Chen Qing nearly jumped out of his skin!
He almost dropped straight off the rope, threw himself to one side, and snatched the hammer from his waist.
Only...
That ghost was just a ghost statue.
The rope had simply caught in its hand.
Looking at the statue, his heart was still pounding.
Having lived through a Ghost Tide, he didn't believe for a second it had only been his imagination.
Testing it, he brought the hammer down hard on the thing...
Thud!
A dull, muffled sound.
Not like a stone carving—more like tough leather, or... dried meat.
His scalp crawled. But real or not, there was no chance of retreat.
Even if there were ghosts inside the pagoda, he'd grit his teeth and press on!
The seventh floor held many ghost statues, but all of them were pinned beneath a single pagoda, every one carved with its guts spilling out.
House-warding talismans, warding copper gourds, and the like were usually set on the beams.
The seventh floor wasn't tall; except at the very center, Chen Qing could touch the ceiling on his toes.
Only...
He felt along the first beam. Nothing.
The second. Nothing.
The third...
Soon Chen Qing was coated head to toe in dust, but he'd found nothing at all.
"How can that be?"
He went slightly blank, then ran his hands over all eight great beams a second time.
Still nothing.
After that, every stretch of wall, every inch of floor—he searched them all, fine and careful. Still nothing.
Could the pagoda's owner have been playing some kind of joke?
Chen Qing quietly gritted his teeth.
Suddenly he looked to the statue on the seventh floor:
A pagoda, pinning down a mass of ghosts, the ghosts crushed until their bellies split and their guts spilled.
"Inside the statue?"
Chen Qing would never allow himself to leave empty-handed!
Even if he had to break the whole seventh floor apart! Grind it to powder!
He would find it!
Not on the seventh floor, then the sixth! The fifth! The fourth!
He'd brought the hammer. Without hesitation, he smashed it down hard on the pagoda-spire in the statue!
Crack!
Chips of stone flew, sparks scattering.
Chen Qing's heart sank.
This was carved from a single solid block of stone. There was no way a pagoda was inside it.
If it were clay, something could have been hidden within.
But solid stone—how could there be?
Still, in that moment Chen Qing was like a man possessed, hammering without pause.
Crack after crack rang out.
Ting!
Suddenly, a crisp metallic note.
The half-crazed Chen Qing paused, then looked closer.
There, in the middle of the stone carving, the spire of a small pagoda had emerged!
"Found it!"
Chen Qing was overjoyed!
A quarter of an hour later, the little pagoda stood fully exposed.
Chen Qing gripped its body and wrenched with all his strength—and his hands suddenly came free!
Thump!
Clutching the Demon-Suppressing Pagoda, Chen Qing landed flat on his backside.
At the same moment, from the cavity where the pagoda had rested, wave upon wave of cold, sinister air came bursting out.
Hiss, hiss, hiss...
Whoo... whoosh...
Faint whispers drifted past.
It felt as if someone were blowing softly at his ear.
The ghost-qi teemed with ghostly figures, most of them hazy and hard to make out.
But one silhouette stood out, unusually solid—rapping a bamboo clapper as it passed clean through the wall.
Every knock landed as if it struck the very depths of Chen Qing's soul.
The hair rose all over his body. He clamped the Demon-Suppressing Pagoda to his chest. "All evil, keep away! All evil, keep away! All evil, keep away! All evil, keep away..."
"Thank you for saving me, young master~"
A sweet voice circled once around Chen Qing—an ancient-styled woman holding a flower-painted parasol.
Her features were hazy, hard to see clearly, but his instincts told him this was a peerless beauty.
A parasol-carrying female ghost?
Chen Qing's heart hammered, but nothing in his memory matched a figure like her.
After a while, the disturbance faded and everything went still.
Only, some of the ghosts on the seventh floor of the Ghostless Pagoda seemed too slow to escape—dazed, blank, stranded.
These were the lowest Wandering Souls, also called the Nascent stage; a single touch would shatter them, and they posed almost no threat to a person.
Naturally, Chen Qing wasn't about to provoke them either. He withdrew at once.
He made it down to the first floor in one breath, and finally let out a long sigh of relief.
An iron pagoda, roughly the size of a water bottle, exquisitely made, its tiny lattice windows crisp and clear.
"This is the Demon-Suppressing Pagoda!"
The Seven-Treasure Demon-Suppressing Pagoda!
One of Ximing City's two super-relics!
With this thing, he and Chen Man were basically safe!
But looking at the floor covered in his own footprints, Chen Qing frowned...
Time slipped by.
Soon the sky was just beginning to pale.
A little monk hurried to the abbot's quarters.
"Master, there was a disturbance in the Ghostless Pagoda last night."
"A disturbance?" The abbot frowned. He knew perfectly well it was because someone was inside, and said offhandedly, "Ah, there's a benefactor devoted to the Buddha. He asked to spend a night in there."
"Oh..." The little monk was about to leave, then turned back. "But the sounds I heard came from the fourth or fifth floor."
"Oh?"
The abbot couldn't sit still.
Without even throwing on his cassock, he grabbed the keys and strode for the Ghostless Pagoda with the little monk in tow.
He unlocked the door fast, and a dense cloud of dust rolled out into his face.
Like rising smoke.
The whole pagoda was full of it, and the abbot coughed several times.
"Benefactor!"
He called out again and again, and Chen Qing's voice came from up above.
"Coming."
The next moment, Chen Qing appeared on the first floor, so caked in dust his own features were no longer recognizable.
"You... benefactor, what is all this?"
The abbot was dumbstruck.
"Oh, I saw how thick the dust was, so I gave it a bit of a sweep. Whew—whew—" Chen Qing blew the dust off himself. "Master, do you have a washbasin? So many of the statues are caked in dust; they really need a good cleaning. Oh, and—I accidentally stepped through a hole. I'm not sure how to make it right."
Chen Qing's footprints were all over the pagoda, impossible to hide, so he'd simply pretended to have cleaned the place, masking every trace of his climb to the top under the guise of sweeping.
"No, no, no, no, no, no," the abbot said, deeply moved, waving his hands all the same. "Benefactor, safety comes first! Safety first! No one has tended this pagoda in ages—you mustn't go up there again!"
He added:
"To hold the Buddha in your heart is enough. There's no need to fixate on outward forms."
Chen Qing pressed a few more times, but the abbot refused every offer.
After a while, the little monk ran out. "Master, this benefactor has even swept all the way up to the fourth floor."
The abbot said, ashamed, "Aiya! Here we are, reciting the Buddha's name day after day, and we can't even match a layman like you."
"You flatter me, you flatter me."
"Benefactor, please, come take a meal in the temple."
Polite words—but with a second meaning underneath: I beg you, stop! Please, no more!
Chen Qing went back and fetched the "urn of ashes," and the little monk locked the door at once, adding a second padlock for good measure.
Cradling the "urn of ashes" that held the Demon-Suppressing Pagoda, Chen Qing was thoroughly satisfied.
Temples these days had all taken on a whiff of commerce, but when it came to meals they were still strict.
Steamed buns, thin rice porridge, stir-fried greens. Not a trace of meat.
Eating, Chen Qing thought of something and asked, "Master, do you happen to have the Vajra Demon-Subduing Art here? I might not have the name quite right, but it's roughly those words."
"Is that what you're after, benefactor?"
"My grandfather mentioned it once. He said the art strengthens the body—and that for those who believe in the Buddha, practicing it works even better."
"We do have it..."
Chen Qing quickly pushed over a thick envelope.
"Master, let me have it! For the sake of my sweeping four floors of that pagoda! I truly am devoted to the Buddha!"
"Er..." The abbot took a bite of steamed bun with his greens, and in the end, nodded!
Chen Qing was overjoyed!
He'd never expected such an unlooked-for windfall!
This body-refining art was a first-rate cultivation method.
Body cultivators enjoyed many advantages in the Blood Moon—the greatest being that their thick, dense blood-qi could scorch ghosts.
To a ghost, a body cultivator's fist was like a red-hot branding iron.
And of the several famous body-refining methods, this was the one Chen Qing happened to know. He'd only asked on a whim, never dreaming its very source lay right here.
There was hope for Chen Man's cultivation method now!
Last life, in his final moment, Chen Man had erupted with a dazzling blood-red light.
That was an innate Blood-Qi Realm!
The two of them finished eating and came to a study.
Tall shelves were stacked high with books.
Most were modern printings; a few older ones might be forty or fifty years old.
The abbot drew out a copy of the Vajra Demon-Subduing Art and handed it to Chen Qing.
Chen Qing was speechless.
A printed edition!
There was even a price on the back: 22.8 yuan!
You're selling it to me for fifty thousand—does that seem right?
Chen Qing smiled and shook his head, not taking it, and only said, "This edition, my family already has."
The abbot looked a little awkward. "The original is quite tattered, I'm afraid..."
Chen Qing pressed another envelope over.
"Master, even if it is the original, its market price is probably under five thousand. But my grandfather was devoted to the Buddha—please, do me this favor."
Now that he knew, there was no reason to let it slip.
Money, after all, would soon be so much waste paper.
Even if he emptied the million-plus on him, it wouldn't matter.
The abbot's face bloomed into smiles. Clutching the two envelopes, he went to a safe.
"A safe, too..."
Chen Qing tactfully turned his back.
There was a clicking of the lock, and the abbot handed Chen Qing a very tattered old volume.
On it, in traditional characters, was written the Vajra Demon-Subduing Art.
Chen Qing was overjoyed!
It looked ready to crumble at a single turn of the page—but after the Blood Moon, it likely wouldn't even be pierced by a bullet.