Mutated Tao

Yang Xiaohai looked up as he hung from the ceiling. He didn’t know what the strange water was, but he felt his body melting and his consciousness fading.

“Quick! We need to run faster!” Li Huowang dragged Yang Xiaohai and ran even faster. Their bodies gradually shrank as the sea started to come alive. It howled and hissed at them.

The waves crashed upwards and became like tongues that lapped on everything that melted off the bodies of both Li Huowang and Yang Xiaohai. The sea was trying to consume them!

Yang Xiaohai felt his brain begin buzzing as he lost strength in his limbs. Just as he thought that he was going to collapse, he saw an upside-down temple in front of him.

The temple had golden Buddhist stone pillars[1] with treasure vases on the roof of the temple. It was built on a large mountain with various stalagmites that resembled spines.

The temple was as large as a mountain. The tip of some of the pagodas were submerged in the strange sea of water but the tips remained unaffected.

“Senior Li, there’s a temple there!” Yang Xiaohai shouted excitedly.

“I see it! That’s the Antrabhara Temple[2]! It’s the exit, so quickly go there!” The closer they got, the larger the temple was. For some reason, the temple exuded an oppressive feeling.

Just as Yang Xiaohai entered the range of the Antrabhara Temple, the sound of a bell came from it. Li Huowang stopped just in front of the temple.

Yang Xiaohai saw that Li Huowang was staring at him while smiling curiously. Li Huowang was acting just like Lu Juren.

“Yang Xiaohai, why are you here?” Li Huowang beckoned for Yang Xiaohai to come out of the range of the temple.

Yang Xiaohai hesitated and shook his head.

“Why are you standing there? Come here. Let me ask you something.”

Li Huowang had just raised his foot to walk toward the temple when the bell rang again. Li Huowang stood at the same spot and repeated, “Yang Xiaohai? Why are you here? What a rare guest.”

“Senior Li, are you dead too?” Yang Xiaohai stared at him in fear.

“Dead? Maybe, but I think it’s more correct to say I was abandoned. Come here, let me show you the way out.”

Yang Xiaohai ignored Li Huowang calling for him as he ran towards the upside-down Antrabhara Temple.

Senior Li is actually dead, just like Lu Juren! He’s not even a ghost now—he’s just a fragment of his previous self repeating for all eternity!

Yang Xiaohai had just stepped into the temple when everything behind him disappeared. The sounds of Li Huowang shouting and the churning water both disappeared.

Yang Xiaohai became nervous due to the silence. The temple was strange because there wasn’t a single monk there.

“What’s happening? Didn’t he say that this is the exit? Is he fooling me?”

Just then, Yang Xiaohai heard something from above. He looked up and saw that both the monks and the Buddhas’ statues were up there.

Rows of Lamas[3] were wearing red robes as they chanted in unison. They were also turning a prayer wheel in their hands.[4]

Yang Xiaohai realized that the reason he saw nothing when he first came in was because he was upside down!

Before he could react, the verses of the mantra forced their way into his ears. Yang Xiaohai felt his body go numb before his consciousness faded.

“Weng Ni Yi ma Ha Yan Ah Mi Ah Niu…”

He lost consciousness and fell downwards as his body merged with the mantra scroll. Then, the Lamas spun their player wheels repeatedly with their skeletal hands.

“Xiaohai! Xiaohai! You can’t die!” Yang Xiaohai groggily heard a familiar voice calling for him.

“Xiaohai! How am I supposed to go on living if you’re gone?!” the person wailed.

As the voice got louder, Yang Xiaohai struggled to open his eyes, finding that they were sealed shut by his own coagulated blood. With some pain, he forced his eyelids to open slightly and saw Zhao Xiumei’s crying face.

“Husband! You are awake! You are finally awake!” Zhao Xiumei quickly took out some pills from her gourd and forced them into Yang Xiaohai’s mouth.

“Ugh, I can’t eat too many Blood Nourishing Pills, or all of my blood will get clotted.” Yang Xiaohai ate three and spat the rest out.

Zhao Xiumei placed a gourd filled with water near his mouth. Yang Xiaohai took some sips and felt his mind clear up. He struggled to stand up and saw that they were stuck in a ravine. The water had disappeared, and all he saw was the ground.

“Xiaohai, are you okay? Do you still remember me?”

Yang Xiaohai inspected his body. He realized that his left arm was twisted in a strange direction, and even his fingers were twisted.

He felt his head hurt. Apparently, he hit his head when he fell.

“Xiaohao, how are you feeling? Don’t scare me… Are you okay?” Zhao Xiumei saw Yang Xiaohai staring at her blankly and almost cried.

The three children were jumping around, scratching their ears and cheeks like monkeys.

Yang Xiaohai touched the top of his head and felt a large blood clot on the top of his head. He checked the inside of his clothes and saw the scepter that Li Huowang gave him was there too.

“I think I had a strange dream. I dreamed that Lu Juren and Senior Li were dead.”

Even Yang Xiaohai wasn’t about whether everything he saw had actually happened.

“Xiaohai, that’s enough. Let’s get out first.”

Zhao Xiumei tied him to herself with a rope before she climbed up the ravine. The three children had prepared a rope, which they tied to the top of the ravine.

“Xiumei, don’t do this. Let me rest a bit first. We can’t go up like this.”

“Don’t worry. I’m not a weak damsel. I followed my father and worked in the fields ever since I was ten. I’m actually very strong.” Zhao Xiumei pulled herself and Yang Xiaohai upwards while holding onto the rope.

The three children climbed up like monkeys and didn't need a rope.

Zhao Xiumei was sweating buckets when they finally crawled out from the ravine.

Yang Xiaohai raised his head in pain and saw that Qing Qiu had completely changed. The hills had moved. Areas where hills once stood were now flat, while new hills had formed in other places.

1. Stone pillars inscribed with sutras ☜

2. This first came up in chapter 632. Antrabhara is a period of 49 days before someone gets reincarnated after death. ☜

3. Honorific title given to a spiritual leader in real-world Tibetan Buddhism. ☜

4. A device consisting of a hollow metal cylinder with a mantra scroll tightly wound onto it. Each rotation of the wheel by hand is equivalent in efficacy to the prayer’s oral recitation multiplied by the number of times the mantra was printed on the scroll. ☜

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