For some reason, he felt that only by solving this case could he find where Bao Zhu truly was.

Wei Xun placed the unfamiliar female corpse back in the coffin and undressed her, examining from head to toe the injuries she had suffered in life. There was only one fatal wound – the strangulation marks on her neck. He had injured himself in the illusion to force himself to let go, which hadn’t caused serious damage. These marks were bruised black and deeply indented without elasticity, already formed over ten days ago.

The killer had used tremendous force, not only crushing her neck but also leaving crescent-shaped nail marks on her skin. Within these nail marks remained traces of bright pigment.

After redressing the female corpse and tidying her hair bun somewhat, Wei Xun carefully pried open her lower jaw to examine the inside of her mouth for thoroughness.

Racing between the meditation halls and pagodas where coffins were kept for vigil, wherever spirit coffins were placed, there were inevitably incense burners and eternal lamps. These were rituals for honoring the dead that wouldn’t arouse the slightest suspicion.

Wei Xun held his breath and overturned all the incense burners within sight. As expected, hidden inside were various deadly poisons: peacock bile, arsenic-copper green, mercury, cinnabar, lead white, and other toxic substances. These materials were both alchemical ingredients and raw materials for making painting pigments.

These substances burned together with the rich incense meant to suppress corpse stench, confusing his sense of smell so he couldn’t discover the trap in advance. Continuously breathing poisonous fumes was the direct cause of his inadvertent fall into hallucinations. If he had held his breath while working as in past tomb robberies, he probably wouldn’t have been poisoned so deeply. But tonight he had been with Bao Zhu, and to avoid frightening her, he had kept talking to her continuously. Who would have thought he’d go directly from a wakeful state into delirium?

From exactly which moment had “Bao Zhu” ceased to be the real Bao Zhu? Wei Xun shook his head, trying not to think about this question. He opened the vigil coffins one by one, holding up an oil lamp to carefully examine each corpse’s mouth.

He still remembered once joking with Bao Zhu: “If you want to know someone’s background, just look at their teeth.”

This was wicked expertise gained from years of contact with corpses at the Setting Sun Courtyard. Believers with sufficient wealth to donate large sums in merit money and hold vigil at Chanchan Temple must come from privileged backgrounds. Regardless of gender or age, having eaten soft refined grains since childhood, their teeth showed very little wear.

Among all the corpses, only the young female corpse buried with osmanthus sugar frost in her mouth was different – she was a commoner who had grown up eating coarse grains like unhusked rice, with severely worn teeth.

Wu Gui’er, this young woman who had been missing for half a month, was indeed hidden in Chanchan Temple as her relatives had suspected. The killer who violently strangled her was her husband, the former monk Wu Guancheng. He had used such force during strangulation that pigment from the painter’s fingernails remained on her neck even after death.

So who had killed Guancheng?

After forcing all the corpses to “speak,” it was time to question the first corpse that had appeared on Ullambana night and make it reveal its “innermost thoughts.” Silently infiltrating the mortuary chamber behind the Guiwuchang Hall, Wei Xun extinguished the incense burner and lit an oil lamp.

Guancheng’s swollen, deformed massive corpse still lay in the lime pit, emitting waves of putrid stench. Wei Xun quietly observed for a moment, rolled up his sleeves, said “pardon the intrusion,” bent down, and used his Dying Light technique to cut open the corpse and disembowel it, removing the organs one by one for examination.

If he had acted when first seeing this corpse and solved the mystery case on the spot, what followed wouldn’t have happened. But he hadn’t wanted to expose his true nature in front of Bao Zhu and get covered in corpse stench, making her disgusted and repulsed. By deliberately avoiding the autopsy, he had finally led to the current predicament – truly reaping what he had sown.

Guancheng’s lungs were enlarged, filling the chest cavity, and inside were full of foam – undoubtedly death by drowning. Unlike other drowning victims, the inside of his mouth and throat were multicolored, with many ulcers caused by toxic corrosion. This painter’s various mad behaviors before death were simply mental reactions from years of poisoning by pigments.

Wei Xun recalled that long, twisted nightmare, recalled his own hands gripping “Bao Zhu’s” neck in the hallucination. Feeling the same experience, he completely understood the cause of Guancheng’s death.

In his hallucination, he had seen the pagoda peak, six-armed celestial demons, Imperial Guard funeral processions, and mausoleum underground palaces. Though the circumstances were bizarre, they were actually all scenes he had witnessed before. The hallucinations seen by painter Guancheng should have been different from his, possibly even more fantastic and strange, but equally twisted and terrifying.

Unfortunately, he had restrained his killing intent and let go, while Guancheng, in the terrifying hallucinations after poisoning, had personally strangled Wu Gui’er to death. When his reason slightly recovered and he saw his beloved wife dead by his own hands, Guancheng couldn’t accept it, went completely mad, and thus fell into demonic obsession.

But that madness was traceable.

People revered lavish burials, spending vast sums for this purpose. As an apprentice, Guancheng was financially strapped and unable to prepare fine coffin materials and burial goods for his wife. He simply took over someone else’s nest, placing her remains in a wealthy family’s coffin kept for vigil at Chanchan Temple.

Unable to afford precious incense and jade mouth-pressings, he scattered many dried osmanthus flowers in the coffin and placed precious sugar frost that they couldn’t normally afford in her mouth. All these details displayed guilt and love, not hatred.

Afterward, Guancheng frantically painted Nine Aspects paintings throughout the temple – this was a madman’s desperate attempt at self-rescue.

He believed what his master Tan Lin had said: that Nine Aspects meditation practice had the effect of “driving away inner demons, breaking through delusions, and healing terror,” making people abandon attachment to appearances and no longer indulge in the confusion of external beauty. Painting imagined images of Gui’er gradually decomposing was meant to drive away inner demons through this method. But while painting could remove attachment to appearances, it couldn’t sever his love for his only beloved in the world.

In the end, Nine Aspects meditation couldn’t save his despairing heart. Unable to bear the guilt of killing Gui’er with his own hands, Guancheng drowned himself in the liberation pond.

This genius madman painter’s final act in life was painting the underwater “Hell Transformation,” placing his body in the center, cursing himself to fall into hell forever without salvation.

Wei Xun examined his wrists again – no friction marks from struggling. People with strong self-destructive tendencies can suppress their survival instincts when committing suicide. Those thin strings used for wrapping sugar were only tied on to fix his body in the center position of the painting.

Drowned corpses sink three times and float three times. When the body filled with gases and floated up from the pond bottom, the strings had already rotted in the water and lost their fixing function.

When the mad Guancheng used his own corpse to complete this illusory underwater painting “Hell Transformation,” he couldn’t precisely calculate the time of floating, much less consider that the crowd attending the Ullambana Festival would create a stampede tragedy because of this. Perhaps the water body was disturbed by people releasing river lanterns in the liberation pond, causing the corpse painting to surface at that critical moment.

Wei Xun groped around and extracted a handful from the corpse’s opened throat, stuffing it into a leather pouch he carried, then stood up.

Guancheng’s death time had exceeded three days – the person who had put poison in the incense burners couldn’t be him.

Before leaving, Wei Xun found his vision very blurry, his night vision greatly reduced. He glanced at the soul-calming mirror on the wall and saw the person in the mirror had a layer of greenish aura over his face, with bloodshot red eyes. Though his mind had somewhat recovered, the remaining poison in his body had still changed his appearance, making him look especially fierce and violent.

After opening more than ten coffins and manually eviscerating Wu Guancheng, his entire person reeked no differently from putrid corpses. It seemed that whether in life or death, people could never escape their origins. Like teeth, the traces of past life were etched bit by bit into body and soul.

The enemies… should be three.

He left the mortuary chamber, preparing to advance toward the Guiwuchang Hall ahead, but was blocked midway by a tall, burly monk.

“I saw someone light a lamp in the mortuary chamber and thought it should be you,” Guan Chuan said expressionlessly.

So this was the first one tonight, Wei Xun thought. What did Tan Lin call this type? The three poisons of greed, anger, and ignorance – the demon of anger and impulse.

Wei Xun questioned directly: “Where have you hidden Yang Fangxie?”

Guan Chuan frowned: “Why does everyone come to the temple demanding daughters? Isn’t Yang Fangxie resting in the guest hall? No matter who she really is, her surface identity is the daughter of a court official. We will treat her well and let father and daughter leave Chanchan Temple safely.”

Wei Xun said coldly: “So you’re directly admitting you want to keep me here.”

Guan Chuan’s expression was frank: “Correct. However, on this point, my views differ somewhat from my master’s. He wants to persuade you to convert to Buddhism, while I only want to beat this Asura whelp to death. People like you are as stubborn and unrepentant as Chen Shigu – impossible to convert.”

Wei Xun’s heart stirred as he probed: “Are you a descendant of that Sanskrit monk Jiashiye?”

Guan Chuan nodded slightly: “Correct. Back then, my grand-master was compassionate. Hearing that his old friend’s disciple Chen Shigu had fallen into the demonic path, he left Luoyang for Guanzhong to reform him, but was tragically murdered and had the Prajna Repentance heart formula stolen. Though we descendants aren’t necessarily all in Buddhism, we all remember this grudge. Later I met my respected teacher Master Tan Lin, who persuaded me to let go of obsession, enter monastic life to protect Buddhist teachings, and thus cultivate into a Dharma protector…”

Before he finished speaking, Wei Xun suddenly burst into loud laughter. Guan Chuan was extremely displeased and angrily demanded: “What are you laughing at?!”

Wei Xun laughed so hard he was doubled over, nearly shedding bloody tears. After a long while he managed to speak: “So… so Tan Lin uses this same set of words on everyone, just seeing which fool takes the bait and then gets his head shaved to be used by him. Did he also mention to you things like inner demons, three poisons, impermanence, how love is like holding a torch against the wind and will surely burn your hand? Who would have thought that despite speaking so mysteriously and profoundly, he’s actually just directly poisoning people.”

He looked down at his own palm burned raw by the incenser and mocked himself: “And I really did burn my hand.”

Hearing Wei Xun mock Tan Lin, whom he revered as divine, Guan Chuan was furious beyond measure, the breath in his throat hissing.

Seeing Wei Xun’s bloodshot eyes after poisoning, his behavior and speech showing considerable madness and radiating evil aura, his disgust increased: “Since you weren’t destroyed by inner demons, you’re destined to die by my hand.” Having spoken, he took a deep breath, filling his dantian with qi, neck veins bulging, preparing to unleash his lion’s roar.

Wei Xun gathered his blurred vision with effort to observe this powerful enemy, knowing he had practiced Prajna Repentance to the Diamond Indestructible realm, making his defense extremely difficult to break. While he himself was injured and poisoned, nearly half-blind – tonight he must fight with his life.

He sighed, his knuckles crackling as he said quietly to himself: “Bad luck not bringing weapons – will have to make do.”

Having come this far, wanting to protect her safety, he ultimately had to kill his way through. When Buddha comes, slay Buddha; when demons come, slay demons.