The most important thing now was to figure out which of the two Bodhisattva statues was real.
Yao Shunyu looked up and examined the two statues on either side. They looked almost exactly alike, and the paint on them was quite old. They seemed to have been standing here for a long time.
He walked up to the statue on the left, cautiously reached out, and rapped his knuckles lightly against it.
The sound was dull. It didn't seem to be hollow inside. Yao Shunyu tried the same thing with the statue on the right, but got the same result. That statue was solid, too. This method wouldn't work.
The simplest, most direct approach would be to find an inconspicuous spot on a statue and smash a hole in it with a hard object. If it was still made of clay inside, then it was the real one. But that was far too dangerous. If he found flesh and blood inside, Yao Shunyu knew he wouldn't be long for this world. Zhusheng Niangniang wouldn't spare him for disturbing her.
"Bang."
"Bang."
The wooden window frame rattled incessantly in the wind, making a clattering sound now and then. It only made the already anxious Yao Shunyu more irritable.
He took a deep breath, slowly sat down, and began carefully piecing together the clues from tonight.
"Bow before the demon, scrape gold from the Buddha's face, and the words 'feng shui'..."
As he thought, Yao Shunyu's gaze wandered around the main hall. He had a subconscious feeling that he was overlooking something, and that it was nearby.
A few seconds later, his eyes settled on the wall along one side of the hall—or, more precisely, on the wooden window rattling in the wind.
"Wind..."
Yao Shunyu's eyes narrowed. Where was this