Something shot across the cliff face, moving with a swiftness and agility that rivaled a gibbon. The sight was a mere blur, making one wonder if it was one of the Bar-Shan Apes trained by the Feng family of Guanshan. Yet, the apes kept near the Qingxi air-raid shelters didn't seem to possess such a large build. Could there still be surviving "Corpse Immortals" hidden in Coffin Mountain?

Just then, the figure scaling the wall suddenly stopped beside us. I quickly rubbed my eyes and peered closer, only to be struck by even greater astonishment. Fatty and I, along with the others, were standing in a narrow, precipitous bird path. Dozens of meters away, several wooden stakes were driven into the sheer cliff, intended for suspending coffins. The Bar-Shan Ape stood motionless there in the heavy rain, carrying Professor Sun on its back. The ape and the man stared at us expressionlessly.

I guessed the Bar-Shan Ape hadn't followed the group into Coffin Gorge, but being highly intelligent, it must have sensed the earth-shattering movements underground while roaming the valley. It had traversed mountains and valleys, found Old Master Sun amidst the collapsing Coffin Mountain, carried him up the cliff face, and once again crossed paths with us. I saw that Old Master Sun’s arm hung limply, his body caked in black mud, his face appearing starkly pale as the rain washed over it. He didn't speak, but I felt he merely wanted to ensure we were safe before vanishing to an unknown destination, never to be seen by us again.

We gazed at Old Master Sun and the Bar-Shan Ape from afar on the cliff. Not a single word was spoken between us for several minutes. The sheer cliffs of Coffin Gorge were incredibly steep; I knew taking even one step closer to him was impossible.

Having barely escaped with our lives from the Earth Immortal Village, and with no casualties among our companions, the whole encounter felt like a terrible nightmare. It made us look back on past events with a sense of resignation. I felt Old Master Sun's actions were perhaps excusable out of emotion, though unjustifiable by reason. Despite the harsh words I exchanged with Fatty, I truly had no intention of pursuing the matter further with him.

Now, seeing Old Master Sun rescued by the Bar-Shan Ape from Coffin Mountain brought a heavy weight off my chest. But seeing him prepare to flee into the distance, I didn't know when we might meet again. I remembered a formality I needed to convey to him, so I brought my hands to my mouth and shouted through the mist and rain, "Old Master Sun, our accounts are not yet settled between us! I only pray Heaven keeps you safe, at least until the next time we cross paths!"

Old Master Sun remained unmoved. He stared intently at us for a moment, and a faint, almost imperceptible sneer flickered across his ashen face. He gently patted the Bar-Shan Ape’s shoulder. The ape seemed to understand, spared us another glance, stretched its simian arms, and leaped up the sheer cliff. Carrying a man, it navigated the thousand-foot precipice with ease. With a couple of quick flashes, it ascended higher and higher, vanishing into the downpour.

Fatty, the others, and I leaned out from the bird path, gazing up the cliff face. All we could see was the hazy veil of rain and fog; there was no trace of man or ape to be found. A hollowness settled in our chests, leaving us adrift, so we retreated back into the rock shelter to wait out the storm.

At this time, Coffin Gorge was battered by wind and rain. Not daring to risk climbing the slippery, steep cliffs, we resigned ourselves to waiting for the storm to pass. Coffin Mountain, suspended in the gorge, had completely disintegrated, fracturing into countless massive rock slabs that were swept by the waterfall into the great river. It was the flood season, and the water levels were immense. All traces of the Earth Immortal Tomb's Lingxing Hall, submerged in the water, were immediately swallowed up.

The group ate some dried rations and preserved fruits, then sat hugging their knees, each lost in thought and silent. Weariness from our exhaustion soon overtook us, and one by one, we drifted into an uneasy sleep.

Wushan County has always been renowned for the deep solitude of its misty mornings and rainy evenings. When I awoke, the mountain rain had not yet stopped. It wasn't until the following morning that the clouds parted and the rain ceased, allowing us to traverse the mountains and leave Coffin Gorge. We saw no sign of Old Master Sun along the way. I couldn't tell if he was still hiding in the gorge or had fled elsewhere.

Most of us had sustained injuries, so we headed straight to the Wushan County clinic for treatment while discussing Old Master Sun's whereabouts. Fatty cursed Old Master Sun, saying he deserved to be cut into a thousand pieces, but there was no need to rush. "A monk can run away, but his temple can't," he grumbled. "We’ll go back to Beijing and raid his lair. Even if he hides in the Lingxiao Palace in Heaven or the Crystal Palace in the sea, even if he were the Golden-Winged Roc next to the Buddha, we'll track him to the Western Heaven and pluck every feather off him. We won't consider it finished until we’ve eaten every dish from that Zhengyang Residence feast."

What worried me most was whether Old Master Sun was plotting something else. He exhibited many strange phenomena that were hard to fathom. The more I pondered, the more I realized the old man was no ordinary person. If we had inadvertently aided evil, our sin would be great. We absolutely had to find him somehow.

However, I felt Fatty’s suggestion to return to Beijing to raid his lair was pointless. Old Master Sun, compared to his ancestors—the Guanshan Housekeepers—was infinitely more secretive and cunning in his methods. If I wasn't mistaken, before setting out from Beijing with us, he had already resolved to abandon his home and career, intending never to return.

That day, Shirley Yang and I made a long-distance call from the county town to Professor Chen’s home in Beijing, tentatively inquiring about Old Master Sun. As expected, Old Master Sun had handed over his duties, claiming illness to take early retirement back to his hometown. He had even returned his dormitory room in the tube building. People in Beijing only knew this much.

Seeing that the inquiry yielded no immediate results, I decided to put the matter aside for the time being and focus on recovering my health. The sheer density of yin energy in the Earth Immortal Village tomb and Coffin Mountain had caused all four of us to accumulate significant Corpse Poison. We first suffered from persistent coughing and shortness of breath, followed by frequently vomiting black blood. We spent nearly a week in the hospital, but the recovery remained elusive.

As night fell one evening, I lay in my hospital bed receiving an IV drip and unconsciously fell into a nightmare. The scenery was hazy and indistinct, seeming to pull me back to the Earth Immortal Village in Coffin Mountain. I found myself in the main hall of the Feng family’s ancestral home. The hall was thick with swirling incense smoke, and a portrait of the deceased hung on the wall. In front of it was an altar table laden with seven dishes and eight bowls, holding various fruits, pastries, and the bloody heads of pigs, cattle, and sheep. White paper banners swayed back and forth; it was clearly a mourning hall prepared for a water-based ritual.

I approached the altar, wanting to see who was depicted in the portrait. In the dim candlelight, I vaguely recognized the silhouette of a half-blood young girl. I thought, "Isn't this Duo Ling? Why is she dead... and who placed her memorial tablet here in the Earth Immortal Village?" As I stood there in perplexed surprise, I heard a clattering sound from the altar table, like a pig slopping up slop.

I quickly looked down. The pig's head placed on a plate on the altar had somehow come alive. It was greedily staring, devouring the various offerings—fruits and pastries—with blood and saliva dripping everywhere, looking incredibly ferocious and terrifying.

Seeing this filled me with anger, mixed with an indescribable sense of revulsion. I immediately grabbed the pole of a paper banner leaning against the altar and thrust it at the pig’s head. To my dismay, the banner pole was too soft, offering no resistance at all. Frustrated to the point of sweating profusely, just as I was growing anxious, I felt someone push my shoulder a few times, jolting me awake from the dream.

I saw that it was Shirley Yang and the others who had awakened me. I realized it had only been a dream, yet the dream felt eerily real. My entire body was soaked in cold sweat, and I sensed an ominous feeling, my heart still gripped by waves of panic.

Sister leaned over curiously and asked what I had dreamed to frighten me so badly. "If you have a nightmare, you should immediately say it out loud; once spoken, it loses its power."

Fatty was also puzzled. "Old Hu, your guts have never been small. It’s just that there aren't any long enough sticks in the world—if you had one, you’d dare poke a hole in the sky. How can a mere dream leave you looking like this?"

"Stop talking nonsense," I told them. "As the saying goes, dreams reflect the mind; they don't predict fortune or disaster. Maybe I’ve just been thinking too much about Duo Ling recently, which caused this nonsensical nightmare." Then, I recounted what I had seen in the dream to everyone.

Hearing the dream, everyone felt an ominous premonition that Duo Ling’s life might not be saved. Although we felt we had failed the dying request of Captain Ruan Hei, we had done everything in our power. Ultimately, we failed to find the inner core of the thousand-year-old corpse. Duo Ling's fate, living or dead, was now up to her own fortune.

We discussed how Duo Ling had fallen victim to a powerful form of sorcery cast by her own father. It truly showed how unpredictable fate could be. But ultimately, the events at the South Sea were traceable back to Old Master Sun. In these past days, we hadn't received any news from him, and we didn't know where he was hiding.

I speculated that Old Master Sun wouldn't leave the Qingxi area, as it was his ancestral home, and the bodies of his father and brother were still there. Therefore, I planned to re-enter Coffin Gorge to find him as soon as my injuries showed some improvement.

As we were discussing how to find Old Master Sun, a package was suddenly thrown in through the window. The contents didn't seem heavy; they landed on the floor with a soft thud. Fatty immediately got up to look outside. The county town had old and new districts; the clinic was located on the edge of the old city, not densely populated. It was midsummer, and the air was humid and stifling. Although mosquito coils were lit in the evening, the ward windows were still open for coolness. Outside, only a few scattered streetlights illuminated the darkness, and no one was in sight. Fatty had no choice but to close the window to guard against any unexpected developments.

Shirley Yang picked up the package and opened it. Inside, he found several bundles of strangely shaped wild grasses, along with a stack of letter paper. The bronze dragon talisman without an eye was also wrapped within. He handed it to me, saying, "It must be Old Master Sun, using the Bar-Shan Ape to sneak into the county town and deliver us a letter. See what it says."

Eager to know the contents, I quickly unfolded the paper and read it aloud to the other three. It was written in Old Master Sun’s own hand, signed with his real name, "Feng Xuewu." The long letter generally stated that he felt ashamed to face us again, having let everyone down. However, the excavation in the Earth Immortal Village of Coffin Mountain relied entirely on the assistance of the Mojin Xiaowei. Although they might never meet again, there were many things he felt compelled to explain.

Old Master Sun wrote that he had never lived freely in his life; a huge mountain always weighed on his heart. His family background and various internal and external pressures meant he didn't have a single trusted confidant. The only one he could truly rely on was the Bar-Shan Ape hidden in Coffin Gorge. But although this old companion was absolutely loyal and intelligent, it could not speak human words. It was like a Romanian film centered around a wolfdog—always a "silent friend."

Over time, this fostered Old Master Sun's gloomy and cold demeanor. In his worldview, nothing else in the world mattered as much as the affairs of the Guanshan Feng family. Because the outer perimeter of the Earth Immortal Tomb was guarded by the Nine Deaths Shocking Tomb Armor (Jiu Si Jing Ling Jia), only during a few specific days in the Rat Year, which occurs once every twelve years, while the Jing Ling Jia were dormant, could outsiders have a chance to enter Coffin Mountain. This caused the descendants of Feng Shiqi to repeatedly miss opportunities. Commander Feng missed the date due to illness on the journey, which enraged him to the point that his legs became paralyzed, leading to his death before the Nine Palaces Tiger Lock (Jiu Gong Li Hu Suo).

Old Master Sun watched his family line dwindle. If an entrance couldn't be found by this summer, he feared the opportunity would be lost forever. After years of careful planning, he finally caught the right timing, the optimal geography, and the necessary human support. Though his scheme was meticulous, he couldn't foresee everything. Since entering Coffin Gorge, many unforeseen events had occurred.

Originally, Old Master Sun possessed the true Guanshan Zhimi Fu (The Manual of Unveiling Secrets of Guanshan), but fearing the Mojin Xiaowei would abandon him and proceed alone, he kept it concealed. He set up several traps beforehand, allowing us to encounter true and false information in segments at different locations, supplemented by calculated self-injury, to confuse and mislead. At the critical moment, he intended to reveal everything. In fact, the true secret code within the Guanshan Zhimi already contained information on how to open the Nine Palaces Tiger Lock. The only obstacle was assembling the fragmented map made of porcelain screens. The unexpected arrival of the heir from Honeycomb Mountain joining the expedition forced him to change many of his pre-arranged plans, leading to a gradual descent into chaos.

What shocked Old Master Sun the most was the sequence of events that unfolded beneath the Soul-Scaring Bridge formed by golden silkwifts. His intention was to use the Golden Armor Celestial Soldier (Jin Jia Mao Xian) hidden in the gorge to distract everyone, then point out the escape route down the Fossil Waterfall onto the wooden beam.

This arrangement was necessary because shortly after descending into the gorge, they would enter the Useless Sheep King's underground palace. Before that, he needed to perform "surgery" on his body. The Guanshan Feng family gained prominence by robbing ancient hermit cliff coffins, discovering many lost, ancient, and malevolent sorceries in the process.

One such technique involved piercing the brain with a bone needle. It was said this could extinguish the Samadhi True Fire within a person, as the living possess three lamps—symbols of their vital yang energy. The brightness or darkness of these three flames indicated the rise and fall of the person’s luck and morality. Ordinary eyes could not see them; only ghosts and zombies could. By inserting the bone needle into the acupuncture point at the back of the skull, these three life lamps could be extinguished, allowing the tomb robbing to proceed without the risk of "encountering ghosts and becoming a reanimated corpse." However, once this technique was used, the practitioner must never reveal it to others; it had to remain a secret known only to oneself. If spoken aloud, the soul would instantly scatter, preventing even the formation of a ghost after death.

This evil art originated in the ancient regions of Ba and Shu and was actually the precursor to modern acupuncture. Murals and rock paintings from the Wu-Chu civilization detailed similar scenarios. When the shaman performed the spell, the person struck by the bone needle would act as if possessed, climbing mountains of knives and walking through seas of fire, completely unaware of pain. This was because the point pierced by the needle was the nerve center in the brain that governed the perception of pain. Ancient people, not understanding the mechanism, believed it to be witchcraft.

However, at the Dragon Gate near the Fossil Waterfall, Old Master Sun lost control of the situation. When he fell onto the wooden beam, he hit his head. The bone needle that had just been inserted into his brain must have gone missing—perhaps it all sank into the back of his skull, or perhaps it fell out somewhere in the chaos. After entering the Useless Sheep King’s underground palace, he noticed his nerves gradually going numb. Corpse worms bit his body, yet he felt absolutely nothing. But it was irreversible; he would likely spend the rest of his life as an insensate automaton. Furthermore, whenever he became overly tense or agitated, he felt his blood vessels surging, suggesting he could suffer a burst blood vessel and die at any moment.

Old Master Sun’s will was as hard as iron. Since the matter had occurred, he could only accept his fate and settle down, not dwelling too much on blame. By nature, he was indifferent and viewed both his own life and the lives of others very lightly. He had originally planned to enter the Earth Immortal Village alone, relying on the extinguished three life lamps and the protection of the Void-Returning Bronze Mirror (Gui Xu Qing Tong Jing); finding the Earth Immortal Tomb should have been manageable.

Unexpectedly, due to a twist of fate, the signs of his corpse transformation aroused the group's suspicion, leading to his identity being exposed prematurely. In order to enter the Earth Immortal Village before the Nine Deaths Shocking Tomb Armor sealed Coffin Mountain, he knew entering meant there was no return, so he had to resort to further trickery, compelling everyone to go with him.

The situation had developed far beyond what Old Master Sun could have imagined or predicted. Even more so, he never expected that his actions had all been calculated beforehand by the Earth Immortal Feng Shigu, causing his heart to turn to dust. He fully expected that the Corpse Immortal in the tomb would escape the mountain, triggering a widespread plague. No matter how many people died in the disaster, the resulting karmic debt would be attributed to him, and he would be ashamed before his ancestors in the afterlife. His mental state collapsed.

Who would have known that the situation would finally take a turn for the better at the dead end? Perhaps Heaven truly had an eye for things. The saying "the mantis stalks the cicada, unaware of the oriole behind" applied not only to our group of tomb raiders but also to the Earth Immortal Feng Shigu, who fell prey to the wicked descendants guarding the Useless Sheep King’s tomb. It could be said that the Guanshan Housekeepers and the Mojin Xiaowei were less calculating and ruthless than those wicked remnant tribes who guarded the secrets of Coffin Mountain. Thinking back on it sent shivers down my spine.

The heavenly portents deduced by the convicts before their deaths caused Coffin Mountain to be finally incinerated by thunder and fire after it left the ground. All the dead in the Earth Immortal Village were burned to nothingness, as if everything had been predetermined in the dark. All earthly ambitions were nothing more than fleeting smoke.

When Old Master Sun fell from the cliff, he landed amidst the pile of dead bodies in Coffin Mountain. In the darkness, he luckily avoided hitting a rock and being smashed to pieces. Then, lightning and thunder ripped through the gorge, and the Earth Immortal Village was engulfed in flames. The non-human, non-ghostly Old Master Sun managed to evade the lightning strikes, was rescued by the Bar-Shan Ape that had come running at the sound, and escaped far away up the cliff in the pouring rain.

Subsequently, in his letter, he mentioned that the Void-Returning Bronze Mirror was an ancient treasure and should never be lost simply because its bronze energy dissipated. In a courtyard in Xicheng District, Beijing, there was a long-abandoned dry well. Hidden within were some items that could be found by digging according to the map drawn in the letter. Then, this object, when combined with the hexagram diagram on the back of the ancient bronze mirror, might lead to the long-lost Heavenly Cycle Elder Hexagram (Zhou Tian Lao Gua).