"Dharma Mahā, Dharma Mahā, Dora Dorasa, luo luo suo, Dora Dorasa."
A bitter wind drove the miserable rain, howling like weeping ghosts.
The thugs carrying the bodies had clothes plastered against their skin, forcing them to keep tugging the fabric away. Once they reached the entrance, they hurriedly set the bodies down.
Then they left the Cemetery.
That Uncanny heart mantra echoed throughout the Cemetery.
This was the Secret Mantra Lin Feng had heard from the monk in the Floating Bridge House complex.
There were similarities, but also differences.
This, too, was a heart mantra.
It belonged to no known category of incantation.
It seemed that secret mantras like this worked only on Ligela Island.
Lin Feng slipped into the Cemetery and heard the mantra echoing through it. He saw the Ascetics sitting cross-legged beside a large pit. Gale Wind and torrential rain lashed their naked bodies, while the branches beside them whipped them relentlessly.
It seemed as though evil spirits lurked inside their bodies.
Every lash sent blood spraying.
One of the Ascetics held his palms together, every finger burning like a candle.
He was burning his fingers as an offering to the Buddha.
Even among the Ascetics, burning one's fingers as an offering to the Buddha was an advanced practice beyond the reach of most.
The agony of fingers connected to the heart was not something mere Intent could withstand.
Lin Feng stood at a distance, watching it all.
He had long known something was wrong with the Cemetery, but he had never imagined it was this bad. Amid Gale Wind and torrential rain, gnarled trees sprawled across the Cemetery, strange woods flourishing. A black mass of crows stood motionless on them like a blanket.
They swayed with the writhing branches.
Centipedes as thick as pythons burrowed in