart. The moment an idea forms, it slips from my tongue, and I blurted out, "Well, Wenbin, I must say this fellow bears a striking resemblance to you."

Zha Wenbin raised his head and stared blankly at me, a look of profound astonishment on his face. Immediately afterward, he lowered his head once more, fixing his gaze upon the figure carved into the flagstone for a full three minutes. After a long silence, he muttered almost to himself, "It really does look rather similar... Then this child is..."

"Ah, pure coincidence, sheer coincidence." Knowing how prone he was to brooding, and fearing that my remark might trigger some deep-seated concern, I quickly rushed to smooth things over. "What can you expect from a stone carving? Don't terracotta warriors all end up looking somewhat like you—wearing that perpetually icy expression, as if the whole world owes them a fortune? Anyway, we've seen it all now. What on earth are these things supposed to be?"

"This is a depiction of the Eighteen Levels of Hell," he replied. "From the first panel representing the Hell of Crumbling Ice to the second depicting the Mountain of Knives. The third one you looked at is the Hell of Boiling Sands—that isn't a volcano, but rather scorching red sand onto which sinners are cast. The fourth one, where they are boiled in that massive cauldron, does not contain water, but rather excrement; that is the Hell of Excrement. Look at this second-to-last one, which represents the seventeenth level of hell. Those people are being devoured to the bone by myriads of insects; this is the Hell of Maggots." He paused, tapping the final illustration with his foot, and continued, "And this must be the final realm of hell—the Hell of Molten Bronze. This lake ought to be the legendary Abyss of Molten Bronze, and this place is also known as the Avici Hell, the Hell of Uninterrupted Suffering. It is said that those imprisoned here can never transcend their torment for eternity. Within this Avici Hell, there is never any hope of liberation; aside from enduring suffering, no other sensation exists whatsoever. Furthermore, the suffering is uninterrupted, the body suffers uninterruptedly, time flows uninterruptedly, and the torment proceeds uninterruptedly."

Hearing him describe it in such a manner, goosebumps instantly erupted all over my skin. If such hells genuinely existed, I couldn't endure even a single one of them, and I hastily urged him, "Let's stop looking. They were surely just painted to scare people. Shouldn't we be leaving now?"

Zha Wenbin shook his head. "It was this place that brought us here; it cannot be without purpose. Let us inspect the surroundings more thoroughly. I suspect we may have missed something." With that, he squatted down once more to examine the eighteenth illustration. In truth, I had no inkling that at that very moment, a shadow had been quietly cast deep within Zha Wenbin's psyche.

This space truly was diminutive; one could scan the entirety of it in a single glance. I honestly failed to perceive anything out of the ordinary here, and if anyone were hiding, there simply wasn't anywhere to conceal themselves. I merely squatted there, watching Zha Wenbin scour the area back and forth. Squatting for too long invariably induces drowsiness, and since the hour was growing exceptionally late, I simply stood up and leaned against the wall, intending to snatch a brief nap. Just then, I fancied I heard a muffled whimper echoing near my ear, sounding somewhat like the cries of our dog, Daidai.

"Don't move!" I shouted, pressing my ear firmly against the stone wall to listen intently once more. The sound had vanished entirely. Could I have been mistaken?

Zha Wenbin and I were standing roughly three meters apart. At that moment, we both held our breath, to the point where we could actually hear each other's heartbeats. Suddenly, I heard a sharp scratching noise, much like a canine's claws scraping against wooden furniture. We moved almost simultaneously. We both turned our gazes toward the wall behind my back. He pointed a finger, and I nodded in acknowledgment to signal that this was indeed the spot!

This was a whitewashed wall, appearing identical from every angle. The plaster was somewhat aged, displaying numerous fractures and cracks, interspersed with patches of mud splashed by rain. At a casual glance, it looked utterly unremarkable. Zha Wenbin traced the wall with his hand, meticulously searching back and forth across a section barely a meter wide, until he finally made a discovery.

The cracked fissures on this section of wall differed subtly from the surrounding ones. If one examined them closely, it became apparent that two of the lines ran continuously from top to bottom without a single break in the middle. These two lines appeared irregular, yet their color was marginally darker than the neighboring cracks. Zha Wenbin signaled for me to fall back. I did not dare to delay, raising my Type 56 semi-automatic rifle, which was already loaded and primed. I figured that whatever sort of creature lurked beyond, the moment that door swung open, I would treat it to a resounding display of force.

He first gave the wall a shove, but it refused to budge. Next, he set his shoulder against the surface and put his weight behind it. With a surge of strength, I heard a distinct creaking groan. The fissures widened progressively, revealing that this section of wall was indeed a concealed door!

When the opening had widened just enough for half a person to squeeze through, Zha Wenbin was already breathing heavily. Since I wasn't standing directly in front of the aperture, he shot me a meaningful look. We shared a fair degree of coordination; he raised his flint striker and hurled it sideways into the dark interior with a sudden jerk, while I sidestepped into position and brought my rifle up, instantly ready to fire.

This coordinated maneuver was executed in the blink of an eye. By the time I shifted to the front, the fire striker had just clattered to the floor. The glaring beam of my miner's lamp swept instantly across a dark mass huddled on the ground. I was on the verge of pulling the trigger when I realized something was amiss. Looking closer, wasn't that precisely our Daidai?