A City Filled with Gods and Buddhas

Three days earlier, in the borderlands between Mingzhou and Guanzhou, ten thousand li from the Imperial Capital City, a jar had fallen from the sky. It stood over a zhang tall, with a black porcelain body, yet it was astonishingly sturdy.

Though it had fallen from the sky, the jar had not suffered even the slightest damage. At first, the people nearby had been badly frightened, but gradually, some of the bolder ones came over to touch and push it cautiously.

The jar was far sturdier than they had imagined, and far heavier, too.

The strongest man in the surrounding villages had spent ages levering it from underneath with a pole, yet it had not budged a hair.

The village elders therefore decided it was a divine object. They said that ever since the jar had fallen, the Evil Spirits that had been causing trouble nearby had vanished. So they fenced it off with branches, then brought the whole village, young and old, to kowtow and burn paper offerings beside it.

But as the commotion surrounding the divine jar drew more and more people to worship it, it suddenly shuddered one day, as if an invisible giant hand had given it a push.

The villagers were all startled. Just as they hurried to kowtow, the jar suddenly soared high into the air and shot straight into the clouds. The next moment, it hummed, shrank to a black speck, and swept off toward the north.

When they looked beneath it, even the pit its weight had pressed into the soil had disappeared.

If not for the branches they had put up around it and the traces of the burnt offerings, they might have thought it had all been a dream.

By then, the thing beneath the ground had almost entirely