Deep, endless, boundless… the ancient temple corridors were like tomb passages.

Corresponding to this were the intensely colorful murals on the walls – rows of armored Vajra guardian deities, bodhisattvas and celestial beings in trailing silk robes holding pure vases, identical to the attendant and palace maiden murals in ancient tombs.

Bao Zhu held up a candle holder, carefully admiring the figures painted on the walls, complaining wistfully: “They were even so rushed that they didn’t add colors to the murals in my underground palace.”

Wei Xun felt his heart filled with the smoke rising from incense burners, clouds and mist swirling densely, so foggy he couldn’t see the distance clearly. He noticed her lips – full and crimson, with the tender texture of flower petals, as if painted with rouge. He knew he shouldn’t gaze at any part of her body with such eyes, but he couldn’t control himself, unable to look away.

“Do you still remember giving me a seven-treasure glazed box? That lacquered box made by the Changzhou craftsman?” Bao Zhu suddenly asked.

Wei Xun answered: “I remember. It originally contained a fake luminous pearl that I crushed.”

Bao Zhu said: “Next time you open a coffin and encounter a woman wearing hair ornaments, pull out a hairpin for me. I want to fill that empty box.”

Wei Xun was startled: “Are you sure? Jewelry from a corpse? The smell would need to be purged by fire tempering before it could be removed.”

Bao Zhu was dismissive: “Don’t you always carry the smell of dead people? I’ve never found you disgusting.”

Wei Xun was momentarily speechless, unable to think of any reason to refuse. After all, he truly was a habitual thief who made his living by grave robbing, but he still felt vaguely that something was wrong somewhere.

Would she say such things? Would she make such strange requests?

Wu Guancheng’s Nine Aspects artwork: the third aspect of purulence. The corpse in the painting was so swollen as to be unrecognizable, somewhat similar to the floating corpse in the liberation pond, except the skin was bruised and purple. The closer to fresh death, the more clues could be seen about the person’s life before death. An adult female corpse – from the thick black hair, she appeared quite young.

Wei Xun opened the coffin beside the mural where vigil was being held. Inside was a little girl who looked only seven or eight years old by body size, wearing complete hairpins, rings, and necklaces, all exquisite and refined. She appeared to have been much beloved by her family in life. After thinking it over, he still didn’t touch the jewelry on the corpse and closed the coffin lid as it was.

Walking out of the meditation room where vigil was held, Bao Zhu sat on a high platform against the wall in the corridor. She had removed her shoes and sat there with bare feet dangling, waiting for him. Seeing Wei Xun emerge, she looked at him with a half-smile, asking expectantly: “Any harvest?”

This platform was about six feet high. Without lightness skills, it would be very difficult for ordinary people to climb up, and forcing it would result in clumsy, ugly postures. Yet she was someone who maintained exquisite makeup even when facing enemies, refused to eat while riding a donkey, and paid extreme attention to her appearance and bearing.

Wei Xun lowered his eyes, took a deep breath, and mentally planned several combat strategies. With his own skills, this shouldn’t be so troublesome, but if an enemy had disguised themselves with her appearance and voice, without proper mental preparation, he might hesitate and show mercy when striking.

He walked in front of her and looked up to command: “Come down.”

Bao Zhu responded and dropped down, jumping from the high platform. The moment she landed, Wei Xun hooked his arm to lock her shoulders, pushing her against the wall and forcefully restraining her.

Bao Zhu exclaimed in shock: “What are you doing?!”

Wei Xun’s face was impassive as he asked coldly: “Where is she?”

Bao Zhu said in confusion: “She? Who is she?!”

Even at the point of turning hostile, Wei Xun still dared not look directly at her face, only staring at the area around her collarbone. Hearing her ask questions in that familiar clear voice, anger surged in his heart as he threatened in a low voice: “If you speak in her voice again, I’ll tear out your throat!”

Bao Zhu remained utterly perplexed, frowning and saying: “You’re hurting me. Are you trying to rebel?”

Wei Xun could no longer contain himself and pressed his free hand against her face, wiping it. He had extensive experience dealing with people skilled in disguise. This move carried some force – if cosmetic paste or false skin had been used for transformation, it would immediately be rubbed away. With just a bit more force, even the original facial skin might be torn off alive by his Dying Light technique.

Bao Zhu cried out in pain, staring at Wei Xun in shock. But the latter was ten times more shocked.

This wiping revealed nothing false. What passed under his hand was her tender, flawless skin, with only the rouge on her lips smudged and displaced.

Wei Xun looked down at the crimson color staining his palm, suddenly feeling panicked. He had already stolen and discarded her rouge, and in this temple full of monks, where could cosmetic powder be found? But this wasn’t even the main point…

Bao Zhu spoke softly through those bright, moist red lips, as if complaining with resentment: “Huo Qi and the others said you were heavy-handed, and they were right. You’re a very, very bad lynx.”

Wei Xun had been locking her shoulders with his arm. He immediately changed moves to grab her upper arm and twist, turning her to face the wall and pressing her down again, then grasped her back collar and pulled down, tearing her jacket to expose her smooth back.

In his memory, beside the Soul Gate acupoint below her shoulder blade, there was a red birthmark the size of a little fingernail, shaped like a peach petal…

It was right there, not displaced by even a fraction.

Bao Zhu was pressed against the wall with her arm twisted behind her, unable to move. Her eyelashes trembled, tears glistening, but her words were strange: “Where else do you want to check? There’s a mole under my left arm by the ribs, and on the back of my thigh… that place even I myself don’t seem to know about.”

Wei Xun released his grip and stepped back abruptly, his eyes showing uncontrollable terror.

Freed, Bao Zhu turned around. The skin of her upper arm still bore his finger marks. She gathered her disheveled clothing and said: “You know these minute details of my body because when you rescued me, the circumstances were strange and you needed to check whether steel needles, iron nails, or other suppression objects were inserted in my body. You were completely ignorant then, with a clear conscience, treating it like handling a corpse. Who knew that after being oblivious for a month or two, you suddenly recalled it in dreams and lost sleep over it. Isn’t that very interesting?”

Shame and panic immediately filled his chest. Wei Xun retreated step by step, his mind filled with shocked suspicion: Who was she? Why did she look exactly like Bao Zhu? Even the minute marks on her body were completely identical? And why did she know what had happened at Cuiwei Temple then?

Wei Xun broke into a sprint toward the guest hall, reaching Bao Zhu’s room. Too urgent to enter through the main door, he leaped through the window. The pages of the Ullambana Sutra she had copied by hand danced and tumbled in the air current. The room was pitch black and empty – no one was there.

“Bao Zhu? Bao Zhu?!” Wei Xun called out frantically, but no one responded.

He rushed outside to the hot spring pool. It was still empty, but he heard faint water sounds from the other side of the bamboo wall. He swiftly leaped to the top of the bamboo wall and saw a figure soaking in the hot water amid hazy steam.

“Ah, you finally worked up the courage to climb over.” Bao Zhu raised her arm marked with bright finger prints from the water and waved at him. “Come over. Don’t you always want me to touch you?”

Wei Xun’s foot slipped. He retreated from the bamboo wall in shock and stood by the pool in a daze.

From the other side of the bamboo wall came Bao Zhu’s disappointed voice again: “Oh right, you don’t dare. You know I have nothing left – status, position, power, jewelry, guards… Though called a princess, I’m no different from an abandoned child, with only a lonely pride remaining. So this pride is especially precious and cannot suffer the slightest damage. You’re terrified that reaching out actively would damage this pride, so you’ve always restrained yourself, not daring to move.

But instinctual desire doesn’t disappear. You actually quite enjoy watching me cry and sob, don’t you? Your heart suppresses a secret impulse to bully me ruthlessly, just like you did earlier…”

Her subtle words were sharper than the Fish Intestine sword, slicing a person to pieces through the wall.

What was this? Was it a dream? Why would he have such a terrifying dream that laid bare his heart like a disembowelment?

Wei Xun’s face was deathly pale. Feeling dizzy, he looked up at the moon, wanting to find a standard for determining time and direction, but only saw dark, lightless clouds in the sky.

He turned and ran again, sprinting and calling Bao Zhu’s name all the way. No one answered. Seeing a cluster of bright, clear light in the distant corridor ahead, hope rose in Wei Xun’s heart as he hurried toward the glow.

“Bao Zhu!”

“Little Cat?”

She wore a shawl made of moonlight, her long hair like black satin draped over her shoulders. She called his pet name affectionately and opened her arms to him.

“Don’t stand in the shadows like that – I can’t see you.”

Wei Xun’s steps halted as he stared blankly at the person in the light.

Bao Zhu said gently: “Or… are you not really a kitten?”

She slowly walked toward him as Wei Xun retreated step by step.

“You gazed up at the moon from under the dark river. Drawn by this radiance, you crawled out from the dark ghost realm, retracted your claws and fangs, disguised yourself as a gentle, harmless, obedient little cat, and came to my side.”

“I didn’t disguise myself…” Wei Xun murmured.

Bao Zhu said: “Then what’s that on your hands?”

Wei Xun looked up at his hands in confusion and found that the rouge stained from her lips was gone – his hands were covered in fresh blood.

“One strike kills, never let a grudge last the night – how many people have died by your hands? Were they all deserving of death?”

Yes, since coming to her side, the desire to kill had been suppressed by another kind of thought, sinking beneath the dark water’s surface. But that thing hadn’t disappeared – it had only hidden itself.

Bao Zhu had walked up to him and raised her hand to touch his face. Wei Xun twisted away and bounded several yards, leaping onto a rooftop and fleeing into the distance.

He raced across the sky above Chanchan Temple at top speed, trying to shake off all the strange enemies. His cyan afterimage moved like lightning, sweeping over the Liberation Pond, Lingzhi Platform, kitchen, meditation halls, bell tower, drum tower… He leaped onto the thirty-yard-high pagoda and climbed all the way to the highest point of the entire ancient temple.

Looking down at the Great Chanchan Temple in the deep night, except for the weak candlelight of eternal lamps at places where vigils were held, everywhere else was shrouded in tranquil darkness.

He should have shaken them off, right? No one in this world was faster than him. Even in Chen Shigu’s prime years, in lightness skills, he could only match Wei Xun at best.

“How is that possible?”

The voice he most longed to hear suddenly rang out. Wei Xun immediately stiffened all over as a soft, warm body embraced him from behind.

“Even if your lightness skill is the world’s best, you can’t run away and leave part of your body behind.” She stood on tiptoe behind him and whispered in his ear: “I am your desire, your inner demon. You can never be faster than me.”

Wei Xun’s chest heaved violently. He steeled his heart to grab the person behind him and forcefully pull her to the front.

On this Ullambana night of dim moonlight, with boundless dark clouds obscuring the sky, at the top of the towering pagoda reaching into the clouds, a graceful, alluring silhouette descended before his eyes like a celestial being.

Her celestial silk garments danced in the air, she wore a lotus crown, was bare-chested and barefoot, with six slender, full arms extending one by one…

What had originally been just a tiny wish hidden in his heart – hoping she would actively come touch him – but on this special night when the boundaries between yin and yang blurred, the wish gradually twisted and deformed, slowly sliding toward an unknown abyss.

Six arms – one pair cupping his face, one pair firmly embracing his waist, one pair continuing to explore downward.

“This is your wildest fantasy, isn’t it?” She looked down at him from above, blooming with a mysterious, unfathomable smile.

He cried out in terror: “No! This isn’t…”

Just as Wei Xun opened his mouth to argue, the six-armed celestial demoness with Bao Zhu’s face suddenly kissed down at him, lips and tongues tightly intertwined.