The World Inside the Pot

Gao Tian set the pot in a brightly lit spot and leaned in close to examine what was inside.

The third floor of the Living Person Apartment was the largest Supernatural Event here, and it could suppress the killing rules of other ghosts. Gao Tian didn't need to worry about being harmed by anything inside the pot.

He could just make out a miniature cave floor at the bottom of the pot. Before the uneven rock wall sat an exquisitely detailed skeleton, no bigger than an action figure. Its clothes were tattered and riddled with holes, and it had died in a meditative pose. Weeds and trickles of water covered the ground, while tiny characters densely covered the wall behind it. But the cave itself was already so small that he couldn't make out what the writing said.

What was this?

Had Xu Yuan bought an action figure of an immortal in a Cave Mansion and put it at the bottom of the pot?

Gao Tian changed his angle and switched on his flashlight. Even then, he could only make out the five largest ancient characters: "Left by Wanfa Zhenjun."

Wanfa Zhenjun?

That must have been the name of the White Bone True Person when he was alive. His Daoist Name was probably Wanfa Zhenjun.

The name sounded pretty impressive.

Wait.

Gao Tian had a vague feeling that everything at the bottom of the pot—the dead man, the patterns on the rock wall, even the ripples and aquatic plants—was far too detailed.

At a glance, it looked exactly like the real thing, with no discernible difference. The closer he looked, the more lifelike it became, almost indistinguishable from reality.

This wasn't a model at all. These were real people and real things. Somehow, the entire cave and the corpse of the real person sitting in his Cave Mansion had been shrunk down to the size of an ornament and placed at the bottom of the pot.

If Wanfa Zhenjun had really been shrunk and put inside, then why had Xu Yuan kept the pot? Surely he hadn't just wanted a pretty action figure to admire.

There had to be a secret connected to the man called Wanfa Daojun.

Because he was in the Living Person Apartment, Gao Tian felt a little bolder. He tentatively reached into the pot, trying to lift the complete skeleton of Wanfa Zhenjun from the Cave Mansion.

But the moment his finger touched the skeleton, it passed straight through its body and the rock wall behind it, until it touched the cold edge of the pot.

The moon reflected in water; flowers reflected in a mirror.

The Cave Mansion at the bottom of the pot was like a projection. He could only look at it. If he tried to touch it, his finger passed right through.

So he couldn't touch it after all.

Gao Tian still wasn't ready to give up. Wanfa Zhenjun's title, his pose, and his rotted clothes all made it clear that he had been an ancient person.

He'd read a few Qidian novels. There were always mysterious old men living inside rings, waiting for someone destined to put one on, so they could immediately pass down Peerless Skills and transfer Spiritual Energy.

But he'd never heard of anyone putting a master's Secret Manual and corpse inside a pot.

Besides, this era was crueler than any online novel. Even if a real Celestial Immortal descended, they might not be able to solve the crisis they faced.

Still unwilling to give up, Gao Tian slowly lowered his phone into the pot. He tried adjusting the camera angle so he could photograph the tiny characters on the rock wall.

He held the phone inside the pot and, guided by feel, moved his arm to different positions, taking several photos in a row. Then he pulled it back out.

He opened the photos. As he'd expected, the phone had captured the writing on the rock wall, but the lighting had made it blurry. Apart from the general shapes and a few characters, he couldn't tell what it said.

Fortunately, it was the age of AI. He fed the photos into some AI Repair Software. Soon, it had filled in the characters that human eyes couldn't make sense of, generating a completed version of the ancient text. It had even translated the contents into modern language.

Now he could finally see what was written behind Wanfa Daojun inside the pot.

Thank goodness for modern technology.

Original text:

When I was seven, every person in the village was slaughtered by Vengeful Ghosts. I alone was left, an orphan with no one. I reported it to the authorities, but the yamen was full of fools who refused to believe that Ghosts and Monsters existed in this world. Or perhaps they feared the creatures' savagery and didn't dare oppose them.

That Many-eyed Long-handed Ghost killed more than thirty members of my family. The hatred was carved into my bones; I would never forget it.

Afterward, I wandered the land alone before becoming the disciple of the greatest hero in the Jianghu. I trained hard for thirty years and mastered the peerless Crimson Sun Palm. Its Palm Wind could split stone tablets and crack rocks as easily as slicing rotten fat. I surpassed my master, and everyone of the time was astonished.

Just as I was about to seek out the Vengeful Ghost and avenge the twenty years of hatred I had carried, a sudden disaster struck—

One day, I returned from slaying a villain, carrying his head to report to my sect. But inside and outside the Mountain Gate, I found my master, fellow disciples, and even the servants—more than a hundred people in all—dead in a single night. Their heads had been half-severed, dangling from their necks. It was just like the work of the Ghosts and Monsters from that day.

I sat alone among the scattered limbs and thought long into the night. After twenty years of hard training, I had to face the truth: before a Vengeful Ghost, my desire for revenge was no more than a child waving a branch—utterly futile.

Yet my resolve did not die. If Martial Arts could not vanquish evil, was there no Immortal Path in this world? I knew the road would be harder than climbing to the heavens, but with hatred filling the vast sky, how could I simply give up? If Ghosts and Monsters existed, there must be a Sect that Subdues Demons. Only the arts of a True Immortal could suppress the Netherworld.

I swear to suppress every Vengeful Ghost in the world, and restore Yin and Yang to their proper places, with the living and the dead kept apart. Let the Netherworld contain the Evil Spirits, and let the Human World return to peace and clarity.

The translation reads:

When I was seven, every person in the village was killed by Vengeful Ghosts. I was the only one left, all alone. Even after I reported it to the authorities, the officials were nothing but fools. They refused to admit that Ghosts and Monsters existed in this world. Or perhaps they simply didn't dare stand up to the Ghost.

The Ghost that killed more than thirty people in my family had eyes all over its body, and arms so long they dragged along the ground. I would never forget it for as long as I lived.

After that, I endured countless hardships and became the disciple of the greatest hero in the Jianghu. I spent about thirty years learning an incredibly profound art: the Crimson Sun Palm. A single strike could split rocks like tofu. I surpassed my master, and everyone was astonished.

Just as I was feeling proud of myself and preparing to begin my revenge—to find the Vengeful Ghost that had killed everyone in my village twenty years earlier—something unexpected happened.

After completing a sect mission to hunt down a villain, I carried his head back to report to my sect. But what awaited me, both up on the mountain and down below, was the sight of my master, my martial uncles and fellow disciples, even the ordinary servants and outer disciples—all more than a hundred of them—slaughtered overnight. Their heads had been half-severed, with the other half still attached to their necks.

I knew this scene all too well. The nightmare had returned. It was the handiwork of the Many-eyed Long-handed Ghost that had killed more than thirty people in my village.

I sat alone among the severed limbs of my fellow disciples and thought for a long time. It took me a while to accept what had happened.

The profound Martial Arts of the Jianghu might work well enough against ordinary people. But before a true Vengeful Ghost, they were as laughable as a child wielding a dead branch.

All the peerless skills I'd learned over those twenty years, all my desire for revenge, had turned to nothing before a true Ghost.

But I still hadn't given up.

If Martial Arts were no longer enough to fight Vengeful Ghosts, then were there Immortal Sects in this world? Was there a Method of Becoming Immortal?

I knew the road was more difficult than learning Martial Arts, but I couldn't accept defeat. If Ghosts existed in this world, then there had to be Daoist Sects. Only true immortals could deal with Vengeful Ghosts.

I swear that one day I'll suppress every Vengeful Ghost in this world. Let the dead return to the underworld and the living remain in the Mortal World.

The writing ended there. Judging from the rock wall, there was clearly more, and the story wasn't finished.

But the rest of it was impossible to photograph or read. The writing carved into the rock wall had sunk deep with age and had merged completely with the stone platform beneath the White Bone True Person.

Judging by the skeleton's meditative pose and the writing on the wall, Supernatural Events hadn't only started in modern times. Even back in the feudal dynasties, powerful clans and Martial Arts Sects had become victims of Ghosts.

It was just that in their era, the supernatural hadn't yet fully revived and spread. Whether in court records or history books, the accounts amounted to just a few cursory strokes, briefly mentioned and passed over. Records preserved in village and clan genealogies had been dismissed as nonsense and superstition by later generations who had never witnessed such things.

So, had Wanfa Zhenjun found a Method of Becoming Immortal?

If he hadn't, why had he given himself that Daoist Name? And why had Xu Yuan carefully kept this miniature pot containing the bones of Wanfa Zhenjun, treating it like a treasure?

But if he had, then a hundred years later he had still turned to dust and dry bones like any ordinary person. He had fallen far short of transcending the Cycle of Life and Death like a true immortal.

A hundred or a thousand years after his death, the Vengeful Ghosts in this world hadn't been suppressed. After entering the modern era, Supernatural Events had only grown more frequent and violent, even seeming to be on the verge of a full-scale revival.

Gao Tian studied the miniature world inside the pot, seriously wondering if there was any way to see what happened in Wanfa Zhenjun's life afterward.

Distracted for a moment, he looked up at the ceiling. When he glanced back at the mouth of the pot, Gao Tian was suddenly shocked to see that the cave, person, and water inside had all changed dramatically. They had become an entirely new world.

Concrete roads. In the darkness on either side, the outlines of tall buildings stood in rows.

"How is that possible?"

"No, that can't be right."

Seeing that the pot had conjured a new scene, Gao Tian still found it impossible to believe that what he was seeing was real.

A bus drove along an empty road. It seemed to be nighttime inside the pot. Aside from the bus itself and the stretch illuminated by its headlights, the darkness on either side of the road looked like a void.

If that had been all the pot showed him, Gao Tian wouldn't have been so shocked.

The bus's metal exterior was transparent, allowing the observer to see what was happening inside the passenger compartment.

It was as though the red pot had deliberately displayed everything this way, sending some kind of signal to the person outside.

Besides the driver, there were five passengers sitting inside the miniature bus.

No. Strictly speaking, one of them was a badly decomposed, nearly mummified corpse. It was hard to say whether it could still be considered a "passenger."

The moment he saw the person sitting behind it, Gao Tian's mind went blank. For an instant, he even forgot to breathe.