The Flies Begin to Buzz

Jingxin’s hands, filth caked deep under every nail, reached into the lacquer box and scooped out the blood-red eyeballs. She kneaded them gently. “Heh heh. Now this is a real treasure.”

With that, she took one egg-sized red eyeball in each hand and slammed them into her own pitch-black eye sockets.

When she lowered her hands again, the blood-red eyes had found a new owner. “Much obliged. I can see again.”

A bloated, hideous, toothless old nun—her face now set with a pair of huge, lidless, blood-red eyeballs. The sight made everyone else in the room deeply uneasy.

“Brother Li… is she really a good person? She doesn’t feel like one…” Bai Lingmiao shrank behind Li Huowang and whispered.

“Shh. Don’t talk.” Surprisingly, Li Huowang was not especially shocked by what Jingxin had just done.

Without realizing it, after everything he had been through, his tolerance had risen dramatically.

His expression grim, Li Huowang stared at that disturbing old face and said, “Now that you’ve got those, when do we start getting rid of Danyangzi?”

“What’s the rush? You young people are always so impatient.” As Jingxin finished speaking, Li Huowang heard noise behind him. He turned to see a row of obese nuns staggering and burping.

“What are they doing? Trying to double-cross me?” His hand went instinctively to the Thousand Greats Record.

But their actions quickly made him realize he had misread the situation. The nuns were beginning to tear down the wall with their bare hands.

Abbess Jingxin was too large. The door was too small. If she wanted to get out, the wall had to come down.

When an entire section of the wall had been cleared, the nuns pushed forward a wooden plank mounted on wheels—Jingxin’s means of transport.

Under everyone’s watch, Jingxin squirmed like a giant grub, inching her way toward the cart.

After struggling for a while, she snapped irritably at Li Huowang, “You really have no sense of timing, do you? You want to get rid of your master, but you’re not showing any urgency? Can’t you see I’m slow? Get over here and push!”

With everyone’s help, Abbess Jingxin was finally hoisted onto the cart. The wheels creaked as the other nuns began pushing her forward.

Letting go of her rolls of fat, Li Huowang scratched hard at an itchy spot on his hand that he couldn’t reach.

He stepped back and looked at the bloated Jingxin, surrounded by her nuns. For a moment, she reminded him of a Buddha statue.

“A statue is just a statue. Becoming a real Buddha isn’t that easy. Hurry up and follow.”

Hearing this, Li Huowang fell into step behind her.

The nuns did not push Jingxin toward the main gate. Instead, they headed deeper into Anci Nunnery, to a part Li Huowang had never seen.

“Take your hand off the Thousand Greats Record. I’ll let it slide this time, but don’t ever bring that thing into this nunnery again. It’s bad luck.”

Jingxin’s tone was full of disgust, but Li Huowang had no time to care about that. His mind was entirely on what came next.

“What kind of ritual is it? Can it definitely work?” There was a tremor of anxiety in his voice.

“Isn’t it a little late to be asking that? Relax. Our Anci Nunnery keeps its word. If you can’t trust us, you won’t find anyone else.” Jingxin’s words did not calm him.

Ever since he’d learned that Danyangzi had been clinging to him all along, he had been waiting for this day.

Now, the crushing weight on his shoulders was finally about to be lifted. For a moment, his mind raced.

“Don’t celebrate too soon. Once this trouble with your master is gone, you’re still a Heart-Element. That’s the big one.”

Li Huowang’s heart sank. “Don’t be so sure, Abbess. You may not have found a solution, but that doesn’t mean I won’t.”

Jingxin laughed. “You think you’re the only one who’s thought that? Every Heart-Element thinks the same. But they all end up more or less the same way.”

Frowning deeply, Li Huowang opened his mouth to retort, then stopped. He took a deep breath. “Whether there’s a way or not, I have to try, don’t I? You think living out my days muddled and unaware like your son… is that really better? I don’t.”

Jingxin’s expression fell. She reached into her rolls of fat, pulled out her son, and cradled him gently in her arms. She looked at his aged, withered face with pity.

“Ah… What else can I do for him? As his mother, the best I can manage is to keep him alive.”

Li Huowang reached out and gently stroked the old man’s dry, white hair. His eyes held the same compassion as Jingxin’s.

The other human ingredients and nuns also turned to look at the man with the shriveled limbs.

Li Huowang looked at him, his voice slow and even. “I remember when he was little… stumbling toward me with his arms out. So endearing.”

Jingxin nodded, then a pained expression crossed her face. “When it actually comes to this… it’s hard to say what’s right or wrong. Back in the hallucination, when I saw my mother kneeling in front of me… my heart felt so tight I could barely breathe.”

The pain on Jingxin’s face seemed contagious, spreading to everyone in the room.

“Ahhh…” They all sighed at the same time, the atmosphere growing heavy and oppressive.

Accompanied by this shared melancholy, the little cart creaked onward. Before long, from the left, another enormous, bloated old nun was wheeled out.

Li Huowang looked at her with disgust. “Abbess Jingyuan, can you hurry it up? Danyangzi is altering my perceptions every moment, you know.”

“What’s the rush? We’ve waited this long. A little more time won’t kill you. If you’d found us sooner, you wouldn’t be in such a hurry now.” Jingyuan grabbed a piece of moldy rice cake from the ground and stuffed it into her mouth.

Jingyuan was not the last. Soon, a second and a third bloated old nun were wheeled out on their wooden carts. Including Jingxin, there were six of them in total.

Accompanied by these women, Li Huowang and the others arrived at a low-lying hollow. Inside stood a giant black, writhing Buddha statue over ten meters tall.

As they drew closer, a low, buzzing hum filled the air. The writhing black “Buddha” was made entirely of green bottle flies.

“My stomach feels a bit off… Can you wait a moment?” Li Huowang clutched his belly.

“Stop stalling. Hurry up. Do you think it’s easy for us to get out here?” Jingxin pulled a string of well-worn prayer beads from her fat and tossed them to him.

He caught them reflexively and began to rotate the beads between his fingers, muttering a difficult, obscure sutra under his breath.