Qingqiu

Yang Xiaohai hung upside down from the rock layer, staring upward. He didn’t know what the churning, alien water above his head was. All he felt right now was his body melting, his consciousness dissolving.

“Quick! Move!” Li Huowang grabbed Yang Xiaohai and kept running. Their bodies were shrinking too. Beneath them, the ground had completely transformed into a living, raging ocean. It roared and howled.

The splashing seawater, like tongues, kept licking up everything that dripped from their bodies, determined to swallow them both.

Yang Xiaohai’s head was going numb, his limbs growing weak. Just when he felt he couldn’t hold on any longer, he saw it up ahead: an upside-down temple hanging from the cavern roof.

Gilt jingchuang streamers, vase-shaped ridge ornaments, towering halls—a vast expanse of stalactites, like spinal cords, dragged this impossibly grand structure, entire, from the stone ceiling.

The temple was as massive as a mountain. Parts of its roof were even submerged in the strange seawater, yet it remained utterly unmoved.

“Senior Li! There’s a temple!” Yang Xiaohai shouted, forcing himself alert.

“I see it! That’s Zhongyin Temple—that’s the exit! Move!”

The closer they ran, the more immense the hanging temple became, its oppressive weight pressing down on them.

Just as Yang Xiaohai’s foot crossed into Zhongyin Temple’s perimeter, a resonant bell toll spread outward, shattering their momentum. Li Huowang stopped before the temple.

“Oh? Yang Xiaohai? That’s a rare sight.” Hearing this, Yang Xiaohai turned and saw Li Huowang appraising him, the corners of his lips slightly raised.

His repetitive action was exactly like Lyu Juren’s just moments ago.

“Yang Xiaohai, how did you get here?” Li Huowang reached out and gently waved his hand, signaling for Yang Xiaohai to come out.

But Yang Xiaohai hesitated for a moment, then gave a small shake of his head. He didn’t obey.

“What are you standing there for? Come over here. I want to ask you something.”

Li Huowang said this as he stepped toward Zhongyin Temple again. But the moment he lifted his foot, another bell toll rang out, freezing him in place.

“Yang Xiaohai? Why are you here? That’s a rare sight.”

“Senior… are you dead too?” Yang Xiaohai asked him in terror.

“Dead? Maybe. But I think this situation is better described as ‘forgotten.’ Come here. I’ll take you out of this place.”

Yang Xiaohai could no longer heed Li Huowang’s calls. Filled with dread, he turned and ran toward the upside-down Zhongyin Temple.

Senior Li was really dead. He was just like Lyu Juren before him—dead. The Li Huowang now wasn’t even a ghost; he was just a lingering afterimage repeating itself in the world of the living.

The moment his front foot crossed the temple threshold, everything behind him vanished. Li Huowang’s shouts, the ocean’s roar—all gone.

The empty surroundings made Yang Xiaohai’s heart pound with anxiety. This didn’t look like a temple. There wasn’t a single monk inside.

“What’s going on? Didn’t Senior Li say this was the exit? Could he have lied to me again?”

Just then, Yang Xiaohai heard a sound from above. He looked up and realized: the Buddha statues and the monks were all there—they were just hanging directly above his head.

Rows of lamas in red robes, turning golden prayer wheels, chanted sutras in a resonant, harmonized hum that rose and fell.

Yang Xiaohai hadn’t processed it until now. He himself was upside-down, clinging to the ceiling. No wonder he couldn’t find anyone.

Before he could react, the obscure, impenetrable sutra entered his ears. The moment he heard it, a numbness shot through his body. Then his willpower shattered entirely.

“…OM… NI… MOU… MA… HA… AM… AMI… A… HUM…”

Fully losing consciousness, Yang Xiaohai fell limply, merging completely with the sutras. Again and again, he revolved within the prayer wheels, whose handles were made of bone.

—

“Husband! Husband! You can’t die!” Through the fog, Yang Xiaohai seemed to hear a voice—a very familiar voice.

“Husband, if you die, how am I supposed to go on?!! Boohoo…”

As the voice grew a little louder, Yang Xiaohai tried to open his eyes to see. It was difficult. Scabs of blood had completely sealed his eyelids shut.

With a sharp pain, he finally pried open a slit. He saw Zhao Xiumei’s tear-streaked face.

“Husband! You’re awake! You finally woke up!” Zhao Xiumei eagerly grabbed a gourd, tipped out some pills, and fed them to him.

“Cough… you can’t eat too many Moistening Blood Pills… or all the blood in your body will congeal…” Yang Xiaohai swallowed three, then spat the rest out.

A water gourd was brought to his lips. He drank a few mouthfuls, and his groggy head finally cleared a little.

He forced himself to look around. He was in a crack between sheer cliffs—a sliver of sky above. The Zhongyin Temple, the ocean—everything was gone. There was only rock and dirt on either side.

“Husband? Are you alright? Do you remember who I am?”

Hearing this, Yang Xiaohai looked down at his own body. His left arm was twisted out of shape. His fingers were bent at grotesque angles, looking terrifying.

His head also hurt badly. It seemed he’d hit it when he fell. He really had taken a beating on the way down.

“Husband, what’s wrong? Don’t scare me. Did you hurt your head?” Zhao Xiumei looked ready to cry at his dazed expression.

The three monkey-children beside them hopped around anxiously, scratching their ears and cheeks.

Yang Xiaohai reached up and touched his head. His hand came away covered in blood clots mixed with his hair. Then he felt inside his robe. The Decayed Wood Ruyi from Niuxin Village was still there.

“I… I think I just had a dream. A very strange dream. I dreamed about Lyu Juren, and I dreamed about Senior Li… They… they’re dead.”

Yang Xiaohai’s voice was full of uncertainty. He couldn’t tell whether what he’d just seen was real or not.

“Husband, don’t talk about that now. Let’s get out of here first.”

Zhao Xiumei carefully lifted him onto her back. She took a rope from one of the monkey-children and tied him firmly to her. Grabbing a dangling rope, she prepared to climb.

“Xiumei… you… you can’t make it like this. Let me rest a bit and recover my strength.”

“I’m not some delicate lady who never leaves the house. I was ten when I started following my father into the fields. I’m plenty strong.” With that, Zhao Xiumei braced herself against the rock walls and began to climb, step by step.

The three monkey-children, needing no rope, scrambled nimbly up and down the cliff faces, chattering encouragement.

By the time Zhao Xiumei’s clothes were soaked through with sweat twice over, she finally crawled out of the crevice.

Yang Xiaohai laboriously lifted his head and looked around. The landscape of the Qingqiu region had completely changed. Some of the distant hills were gone, and new ones had risen in their place.