The admiral had fallen ill with a high fever, and almost all his duties had been handed over to Cao Xi.
When Nick visited him, he sensed how worried he was. After receiving Nick's note, the officers under his command spent a day investigating and seemed to have uncovered traces of rebels. On every full-moon night, they gathered to burn incense, and this time, the gathering place was likely a village temple. Cao Xi would lead men to arrest them, and Nick was going along as well.
The village lay beside the main road to Macau. Nick intended to take the opportunity to find the priest, so he rode out with Cao Xi.
Nick had assumed Cao Xi would travel by sedan chair, since many civil officials did, but Cao Xi was a fine rider. They reached the vicinity of the village in just over an hour. To avoid alerting the enemy, they all changed into commoners' clothing. The soldiers dressed as caravan hands, Cao Xi played the shopkeeper, and Nick posed as a painter traveling about to sketch—though that was his actual profession anyway.
There was a temple outside the village. At its entrance stood two unforgettable statues of ghostly deities, as if they were devoutly guarding the temple gate. One was handsome and smiling, while the other glared with furious eyes, its great crimson eyes wide open. A tall, lean old man told them that, to make the statues seem more lifelike, the red-eyed statue's eyes had been dyed with animal blood to frighten people.
The entrance to The Hunchback of Notre-Dame also featured a relief of the Last Judgment, and there were gargoyles beneath its eaves as warnings. Then they entered the temple. The first hall housed Guanyin Who Grants Children. Both in appearance and bearing, she