Chapter 215: The City of Evil Luo Sea

Shirley Yang was confident that the "great beehive" ancient city we were in was not the true "City of Evil Luo Sea," but rather the "Bottomless Ghost Cave," and she had me and Pangzi look at the backs of Uncle Ming and his daughter's necks.

I thought the difference between an "ancient city" and a "ghost cave" was too great, but time-frozen "City of Evil Luo Sea" and the bottomless, curse-filled "Ghost Cave" are both beyond ordinary understanding, so I wasn't overly surprised.

I pulled back Uncle Ming's collar and indeed saw a faint circular red mark on the back of his neck, not under the skin but seeming to seep out from within, a faint red rash, very blurry and hard to notice unless one looked closely; I then checked Axiang's neck, and it was exactly the same as Uncle Ming's.

This is the mark of the "Bottomless Ghost Cave" curse; though only initial and not yet obvious, within one or two months it will gradually become clear, forming a mark like a vortex or an eyeball; those afflicted with this vicious curse will, around age forty, gradually lose hemoglobin in their blood, and the blood in their vessels will slowly turn into yellow mud, tormenting them into hungry ghosts in hell.

But Uncle Ming and the others have been with us for over a month recently, so they couldn't have gone alone to the Taklamakan Desert's Black Sand Desert in Xinjiang; could it be that they truly contracted this terrifying curse merely from seeing this "beehive" ancient city?

Uncle Ming was bewildered, not understanding what we were saying, but upon hearing words like "curse" and "ghost cave," he immediately felt an ominous premonition and hurriedly asked me what was going on; I had many things to ask Shirley Yang and had no time to attend to him, so I had Pangzi give him a simple explanation to prepare him mentally; Pangzi gloated with a smug smile, slinging his arm around Uncle Ming's shoulder: "This time we're like grasshoppers tied to the same rope—we can't get away, you can't run off, we can't separate; what was that song I sang when boiling chicken soup for relatives? Oh right, it's 'not one family, but better than family'—guess how it goes? It goes like this..."

While Pangzi embellished his tale of the "Bottomless Ghost Cave" for Uncle Ming, I pulled Shirley Yang aside and asked her how she discovered all this. Why did everyone get fooled by Axiang's eyes?

Shirley Yang led me to the last few human skin murals, where I saw the ritual offering to the "Bone of the Snake God"; it turned out the place where the Snake God buried its bones was exactly the "Ghost Cave" we had seen beneath the Zhegela Lama Holy Mountain in the Black Sand Desert.

These human skin murals did not explicitly state that the "Bone of the Snake God" was in Xinjiang, but combined with the long poem "World-Conquering Pearl King," it's not hard to make that judgment. In the far north of Kunlun Mountain, there is a monk's cave named Gesang Nanyun containing treasure, with five treasure boxes holding respectively the Snake God's bones, the Snake God's two divine traces—though its body rotted to only a skeleton, its brain still retains the power of "Boundary Illusion Transformation," and the giant eye on the snake's head can make its soul immortal; at the end of heaven and time, it will be reborn from its bones like a phoenix, and this giant eye can also serve as the passage to the "Boundary Illusion Transformation" gate, namely the seventh eye described in Buddhist scriptures, the "Boundless Demon Pupil."

If explained by scientific phenomena, this "Boundary Illusion Transformation" is likely what experts at the Kansas Special Phenomena and Case Research Center in the United States have been studying—the "imaginary space"; the mythological "Phoenix Gall" is said to be the Snake God's eye, but no one has seen it; perhaps that "imaginary space" truly contains snake bones, though this cannot be confirmed; maybe the "snake bones" are merely symbolic.

In the final ritual depicted on the human skin murals, the ancestors of the Demon State took the Snake God's eye and mastered its secret, then journeyed far to Gesang Nanyun on Kunlun Mountain, establishing a vast theocratic religion; whenever the state had a ghost mother with a "ghost eye," they would open the passage in her eye, hold elaborate rituals, use captured slaves as sacrifices to the Snake God's bones, and any slave who had seen "Boundary Illusion Transformation" with the naked eye would be branded with an eyeball mark and then penned like livestock until their blood solidified and they died; the Demon State people believed those bloods were absorbed by "Boundary Illusion Transformation," then believers ate their flesh pure, and only those who strictly upheld this faith were considered pure male and female cultivators, who in this life would gain happiness, joy, and rights, and in the next life would obtain immense supernatural power—this fully matches the core teaching of the later "Reincarnation Sect."

Numerous countries near the Demon State saw countless commoners reduced to sacrifices for the Snake God's bones, but the Demon State's priests mostly mastered this dark art, especially skilled at driving beasts and insects; nations struggled to oppose them, knowing that King Gesar and Master Padmasambhava joined forces, sending warriors to infiltrate the demon realm and seize the reincarnating pearl "Phoenix Gall" by stratagem; shortly after, the Demon State's capital, the "City of Evil Luo Sea," was mysteriously destroyed, reversing the balance of power instantly; the allied forces (called the "Heroic Army" in the long poem) swept away the demons' lair, and the deeds of the Pearl King of Enemy-Conquering have been continuously sung by poets on the snow-covered plateau to this day.

The "Phoenix Gall" likely flowed into the Central Plains during that turbulent era; if King Wen of Zhou divined it as an "immortal" object, it would make perfect sense; thus, the origin and fate of the "Phoenix Gall" are basically clear—but what is this "City of Evil Luo Sea" we are in? Where did its people go? Why is time frozen in the city at a single moment?

Shirley Yang said: "Where the residents of the City of Evil Luo Sea went, only they themselves know. Old Hu, I remember you mentioned in the Nine-Story Demon Tower that the glacial crystal corpse seemed to be missing something; the Reincarnation Sect endured hardship, dug open the Demon Tower and the Gate of Disaster—these were all for what? But at the time, the situation was chaotic, we didn't have time to think further; now recalling, that glacial crystal corpse had no eyes and no brain."

At the time I only vaguely remembered the glacial crystal corpse's flesh and skin were transparent, only the five viscera and six bowels were dark red, like bright agate; indeed, it seemed missing a part; the Reincarnation Sect must have taken her head and brain, including the demon pupil, and placed them behind the Gate of Disaster? The Reincarnation Sect couldn't find where the Snake God's bones were buried, but they could set up a passage, or rather, a mirror.

Shirley Yang said, only after seeing the final ritual in the human skin murals did I understand: the Reincarnation Sect wished to continue their ancestors' sacrifices, so they opened a city long vanished from the world—this city is the ghost mother's memory from life; for example, in that slaughterhouse, the just-beheaded yak, the cooked beef, the blood handprint on the door not yet dry—these may not have happened at the same time; these are fragments left deep in the ghost mother's eyes, constructed as a memory city through the demon pupil in the "imaginary space."

Iron Staff Lama admitted Axiang has eyes as sensitive as a wild animal's, which made us develop a blind reliance and trust in her; she can see the real and the illusory, but her eyes are only slightly more sensitive than a human's, fundamentally unable to distinguish this city built through impression in the "imaginary space"; though merely a mirror city created by the ghost eye using the energy of the ghost cave, it is objectively real, just like the bottomless "Ghost Cave" in the Black Sand Desert—whoever sees it becomes a sacrifice to the Snake God's bones, can leave at any time, but at the moment of death, you still belong here, cannot escape to the ends of the earth, cannot shake it off; the ghost cave is an endless nightmare.

At this moment, Uncle Ming, after being thoroughly lectured by Pangzi, was dazed and came over to confirm with me; I simply conveyed Shirley Yang's words to him; Uncle Ming wept and said, "Old Brother Hu, I never thought it would come to this—I toiled like a dog all my life, never imagining I'd die like a dog, becoming a sacrifice to some Snake God's bones—ah, I'll let it go, but poor Axiang, how young is she? I owe her parents; even in death I cannot close my eyes."

I said to everyone: "Although Uncle Ming and Axiang were drawn in, and this city is not the true City of Evil Luo Sea, things have two sides; if we hadn't come here, we couldn't have seen these human skin murals recording the true rites of the Demon State—this shows our fate is not yet sealed; so then, then..."

Shirley Yang said, then as long as we find the true ruins of the City of Evil Luo Sea, hold the opposite ritual at its deepest altar, and use the "Phoenix Gall" to close the "Boundary Illusion Transformation," this curse will end; I don't believe in curses in the world—I think this ghost cave curse is likely a virus spread through the eyes, existing only in that "imaginary space"; severing their connection is the most direct and effective way.

Upon hearing there was still hope, Uncle Ming immediately perked up and hurriedly asked how to find the true ruins of the City of Evil Luo Sea—this is the key; whether we survive depends entirely on this.

At this moment I also realized: a breakthrough in one link brings life to the whole; I immediately called everyone to hurry upward, return to the green rock beside the city; thus everyone grabbed their things and hastily retreated along the original path; on either side of the green rock, one side is the "City of Evil Luo Sea" shrouded in twilight—but that is the ghost mother's memory; the other side is the clear, transparent "Wind-Eroded Lake," with its vast school of white-bearded fish and the dense wind-eroded caves at the lake bottom, all clearly visible.

Legend says the City of Evil Luo Sea lies behind the Gate of Disaster; its true form should exactly match the remembered ancient city, entirely built from natural giant wind-eroded rocks; at this moment, everyone gazing at the lake bottom's beehive-like cavities understood: since the Demon State worshipped abysses and caves, they dug the underground chambers too deep, so the true City of Evil Luo Sea has already sunk underground, submerged by water; after thousands of years of sea changes, it has become this mirror-like "Wind-Eroded Lake"; as for the legend that the city's residents turned into fish, that is nonsense—more likely they died in the ground collapse disaster and fed the fish; the legend says the dragon fish love to play with pearls, so those fierce black-and-white striped dragon fish constantly attack the fish in the lake, likely trying to seize the pearls at the lake bottom; perhaps the Reincarnation Sect placed the ghost mother's eye there.

Of course, before seeing it, these matters were still speculative; but one thing is certain: to find a deeper altar, one must venture down from the largest wind hole in the middle.