Chapter 125: The Midnight Guest Outside the Temple

As night fell and sunlight bled from the square, the movements of the starving ghosts visibly slowed. They turned a blind eye to the group entering the giant Buddha statue in the main hall.

Seeing this, Gao Tian knew he had won the gamble again.

Of course, even if he had bet wrong, it would only cost them another day. He could simply continue testing for the only way out in the next cycle.

Inside the giant Buddha's belly, a space originally capable of holding over a dozen people, there was more than enough room for the four of them to complete the special ritual.

Following their prior rehearsals and the corrections from the scriptures carved onto the Buddha, Jiang Yang and the others moved at top speed. They turned, pressed their backs against the interior wall, silently chanted the nine words, and completed the entire process.

Scarcely a moment had passed between the sky turning dark and the completion of their ritual. Outside the temple, the abnormally terrifying bear roars echoed across the mountains and plains once again. Waves of sound washed over Longshu Temple like a tsunami, sweeping toward the distant reaches of the Inner World.

Would it succeed this time?

Hiding inside the giant Buddha and following the ancient method—would it really allow them to bypass the eternal nine o'clock loop and usher in ten o'clock at Longshu Temple?

Gao Tian didn't know. Pressing his palms against the freezing ground, there was nothing left to do but leave it to fate.

He was already considering the worst-case scenario. If they still couldn't survive past nine o'clock tonight, where exactly in Longshu Temple should they search for a breakthrough in the next cycle?

"Hey—"

"You guys—are you still alive?"

An unknown amount of time had passed before Wang Wenbo's probing voice broke the darkness around them.

Gao Tian turned his head. The interior of the Buddha was pitch-black, but the faint light reflecting in the pupils of Jiang Yang, Lan Zhu, and Wang Wenbo proved they were still alive and completely unharmed.

At some point, the world-engulfing bear roars outside—which Gao Tian had thought would never end—had quietly ceased.

The starry sky of the Inner World was dead silent, without a single sound. It looked no different from the night sky of the real world.

It was over.

Everything was over.

The true scriptures inside the giant Buddha had worked. Relying on the legacy of some enlightened high monk, they had actually broken past nine o'clock.

No, everything had only just begun.

Next came the returning master mentioned by the starving ghosts—the main event that would determine whether they could truly break this deadlock.

Gao Tian slowly stood up inside the Buddha's belly. When he looked out at the square again, he found that the starving ghost monks—previously scattered in twos and threes across Longshu Temple—had vanished.

It made sense.

They had been trapped before nine o'clock for decades, perhaps even centuries. They had never reached the timeline after nine o'clock.

Once the time reset point arrived, they naturally ceased to exist.

This served as double proof that Gao Tian's Apartment squad had truly broken through Longshu Temple's time loop and entered the normal timeline.

"Move quickly. We need to prepare for the return of the temple's grandmaster."

Jiang Yang's urgent words snapped them to attention. He directed everyone to leave the Buddha's belly and find optimal hiding spots in the main hall.

The giant Buddha had fulfilled its purpose. Because its belly faced the temple entrance, an outsider pushing open the double doors and looking up at the main hall would easily spot their silhouettes if they remained hidden inside.

Right now, no one knew if the grandmaster was even human. They had to prepare for the worst and guard against him as if he were a Fierce Ghost.

Beneath the Bodhisattva statue, behind the Vajra statue, against the giant Buddha's back, and in the shadows of the main hall's side pillars.

The four of them each found the best possible hiding and observation spots. These positions ensured they would get the first look at the "person" entering through the main gates without being spotted in return.

At the same time, Gao Tian activated the Wind Attendant Buddha. He had the Wind Puppet walk slowly out of the main hall and into the temple square, where it sat quietly behind the Diamond Tree to wait for the ten o'clock visitor.

This way, if the worst happened and the returning grandmaster proved to be a Fierce Ghost, the Wind Attendant Buddha could bait out its Killing Rule the moment it entered the temple. The four in the main hall would see everything clearly and figure out a countermeasure.

Of course, "ten o'clock" was just an example Jiang Yang had used during his second-loop deductions. The grandmaster wouldn't necessarily enter the temple exactly on the hour, but it shouldn't be far off.

After making these foolproof preparations, Gao Tian stood motionless in the shadow of a side pillar, letting his figure blend completely into the darkness.

It was another round of waiting.

In truth, this wait was even more agonizing than sitting through the bear roars inside the Buddha's belly.

The bear roars offered only two outcomes: death or survival. But with the grandmaster's return, whether he was man or ghost, they would have to adapt and tread carefully.

Hiding across from him, Wang Wenbo began making hand signals. Though none of them dared to speak, Gao Tian could roughly grasp his meaning:

An hour and a half has passed. Why is the doorway still empty? Why hasn't anything come in?

Gao Tian ignored him and kept waiting.

"The departed master will return"—this was only a hypothesis Jiang Yang had deduced based on what the starving ghosts had said.

The Green Text Mission had never specified how long they needed to wait at Longshu Temple to trigger the next phase.

Gradually, Gao Tian heard Jiang Yang's breathing grow heavier from his diagonal hiding spot.

This meant some kind of change had occurred at the temple's main gate. He immediately shifted his gaze and looked in that direction.

Creak. The sound of the door being pushed open was exceptionally piercing in the deathly silent Longshu Temple, where previously only the wind could be heard.

A slender, pitch-black silhouette pushed open one half of the door. Keeping one hand raised in a Buddhist salute, he walked step by step down the central path of the temple square, dragging a tattered monk's robe through the moonlight.

His pace was terribly slow and composed. Returning to Longshu Temple was like returning home.

He was here. The starving ghosts hadn't lied. Around eleven o'clock, a "person" had actually pushed open the gates and entered Longshu Temple!

Gao Tian's heart began to pound uncontrollably, like a heavy hammer striking a massive bell.

No matter who had arrived, the mystery of Longshu Temple would be settled tonight.

From this distance, the group hiding in the main hall couldn't make out the arrival's exact appearance, or whether he was human or ghost.

But from his monk's robe, his hand gestures, and his bald head, they could tell it was a monk.

'No—'

As the silhouette stepped deeper into the moonlight, Gao Tian gleaned more details and reconsidered.

This person's pace was incredibly steady, and his walking speed wasn't exactly slow.

It shouldn't be a ghost. Most ghosts had extremely deformed bodily proportions, staggering and swaying like grotesque aberrations when they walked.

It wasn't even an old man. An elderly person's steps would be somewhat shaky, never this steady.

The one returning wasn't the temple's grandmaster—it was a young monk.

Catching sight of Jiang Yang anxiously gesturing at him from across the hall, Gao Tian suddenly realized he had made a rookie mistake. He had been so engrossed in observing the figure that he had forgotten the Wind Attendant Buddha he set up outside.

Fortunately, it wasn't too late to command the Wind Attendant Buddha now.

With a single thought from Gao Tian, the Wind Attendant Buddha slowly stepped out from behind the Diamond Tree, blocking the main path between the newcomer and the main hall.

The figure clearly hadn't expected a "person" to be hiding behind the Diamond Tree and visibly paused. Both sides simultaneously raised their heads, looking at each other by the faint moonlight overhead.

Hidden behind the main hall's pillar, Gao Tian used the Wind Attendant Buddha's shared vision and clearly saw the young monk who had entered Longshu Temple.

He wasn't the grandmaster of Longshu Temple.

But his arrival was both expected and perfectly reasonable.

It was an incredibly familiar face and build.

It was Yusheng.

However, while Yusheng's face still bore a look of deep compassion for the world, one of his eyes was now blind. Wriggling black flesh had coagulated into connective tissue over the ruined socket, squirming as if it were alive.

It looked like a sign of impending corpse mutation.

At this moment, Yusheng looked both kindly and ferocious.

Both of them fell silent. Surprisingly, Yusheng was the first to speak.

He still carried that calm tone and voice. "Is this your fourth Green Text Mission, Gao Tian?

"I am glad that you've survived up to now since we parted ways at the Living Apartment. It seems you managed to pull through without any real harm and dodged the star of death I saw hanging over your head.

"After I left, when you guys went upstairs to explore... Zhao Zhenjia died, didn't he?"

Gao Tian froze for a moment.

He immediately understood. The Wind Attendant Buddha was originally Zhao Zhenjia's Supernatural Item. Seeing it in Gao Tian's possession and bearing Gao Tian's appearance, Yusheng subconsciously assumed that Zhao Zhenjia had died on the fourth floor of the Apartment and bequeathed all his items to him.

Compared to what was happening at Longshu Temple tonight, this was just an inconsequential misunderstanding.

Whether it was Longshu Temple or Yusheng himself, there were simply too many mysteries surrounding them.

He had to provide answers tonight. If Yusheng kept speaking in riddles like he had at the Apartment, he might truly breach Gao Tian's tolerance and catch a vicious punch to the face. "Zhao Zhenjia isn't dead. He voluntarily made a deal with me and gave me the Wind Attendant Buddha.

"Yusheng, it really wasn't easy to meet you here.

"Fortunately, I was the one executing this mission today. If it had been anyone else from the Apartment, this entire squad would already be ghosts, dying without even knowing what happened to them.

"Considering the massive price we've paid, you can at least tell us a little bit. What exactly do you know, and how is your past connected to Longshu Temple?"

At the same time, Gao Tian remained highly vigilant.

Even after seeing that the arrival was Yusheng, he still faced him solely through the Wind Attendant Buddha. The four squad members in the main hall didn't relax their guard or reveal themselves; instead, they kept their nerves taut, prepared for battle.

Why would Yusheng appear at this time? And what was going on with the flesh on his face?

Did his seventh Green Text Mission count as a success, or a failure?

Faced with the Wind Attendant Buddha's questioning, Yusheng merely smiled.

He slowly sat down on the ground. "Naturally.

"I cannot tell you everything right now.

"But I can at least tell you alone a part of the truth regarding Longshu Temple and myself."