Ming Huazhang frowned and glanced back toward the hidden door. The secret passage led to an unknown destination; if he went down while the abbot was on his way back…

But he did not hesitate long before drawing out his face covering and pulling it up over the lower half of his face. He had come this far — he could not leave now. Even if what lay ahead was a trap, he had to press through.

When he had been searching the room earlier, he had been careful all along to keep everything in its original position. Now he only needed to replace the stone tiles — there would be no trace that anyone had ever entered. Ming Huazhang checked again, confirmed nothing had been left out of place, then put out the fire-starter and stepped silently down into the darkness below.

Past the staircase, he entered a passage that was dim and narrow. At its tightest point, only one person could pass at a time; Ming Huazhang had to stoop slightly to stand properly. The passage was cold and oppressive, the air heavy with a damp, musty smell of earth — clearly it had been here for many years, and was by no means newly dug.

Ming Huazhang held the fire-starter in one hand; in the other, his short blade was already drawn. He left marks on the wall as he went, moving cautiously forward into the passage. Its length exceeded what he had expected. Gradually, the area lit by the fire grew more open; the passage widened to allow two people side by side, and when he turned a corner, the space opened up unexpectedly before him.

This appeared to be an underground chamber. Ming Huazhang lit the oil lamp on the wall; the wick leaped from a pale blue point and flared upward, the light swaying unsteadily, like a solitary beacon on the open sea.

By this light he looked around. The chamber was roughly the size of two rooms. At the center stood a stone platform, carved on all sides with Sanskrit characters of unknown purpose. Along the walls, Buddhist statues of various postures were arranged — sinister-looking in the firelight.

At first Ming Huazhang could not quite see them clearly; when he drew closer and made out the details of the statues, his expression turned abruptly grave, and he wrinkled his brow with something like contempt.

Two bodies clad in divine regalia — jeweled crowns, celestial vestments — stood facing each other in close embrace, their forms joined together. As he looked further around the room, he found that every statue depicted a pair of male and female forms: some standing, some seated, all in intimate postures with one another. Some of the wrathful deities even had the heads of beasts on human bodies — fanged and blue-faced, yet the women they held in their arms were entirely unclothed, presenting a sight that was grotesque and deeply unsettling.

These were the Tantric paired-form Buddhas — though their other name was perhaps more widely known: the Joyful Buddhas.

Ming Huazhang recalled certain rumors concerning Tantric Buddhism. In the Tantric view, women were offerings — through love and desire they provided nourishment to those fierce and wrathful divine spirits, which would be moved and transformed, brought into the realm of Buddhist enlightenment. Dual cultivation was considered the highest level of Buddhist practice in Tantrism, representing the union of wisdom and compassion, the subjugation of demonic obstacles, and guidance toward the Buddha’s knowledge — the bliss of dual emptiness.

In other words, to pursue the highest stage of Tantric Buddhist practice, a female companion was required. As Ming Huazhang now looked at the stone platform in the center of the room, he could not tell whether it was merely preconception — but the longer he looked at it, the more it resembled a bed.

An unpleasant feeling rose within him. He thought back over the direction he had come from, and his heart lurched. He looked up.

By that reckoning, the space directly above would be the Main Hall of the Great Hero in Purdu Temple.

Ming Huazhang’s expression darkened. He went immediately to search the stone platform. But it had been cleaned — and moreover, the last killing here had been four years ago. Under the passage of time, many traces were beyond recovery.

He could only search for other evidence instead. If his conjecture was correct, the female vagrant, Huang Caiwei, Yuyan, and perhaps more victims than these, had been forced to “assist in cultivation” in this very place before being killed. There must be a weapon nearby — the tools required to dissect a shin bone were highly specialized; it was not something any ordinary blade could accomplish.

Ming Huazhang opened the wooden cabinets that housed the Buddhist statues. He noticed that all the drawers inside were empty; based on the impression left in the silk lining, they had originally contained something that was now gone.

He measured with his fingers. Yes — those measurements were exactly right for bone flutes. So the bone flutes had originally been kept in places like this, only to be moved later to the hidden chamber above by the abbot, covered with the fabricated story of a theft, and disposed of through legitimate appearances?

Ming Huazhang continued searching. He opened cabinet after cabinet, all of them empty — until he pulled open the final cabinet door and his hand stopped.

He stared for a long moment, then removed the contents one by one. An iron saw. An iron pestle. Rope. A complete set of blades in various lengths. And numerous sharp instruments of unclear purpose. Ming Huazhang held the fire-starter close to inspect the cabinet, and at its base found brownish-black stains.

Blood, it appeared. Based on their position, it seemed they had been left when weapons bearing blood were placed into the cabinet without sufficient care, leaving their mark behind.

Ming Huazhang tried to reconstruct the complete sequence of events. Tantric Buddhism revered dual cultivation, and certain zealous believers took this to heart as well. He believed himself to be practicing the highest form of Buddhist dharma; to be chosen by him was, in his mind, a tremendous honor — the woman would become a Buddha Mother, aiding in his cultivation. He brought his victims here by whatever means necessary — luring or abducting them. Afterward, when these women refused to keep his secret, he killed them. He then extracted their shin bones and, in accordance with Tantric custom, fashioned them into bone flutes to dispel their resentment and guide their souls to rebirth in the Pure Land.

Perhaps the murderer truly believed that in so doing, he was releasing these women from their suffering. Or perhaps he was simply using the name of Buddhist law to satisfy his own dark desires. As those women were violated, tormented, and murdered, directly above their heads stood the Supreme Sun Buddha — boundless in his dharma — while people outside came and went, kneeling devoutly before the Buddha’s image, praying for the fulfillment of their own worldly cravings and attachments.

In the earlier killings, the murderer had been flawless in execution. But four years ago, the matter became too large, and for some reason he had suspended the killings and abandoned this location. This year, however, he had appeared again — only now the scene had moved to within Chang’an’s city walls. But this time was different from four years ago: the Capital Prefecture’s investigation was intense, gradually closing in on Lu Du and Purdu Temple. The murderer grew afraid, and so devised the scheme of deflecting suspicion elsewhere.

Ming Huazhang had been able to see through the fiction of Cen Hu. The murderer was a devout Buddhist who clearly knew a great many people within Buddhist circles, and would certainly have been able to see through it as well. He might not have known Cen Hu’s true identity — but as long as he knew that Jinghui was an impostor connected to the official silver case in Qingzhou, he only needed to redirect the authorities’ attention toward Cen Hu. The rest, the officials would handle themselves. He would then kill Cen Hu, fabricate the appearance of a guilty fugitive meeting an accidental death, and through this substitution make everything die with him, leaving nothing to be proven.

The perception that Cen Hu had packed his own things and run away was also easily manufactured. The murderer knew about this underground altar, which showed he was extremely familiar with Purdu Temple — he must have had accomplices inside the temple. All that was needed was to enter Cen Hu’s room while he was absent, pack up his valuables, and deliberately create the appearance that the occupant had fled in a panic. When the authorities arrived, a timely word dropped here and there would be enough — everyone would assume that Cen Hu had run because of a guilty conscience.

Indeed, there was no need for the murderer himself to act. Cen Hu’s relations with the monks of Purdu Temple were already poor; one only needed to plant a few suggestions among the novice monks, and when the authorities came asking, the young monks would indignantly direct all suspicion toward Cen Hu of their own accord.

By that point, Cen Hu would certainly be dead. A dead man cannot speak, and the authorities would not trouble themselves to clear the name of a convicted criminal. Every charge would be laid at Cen Hu’s feet.

Unfortunately for them, they had encountered the excessively meticulous, disagreeable, and relentlessly nit-picking Ming Huazhang. He had later gone to the place where Cen Hu had fallen and conducted tests — dropping human bones from the cliff — and confirmed that they would not shatter into such scattered fragments from a fall alone. Moreover, a heavy object rolling naturally off a cliff’s edge would not land at the position Cen Hu’s body had been found, unless someone had given it a push.

Cen Hu had not died naturally. He had been lured to that stretch of road and then shoved from behind over the edge.

It still counted as a fall to the death — no matter how carefully the coroner examined the body, nothing could be found amiss. Only Ming Huazhang had noticed that Cen Hu’s body seemed to lie too far from the cliff face; and so, with the particular diligence that was entirely his own, he had found a sack of roughly the same weight as Cen Hu and pushed it off the cliff himself to test it in person.

At this point, it was certain that the murderer had undeniable ties to both the abbot of Purdu Temple and Lu Du. Purdu Temple had been donated by the Zheng family; if a hidden chamber had been secretly built inside, the surrounding residents would have known about it. Yet those living nearby had been entirely unaware — the only possibility was that the chamber had already existed before Purdu Temple was established.

During times of war, many families built underground chambers to shelter themselves. The Zheng family was a great clan, and it would not be surprising for them to have made such preparations. If the chamber had always been there, then the two people in Chang’an most likely to know of it were Lu Du, and the abbot of Purdu Temple.

This had once been the residence of Lu Du’s mother’s family. Lu Du had lodged here for several years. Every victim had some connection to Lu Du. The coincidence was too extraordinary to ignore. As for the abbot — it went without saying. The underground altar lay directly beneath the Main Hall, with the entrance in the abbot’s own room. He had moved the bone relics to frame Cen Hu, deliberately erased any mention of Lu Du’s parents, and maintained complete silence when questioned by the authorities. Too many of his actions were deliberate.

But Ming Huazhang was still not certain whether the abbot had been a participant in the murders or merely someone who knew and had said nothing. If an accomplice, then there was no need to be restrained about how he dealt with him; but if only complicit through silence, he would have to be careful not to alarm the true murderer and give him a chance to destroy evidence.

After all, even though the crime scene had now been found, there was still no evidence that pointed directly at the murderer.

Moreover, on the day of Cheng Siyue’s death, both the abbot of Purdu Temple and Lu Du had clear alibis. If he acted rashly without sufficient proof — if the murderer refused to confess — the Censorate would certainly not approve the verdict.

As he thought through all of this, Ming Huazhang put the larger items back where they had been, keeping only the set of blades on his person, intending to have them examined by the coroner when he returned.

Ming Huazhang did not attempt to retrace his steps. He had spent a considerable amount of time underground; it was likely almost the second hour of the night by now. The abbot would be returning soon. He could not go back through the meditation room.

But Ming Huazhang was not alarmed. If his theory was correct — that this place had originally been built for shelter during wartime — there would certainly be another exit.

Ming Huazhang held his fire-starter up and looked around the walls. He suddenly noticed that one section of wall was a different color from the rest, and its shape happened to be perfectly rectangular. Ming Huazhang studied it for a while, then tried pushing one side; the stone wall actually gave way and slowly revealed the space behind it.

Ming Huazhang glanced briefly at the oil lamp in the chamber, extinguished it, and slipped into the unknown darkness ahead.

The passage twisted and turned, dark and cramped; in some stretches it was only half a person’s height. Ming Huazhang’s breathing remained steady, and he showed not a trace of fear in the darkness — but he did not rush ahead heedlessly either. His steps remained measured and unhurried throughout, nimble and quiet as a cat threading through one bend after another.

Without quite realizing it, the passage had grown taller. Frost was beginning to form along the walls; Ming Huazhang knew the exit was close. But when he came upon a fork in the passage, he paused a moment, then decided to explore the branch first.

The branch ended in another short staircase. Ming Huazhang climbed the steps and lifted aside the stone slab above, finding himself inside a meditation room. The room was empty, its air cold as ice. Ming Huazhang carefully replaced the floor panel, and with blade in hand, explored the meditation room.

Where was this? Why would the passage lead here?

Ming Huazhang used the tip of his blade to push open the rear window and peered out sideways. A waxing crescent moon hung high among the treetops, its cold radiance spilling across the earth like a layer of frost.

Ming Huazhang noticed that beneath the withered underbrush, there seemed to be a path leading directly to the rear window. Without further hesitation, he simply climbed out to see where it led.

The monks’ evening liturgy had ended; from somewhere ahead came the faint sound of voices, as a group of monks walked together in his direction. Ming Huazhang quickened his pace and slipped into a shadowed corner. It was then that he noticed, ahead of him, a spot where the wall had crumbled — concealed by dense shrubbery, barely visible.

Through the broken bricks he peered in and felt a flicker of recognition. Was this not the courtyard where Huang Caiwei had once come to burn incense? After the Chu Jun case, he had ordered the area sealed. He was now displeased to see that the men below him had been so careless as to not notice this breach.

Ming Huazhang could not help but go further inside the courtyard. Yes — this was indeed the courtyard Huang Caiwei had used. He could even see the seal on the rear window. The last time Ming Huashang had come here, she had insisted on going in, and he had broken the seal to let her enter; afterward it had been he who affixed the new one himself.

So this courtyard of Huang Caiwei’s could be reached without going through the main gate — by skirting around from the rear? And who had just been residing in that other meditation room?

Ming Huazhang stopped before the rear window, and was just about to go in and look around when his fingers suddenly froze.

The last time he had come with Ming Huashang, they had entered through the main gate. Then why had the seal on the rear window been disturbed?

Ming Huazhang sensed something was wrong and immediately drew back. At that instant, a streak of cold light cut through the window paper and through the thin, frigid moonlight, aimed directly at Ming Huazhang’s chest.