Chapter 225

"Phoenix Gallbladder" was casually tossed by Uncle Ming into the Yun Lake beneath the Tian Liang, and I, furious, dragged him down from the stone statue, raised my fist to strike, but before I could move, Shirley Yang shouted: "No, we're out of time." After saying that, she looked up at the crystal veins above, and Ah Xiang sitting on the ground, Pangzi who had just hidden behind another stone statue to avoid gunfire, including Uncle Ming whom I had pressed beneath me, all lifted their heads and looked upward.

This was due to a change in the cave's light; the fluorescence originally emitted from the ore above suddenly dimmed, and the surroundings darkened accordingly. Though not pitch black, the nearby figures became hazy and indistinct. Seeing their actions, I knew something must have happened above, so I restrained Uncle Ming and looked up. From the ice-wall-like crystal veins, countless spreading crystals extended, growing downward at twisted angles, clustered like wind-carved ice spikes. Among these strange crystals, a massive black shadow drifted and writhed in the depths, emitting muffled thunder-like sounds that echoed repeatedly against the crystal walls, releasing an ominous noise. The appearance of this black shadow diluted most of the faint fluorescence, and the cave environment grew increasingly dark.

The scene resembled dark clouds pressing down on a city, making this already narrow altar space feel even more oppressive. Hearing the rumbling from above, that inexplicable panic in the white tunnel resurfaced in my heart, and I couldn't help but mutter: "What the hell is that thing?"

I had been talking to myself, but I didn't expect Uncle Ming, whom I was restraining, to suddenly interject: "Old Brother Hu, this is… it's an evil spirit sealed in stone, and it's trying to break out. This time we're really done for—we won't survive."

Only then did I recall Uncle Ming's situation. Hearing him still have the nerve to speak to me, I flared with anger, thinking this old harbor farmer had gone completely treacherous. Originally, I had been discussing the altar with Shirley Yang and Pangzi; although the situation was urgent, we still had some time to figure things out. Though the killing ritual was mysterious and ancient, at its core it merely involved altering the balance of yin and yang at the intersection of string and arc. If no accident occurred, we might still have a chance to uncover its secret within the remaining hour or so. It wasn't necessarily a dead-end situation. No matter what difficulties we faced entering Tibet this time, I had never given up effort, because according to Zhang Yingchuan's divination, one finds the Middle Path upon encountering water, and this westward journey must bring benefit and success in crossing great rivers, as repeatedly indicated by the solemn divine techniques. I had no doubt about this, but in this ritual, how could one "encounter water to attain the Middle Path"? And what path to survival might exist in the water under these circumstances? I couldn't grasp it at the moment.

But I no longer had the chance to comprehend its true meaning, all because this harbor farmer had acted cleverly to save his own life, actually deceiving everyone and seizing the "Phoenix Gallbladder" to threaten us, wasting our already precious time. It was utterly infuriating—why keep him alive? I raised my fist again to beat him.

Seeing that I meant to strike, Uncle Ming trembled like chaff in a sieve. I have always treated enemies, especially traitors, with winter-like cruelty, unmoved by sentiment, but my fist had not yet fallen when his expression suddenly changed—blank confusion—and he said: "Ah… where am I, Old Brother Hu? What just happened? I have an old condition; sometimes I suffer from split personality, so I don't even remember what I just did or said. Did I act strangely just now?"

I snorted coldly, lowered my hand, and stopped hitting him, though I couldn't help but feel a grudging admiration for Uncle Ming—this old smooth operator seized the moment quickly, his talent for playing dumb far surpassing mine and Pangzi's; it's a shame he didn't go into film. I couldn't really kill him, and a beating wouldn't help anyway, plus I had no time to deal with him now. I looked up again at the situation above: the black shadow in the crystal grew clearer, the shadow twitched faintly, and the muffled thunder in the air grew sharper—truly like some demon trapped in stone, struggling to crawl out.

I stopped paying attention to Uncle Ming's act of madness and called Pangzi over: "You handle him—just educate him, don't cause a death… and if he gets even half a step closer to the Phoenix Gallbladder, don't bother with words—just shoot him dead."

Pangzi glared, plopped down onto Uncle Ming, pinned him beneath him, and while poking Uncle Ming's ribs with his finger, he cursed: "Historical experience, past lessons, again and again they tell us: whoever cuts himself off from the people, whoever that is, is on a dead-end road." With each curse, he scraped his finger across Uncle Ming's ribs.

Hearing Uncle Ming's ghostly wails from pain and itch, I finally felt some relief—if we don't teach him a lesson now, he'll keep causing trouble later. So I stopped worrying about how Pangzi was correcting Uncle Ming's mistaken stance, and rushed to Shirley Yang, saying: "Although we don't know what that Great Black Heaven Thunder Strike Mountain is above, once that thing truly detaches from the crystal consciousness, it will absolutely be beyond our current ability to handle. But judging from the movement above, we might still have a sliver of time. I'll go down first to retrieve the Phoenix Gallbladder, then we'll talk."

Although I said that, what the stone mist below this vast sea of clouds looks like—I only heard Pangzi mention it—but we can tell the terrain below is unimaginably complex, all mirror-like multi-faceted crystals, making it impossible to distinguish front, back, left, right. A dragon-eye-sized pearl dropped down would be impossible to find in an instant, and even the chance of finding it again seems slim. Moreover, time is truly urgent, but if we don't go look, we won't even have a one percent chance.

Shirley Yang had just noticed the anomaly in the crystal veins above, immediately ran back into the belly of Jade Mountain to check the crystal sand, then returned to Tian Liang and helped Ah Xiang, who was sitting on the ground crying, to her feet. After hearing my words, she immediately stopped me and said: "Too late—time has run out. The crystal basin is already filled with fine sand, and even if we retrieved it, what then? Are we really going to kill Uncle Ming?"

I only wanted to quickly retrieve the "Phoenix Gallbladder," ignoring Shirley Yang's attempts to dissuade me, determined to jump down from Tian Liang, but suddenly an unbelievable scene appeared before my eyes, and I hurriedly said to Shirley Yang: "Quick, look down at the stone mist! It seems to have changed."

In the hazy, flickering fluorescence, the white smoke—second only to crystal dust—was gradually lowering its height, as if the black shadow above had grown by a fraction, causing the stone smoke to thin by a layer. We didn't notice when this change began, but now the cloud mist thickness had already decreased by half a meter compared to before, and it continued to diminish, growing progressively thinner.

In this gradually thinning cloud mist, a half-black, round object floated into view—exactly where the "Phoenix Gallbladder" had just fallen—and that thing was none other than the "Phoenix Gallbladder" itself, crucial to the overall situation. It seemed almost too fortunate to be true: could it really be that Uncle Ming just happened to toss it onto a crystal stone, and the gallbladder landed there without rolling into the depths? I couldn't believe we had such luck, but the facts were before our eyes, undeniable.

I pinched my own leg hard—not dreaming—and Shirley Yang also saw it clearly. But at that moment, the cloud layer continued to descend by an extremely thin layer, and we saw what lay beneath the clouds, making our hearts leap violently. There, a dry, blackened arm stood motionless, holding up the "Phoenix Gallbladder"—the half-arm exposed from the mist had completely lost all moisture, leaving only desiccated skin wrapped around a bony frame, the skin black-purple in color.

I instinctively reached into my pack to feel for the black donkey hoof, only to remember those items had been lost long ago on the road. But then I saw more and more horrifying things emerging from beneath the mist: some places revealed a human head, others a limb—arms or legs—without exception, all naked, desiccated, black-purple, countless in number, impossible to count. The white stone mist grew denser the lower one went, and the thinning rate began to slow. Seeing this, Shirley Yang and I understood: these desiccated corpses were those discarded after the ancient sacrificial rites around Jade Mountain, accumulating year after year until the bodies piled into a mountain. Perhaps due to special dehydration or geographical conditions, they had remained incorrupt for ages. Only now, as the cloud layer thinned, were they gradually revealed. Pangzi and Uncle Ming had fallen near the tunnel entrance, but they saw only countless bizarre crystals—clearly, the sacrificial dry corpses had been thrown to the sides of Jade Mountain.

Seeing the "Phoenix Gallbladder" resting on the hand of a desiccated corpse above, I felt both shock and joy, immediately jumped down from Tian Liang, intending to step on the corpse mountain to retrieve the bead. Less than one meter below Tian Liang, the ground was already piled high with corpses—each step sank in, and the suspended bodies beneath slid downward under my weight. I didn't have time to look at the corpses, my eyes locked on the "Phoenix Gallbladder," fearing it might roll off the corpse heap; if it fell into the gaps between bodies, it would be a hundred times harder to find than if it had dropped into crystal stone.

Stepping on the exposed corpses beneath the cloud layer, I felt some tension, and not watching my step, I kicked a corpse's skull—actually sending the head flying. The skull was dry, hard, and slippery; my foot slipped on it, I lost balance and fell flat, landing on a female corpse.

The female corpse's desiccated face had two huge black eye sockets, and I gasped inwardly, cursing my bad luck, I grabbed at the chaotic pile of corpses trying to rise and continue for the "Phoenix Gallbladder," but my eyes couldn't leave that female corpse—because I suddenly realized: wait, these corpses aren't sacrificial offerings; their skin hasn't been peeled off—I had only been staring at the "Phoenix Gallbladder," seeing nothing else, and due to this fall, my momentary distraction made me notice this detail. Moreover, this mountain-like pile of corpses—every single one, regardless of gender or age—shared a common trait: of course not that they wore clothes (their garments had likely rotted to dust), but every corpse had its eyes gouged out.

The thunder above grew tighter, like a series of death-summoning talismans—I knew our time was nearly up. Fortunately, after the crystal sand finished flowing, the "Great Black Heaven Thunder Strike Mountain" still needed time to fully manifest, which was like Death granting us a narrow lifeline—now we must race against death.

Seeing those two deep black holes on the female corpse's face, I wondered about the connection between so many corpses and the altar; though I vaguely felt something was wrong here, the urge to crawl over and grab the "Phoenix Gallbladder" now completely dominated my thoughts, leaving no room to ponder what these corpses signified—I didn't even have the stomach to endure the nausea of crawling through the corpse mountain; my mind held only the "Phoenix Gallbladder"—an extreme emotion born of psychological overload, already slipping beyond my control.

But the more anxious I became, the less I could climb—whether arms or legs, no matter how I braced, I couldn't exert force; my hands and feet sank into the layered, stacked corpses, drenched in sweat. Perhaps related to the black shadow above—just seeing it caused an inexplicable panic, or perhaps it truly was some evil spirit dwelling in the ore; my mind wandered, while my limbs were trapped by the jagged, uneven corpses. In the midst of my frustration, Shirley Yang jumped down from Tian Liang, helped me up, and I said to her: "These many corpses aren't sacrificial offerings—they haven't been skinned."

Shirley Yang said: "No, they had their eyelids cut off, and a pair of human eyes removed—only then can the ritual of the Ghost Cave be completed."

Shirley Yang's words were like a crucial hint—I immediately looked down at the corpses beneath my feet, and sure enough, the eyelids had been cut away starting from the brow bone. I suddenly understood—no need for explanation, I grasped her meaning. The murals depicting the killing ritual flashed through my mind like a film: first, "skinning"—the priest holds the victim's head, begins cutting from the forehead with a sharp blade. Since I'd heard before that skinning is done with a saber starting at the head, I naturally assumed that was the case—plus the execution pit looked so bloody that just a few glances made me want to vomit—so in my haste, I thought the mural showed full-body skinning. But looking at these corpse mounds, the mural actually depicts the removal of eyelids. With this premise, the rest follows naturally: in the stone trough, the task is to fully extract the victim's "eyes," and the mural showing the priest holding the corpse and placing it on the altar depicts the body as blurry—we thought it showed a corpse bleeding all over, but now I realize that blurred form represents the life force clinging to the eyeball, and after the eyeless corpse was cruelly killed and discarded near the altar, over countless years, it has formed the astonishing scale we see today.

Sacrificing a pair of eyes assimilated by the Ghost Cave can lift one's curse, but when we entered through the white tunnel, we had our eyes covered the whole way, feeling our way in darkness, knowing all too well the panic and helplessness of losing sight in endless blackness—if we gouged out our eyes, we wouldn't know whether death would come sooner or later, and aside from Shirley Yang, who would sacrifice their own eyes? Of course I couldn't let her do that—worst case, let Uncle Ming redeem himself through service—but she'd surely refuse. Still, compared to gouging eyes and slaughtering people, this was already a half-price discount, and thinking this lifted my spirits.

These thoughts flashed through my mind, but my body didn't halt amid the chaos—I finally approached the "Phoenix Gallbladder" lying in a corpse's hand, but my haste violated the taboo of "haste makes waste." I lunged forward in one final step, trying to snatch the gallbladder, but the corpse-hill, formed from countless bodies thrown down from Tian Liang without intentional stacking, was full of hollows inside—any external force caused it to collapse like a landslide. Just as I saw the gallbladder in the corpse's hand wobble, about to fall, it would roll down together with several nearby corpses.

I shouted and lunged forward, grabbing the "Phoenix Gallbladder" at the same time as I rolled down with the collapsing corpses—the distance to the crystal ore layer below wasn't great; after tumbling five or six meters, I came to a stop. Without waiting to rise, I first looked at the gallbladder in my hand—truly and firmly grasped—and only then exhaled in relief: I had finally retrieved it.

At this moment, the white stone mist around me had become extremely thin, the remnants like scattered drifting clouds, the crystal vein fluorescence dim and bleak, the terrain roughly symmetrical with what lay above, like a mirror image—due to the countless fallen corpses scattered nearby covering the ground, it wasn't easily affected by the ice-wall-like crystal surfaces. I looked up at the heavens above—truly, heaven and earth overturned, clouds and winds changed color—the vast black shadow twisted and elongated, fully extended, no longer resembling a human shape, like a tattered black war banner slowly turning in the crystal, its shape resembling a black eye socket, pulsing continuously, as if about to drip water onto Jade Mountain.

Shirley Yang stood at the edge of the corpse mountain, desperately shouting for Ah Xiang and others on Tian Liang to hurry down, while Pangzi pulled Ah Xiang and Uncle Ming down from Tian Liang onto the corpse heap below, stumbling and shouting: "We can't stay at the altar—hurry up, comrades……"

I couldn't clearly see what they had seen, but I felt a sudden chill—though I had retrieved the "Phoenix Gallbladder," I had done so too late, possibly unable to return to the altar, and I suddenly felt an impulse to risk rushing back—but whose eyes should I use? Should I gouge out Uncle Ming's, or use my own?

Just then I heard the sound of water striking stone—I turned quickly and saw, not far off, a cluster of crystal veins containing a sizable underground water cavern, its water stained red with blood—the white-bearded old fish we had seen in the Wind-Erosion Lake, which we had fallen into the underground lake with, this subterranean water vein, though crisscrossing like a net, I never expected to see it again here.

The white-bearded old fish lay gasping at the water's edge, still alive but death only a matter of time—its entire body covered in wounds from tearing, biting, and impacts; its mouth opened and closed, continuously spitting blood bubbles; with a gush of fresh blood, it actually spat out two bead-like objects from its mouth, rolling and tumbling onto the ground.

Although those two beads were covered in blood, I could still tell they were the eyeballs of the Ghost Mother "Glacial Crystal Corpse"—there could be no more fitting sacrificial offering. Heaven had not left us without a path—I immediately rose to retrieve the eyeballs from the ground, but the crystal layer underfoot was slicker than ice, I flailed and fell again, and the Ghost Mother's two crystal eyeballs also began to slip toward the water—I was only a step away, but couldn't rise in time; I reached out from where I lay, still too short, and watched helplessly as they rolled toward the water's edge—once they fell in, everything would be lost.

In desperation, I had to take a risk—I casually pulled out my mountaineering pick, laid it flat on the crystal layer, and pushed it toward the direction the eyeballs were rolling—this was indeed a dangerous gamble, but off by no hair's breadth—I finally stopped the eyeballs from rolling into the water before they could enter, my heart still suspended—I saw the two crystal eyes slowly begin to roll upward along a steeper slope—in the fissure between two crystal ore veins, a black-and-white patterned "Banded Flood Dragon" squeezed out a bloody maw, staring with greedy blood-red eyes, inhaling deeply, drawing in the foul breath, and sucking the pair of eyeballs into its belly.