Chapter 118: One More

Chenpi A'si grew more and more frightened the more he thought about it, but by then the man was nearly fifty-six years old, with

As mentioned earlier, Chenpi A'si's life philosophy was to strike first and strike hard. My grandfather had told me this more than once too. In the underworld, this principle was the simplest yet extremely practical. Without holding back, he hurled two iron pellets, which struck the pale-faced Arhat statue square in the eyes with two dull thuds, cracking both eye sockets completely. The pellets ricocheted off and fell into the depths of the Mirror Palace.

If it had been a real person, they would have been blinded for sure, showing just how ruthless this move was. Though the Arhat statue was made of clay, it couldn't withstand such an impact. In an instant, the statue's eyes became two deep pits, looking hollow and strange, but far less unsettling than before.

Chenpi A'si breathed a slight sigh of relief and sneered inwardly, thinking: These damned monks, always preaching about the Four Noble Truths and emptiness, yet here they are, setting up these tricks to scare people. He reached into his bosom and pulled out a gecko claw hook. One end he fastened to the curved wooden palace ceiling above, while the other end, attached to a single strand of walrus hide rope, he tied to his ankle. Loosening it, the elastic walrus hide rope stretched downward. Using walrus hide rope was a technique Chenpi A'si had developed over years of grave robbing; its strength was second only to steel cable, but it could stretch. Since Chenpi A'si was short and wiry, he wrapped it tightly around his waist in a dozen coils, completely invisible under his clothes, and it could handle depths of about ten meters.

However, this "Mirror Palace" was far more than ten meters deep. Chenpi A'si let out the rope to its limit, but there was still a long way to the bottom.

Still, from this vantage, he could already make out the outlines of things below. The base of the palace floor seemed to be made of white marble, covered in various unidentified fragments from years of earthquakes and natural erosion. At the center of the palace floor sat a miniature white pagoda, whether of jade or ivory was unclear, draped in a translucent gauze "treasure canopy," giving it a hazy white appearance.

In his lifetime, Chenpi A'si had limited knowledge of Buddhist pagodas and stupas, which was also related to the illiteracy of his generation before liberation. There was an old saying among the Changsha earth masters: "A ten-thousand-household marquis is not as good as a pagoda," meaning that the treasures in pagoda crypts often surpassed those in marquis tombs. Though Chenpi A'si had heard this saying, he never fully grasped its meaning. If it had been me, I would have already known what lay below.

Beneath the miniature pagoda should be the eightfold treasure case containing the Buddha's relics—eight nested boxes. This was a Buddhist specialty, and with the relics inside, it represented the three thousand worlds and the six realms of reincarnation. Setting aside whether the contents were real Buddha bones or imitation stone bones, just the eightfold treasure case alone—my god—was something of incalculable value.

Hearing this, I felt a bit puzzled. If Chenpi A'si had really stolen the eightfold treasure case from the underground palace, how could those items appear in the newspapers? Could it be that he was so close to the treasure but gave up for some reason? Given his personality, that seemed highly unlikely.

Old Hai didn't notice my distraction and kept rambling on. However, his narration was far too long-winded, and I couldn't get a word in, so I had to let him continue spinning his tale for me.

After seeing the pagoda, Chenpi A'si still didn't know exactly what lay beneath it, but he knew it couldn't be too bad. Now, if only he could get down there, he could return home with a full load and great satisfaction. But how to descend?

Unfortunately, he hadn't brought enough rope. If he had known, he would have retreated earlier, prepared properly, and returned. Now he was stuck in a dilemma.

He shone his flashlight around, seeing if he could swing to the side of the underground palace and then climb down along the Arhat statues. He examined the height section by section, estimating the distance, until his gaze reached the bottom. Around the pagoda, he suddenly spotted something strange—a heap of yellow soil scattered on the white marble palace floor. He couldn't tell if it had fallen there accidentally when the palace was sealed or if it had fallen when he had sawed open the roof with the wire saw.

He looked more closely and his heart skipped a beat. He silently exclaimed, "Oh no!"

It turned out that what was on the palace floor was not yellow soil, but a large mound—clearly a hornet's nest.

Following the direction of the mound, he could see a half-human-high stone door on the side of the underground palace, very subtly placed. The mound seemed to have "grown" in from there.

It appeared that this "Mirror Palace" had additional underground structures around it, likely never sealed, which these insects had turned into a summer-and-winter resort. From this vantage, the nest was still small, but the part inside the low door was probably terrifyingly huge. No wonder the nest was so massive—in an underground man-made structure, protected from wind and rain, it was a prime "location." The old insects in this nest even knew how to read feng shui.

If the curved wooden roof he had just sawed off had fallen directly onto the nest instead of getting stuck between the lower Arhat statues, then dangling here like a piece of hanging sausage, he wouldn't be able to escape quickly and would be stung to death by the bees—a laughingstock for generations to come.

But this made things troublesome. The moment his foot touched the ground, even if he moved as silently as smoke, moving such a small pagoda in such a confined space would inevitably disturb these ground bees.

Chenpi A'si pondered briefly and realized it was impossible to go down. There was only one way to get the treasure up.

At this point, I must mention Chenpi A'si's background. He grew up in a fishing village on the coast of Zhejiang and only fled to Changsha when the Japanese invaded, so his Changsha dialect was far from authentic. However, he was very clever. Since ancient times, earth masters rarely passed their skills to outsiders from other provinces, but he was a rare exception. While still in Haiyan, he had already mastered a unique skill: catching crabs on the mudflats—not with his hands, but with a tool called the "Nine-Claw Hook."

This tool was similar to the flying claw hooks in martial arts movies or the three-pronged grappling hooks used by special forces for climbing, but this one had nine hooks arranged in a tight circle. When catching crabs, he would tie a rope to the tail of the hook, and when a crab appeared on the mudflat, he would fling the hook out, snagging the crab with one throw. Then with a pull, the crab would fly back into his basket.

According to my grandfather's notes, this skill was so precise that he could hook a raw egg from twenty meters away with a flick of the wrist, and it would land unbroken—a near-miraculous feat. For longer distances, he would use a stick to swing the hook, still with great accuracy.

With no other options, Chenpi A'si gritted his teeth and fell back on his specialty. First, he swung to the side and climbed down along the Arhat statues layer by layer. When he was close enough, he took out the Nine-Claw Hook, took a deep breath, and with an extremely shallow arc, the hook caught the treasure canopy. Fortunately, the canopy wasn't made of common bluestone and was quite light. Chenpi A'si lifted it with a flick and set it on the head of a nearby Arhat statue. With a change in the force of his hand, the hook disengaged and returned to him.

Next, he needed to remove the jade or ivory pagoda. But no matter what material it was, the Nine-Claw Hook couldn't lift it. Chenpi A'si flung the hook again, snagging the miniature pagoda's spire. He pulled a few times, but it didn't budge.

"Weighs at least five hundred jin if not half a ton," Chenpi A'si cursed under his breath.

He swept his flashlight over the pagoda body and saw four miniature pillars at the base. The pagoda must have been a scaled replica of the one that had collapsed above, so its structure should be similar. These four pillars bore the entire weight of the pagoda. The treasure case was right between the pillars, but the angle was wrong. If he could get a better angle, he might be able to hook it out.

By now, Chenpi A'si was getting impatient. He estimated that he had been down here for about four hours. He had faintly heard a few whistle sounds earlier, and the Miao people might already be nearby. He had no time to hesitate or think of another way.

With a surge of desperation and a hot-headed impulse, a malicious idea struck him. With a flick of his wrist, he shot out two more iron pellets. The pellets hit the small pillars at the pagoda's base, shattering them on impact. Then he leaped, landing on one side of the pagoda, and using his momentum, he tilted the pagoda to one side. The other two pillars, already unbalanced, snapped under the stress. The pagoda sank, and the body separated from the base.

Chenpi A'si lay on top of the pagoda, controlling his weight. The pagoda was heavy and moved slowly, tilting gradually. As soon as he spotted a corner of the treasure case beneath the pagoda, he whipped out the Nine-Claw Hook, snagged the case, and pulled it out. Then he retracted the hook and flung it again, latching onto a nearby Arhat statue to steady himself like a rope.

This entire sequence took only three seconds, but he hadn't anticipated that the Arhat statue couldn't support both the pagoda's weight and his own. With the pull, the statue wobbled and fell off the wall.

The area below was almost entirely covered in hornet nests. If he fell, he would land directly into the nest, and there would be no escape—death was certain.

In a flash, Chenpi A'si exerted all his strength, yanking the Arhat statue toward himself while tossing the eightfold treasure case into the air. With lightning speed, he switched hands, catching the Arhat statue steadily. But inevitably, the top of the pagoda slammed heavily into the underground palace wall, dislodging more Arhat statues as it tilted.

This time, Chenpi A'si had no tricks left. He watched helplessly as a row of Arhat statues crashed into the hornet nest, raising clouds of dust. The nest was crushed, nearly completely dented and cracked.

In the chaos, he had no choice but to drop the Arhat statue he was holding, then catch the treasure case again. Reflexively, he shone his flashlight on the nest, thinking, "This is it. My old life is over. I didn't die on the battlefield, but here in this underground palace, fulfilling the old saying of my ancestors."

But as the flashlight beam hit the cracks, he didn't see the hordes of hornets he had expected. Instead, the cracks inside the nest looked dry and devoid of moisture, as if it were an abandoned nest.

However, what made his blood run cold was that inside one crack, there was a dark, indistinct lump. It looked like something that had been sealed in when the nest was built—whether a corpse or an animal carcass, he couldn't tell.

He jumped down, pried it open, and saw that a Luohan statue of the same style as this one was wrapped inside, already broken into several pieces. He guessed that it had fallen from above and shattered before the honeycomb formed, and then got encased inside.