Jar-Seated Corpse

The ruined stone walls looked especially grand and imposing in the sunlight, but the air was filled with an indescribable smell.

"What's that smell?"

Xiong Tao raised his nose and took a deep sniff. The smell wasn't exactly foul, but it wasn't fragrant either. Still, there was something about it that made him feel strangely lightheaded.

"It's the smell of corpse oil!"

Captain Wang, who was following behind them, suddenly spoke up. "Corpse oil forms when a body decomposes badly enough for its fat to seep out in liquid form. It usually appears on corpses that weren't dealt with in time during the summer."

"Corpse oil?"

Xiong Tao's face darkened. He instantly felt sick, but still asked stubbornly, "Aren't corpses supposed to stink? How could they smell good?"

Captain Wang glanced at him and saw him struggling to hold back his nausea. He couldn't help sneering as he leisurely recounted a case from years ago.

"Two years ago, there was a case involving a prostitute. The woman was in her forties, but she gave off a peculiar fragrance, and her business was very good thanks to it.

"But after she was arrested in a raid on prostitution, we found three corpses in her refrigerator. She'd cut off their chins and burned them over candles. The oil that dripped down was corpse oil.

"The fragrance on the woman came from perfume she'd made using that corpse oil. The smell is a little different from the one here, but I couldn't be mistaken. This is definitely the smell of corpse oil."

"Ugh!!!"

Hearing that, Xiong Tao couldn't help imagining a bunch of men lying on top of a woman, frantically sniffing her corpse-oil-covered body. He immediately threw up on the spot.

Xu Tong and Yang Zixuan were fine. Yang Zixuan even asked thoughtfully, "So that woman was a murderer?"

Captain Wang nodded. "The victims were all her regular customers, so it was easy to find out about their family backgrounds. They were all bachelors with nobody else at home. That's why no one came to claim their bodies, even after the case was solved."

Xu Tong interjected, "A woman killed three men just to get corpse oil from their bodies? If that was the reason, killing one would've been enough. There were plenty of other places she could've used besides their chins. Why kill three men in a row?"

Captain Wang was taken aback. He stammered, "Well... maybe the corpse oil from the chin was better?"

At that, Yang Guanjin finally couldn't stand listening to them discuss the case any longer. "Enough. This has nothing to do with our current situation."

She didn't forget to remind them, "The Gu worms you swallowed are most likely Heart-Piercing Gu. When the time comes, if you don't have an antidote, the worms will start biting their way through your intestines. Eventually they'll reach your hearts and bore holes through them."

"Damn it, that reminds me of the movie Alien I watched last time." Xiong Tao's mouth twitched. Thinking of the scene where the creature burst out of someone's chest, he felt awful.

"Couldn't we remove them with surgery?"

At the mention of the Gu worms, Yang Zixuan finally got serious. But underneath it all, he was still considering whether they should use a special item to leave this place.

"Surgery? How precise would it have to be? And the worms keep changing positions. How would you know where they were?"

Yang Guanjin shook her head. The question was beyond her understanding. Though she knew some medicine, in this wretched era she'd never even encountered an X-ray machine. How could she possibly understand how advanced modern medicine was?

Still, even with modern medicine's advances, pinpointing the worms' locations wouldn't be easy.

"So we can only get our lives back by finding what he's looking for? Is that why he hasn't asked for the Golden Dagger again, even though he knows it's with you?"

As Xu Tong spoke, he couldn't help glancing at Yang Zixuan. Given his cute cartoon underwear, the guy seemed like a boy who'd kept his childlike innocence.

Noticing Xu Tong's teasing look, Yang Zixuan's mouth twitched. He coughed twice and asked, "Then what exactly is he looking for?"

Yang Guanjin looked just as bewildered this time. "I've heard of the Ascension Bureau, but I don't know the specifics either."

Xu Tong raised an eyebrow, lost in thought. "Why don't we go in and take a look first?"

"Right. Seeing is believing. What Zhou Huasheng said was all too vague."

Captain Wang waved for everyone to keep moving.

At the same time, he didn't forget to ask Yang Zixuan again whether his gun was with him.

At the mention of it, Yang Zixuan rubbed his chin and shook his head. "No!"

Seeing that they wouldn't admit it, Captain Wang could do nothing but keep quiet and walk ahead with Xiong Tao.

The group crossed the ruined remains and found themselves facing a cluster of stone towers and pine trees.

"This place..."

Everyone felt that something was off, but they couldn't quite say what it was.

"Wait, look over there!"

Yang Zixuan suddenly noticed something and pointed ahead. They walked closer and saw a stone wall with an exquisite relief carved into it.

Countless monks knelt in the mural. Before them stood not a Buddha, but a Demon King with a green face and fangs.

Even stranger, the Demon King's arms had been severed, and blood splashed onto the ground, where lotus flowers bloomed.

"What's this supposed to mean?"

Everyone stared at it in confusion, unable to make sense of the mural.

"How can you not understand? Lay down your butcher's knife and become a Buddha right where you stand," Xiong Tao said bluntly, seeing how intently everyone was studying the relief.

And when he put it that way, everyone felt that it did seem to mean exactly that.

"Bah. It's all feudal superstition, meant to fool the people."

Captain Wang spat in disgust. He had the least patience for feudal ideas, and sneered, "If that's how it works, can murderers suddenly repent and become Buddhas? If it really worked that way, wouldn't society descend into chaos?"

He had good reason to say this. Murder cases weren't common, but as a police officer, he'd seen all kinds of criminals. Every one of them claimed to regret it after getting caught. But did they really regret it? If they did, why had they committed their crimes so savagely?

But no one paid any attention to his speech.

Only Xiong Tao showed the faintest hint of agreement. Xu Tong and Yang Zixuan, meanwhile, stared at the mural with especially solemn expressions.

"I think... this looks more like a sacrifice!" Yang Zixuan said after a moment.

He turned to Xu Tong, wanting to hear what he thought. But Xu Tong only shrugged and pointed at Xiong Tao. "I think he's right. Lay down your butcher's knife and become a Buddha right where you stand." As he spoke, he didn't forget to wink at Yang Guanjin behind him.

Yang Guanjin froze, looking a little uneasy.

Yang Zixuan rolled his eyes at the useless suggestion. He'd thought Xu Tong might come up with something different.

They couldn't make sense of the stone carvings, so all they could do was keep going.

"Hold on, something's not right!"

Yang Zixuan suddenly stopped and looked around. "Why do I feel like we've entered a temple? This doesn't seem like the Ascension Bureau."

"You think your family's temple would be built in a place like this? It'd be stranger if there weren't any ghosts."

Xu Tong folded his arms. "Temples are usually built on mountaintops. The higher the mountain, the higher they want to build, as if making the people who climb up exhausted will prove their devotion. Even people who don't believe in Buddha, once they've struggled all the way up, feel they might as well pray and leave some money. Otherwise, the climb feels wasted."

"Well..." Yang Zixuan scratched his head. Thinking it over, he had to admit that made sense. He couldn't help laughing. "So the ancients studied psychology too."

"Come over here! I found the source of that smell!"

Captain Wang's shout came from farther away. Everyone hurried over and saw a huge bronze pot.

The bronze pot hung in midair from several iron chains. Each chain was as thick as an adult's arm, with one end embedded in the surrounding stone pillars. They'd weathered the years and were now covered in rust.

Seeing everyone arrive, Captain Wang excitedly pointed at the bronze pot. He looked at Xiong Tao and sneered. "I can tell you with one hundred percent certainty that the smell we picked up is Corpse Fragrance."

He pointed at the black residue inside the pot. "This is corpse oil."

"Ugh!!!"

Xiong Tao couldn't take it anymore. He opened his mouth and threw up again.

"Was a pot this big used to boil corpse oil?"

Yang Guanjin approached the pot in shock. It was at least five meters wide and three meters deep, with a thick layer of black stuff inside.

It was hard to imagine what it would've looked like to boil corpse oil in a pot this big.

At her words, everyone pictured how cooks rendered lard, then transferred that image to the huge pot.

They imagined the giant bronze pot filled with pale chunks of meat, tumbling and frying in the oil. Everyone shuddered uncontrollably.

"What would they boil such a huge pot of corpse oil for?" Captain Wang walked over, unable to help wondering, perhaps because of his profession.

"Besides a sacrifice, what else could it be for? It's not like they were making hot pot."

Yang Zixuan glanced around. When he saw Xu Tong standing motionless, he went over and asked, "What are you thinking about?"

"Do you feel like something is watching us?"

Xu Tong's brow furrowed. Ever since they'd entered, he'd felt uneasy, as if something were observing him. The feeling was growing stronger.

He suddenly walked over to the trees and reached out to pull at the bushes.

"Rattle..."

He yanked down a dense mass of vines. As they came loose, a giant Buddha statue appeared before them.

No one knew when the stone Buddha had been carved—or perhaps the reason was simply that it had endured the weather for so long—but rain had eroded most of its face. It no longer looked as solemn as the Buddhas in temples. Instead, it seemed a little... dopey.

What made everyone feel even more unsettled was the countless jars arranged beneath the statue.

"Look, they didn't just make hot pot. They even pickled some vegetables," Yang Zixuan joked as he walked over. He tore the seal off a mud jar and leaned over to look inside.

But inside was a corpse sitting cross-legged.

Xu Tong came over for a closer look, then reached into the jar and touched it. He shook his head. "It's not a corpse. It feels like stone or clay."

Yang Guanjin and Captain Wang came over too. After examining it closely, they confirmed that it was indeed a clay sculpture.

There was also a pool of black, solidified liquid at the bottom of the jar.

"I've heard that after eminent Buddhist monks pass away, their bodies are sealed inside clay sculptures and placed in jars for three years. It's called Jar Seating. Could these jars contain the bodies of those monks?"

Yang Guanjin said thoughtfully.

"Maybe these monks cut the flesh off their own bodies, turned it into corpse oil, and poured it into the jars to preserve them or something."

Yang Zixuan pointed at the black, oily substance in the jar. "Maybe that's the secret behind the monks' successful Jar Seating. Good grief, they've mass-produced them. Are they planning to become Buddhas as a group?"

He considered it further. "If that's the case, maybe this really is a geomantically auspicious place. Otherwise, why would these monks come here to mass-produce Jar Seating?"

Captain Wang still regarded the practice as vile and contemptible. "Dead is dead. They deliberately make their corpses seem so mysterious. I think they're just fooling themselves."

In his view, once a person died, all that remained was a pile of rotting flesh. China had begun promoting cremation in 1955, and he'd heard that some big cities had now begun enforcing it in a more organized way.

But in a remote little place like this, they still maintained the custom of burial. Now it seemed they should've started promoting cremation here much earlier.

"Something's wrong!" Xu Tong frowned and sniffed around the jar a few times. "The smell isn't right. This doesn't smell like corpse oil."

"Not corpse oil?"

Everyone gathered around and sniffed carefully. Sure enough, the jar no longer smelled of corpse oil. Instead, it gave off an intense, fragrant scent.

"They must have added some kind of incense," Yang Zixuan guessed. After all, according to Buddhist rules, these seated flesh-body Buddhas still had to be taken out eventually. If they stank, how could they fool the common people into handing over money?

Just as everyone was studying the jars, Xiong Tao grabbed Yang Zixuan's arm and shouted, "It came to life!!"

Everyone froze and looked back. Xiong Tao's face was deathly pale, and he stared fixedly at the Buddha statue before him. "Just now, I was looking at it, and... and its eyeballs suddenly moved!!"

Xiong Tao stammered as he pointed at the statue.

"Heh, you must've seen it wrong. It's just a broken rock."

Captain Wang watched Xiong Tao with a cold, mocking look. He walked up to the statue and patted its big stone foot, his face full of disdain. "This busted rock? Let's see you move again!"

As he spoke, Captain Wang slowly raised his head. The smile on his face froze, and his eyes widened as he stared at the statue before him. Its eyeballs had really turned to look in his direction. The smile that had looked simple and kindly now seemed especially eerie.