This Monk Wants to Dig a Grave

Chapter 32: This Monk Wants to Dig a Grave

They arrived at the first location.

Zhou Zhenguo and Chu Chongtian didn't bother searching inside. There was nothing here but a shell.

Even the walls of the house were gone.

It was an old house that had been abandoned for years. Zhou Zhenguo pushed it once, and the whole thing collapsed.

They weren't attacked by any Possessed.

Aside from the crash of the collapse, everything around them remained deathly quiet.

"Looks like this isn't the place," Zhou Zhenguo said.

"Bang!"

Just then, a sound rang out—not especially loud, but startlingly clear in the silent night.

Tang Luo leaped onto the roof on the other side.

In the dim light, he saw someone running down a distant street.

The person was firing in panic into the darkness.

A figure rushed out and knocked him down. Then came a second, a third, and a fourth.

More than a dozen figures descended like a pack of hunting wolves, dragging the man out from beneath the streetlights.

They hauled him into the darkness.

Then the figures ran off in the same direction.

Tang Luo glanced around, then leaped from rooftop to rooftop until he reached the tallest nearby building.

He could see that the streets of the Small City, once quiet as a mouse, were now filled with people.

A few were being hunted.

Most of them had probably been possessed and controlled by Jack the Ripper, and were hunting others.

After each kill, they all raced off in the same direction.

"Master, what do you see?" Chu Chongtian called from below.

"Ripper's making his move. He's possessed and controlling a lot of people. They're heading toward the church."

Tang Luo leaped down and hit the ground, scattering the snow around him.

A ring of black earth showed through at his feet.

"The church?"

Zhou Zhenguo couldn't understand why Jack the Ripper would possess people and send them to the church.

Shouldn't he be coming here to cause them trouble?

"This monk has a theory. I don't know if it's right, but now we can go check. What do you think?" Tang Luo asked.

"What theory?"

Chu Chongtian nearly burst into tears. Master, you've finally started thinking.

"Is Jack the Ripper really human?" Tang Luo said with a smile.

His smile was gentle, but Zhou Zhenguo and Chu Chongtian felt a chill run down their backs.

It wasn't because of Tang Luo himself, but because of what he'd said.

Was Jack the Ripper really human?

Obviously. If he wasn't human, was he a ghost?

But why couldn't Jack the Ripper be a ghost?

Chu Chongtian swallowed hard and looked at Tang Luo. "Master, you mean..."

Tang Luo didn't answer. He looked at Zhou Zhenguo.

Zhou Zhenguo nodded with difficulty. "It's possible. Both of my failed missions involved ghosts. Those supernatural missions are difficult."

"This monk wants to go see what's happening at the church. What do you two think?" Tang Luo asked.

He was very democratic, always asking other people's opinions first.

"Let's go," Zhou Zhenguo said through gritted teeth.

They had been wrong from the moment they started assuming Jack the Ripper was human.

That was when the mission had taken its most dangerous turn.

"Then let's go."

Tang Luo headed toward the church.

That was where they had first arrived in this world of the mission.

There was a tomb chamber, with a cemetery outside it, and a church nearby.

And there was Li Liang, who had run into trouble on the very first night.

Everything around them was quiet. Several oil lamps hung outside the church.

The residents who had run this way had disappeared. No one knew where they had gone.

The church doors were just as they had been on the first night, left ajar rather than fully shut and locked.

Tang Luo pushed them open and went inside.

Zhou Zhenguo brought up the rear. He closed the doors and slid the bolt into place, shutting out the wind and snow.

Some candles were still burning inside the church.

They kept the place from falling into darkness.

As before, it was empty, save for the flickering candlelight.

The scene was so much like that first night.

Were the three of them going to finish the mission where it had begun?

"Here."

Tang Luo stopped in front of a small black door.

They had all noticed it earlier, but it had been locked.

No one had thought to force their way inside to take a look.

But this time, Tang Luo gave it a light slap.

The seemingly small but surprisingly solid door was knocked clean off its hinges and landed on the floor.

Beyond it was a flight of stairs leading down.

The stairway wasn't long, and a faint glow of firelight flickered below.

It revealed a blurry figure.

At the same time, a muttering prayer drifted up from below.

Tang Luo stepped onto the fallen door and entered the unfamiliar basement.

Before long, the prayers stopped.

Zhou Zhenguo and Chu Chongtian exchanged a glance and prepared to go in, too.

But before they could descend, Tang Luo came back, dragging someone along.

The man in his grasp was dressed as a priest, but his hair and beard were a tangled mess.

His clothes were filthy, and he smelled awful.

Without the clothes, anyone would have taken him for a vagrant.

Even as Tang Luo dragged him along, the priest didn't struggle. He only lowered his voice as he prayed.

His muttering had become a whisper.

"Tell me. Where is Jack the Ripper?"

Tang Luo dropped the priest onto the ground and asked him.

The moment he said Jack the Ripper's name,

The priest stopped praying. His body began to tremble, and he rolled over and fell to his knees, curling up. "My omnipotent master, your lowly servant is here, offering you everything."

Chu Chongtian was about to speak, but Zhou Zhenguo raised a hand to stop him.

"Is that so?"

Tang Luo looked down at the priest. "Then take me to the holy place."

"Yes, my master." The priest stood and slowly walked out of the church.

He looked like a puppet that had been played with until it broke.

Zhou Zhenguo hurried forward and opened the church doors again.

The wind and snow rushed inside.

The priest swayed and nearly fell.

He looked as if he might drop dead at any moment.

Fortunately, he only staggered twice before regaining his balance and continuing onward.

After leaving the church, he turned and headed to the left.

"That way looks like it leads to another cemetery," Zhou Zhenguo said quietly.

The church was somewhat secluded, with plenty of open ground around it. Cemeteries lay on either side.

Tang Luo and the others had come from one of them.

But the priest was leading them in the opposite direction.

The cemetery they had seen was in a more upscale area.

For example, after the manor massacre, many people had been buried there.

The other cemetery was for commoners.

To put it more plainly, it was much like a mass grave.

The priest trudged through the wind and snow.

It took more than half an hour for them to reach a very remote spot.

A tangle of trees stood not far away.

The priest stopped, ignoring the snow on the ground, and prostrated himself.

When Tang Luo had first seen him, he had been praying in this same position.

"There's nothing here," Chu Chongtian said.

The holy place?

It was probably where Jack the Ripper had been buried.

Master Xuanzang had tricked the deranged priest into bringing them here.

But there wasn't even a gravestone. Just a bare tree trunk.

"This is the place."

Tang Luo passed the priest and walked toward the tree trunk, about five meters ahead.

Zhou Zhenguo and Chu Chongtian hurried after him.

Up close, they saw that it wasn't a tree trunk.

It was two pieces of wood tied together to resemble a cross.

It had been stuck into the ground, and could barely be called a gravestone.

Or perhaps a marker.

Most important of all, a dagger was nailed to the top of it.

The dagger was covered in rust and stained with blood.

The light from Zhou Zhenguo's lantern fell on the dagger.

Its shape gradually matched the one he'd seen that night.

"Have we been wasting our time this whole time?!" Chu Chongtian blurted out, his voice turning shrill.

They had worked so hard for so long.

And this was the answer they'd arrived at?

Jack the Ripper was a restless spirit without even a gravestone?

An evil spirit, to put it in Eastern terms?

"No. The mission isn't over yet," Tang Luo said. "That means we've overlooked something important. Only when we find it will we have truly found Jack the Ripper."

As he spoke, he reached for the crude cross stuck in the ground.

The instant Tang Luo touched the "cross,"

the already fierce snowfall turned into a full-blown blizzard.

The frigid wind cut across their faces like knives.

The lantern in Zhou Zhenguo's hand swayed twice, then broke and fell to the ground.

The light went out.

Darkness swallowed everything around them.

"Master!" Chu Chongtian shouted, instinctively crouching down.

The freezing cold was just as it had been that night.

But this time, unlike before, it didn't come without warning.

Back then, they had felt like insects sealed in amber.

This time, it was more like icy water rising beneath their feet.

The numbness crept over them gradually, leaving them some room to struggle.

"Buy this monk two minutes."

Tang Luo's voice cut through the howling wind and reached their ears.

A golden light rose around both of them, dispelling the cold, numb feeling.

This time, the light didn't fade right away.

Instead, it lingered, warmth coursing through their limbs.

It allowed Zhou Zhenguo and Chu Chongtian to ignore the wind, snow, and darkness around them.

But the moment they saw their surroundings clearly, their bodies still froze.

At some point, a large crowd had gathered around them. Hidden by the wind and snow, the nearest people were now less than twenty meters away.

They were all residents of Small City.

There were also Scotland Yard detectives whom Zhou Zhenguo and the others had seen before.

But now, they were no longer "residents of Small City."

Black shadows shrouded every face.

Their features were invisible. All that could be seen were three patches of darkness—over their eyes and mouths—even blacker than the shadows around them.

Two minutes?

A crowd of people possessed by "evil spirits," black as pitch, would rush them all at once.

They wouldn't need half a minute to tear Zhou Zhenguo and Chu Chongtian to pieces.

"Master, what are you doing?!"

Chu Chongtian's voice trembled.

"Amitabha. This humble monk is going to dig a grave."

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