When Yuan Jue spoke, his pace was unhurried and his voice mellow and deep. Even when discussing strange tales from the Buddhist world, he had, as always, a calming effect on those around him.
“As to the origins of the Jade Corpse, there have always been many different accounts. But the most reliable version is the one recorded in the Night-Blue Sutra, which states that a hundred years ago, an imperial prince journeyed south on an inspection tour and happened to pass by a convent. There he encountered a nun of extraordinary beauty. The prince was immediately captivated by her, arranged for her to leave her religious vows, and brought her along on the rest of his southern journey, showering her with lavish affection at every turn. After arriving in a certain part of Jiangnan, the prince and the nun became enchanted by the scenery and lingered, unwilling to leave. They bought a fine residence there, closed the gates, and lived as husband and wife in contentment. Not long after, on the nun’s birthday, the prince had a jade statue carved in her exact likeness and placed it in the residence to please her. But the local official happened to be a close confidant of a rival prince. Seeing the prince indulging in carnal pleasures and living in extravagance, he filed an accusation at the imperial court.”
At that point, Yuan Jue suddenly stopped and picked up the sutra scrolls again, turning through them at a leisurely pace.
A’Han and Qin Yao had been completely absorbed in the story, and at this sight, they could not help but urge him on. “Abbot Yuan Jue, what happened next?”
Qing Xuzi also reproached him. “After all these years, can you not rid yourself of this habit of stopping halfway through a story?”
Yuan Jue let the three of them express their dissatisfaction, openly or otherwise, while he skimmed through the page before him. Only then did he say languidly, “I heard it so long ago, I was afraid some parts might not be fully accurate.”
He closed the scrolls and continued. “After being impeached, the prince was urgently summoned back to the capital. He did not dare bring the nun with him, made a few hasty arrangements, and departed overnight. Before he left, he said that once his affairs in the capital were settled, he would send someone to fetch her — at the very latest, within three months. The nun did not dare press him to stay. After seeing him off, she waited day and night for him to come for her. But as soon as the prince returned to the capital, he was drawn into a succession struggle. Several of the princes all had military forces at their command and refused to yield to one another. The battle dragged on for more than a year. By the time he finally emerged victorious and ascended to the throne, he was busy courting powerful ministers and selecting women from the most influential noble families to become his empress. Who would still remember that nun in a residence down in Jiangnan?”
This account stirred something deeply painful in Qing Xuzi, and he burst out in bitter indignation. “The imperial family has always been heartless through the ages. These scions of heaven’s bloodline may look respectable and glorious on the outside, but in truth they are all the same — abandoning what they have started, betraying their pledges.”
Qin Yao sensed that her master’s words had something of a personal edge to them, and she suspected he was making a veiled jab at Lin Xiao. But his tone was far too passionate — verging on grinding his teeth — for that to seem quite right. She wondered if she had misread the situation. Even if her master was not fully satisfied with Lin Xiao, surely he would not harbor such intense resentment as this. Most likely it was something else entirely.
Yuan Jue gave Qing Xuzi a meaningful look and continued. “By the time this prince finally remembered his three-month promise to the nun and sent someone south to fetch her, two years had slipped by unnoticed. The men he dispatched found the residence, only to discover it had long since been vacated. Upon inquiring, they learned that the nun had fallen ill and died a year before. Stranger still, not long after her death, the servants who had attended her all vanished as well, and the fine residence was left an empty ruin. The imperial envoys were afraid to go back and explain this to the Emperor. They remembered that the Emperor had once had a jade statue carved in the woman’s likeness, which was most likely still inside the residence, and thought to bring it back as a token of remembrance. But after searching the place thoroughly, they could not find the jade statue anywhere.”
“Is that jade statue the origin of the Jade Corpse?” Qing Xuzi frowned in puzzlement. “But… something does not add up. To form a malevolent force of this magnitude — one rarely seen even in a hundred years — it would require an overwhelming torrent of resentment. Even if the nun had waited in vain for the prince and come to harbor hatred for him, that alone would not be enough to cause her to transform into a vicious corpse. There must be some other reason behind it. Could it be that the nun did not die of illness at all, but was murdered?”
Seeing that Qing Xuzi had gone straight to the heart of the matter, Yuan Jue stopped withholding and nodded. “The precise details are no longer known. When Patriarch Zhida investigated the cause of the Jade Corpse’s death at the time, he suspected the nun’s end was inseparable from her own household servants. It is quite possible that those servants, seeing her abandoned in the residence for two years with no one to rely on, became covetous of her wealth and possessions, and so killed her. That nun had given her whole heart to that faithless prince, waiting in suffering for two years, believing that someday clouds would part and the moon would emerge. Yet in the end, the prince married an empress and took on a noble consort, forgetting her utterly. And even that might have been bearable — but in the end, she could not even be granted the modest wish of living out her days alone and dying of natural causes. To be murdered so young made it all but inevitable that overwhelming hatred would take root in her. She was, after all, a woman of the Buddhist faith; it is not impossible that in her final moments, driven to the extreme, she deliberately willed herself to become a malevolent spirit.”
“But how did she come to attach herself to the jade statue? Was there some kind of formation involved?” Qin Yao asked, her curiosity undiminished.
“According to Patriarch Zhida’s records, by the time the nun returned from death, her physical body had in all likelihood already decomposed. For an ordinary person in such a state, no matter how intense the resentment, an incomplete body could produce at most a common ghost — it would not be able to become a truly malevolent force. But she had that jade statue the prince had given her, carved in her exact likeness. Nothing could have been more fitting as a vessel for her soul’s return. She merged with the jade statue and gradually gained mastery over it. Combined with a body that would never decay over a thousand years and the resulting surge in spiritual power, she ultimately became the Queen of the Undead.”
Qing Xuzi nodded, then asked, “Then why did Zhida see fit to suppress her beneath a river? Looking at the formation under the Cangheng River, it is quite elaborate and painstaking. Laying a formation on dry land would surely have required far less effort.”
“That is something you would not know.” Yuan Jue said. “When the Jade Corpse emerged and began wreaking havoc, slaughtering a great many living creatures, several Buddhist masters joined forces to suppress it beneath a mountain. But every time they managed to press it down, the Jade Corpse soon broke free of the formation, and its spiritual power grew stronger with each suppression. It was ultimately Patriarch Zhida who hit upon the idea of sealing it beneath water, and that is what finally brought about the century of peace that followed.”
Recalling the corpse that visited the Pei family residence at fixed hours, Qin Yao suddenly thought of a possibility and asked urgently, “What conditions does the Jade Corpse require when selecting a candidate for the Golden Corpse? Surely it does not go looking for someone who resembles that faithless prince?”
Yuan Jue was mildly taken aback, then shook his head. “A Golden Corpse, naturally, is the result of being bitten by the Jade Corpse and then undergoing a corpse transformation. But the Jade Corpse’s saliva is precious and is secreted only once every several decades. It will not bite someone lightly unless it is certain of its final choice. Beyond the requirement that the person’s soul be compatible with its own, the Jade Corpse must also use its own methods to confirm that the candidate is willing to accompany it for eternity before it will give up half of its spiritual power to that person.”
“Who would be willing to accompany a corpse for eternity?” Qing Xuzi laughed in astonishment. “Is the Jade Corpse not being wildly unrealistic?”
Yuan Jue gave him a level look. “It seems you know far too little about human desire. A Golden Corpse appears no different from an ordinary person. It achieves immortality — it will never age nor die — and possesses extraordinary dark powers, able to move through the world unchecked and without restriction. A hundred years ago, countless people rushed forward one after another, willing to become Golden Corpses. And precisely because of this, the Jade Corpse is so exacting. The Jade Corpse suffered at the hands of that faithless prince and fears above all else being abandoned. So the method it uses to test people is quite sinister.”
Qing Xuzi felt a chill creep through him. “What method?”
Yuan Jue lifted his teacup, took a quiet sip, and said with perfect calm, “The first method is this: the candidate must kill one of their own dearest and most beloved, and use the blood of that beloved one as a pledge of allegiance.”