Chapter 122: Inside the Buddha's Belly

A bloody hand reached out from the Mirror in Gao Tian's embrace, pulling him directly into the Mirror World.

As expected, the Mirror Ghost's abilities were heavily restricted inside Longshu Temple.

First, the bloody hand reached out at an agonizingly slow pace, as though mired in thick jelly.

Normally, entering a Mirror took less than two seconds. Inside Longshu Temple, it took around five.

When running for his life, that delay could prove fatal.

Inside the Mirror World, the long white corridor that usually stretched out like a galaxy was severed at both ends.

Any attempt to step forward only led into endless, empty darkness. There were no more Mirrors ahead.

In short, his free range of movement within the Mirror World was now about the size of a single room.

The only Mirrors left standing along the path were the ones he had brought into Longshu Temple himself.

The connections to the Mirrors at other stops in the Inner World had been completely severed.

In summary, the Mirror Ghost was still usable, but Longshu Temple had drastically compressed its speed and range.

His original plan was to use the Mirror World to temporarily escape before the bear roared.

But the path forward was blocked. If he hid in the Mirror World too close to the Longshu Temple Mirrors, he would still hear the nine o'clock roar.

Back in the outside world, Jiang Yang followed Wang Wenbo's instructions, aiming at the top, bottom, left, and right of the giant Buddha's belly. He pulled the trigger, blasting several bullet holes into the statue.

Then Wang Wenbo dragged over two of the thickest, hardest fallen leaves from beneath the blood-leaf trees, handing one to Jiang Yang. Wielding them like battering rams, the two men hurled themselves at the Buddha's belly. They were determined to smash the outer shell completely and force out the starving ghosts hiding inside.

One strike, two strikes. Bang, bang.

With every impact, the giant, hollow Buddha shuddered. The weak points on its belly soon gave way, leaving it riddled with dark holes.

Gao Tian climbed out of the Mirror just in time to see this. For no logical reason, a sudden shiver ran down his spine, and a deep sense of foreboding settled in his chest.

He opened his mouth to tell them to stop, but he couldn't give a reason. It was just a pure, unsettling gut feeling.

After all, in the previous loop, Gao Tian had never tried to break open the Buddha's interior. He had no idea what the consequences would be.

In a matter of moments, the outer shell covering the Buddha's belly was thoroughly dismantled, exposing the hollow, pitch-black space within.

Logically, with over a dozen starving ghost monks hiding inside, tearing away half the belly should have forced them out into the open.

Yet the exposed interior was completely empty. Not a single figure was visible.

Jiang Yang slowed his strikes, clearly sensing that something was wrong.

The next moment, Wang Wenbo heaved his weight forward, completely shattering a massive wooden panel on the lower half of the statue.

Instantly, the Buddha's entire belly was hollowed out. Dust billowed, exposing the space to the group—the very space that had hidden countless starving ghosts, the ones that had devoured half of Lan Zhu's body in the previous loop.

Sunlight poured in, illuminating the statue's interior to reveal a complete mural. It depicted a Buddhist hell of starvation. Countless emaciated monks were painted onto the stone, drooling as they tore into one another. Some had half their thighs gnawed down to the bone, yet remained utterly oblivious, wholly focused on biting into their companions' arms.

No wonder—

In the first loop, no matter what Gao Tian and Jiang Yang tried from the outside, they couldn't detect anyone hiding behind those dark holes.

The starving ghost monks inside had actually turned into a mural, merging into the giant Buddha itself.

Stripped of the outer shell's protection, the figures in the mural clearly began to writhe, as if trying to step down from the painting.

Jiang Yang grabbed Lan Zhu's arm and signaled to Wang Wenbo and Gao Tian outside the temple. All four quickly retreated toward the central plaza at the rear.

They needed to put as much distance as possible between themselves and this main hall, as well as the upper main hall.

Soon, the first starving ghost monk slowly took physical form and tumbled from the stone wall.

Its legs were as thin as matchsticks, too weak to support its body. It could only crawl along the ground, wriggling like a maggot, though the teeth in its mouth remained fiercely sharp.

Bathed in sunlight, a second and third starving ghost monk revealed their true forms, stepping off the painting one by one and dropping into the Buddha's belly.

More and more monks fell from the mural. Every single one was emaciated, their chests practically touching their spines. As their numbers swelled to forty or fifty, the space inside the Buddha's belly became alarmingly cramped. They formed a writhing mountain of bone, countless arms thrusting out of the Buddha, clawing at the empty air.

"Why—who woke us up?"

"Master hasn't returned yet. Why can we see the outside walkway?"

"Who dismantled the Great Buddha we were hiding in?"

"Master, Master, where are you?"

The voices boiled over, countless questions intertwining into meaningless noise.

Though Jiang Yang sensed that things were going wrong, he stuck to the plan. He stepped up to the base of the main hall's stairs and tried to communicate. "What does your master look like? What is his Dharma name?

"Which direction did he go when he left? Did he say anything before he departed?

"And does your temple have a young monk named Yusheng?"

Due to the sheer crush of bodies, some starving ghosts were forced out of the Buddha's belly, sliding down. Behind them, even more ghost monks were being expelled from the space.

The starving ghosts babbled over each other, completely ignoring Jiang Yang.

Honestly, seeing that dark, massive horde made Jiang Yang regret this.

From the outside, it looked like the Buddha's belly could hold twenty monks at most. Earlier, only seven or eight faces had peered out from the dark holes. Who could have known there would be so many? There were already over fifty of them, and the number was still growing.

Smashing the Buddha's belly was like kicking over a ghost nest.

He watched the starving ghosts' limbs tangle together.

Jiang Yang slowly backed away, trying to distance himself from the main hall and the horde above.

"So hungry... why am I so hungry?"

"Haven't we only waited here for a day? Why does it feel like I haven't eaten in a thousand years?"

"I'm going crazy from hunger! I don't care anymore—I'll break the meat taboo, I'll even eat a living person raw!"

"Master, why haven't you returned yet—"

Squeezing and tumbling over one another, many of the starving ghosts rolled down from the main hall and crashed onto the bluestone paving at the bottom of the stairs.

By smashing the front of the Buddha, the restriction their master had placed on them by drawing a circle on the ground as a prison was completely gone. They were now free to roam Longshu Temple.

Watching the first few starving ghosts stumble forward and charge at them, Gao Tian—who had already sensed things going wrong—was the first to react. "Run! Get out of here!"

At some point, the double doors at the temple's entrance had slammed shut, barred from the outside. No matter how hard Wang Wenbo hammered and shoved against them, they refused to budge.

The entirety of Longshu Temple had become one giant prison.

Looking back toward the main hall, they saw the dark horde of starving ghosts hurtling toward them in strange postures. It felt like the entire courtyard overflowed with ragged, skin-and-bone "people." They were completely doomed; there was nowhere to hide in Longshu Temple.

Lan Zhu clawed at the temple walls, trying to scale them, but even with her agility, she couldn't find a single foothold.

It seemed their four-person team was going to wipe out again in this loop just for cracking open the Buddha's belly.

Gao Tian gripped his Mirror, preparing to escape into it. But if he was the sole survivor in this loop and his teammates all died, he still wouldn't be able to escape when the nine o'clock bear roar came.

Right at that moment, a sudden spark of inspiration hit him. A strange thought flashed through his mind, and he shouted, "The trees!

"Some of the trees have the Demon-Suppressing True Scripture carved into them!"

During their exploration in the first loop, Gao Tian remembered clearly that on the blood-leaf trees lining the plaza, some had bark densely carved with Buddhist scriptures, while others were bare, with nothing on them.

At the time, he had assumed martial monks carved them out of boredom while practicing.

Thinking about it now, those trees carved with the Diamond Sutra might have a special purpose—like restraining the starving ghosts from inside the main hall's Buddha.

Gao Tian knew this connection might be a bit of a stretch. But they were one step away from a total wipeout right now; trying it wouldn't make the situation any worse.

In that life-or-death moment, Gao Tian drew power from somewhere, hugged a large tree, and scrambled right up it.

Seconds later, countless starving ghosts swarmed the base of the tree. The dense, dark sea of monks bared their ghastly white teeth, drooling up at Gao Tian. For whatever reason, they were terrified of the bark carved with the Diamond Sutra. Not a single one dared to touch it.

It worked!

The trees carved with Buddhist scriptures could restrain these starving ghosts.

Gao Tian clung desperately to the uppermost trunk, knowing he had guessed right.

Seeing this, Jiang Yang and Lan Zhu reacted immediately. Choosing the nearest scripture-carved trees at top speed, they scrambled up the trunks, looking thoroughly miserable as they barely managed to save their lives.

In the nick of time, Lan Zhu even had the sheer audacity to loop a Dog Leash directly around a starving ghost, dragging it up the tree to hang there and study for fun.

In the blink of an eye, the entire plaza was overrun by the red-eyed starving ghosts that had crawled from the Buddha. Gao Tian turned his head and saw Wang Wenbo hugging a tree trunk, his face deathly pale. "I don't know how to climb trees!"

Behind him, several starving ghosts were already closing in. Clearly treating him as a delicacy, they were just seconds away from eating him alive.

Fortunately, Gao Tian was only one tree away. He whipped out a small Mirror and tossed it over. "Catch it!"

The Mirror arced through the air. Wang Wenbo spun around and caught it in time.

A bloody hand instantly stretched out from the glass, trying to pull him inside. At the same time, the starving ghosts sank their teeth into Wang Wenbo's arms and back, leaving red blood flowing down white teeth.

At normal speed, the Mirror Ghost would have long since dragged Wang Wenbo inside. But this was Longshu Temple, where many Supernatural Items were suppressed. The bloody hand pulled at him at a sluggish pace, moving like a slow-motion replay.