Chapter 43 Living Inanimate Object

I didn’t understand what Fatty meant, so he continued explaining, “Look at the simple strokes of this pattern. The underground palace has eyes. In fact, it has a lot of eyes.” He pointed his flashlight at the pattern, and when I looked carefully, I saw that it was true. There were so many eyes painted on the lotus-shaped underground palace that it almost looked like some kind of creature.

When I saw that ceramic figurine before, I was surprised that an inanimate object could move like that. But now, seeing how this underground palace was painted, it almost seemed like it was a living thing, too.

“Have you ever encountered a situation where common sense dictates that something is an inanimate object, but it doesn’t actually seem to be inanimate?” Fatty asked me. “In ancient times, there were many legends where objects had been imbued with some kind of feng shui qi and turned into spirits, right?”

I touched my chin, “Is the underground palace a spirit?”

If that’s the case, then why the hell can the underground palace turn into a spirit? If I fill in all of these holes and restore the underground palace, will this spirit appear in my tent when I’m dreaming and say, “After a hundred years of cultivating, I’m finally fated to meet you. I have come to repay the favor.”

In the past, people usually met spirits like snail girls⁽¹⁾, but the spirit I ended up meeting turned out to be an underground palace. And compared to the size of the underground palace, I was the “snail” in this scenario. I couldn’t even ask a Taoist priest to reveal her original form because the Taoist priest and I would both be crushed to death.

“Why are you smirking?” Fatty thought I was acting strange because I was amused all by myself. “You can even smile like a fool thinking about the idea of an underground palace turning into a spirit. As expected of an architect, what you find sexy differs from us mortals.”

I quickly apologized and began thinking about the problem seriously.

An inanimate object seemed to be alive.

I soon realized that I had actually heard of something like this before. And not only had I heard of it, but it was also quite important.

“Scorpion tomb.”

When Poker-Face was “released into the wild” as a child, he went into a tomb that resembled a scorpion. A man named Ma Pingchuan uncovered and tried to excavate the tomb sometime later, but it wasn’t found in the end. All that remained was a two-foot-long iron scorpion.

The tomb ate the coffins of the nearby tombs and then suddenly disappeared. Although it was only a legend, it sounded like a living creature.

Fatty slapped his thigh. We had heard the story so long ago that we had both forgotten it, but once I told him, he quickly remembered it. He immediately looked back and said, “Let’s ask Little Brother to tell us what happened at that time. How could we forget about this?”

Indeed, too many things had happened before and there were so many mysteries—especially dispensable ones—that we had all forgotten.

But when I looked back, Poker-Face was gone. I looked at the gap in the wall but couldn’t see what was inside, so I figured he had already entered the gap to look around.

I didn’t understand what it felt like to contract your bones. It had to be very uncomfortable, but I knew that he would come out soon and help us find a way in. He wouldn’t let us wander around this place on our own and would definitely come out to save us when we were in trouble.

I turned my head and continued to look at the many-eyed lotus palace, but it was completely impossible for me to determine whether Fatty’s inference was correct or not. I just couldn’t understand what these lines meant. He was saying that this underground palace was a living thing that was using Qimen Dunjia to attract people to this valley.

It was a bit nonsensical but I still found it a little scary.

“Lotus and scorpion…” I scratched my head. Lotus flowers and scorpions had very concrete meanings in Tibet, so there were some ideas floating around in my head that were itching to be connected (I may have also just been infested with Ping Lian’s fleas).  

Scorpions had two meanings in Tibet. The first was to exorcise evil spirits. Scorpions, especially iron scorpions, were Guru Rinpoche’s⁽²⁾ magical weapon. The angry Guru Rinpoche would use iron scorpions to exorcise demons and ghosts. The second meaning was “Lu”, which meant dragon. Dragons had very strong protective instincts, and since scorpions were a type of dragon, they were also used to represent this.

Lotus flowers also had two meanings in Tibet. One was qualification, which was the qualification to start cultivating. The other was that of the end, which was the end point of cultivation when you achieved enlightenment.

Tibetan Buddhism prevailed in Mongolia at that time, but I didn’t know whether this was far-fetched thinking on my part or if it was really related to these two underground palaces.

Poker-Face’s journey at that time had started from the scorpion tomb and now we were facing a lotus tomb. It was giving me an uneasy feeling.

I didn’t know what his specific situation had been like in the scorpion tomb, but now he was facing an underground palace that represented an end point—I didn’t like the associations it brought to mind.

There was more information behind the pile of collapsed mud so Fatty tried to pull some of it away, but I quickly stopped him. I had a hunch about the mechanics of this structure and knew that the mud here shouldn’t be moved. Poker-Face was walking through the gap, so if the surrounding mud moved and ended up blocking it, he may be trapped to death.

So, the two of us had nothing to do. I listened to Xiao Hua’s broadcast again on the satellite phone, but there weren’t any changes. In fact, the hidden anxiety in my heart had reached a critical level. Although I hadn’t said anything along the way, I knew in my heart that it had taken us too long to get here because we had encountered too many obstacles. Now I could only pray that Black Glasses and Xiao Hua were still acting normally.

Fatty and I didn’t dare leave either since crevice exploration was more dangerous than cave diving. I asked him to keep watch while I went to the pool outside to clean myself up.

The water was so cold that I was shivering as I hurriedly washed up, but at this time, I suddenly looked up and saw Ping Lian appear above me at the mouth of the hole.

His unhinged jaw was still hanging down, which looked very painful, but he seemed to be all right. He rushed at me and shook his jaw, almost like he was asking me for help.

His eyes were normal, and when I looked at his belly, I found that there was nothing there. I petted him and said to myself, you’re lucky. I took a sip of water, grabbed his jaw, and fiercely sprayed the water on his face. As soon as he shrank back, I pressed his jaw back in place.

He shook fiercely and whimpered a few times, but when he found that he was healed, he immediately ran away and began drinking some water.

I sat by the water’s edge and pointed my flashlight at him, catching a glimpse of his reflection in the water. Since it was facing me, I could see in the ripples that what was actually reflected back was a human face. It wasn’t drinking the water at all and was just looking at me coldly.

<Chapter 42><Table of Contents><Chapter 44>

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TN Notes:

(1) There’s a legend about a snail girl here. In China today, people used the words “snail girl” for people who take care of cooking and other household chores.

(2) Legendary Indian Buddhist mystic who introduced Tantric Buddhism to Tibet and who is credited with establishing the first Buddhist monastery there. Info here and pic here.

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Looks like the “Heavenly Palace” drama is gonna drop soon (about time). Considering I saw Xiuxiu and Xiao Hua on the character list, it’s probably going to wildly diverge from the books like all the others the author had a hand in *sigh* but hey, at least we get the same Fatty from Season 2 (my personal fave).