Stone-Gate Carvings

Upon hearing this, Carlos, who was listening to Lin explain his feng shui abilities, was stunned for a moment. He was about to say, "I wasn't wearing a camera," when he saw Yu Xing turn around and look at him with a probing and slightly cold gaze. He was suddenly startled.

Wrong.

That feeling of being enveloped in mist returned. Carlos stopped, gripped the still-present microphone, and asked, "Should I wear a camera?"

Yu Xing gave a half-smile, and Lin had already discreetly hidden behind Yu Xing.

Yu Xing: "What do you think?"

"Judging from your reactions, I'm from another timeline." Carlos remained calm. He had all the conclusions reached in their discussion in his mind. Perhaps, as Yu Xing said, different timelines could influence each other, just like the scars left by another timeline on the bespectacled man's body. Although his memories were clear, they had obviously been affected.

"Judging from your reaction, you're still a human being." Yu Xing curled her lips, turned back to look at the door at the end of the road, and continued walking. "It's alright, let's keep going."

It's just a change of living people across different timelines; it's nothing to worry about. You have to understand that they had already changed countless times before they even realized it. Even Yu Xing himself hadn't noticed that his equipment was different from what it was at the beginning.

Lin remained vigilant for a while, then reluctantly gave up.

They, who are alive in each timeline, should all have the same goal, and everyone would be teammates. Only when they transform from humans into ghosts will there be a conflict of interest.

If you're going to get hung up on who you really are, or whether the "me" in other timelines is still "me," then there's no need. You also don't need to have the idea that you're being copied. If you want to adapt to this situation, there's a very simple idea you can consider.

Let's just treat each version of ourselves from different timelines as the same person. You can't say that the twenty-year-old version of yourself and the twenty-one-year-old version of yourself are completely different people, right?

So even if Carlos is noticed to have been replaced, it doesn't matter. This will happen many more times in the future, so there's no need to be alarmed.

The three of them were a little quieter than before. Yu Xing was leading the way, and Carlos, who was originally supposed to be the one to talk to Carlos, was now checking himself and didn't have the energy to start a conversation. The indifferent Lin was even less likely to initiate a chat.

They walked on quietly, their overlapping footsteps echoing through the tomb passage.

Yu Xing watched the door draw closer, a strange feeling welled up inside him, as if something behind that door was subtly drawing him in.

In the blink of an eye, the sound of a mechanism clicking suddenly rang in his mind.

The sound was coming from behind me.

Lin accidentally stepped on a mechanism; his intuition had just been working once, but it seemed to have stopped working immediately afterward.

Lin didn't let go; his face was much paler than before, and he seemed somewhat nervous. "I stepped on it. What will it be this time?"

Carlos glanced at him. "Not confident you can dodge?"

Lin: "Nonsense, my mobility..."

Very bad.

He didn't even need to finish speaking; the other two automatically filled in the blanks in their minds. Carlos touched his chin, his gray-blue hair disheveled and obscuring his eyebrows, as if he had some idea in mind.

Before Lin could ask again, he said, "Never mind then, I'll take your place."

"How do I take over?" Lin asked. The next moment, the scene before his eyes changed, and he was now in Carlos's position instead of the one who had stepped on the mechanism. Carlos was standing on the mechanism in a very natural posture, as if he were the one who had stepped on it all along.

Yu Xing raised an eyebrow. What was this? Magic? A magic trick, making a person disappear into thin air?

Even with his excellent eyesight, he couldn't see Carlos's movements clearly. The whole process was like a magic trick in progress, where the audience could only see the result the Magician wanted them to see.

Yi Qing clapped her hands. "Human magic is indeed a high-end technique of visual deception, I really like it."

Even though only Yu Xing could hear him, Sheqing Ghost still decided to properly express his love for magic, which even eased the disdain in Carlos's eyes.

"You two, move back a bit." Carlos called out, and Lin and Yu Xing both retreated nearly two meters.

Carlos lifted his foot, and immediately the ground trembled. His foot slipped, and a feeling of falling washed over him as he plummeted into the suddenly appearing black pit!

Moreover, rows of gleaming bronze spikes lined the pit; falling in would surely result in being skewered into a human meat skewer.

Carlos reached out and grabbed the edge of the pit, using his fingers to stop his fall. Due to the excessive weight, his knuckles cracked. His legs narrowly missed the bronze spikes and landed on the wall, which was inlaid with even more hidden spikes.

Fortunately, the spot he landed on was the only intact rock without any traps. Perhaps the craftsman at the time left himself a way out to avoid accidental injury, and now Carlos benefited from it.

"That was close." Even though he was alright, Carlos showed a relieved expression, as if he had just escaped a disaster. Unfortunately, neither Yu Xing nor Lin offered to comfort him.

Carlos curled his lip, deliberately provoking them with his words: "You people are truly heartless."

As he spoke, he nimbly flipped himself onto the ground, resolving the crisis unharmed.

Yu Xing ignored him, but she could sense that after this incident, Lin seemed to trust the two of them more.

The three were even more careful this time, and thankfully they didn't step on any traps or mechanisms, and safely reached the end of the tomb passage.

This is a heavy stone door, and its construction is undoubtedly crude to modern eyes. The stone door is covered with bumps and chips, as well as gaps left by the erosion of time. The patterns are blurred and the lines are rather coarse.

However, 1,200 years ago, such craftsmanship would only demonstrate the tomb owner's wealth and high status. Even if the demon daoist was wanted by the feudal lords, it would not change the fact that she was rich and had many followers.

"These look like several paintings," Carlos said.

Like the coffin of the gatekeeper ghost, the stone door was cut by lines and divided into a dozen or so compartments, each with a separate scene carved in it.

Speaking of paintings, that falls within the scope of painter San's knowledge. Yu Xing stared at the stone door for a long time before saying, "The order of the paintings is wrong. It seems the sculptor deliberately disrupted the order. Only by piecing together the true story can later generations open this door."

Yes, in Yu Xing's eyes, the painting on the stone gate now has a chaotic narrative structure and several obvious flaws.

For example, the first painting depicts a battlefield, like a battle during the warring states period. But later, there are people dressed exactly like the Nationalist soldiers on the battlefield, raising pigs at home, and participating in the uprising because of famine.

He calmed himself down, went through the drawings in his mind again, and pieced together the most reasonable timeline.

The first painting, which should be the central part of the right half of the stone gate, depicts a small village where a woman is weaving her wedding dress with a smile on her face. Her husband stands outside the house, holding a rabbit and secretly watching her.

The second picture likely depicts a world in chaos, marked by locust plagues, drought, and widespread famine, yet the woman still marries her husband.

The third picture is the one Yu Xing noticed. After getting married, the husband raised pigs and the wife wove cloth, but their hard-earned fruits were stolen by government soldiers, and they couldn't even afford meat, which was less affected by locusts.

Unable to endure such exploitation, peasants in various regions rose up in rebellion, including the husbands of women, thus plunging the land into war.

... The following scenes tell a story that is extremely painful for a woman.

The war lasted for several years, the chaos subsided, and the situation was more or less settled, with various local warlords establishing their own kingdoms.

The young man became a minor local lord and returned to the village to fetch the woman to his new home. On their way out, the woman and the young man were assassinated. To protect the woman, all the servants were killed, and the young man alone escorted the woman to the camp, where he himself was seriously wounded and died.

The woman was heartbroken, but she knew that her monarch was dead and that the small country would not last long, so she secretly fled. Sure enough, less than a month later, another country attacked, and the power left behind by her husband was easily destroyed.

The woman fled into the deep mountains with a death wish, preferring to die there rather than face human weapons and the possibility of even greater humiliation. But just then, she found a tree.

Many people died during the war, and this nameless tree, watered by the blood of those who died in the mountains, bore fruits bearing human heads. The woman was initially terrified, thinking it was a monster, and took another path.

Before she could take more than a few steps, her pursuers caught up with her. They committed a terrible atrocity against the woman. Strangely, the pursuers seemed not to have seen the eerie little tree. The woman was defiled and killed in front of the tree, her resentful head was cut off, and the pursuers laughed heartily.

After nightfall, or perhaps many days and months later, the woman was resurrected.

The woman's remains were absorbed by the sapling. Then, her head grew onto the tree, and her body slowly grew out. Once every part was complete, the woman pulled herself off the branch.

At this point, in the stone gate painting, the woman's image has become like a crazed demon, with disheveled hair and a ferocious face. She seems to know the sapling's abilities, digging open the trunk, taking the core wood from the center, and leaving the mountain with the core wood back to the human world.

After her resurrection, she possessed immense strength and alluring charm. The woman first seduced the ruler of the great nation that had destroyed her husband and defiled her body, then killed him and left his body exposed on the battlefield for three days and three nights before finally beheading him.

This wasn't the end. Having tasted the thrill of killing, the woman couldn't stop. She killed one soldier after another, and finally couldn't resist slaughtering civilians. Only those who "believed" in her could escape the massacre.

She became a fearsome demon daoist, yet she gained a following. Her ever-present wooden core caught people's attention, and when they tried to steal it, she killed them all with the most cruel and brutal methods.

The inscription on the stone gate ends here, much of which was added by Yu Xing himself based on the carving. He relayed this story to Carlos and Lin, who were both somewhat surprised.

"I've researched the information about demon daoist in this world. All the historical records only mention the sudden emergence of demon daoist cultivation and its numerous atrocities, but they don't mention how demon daoist cultivation came to be." Lin looked at the mural, his brow furrowing. "This door seems more reliable than the historical records."

Because it doesn't depict the demon daoist's atrocities in historical records, nor does it seem to defend the demon daoist or glorify her actions.

It is quite fair and just.

"It's another case of the victim ultimately becoming the perpetrator." Carlos thought for a moment. "If what's recorded on the stone gate is true, then the demon daoist was no longer human the moment he sprouted from the Ghost Tree."

Others are absorbed as nutrients after death, their heads simply hanging on trees. Why is the demon daoist so special, having the chance to grow a body and regain consciousness?

In other words, why was she chosen by Ghost Tree?

Could it be because... she died in front of the tree, filled with intense resentment and despair, that the then-young Ghost Tree developed some affinity for the demon daoist?

No one can confirm this now, and the three people in front of the door, having processed the new clues, were filled with even more doubts.

For example, how did the demon daoist break through the Wood Core, and how did the Wood Core later transform into the Ghost Tree and be planted in the demon daoist's tomb? Also, how did the demon daoist resurrect each time, was it due to the power of the Wood Core, or because she grew from the Ghost Tree and already possessed the ability to resurrect herself?

If these questions can be resolved, it means they are not far from the whole truth.

Yu Xing's fingers traced the patterns on the stone gate, lingering on the painting of a woman weaving a wedding dress. Suddenly, she pressed down hard, shoving the entire cut-out grid down.

The grid dented down by a full decimeter and did not bounce back up.

"As expected, we need to press the buttons in the correct order for the stone door to open." Carlos had already guessed this when Yu Xing mentioned that the order of the images was random, but he knew that Yu Xing had already figured out what to do without him having to remind her.

Yu Xing pressed two buttons in order, and seeing how easily he did it, Lin Yueyue was eager to try. "I want to try it too."

He's physically weak, so he's better suited to do things that don't require high physical strength; he can also demonstrate his remaining value.

Yu Xing paused, gave him a subtle look, and then nodded. "You try."

Lin felt a little uncomfortable under his gaze and pressed down suspiciously.

The stone didn't move at all.

Lin pressed it again.

I pressed the button but got nowhere.

Forest:"..."

He's unworthy; I never imagined this thing would be so hard to press! How strong is San?

Yu Xing found it somewhat amusing. The painting said that after the demon daoist was reborn from the Ghost Tree, he possessed immense strength, which is why this stone gate was made so difficult to move, perhaps based on the demon daoist's strength.

He was alright; under the curse's transformation, he also possessed immense power. How could a weakling like Lin possibly succeed? Even Carlos would probably have to exert all his strength to subdue one or two of them.

Lin retreated dejectedly, watching Yu Xing easily finished pressing all the buttons. The stone door made a muffled thud and opened automatically inward.

A deeper darkness unfolded before them, like a black hole that devoured people, luring outsiders into the abyss.

"I don't feel good inside." Goosebumps rose on Carlos's arms.