Chapter 29 Traveling Notes

It’s very difficult to describe the Guan Luo Yin process, because it’s almost like you’re in a half-dreaming, half-waking state the whole time. Afterwards, I suspected that the master put something in the food he gave me that affected my willpower.

Agui kept talking about his eldest daughter’s marriage to a Vietnamese, but I couldn’t really understand him. It seemed that his eldest daughter also had a lot of troubles and asked a lot of questions.

Sure enough, it seemed like everyone had their own troubles they were dealing with.

After that, the master kept asking me what I saw. He wanted to know whether I saw lights or a god, or if I smelled something special.

As I said before, anything strange that happened was merely a result of medicine. Although it was an opportunity to enter the underworld, not all opportunities were set in stone. Some people would hear a rooster crowing while others would see a ball of fire. Once this happened, you had to tell the master immediately so that he could tell you what to do next.

I didn’t see anything, but I kept thinking that this seemed like a situation where after taking some kind of drug, the master had a way of determining whether you were hallucinating or not. There were many psychiatric drugs where, after the patient started hallucinating, they could be influenced by the language of the people around them. Your hallucination would constantly be shaped by external information because you had self-consciously given up all areas of the brain where your feelings formed.

The people around me soon began to say that they saw things, so the master pointed them in the right direction one by one. Then I heard Fatty shouting, “I see it, I see it.”

“What is it?” I asked, but Fatty didn’t answer me. It was almost like he couldn’t hear me. He only said, “It’s a pond, master. It’s a pond full of mosquitoes.”

“Go on,” the master said to him.

He seemed to be able to hear the master’s words and said, “There are many people floating in it.”

“Don’t worry about them. They will touch you, but you’ve accumulated a lot of merits in your previous life. They’re all here to show you the way. If you thank them, the karma between you will be cleared.”

After that, Fatty kept repeating “thank you, thank you”. I still couldn’t see or hear anything but Fatty continued speaking, “They’re showing the way.”

“Swim over,” the master urged him.

Fatty seemed to have to swim for a while, so the master walked over to the others and talked to them for a bit. Some people were more familiar with the process and had already entered the Yuanchen Palaces. The master would recite a sentence, and that person would repeat it. This seemed to be a way for him to teach them how to communicate with the people below.

Soon, some people began to cry while one guy in particular let out strange howls. The master went over to pat him awake and then gave him a refund, saying that his visa had expired, and the people below wouldn’t let him return. He would have to go back and worship the strange Buddha statue again and then come back at a later time.

So, I thought to myself, this Buddha statue is actually a visa officer.

At this time, I suddenly felt someone touch my hand.

“Master, is that you?” I asked while secretly wondering if he was trying to give me special treatment.

The hand grabbed me and started walking in a certain direction in the dark. I hesitated before realizing that the sensation was actually quite strange.

Then I noticed that I couldn’t hear any of the voices that had been surrounding me just now. “Master,” I shouted, “It’s starting. Someone took my hand.”

But there was no response; I couldn’t hear anything at all.

That hand continued to pull me forward.

What happened next was very similar to a dream. As I walked, I found myself in a corridor. It was an ancient corridor with courtyards on both sides, and it was raining heavily.

I had never been to a place like this before, and I had no idea where it was.

The courtyards were full of strange trees with beautiful flowers blooming on them. The rain hit these flowers, sending water droplets flying everywhere. The flowers were very colorful, so when the rain fell, the water was instantly dyed with a touch of color. Then it quickly turned back into ordinary water droplets.

I was still being led along, but I couldn’t see who the person in front of me was so I continued to let myself be dragged around the corridor.

I called for the master again, but there was still no reply. That was when I began to realize that something wasn’t quite right here.

I started struggling, trying to get rid of this hand, but I found that I couldn’t break free at all.

By this point, I could already see the end of the corridor up ahead. There was a door there, and the doorframe was a tunkou—it looked just like a huge, gaping mouth.⁽¹⁾

The whole doorframe looked like it was covered in fangs. The door was open, and I could see that there was a shrine inside with a large Buddha statue. It was about as tall as a person and very old. At first glance, it looked like it had been dug out of the earth. The area behind the door was very dark and scary.

There were two talismans stuck to the Buddha’s eyes, which was very strange. This definitely wasn’t part of the Buddhist system.

I felt as if something was going to happen and kept chanting all kinds of mantras in my heart, but it was useless.

At this time, I suddenly heard someone behind me shout, “Little Master Three!”

I turned around and saw that it was Pan Zi! He was wearing a strange costume similar to the ones worn in local folk dramas. He ran after me at a very fast speed while shouting, “You evil spirit! Let go!”

The sound was so loud that my consciousness began to blur, and I saw Pan Zi’s whole body glowing with a golden light. As he rushed right towards me, all the surrounding trees turned into hands and tried to grab me. But when Pan Zi rushed over, those hands turned into smoke and disappeared. Then he grabbed my shoulder and shouted, “Get away!”

<Chapter 28><Table of Contents><Chapter 30>

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TN Notes:

(1) A tunkou is a monster in Chinese legends that has one leg and one foot. At the knee of this leg is its face, with a wide-open mouth, canine teeth protruding, wide-open eyes, and a fierce look on its face. It usually lives in water, and will lure people close to it into the water. Got that from here. This page said it’s able to swallow all disasters and demons, bless the weather, avoid evil, and relieve disasters. The term also refers to a collar piece often found on Chinese blades. Here are different representations. So the door probably just looks like a big mouth with sharp teeth or something.

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Poor Pan Zi can’t even catch a break in the afterlife. Always having to save Wu Xie’s butt. smh

Pic added 12/27/2022 (fan translation courtesy of me).