Chapter 116: The Wind Attendant Buddha Investigates the Temple

Honestly, what Gao Tian wanted to find most right now were the abhorrent monks whose buzzing murmurs were blocking his Ghost Luck.

But Longshu Temple only covered so much ground; he could take almost all of it in at a glance. Whether in the main hall at the front or the dilapidated shacks on either side, there was simply nowhere to hide that many monks.

With every step he took, those murmurs clung to Gao Tian like maggots to rotting bone, relentlessly haunting him.

They tormented both those waiting outside the temple and the one investigating inside.

It was as if the entire temple had transformed into the gigantic, bloated corpse of a monk, chanting sutras into the void.

Gao Tian repeatedly reminded himself to stay calm and careful. Controlling the Wind Attendant Buddha, he walked it step by step toward the main hall.

When he was less than fifty meters away, the angle finally shifted enough for the Wind Attendant Buddha to see it: a colorless coffin lying flat on the steps beneath the hall. It was empty, simply resting there.

The coffin's material was extremely bizarre. It definitely wasn't glass, and it didn't seem like crystal, but it was perfectly transparent. If a strange refraction of light hadn't exposed the shadow it cast on the ground, Gao Tian likely would have overlooked it entirely and kicked right into it.

His mission was to take the Transparent Coffin out of Longshu Temple.

Did that mean his task for the day would be over as long as he had the Wind Attendant Buddha drag the coffin out, haul it to a nearby station, or take it to McDonald's to ask the mysterious old man for a favor?

There was no way it was that simple.

Gao Tian wasn't a three-year-old, nor was it his first time carrying out a Green Text Mission.

There was very likely some fatal Killing Rule hidden near the Transparent Coffin. Whatever the case, he wouldn't be allowed to simply carry it away.

Gao Tian wasn't in a rush. The mission required them to survive in Longshu Temple for seven days. That meant this battle would be a long one; there would be plenty of time to deal with it later.

He needed to be patient. The matter of the Transparent Coffin could wait.

Right now, the most crucial issue—aside from those annoying, lingering murmurs—was something else.

Was Yusheng inside the temple?

The Wind Attendant Buddha scanned the area, finding no trace of a living person.

If Yusheng were here, he would have heard the intruders' footsteps outside the temple and come out to investigate by now.

Since Yusheng had not appeared, there were four possible reasons:

1. His movements were restricted, rendering him unable to appear.

2. He wasn't in Longshu Temple; he had already left.

3. He was already dead.

4. Yusheng was unwilling to show himself, because his appearance would make the situation even worse.

The third possibility could be immediately ruled out. If Yusheng was already dead on the very first day of the mission, it would mean the Living Apartment held a grudge against Jiang Yang and had deliberately assigned him an impossible goal.

The second possibility could also be largely ruled out.

He possessed a Black Card. If he was physically capable of leaving Longshu Temple, why wouldn't he just use the Black Card to return directly to the Apartment?

At present, the most likely scenarios were the first and the fourth.

Based on his instincts, Gao Tian leaned more toward the fourth.

Aside from the murmurs, this godforsaken place was absolutely hiding an even more terrifying Killing Rule, or an evil ghost.

Yusheng probably wouldn't show himself until the obstacles were cleared away.

Moving carefully, the Wind Attendant Buddha bypassed the Transparent Coffin and stepped into the main hall.

The golden Buddha statue seated in the center of the main hall had lost almost all of its gold lacquer, exposing a dark crimson hue that closely resembled human skin. A massive black hole gaped in the statue's back. Judging by the depth visible from the outside, the interior of the Buddha had likely been hollowed out long ago.

Gao Tian controlled the Wind Attendant Buddha, initially planning to climb up to the hole and check inside. After all, the Buddha's hollow interior had more than enough room to hide Yusheng, let alone a dozen people.

But the Buddha's back was too high and too slippery, lacking any obvious footholds, and controlling the Wind Attendant Buddha was never as fluid as moving his own real body. Standing outside the temple, Gao Tian tried several times. Every time he managed to climb up two steps, the puppet instantly plummeted back down, smashing face-first into the ground.

It wasn't even close to reaching the edge, let alone climbing high enough to look inside the black hole.

A few more falls and the air currents making up the Wind Attendant Buddha would dissipate entirely. Helpless, Gao Tian had no choice but to temporarily abandon the idea of inspecting the black hole.

Finding a few small stones on the ground, he aimed at the hole and hurled them inside.

The stones sailed through the black hole and landed inside with a distinct thud. It proved that the stone Buddha's interior was completely hollow; there were no living people or corpses hidden inside.

With his investigation yielding no results, the Wind Attendant Buddha settled for the next best option, circling the entire main hall before returning to the feet of the giant Buddha.

A praying mat sat in front of the Buddha, covered in dust. There were two distinct knee-shaped indentations where the dust was noticeably thinner. Clearly, someone had knelt here not too long ago.

It had to be Yusheng.

Gao Tian looked at the traces Yusheng had left behind, remaining silent.

He had checked everywhere in the main hall, aside from the black hole on the Buddha's back. He found nothing.

The Wind Attendant Buddha walked around to the back of the main hall.

Between the main hall and the rear wall lay a small vegetable patch, once used by the self-reliant monks to grow their own food. No one had turned the soil in years, and it had solidified into a single massive chunk. Its surface was crimson, and it had grown as hard as rock.

Gao Tian poked it with a finger but couldn't even dent it. The soil was completely ruined.

Swaying slightly, the Wind Attendant Buddha returned to the stone-paved plaza outside. It inspected the small side shrines one by one but failed to find anything of value, or anyone at all.

Half an hour had been wasted, and aside from the Transparent Coffin, he had found absolutely nothing. Every shred of evidence indicated that this was just a hollow, long-abandoned Buddhist temple.

The scattered crows resting in the two rows of large trees hadn't flown away. One of them opened its beak wide and let out a strange, guttural caw, as if mocking the foolish humans below.

Huh? Why are there words carved into this bark?

As the Wind Attendant Buddha passed by a massive tree, he caught sight of pitted grooves on the trunk out of the corner of his eye. They seemed to follow a pattern. Gao Tian subconsciously stopped and immediately discovered the tree's secret.

"Thus have I heard: At one time, the Buddha dwelt at Shravasti, in the Jeta Grove, with a great gathering of twelve hundred and fifty bhikshus.

All of them were great arhats, free from outflows—"

Although he was no expert on Buddhism, he had a rough idea that this was a passage from the Shurangama Sutra.

The Shurangama Sutra was said to radiate the light of wisdom, serving as a Buddhist method to suppress evil spirits and demons.

However, in this temple filled with constant buzzing murmurs, these righteous scriptures had completely failed to suppress the filth. In fact, right now, their presence felt somewhat ironic.

Carving characters into tree bark was already no easy feat, yet every single stroke here had been carved with utmost clarity. They were as bold and clean as the brushstrokes of a master calligrapher. It was obvious just how powerful and steady the carver's hands had been.

Furthermore, this temple had been abandoned for so long that these carvings must have been made a long time ago.

As the trees grew older, logic dictated that these characters should have warped and distorted, no matter how deeply they had been carved.

Why were they still so clear?

Either Yusheng had carved these words into the bark after he arrived.

Or these blood-leaf trees, engraved with the Shurangama Sutra, had stopped growing altogether from that very day!

Just what had those great monks encountered at Longshu Temple back then? Why had they gone to such bizarre lengths?

Determined to find the truth, the Wind Attendant Buddha inspected the trees one by one.

He reached a conclusion: there were exactly twenty-seven large trees in Longshu Temple. A total of ten trees had been carved with righteous scriptures meant to exorcise evil and resist demons, including the Shurangama Sutra, the Diamond Sutra, and the Great Illumination Sutra.

The remaining seventeen trees were completely normal, their bark free of any markings.

That was about it. The Wind Attendant Buddha prepared to leave.

Finally, naturally, he walked over to the Transparent Coffin and tried to haul it away to see if he could end the mission early.

Of course, he knew it was highly unlikely. But failure didn't matter. Even if the Wind Attendant Buddha perished here, it was only a puppet.

Gao Tian pressed his hands against the edges of the coffin, threw his weight into it, and began dragging it toward the temple exit.

Surprisingly, this didn't trigger any Killing Rules or attract any Fierce Ghosts.

He had initially assumed that an empty coffin couldn't possibly be that heavy. But after just a few steps, the Wind Attendant Buddha could barely hold on. The air currents composing its body descended into chaos—the sheer exertion was destabilizing its wind-formed body.

The coffin was actually this heavy?

It had drained half of the Wind Attendant Buddha's strength just to drag it half an inch.

Clearly, dragging the Transparent Coffin out of Longshu Temple was absolutely impossible. Haul it another dozen meters, and the Wind Attendant Buddha would collapse entirely.

Standing outside, Gao Tian saw this and still refused to give up. Thinking it might just be an issue of leverage, he controlled the Wind Attendant Buddha to circle around to the back of the Transparent Coffin. Switching from pulling to pushing, he tried to see if he could move it that way.

Repositioning did indeed make it much easier. Bumping over the uneven stone path, the Transparent Coffin advanced a few dozen meters toward the main gates. However, the Wind Attendant Buddha's stamina eventually reached its limit. With a dull boom, right amid the endless barrage of maddening murmurs, the puppet collapsed into a flurry of chaotic air currents that scattered in all directions.

Suddenly, it felt as though countless low, malicious sneers were echoing all around the empty temple. The blood-red leaves on the trees rustled loudly. A crow flapped its wings, landing on an adjacent branch to let out a mournful screech.

Outside the temple, Gao Tian explained everything the Wind Attendant Buddha had seen to the rest of the group.

The good news was that there were no Fierce Ghosts inside the temple, nor any active Killing Rules.

The bad news was that there was absolutely nothing inside at all. When it came to Jiang Yang and Wang Wenbo's missions, they were like dogs trying to bite into a whole watermelon—they had nowhere to even start.

"It seems someone will have to go inside in person."

Jiang Yang raised his dual pistols and strode toward Longshu Temple. He was the second one to push open the gates, completing a full sweep of the interior.

Eight minutes later, he walked back out and signaled for the three waiting outside to enter. For the time being, the temple was generally normal; he hadn't encountered any danger.

"The mission requires us to survive here for seven days. Could it be that this temple changes as time passes?

"For instance, maybe these invisible, chanting monks only come out at night."

Jiang Yang mused, standing beside one of the trees.

Lan Zhu ran back and forth, touching this and peering at that, not the least bit afraid of triggering some deadly taboo.

From start to finish, Wang Wenbo had been constantly adjusting the electronic devices in his hands.

After following the group into the temple, he caught sight of the Transparent Coffin out of the corner of his eye. Slowly, Wang Wenbo raised his head, seemingly taking an interest in it.