Chapter 111: Mystery of Longshu Temple

They reached Wang Wenbo by mobile phone. After escaping the Jinhai Building, he had been sent to a hospital for a quick bandaging and some X-rays. The nearby hospitals were all full, and his injuries weren't severe enough to warrant an overnight stay.

Jiang Yang hailed a cab for him. Half an hour later, the taxi pulled up at the entrance to the alley. His head wrapped in gauze, his expression vacant, Wang Wenbo limped into the Apartment.

Wang Wenbo barely reacted even when he saw the Green Text Mission on the wall. It was hard to tell if he had been scared senseless or if his spirit was utterly broken.

With several hours left until nightfall, Gao Tian decided to return to his room and get a couple of hours of sleep to recover some strength.

After all, he had fought several fierce battles today. His mind and body were nearing their limits.

In the darkness, the mobile phone alarm he had set earlier began to beep.

Gao Tian slowly opened his eyes under the covers. He was in his room in the Apartment, the bedroom pitched in total darkness.

The two hours of sleep had somewhat eased his mental exhaustion. He could now start preparing for tonight's trip to Longshu Temple.

At some point, a Gray Ticket Stub had also appeared on his nightstand.

As Gao Tian sat alone in the dark, quietly pondering the literal clues in this Green Text Mission, he caught movement in the corner of his eye. At the foot of his bed, a woman with disheveled hair was slowly rising.

?

What the hell was going on?

With a frame that tall... could it be the Woman in the Rain?

Just as Gao Tian's muscles tensed, the female ghost sitting at the foot of his bed slowly spoke. "Gao Tian.

"I'm going on this Green Text Mission, too."

Gao Tian grabbed his pillow and smashed it viciously into the "female ghost's" face.

It was Lan Zhu's voice.

It was that lunatic. He didn't know if he had forgotten to lock his door before going to sleep or if she had used some special method to slip in, but she had been crouching at the foot of his bed this whole time, waiting for him to wake up.

Gao Tian's heart hammered in his chest. "If you want to go, go downstairs and tell Jiang Yang!" he snapped. "What the hell are you doing in my room?

"You're sick in the head!"

Lan Zhu sounded genuinely aggrieved. "I already told Jiang Yang, and he said it was fine. As long as I don't cause trouble on the way.

"He told me to come up and let you know. He also said you might be sleeping, and if you were, I should wait until you woke up to tell you.

"So I stayed here in your room, waiting very politely for you to wake up. How is that my fault?"

Gao Tian took a few heavy breaths, and the cold sweat on his forehead slowly began to dry.

Forget it. Lan Zhu was sick in the head to begin with. There was no reasoning with her.

Forced to swallow his grievance, Gao Tian threw on some clothes and headed straight downstairs.

The three assigned to this mission—Jiang Yang, Wang Wenbo, and Gao Tian—plus the volunteer Lan Zhu. All four of them were gathered here.

This Longshu Temple was Yusheng's seventh mission and Jiang Yang's sixth. There was definitely something wrong with it.

They had to be fully prepared.

Jiang Yang spoke first. He had put on a pair of glasses. While Gao Tian was resting, he and Wang Wenbo had combed through a massive amount of material regarding Longshu Temple.

In the real world, of course.

"The temple was established about fourteen hundred years ago, during the early Tang Dynasty," Jiang Yang said. "Back then, it was just a small shrine with little influence. Over the generations, monks collected alms and made repairs, gradually expanding it into a medium-sized complex covering over a thousand square meters. At its peak, it was somewhat famous locally. Word had it that prayers for children were especially effective there, drawing many pilgrims and newlyweds who traveled thousands of miles to worship.

"It suffered through several wars over the years, completely destroyed and rebuilt on multiple occasions. Three eminent monks emerged from there, producing sarira relics upon their passing and shocking the local prefecture. The records are overly long, and I haven't found any valuable information in them, so we'll skip that for now.

"About a thousand years ago, during the Northern Song Dynasty, local folklore recorded a crimson meteor streaking across the sky above Longshu Temple. Strangely, when pilgrims arrived at the temple the next day, they found the gates locked tight. After forcing their way inside, they discovered that the abbot and every monk had vanished overnight.

"Over the thousand years of ups and downs that followed, Longshu Temple was demolished and rebuilt time and time again, with batch after batch of monks taking up residence. Today, the architecture of Longshu Temple has absolutely nothing to do with the early Tang era. It is a modern structure, holds no fame whatsoever, and currently sits entirely abandoned."

From the sound of it, they didn't have any useful information or clues on how to survive.

Gao Tian pressed further. "Are there any other clues regarding the record of that crimson meteor from a thousand years ago?"

Jiang Yang shook his head. "These local unofficial histories are naturally full of holes. I haven't found any corroborating records anywhere else.

"We can basically conclude it's just folklore passed around by word of mouth. It was likely a rumor spread to add a touch of legend to Longshu Temple.

"The temple was repeatedly destroyed by war, and its monks came and went. Even if all the monks 'vanished,' they were most likely murdered and buried by passing bandits."

Wang Wenbo, who had been intently typing on his keyboard the whole time, looked up. "I hacked into the relevant government department's official website and checked the list of all registered monks at Longshu Temple over the past thirty years, right up until it was abandoned.

"I didn't find the name Yusheng anywhere.

"It's highly likely that Yusheng never served as a monk at Longshu Temple. He's a fake monk."

Wang Wenbo had only met Yusheng a few times, so naturally, he harbored no trust for the administrator.

"Not necessarily," Jiang Yang countered.

"Yusheng might just be his dharma name after severing ties with the mortal world. No one knows his real name."

Lan Zhu let out an eerie chuckle. "Do any of you know Yusheng's real name?"

The question left Jiang Yang completely speechless.

He didn't know.

Xia Ta didn't know.

No one in the entire Apartment knew.

Despite having worked alongside him for so many years, Yusheng was like a black hole. Any information around him was completely swallowed up without a trace, leaving others entirely unable to pry.

The attempt to start from Yusheng's connection to Longshu Temple had temporarily hit a dead end.

"The key to the mission might lie in our three different objectives," Jiang Yang mused.

"Relatively speaking, Gao Tian's task is the easiest—taking a Transparent Coffin.

"Gao Tian, what did Yusheng say to you before he left? Did he ever mention anything about a Transparent Coffin being at Longshu Temple?"

Gao Tian found the whole thing a massive headache as well. "Not at all.

"He gave me the Gray Card and told me I'd face a fatal tribulation in the future.

"He also said that if he didn't make it back, everything in his room would be given to me.

"He never mentioned a single word about anything in Longshu Temple, nor the Transparent Coffin."

The "fatal tribulation" Yusheng had spoken of—sandwiched between exploring upstairs and his fourth mission—was likely the Ghost Infant and Ghost Cave coming to find him at the Jinhai Building.

Given Gao Tian's strength, he should have undoubtedly died. It was only his overwhelming Ghost Luck that had suppressed the omen of death looming over his head.

Lan Zhu toyed with the dog collar in her hands. "How long has it been since Yusheng came back? Why don't we just open his room?"

"Actually, yes," Gao Tian agreed. "He said that if he wasn't back in a week, I could open it. He already gave me the passcode.

"As long as you guys are willing, we can go open it right now."

"Don't rush," Jiang Yang said. "In a moment, the four of us will go upstairs together and open Yusheng's room.

"There's another strange aspect to this Green Text Mission that completely baffles me.

"My objective is to ensure Yusheng survives and to unravel the mystery of Longshu Temple. That requirement is fairly standard, the basic operation of a Green Text Mission.

"But Wang Wenbo's objective is the most bizarre. Alleviating the suffering of the monks at Longshu Temple?

"Is the Green Text Mission implying that, aside from Yusheng, there are other living people inside the Longshu Temple in the Supernatural Zone?

"Furthermore, among the few of us, Wang Wenbo is arguably the weakest. Why is it that the objective assigned to him appears to be the hardest?

"Has Old Wang been targeted by the Apartment, or does this task require some specialized knowledge—skills and techniques that only Old Wang possesses?"

As soon as the words left his mouth, even Jiang Yang found it hard to keep a straight face.

Wang Wenbo was a programmer at a major tech firm. What was he best at? Programming.

It couldn't possibly be that the Longshu Temple in the Supernatural Zone was short a programmer and needed help rewriting their code.

That would be far too absurd.

Gao Tian was the first to correct Jiang Yang's initial point. "No, the monks at Longshu Temple aren't necessarily living people.

"Ghosts have feelings too. They might even experience constant pain. Remaining in this world is like living in purgatory for them."

It was just like during the Memory Ghost incident, when Gao Tian had successfully climbed down from the balcony, leaving his "parents and sister" behind on the fourth floor.

Back then, his "sister" had told him that she would endure suffering beyond a living person's imagination.

Ling Feifei had also mentioned that through the Bone Flute, she could personally experience the various emotions exuded by ghosts: despair, pain, helplessness, and emptiness—

"The monks of Longshu Temple might have been involuntarily transformed into ghosts, forever trapped within the temple.

"They cannot be killed, and they can't even commit suicide if they tried. Something Wang Wenbo possesses might genuinely be the key to their release."

A Green Text Mission shouldn't set up an unsolvable scenario. Otherwise, making a newcomer like Wang Wenbo, who had only been on one or two tasks, handle the hardest part of Longshu Temple would mean they simply wanted him dead.

Hearing himself mentioned, Wang Wenbo stopped typing and looked up from behind his laptop at Gao Tian. "Gao Tian, that forum post you asked Administrator Xia Ta to have me decrypt? I've unlocked it.

"Should I tell you about it now, or should we wait until after we return from the mission?"

So much time had passed since then that Gao Tian drew a blank for a moment.

Oh, right. It was a post Xu Yuan had published on the internet while he was still alive and carrying out tasks for the Living Apartment.

The post was titled: "Discovering Some True Natures of Ghosts in the Living Apartment Incident".

The post itself had been locked, and Gao Tian had asked Xia Ta to find someone to crack it. A whole series of events had occurred since, so it had remained unaddressed until now.

This post didn't currently seem to have any connection to the new Longshu Temple mission. Gao Tian looked at Wang Wenbo. "Thanks. I'd appreciate it if you told me right now.

"Four of us are getting on the Bus to Longshu Temple, and I don't know how many of us will make it back.

"If you don't say it now, I might never get the chance to hear it in this lifetime, and you might never get the chance to say it again."