The Fatty looked visibly relieved. I figured it wasn't his fault; having held it in for so long, it was a wonder his bladder hadn't burst. The Fatty winked at me—our silent communication was lost on outsiders, but I understood perfectly: now that we were discovered, what was the plan? I pointed a finger upward, signaling him to climb higher up the red pillar, ascend a bit further, and wait for my signal to strike.

I then shifted my own position behind the pillar, changing my angle. The Gluttonous Ghoul was already tracking us by scent. Hidden behind the stone, I saw it clearly: its mouth was smeared with patches of blood. Its face resembled that of an owl, or perhaps even closer to a leopard. Its build was roughly humanoid, but it could not walk upright.

I spied on it stealthily, thinking it looked very much like the common muskrat found in Tibet, yet unlike the ordinary muskrat, which resembles a small black cat. This creature was not only much larger, but entirely white. Legends in the interior suggest that some beasts, upon living long enough, grow white fur just like humans.

But there was no time for further contemplation. That white, ghoul-like Shijin Balu had arrived below the red pillar where the Fatty was perched. It meticulously sniffed the traces of urine the Fatty had left. Because the Fatty had urinated through his trousers, the scent was even stronger on him. The Shijin Balu sensed the smell rising above it and started to tilt its head upward.

I thought that if this thing looked up and spotted the Fatty above, our plan for a surprise ambush would be ruined. So, I poked my head out from behind the pillar and suddenly yelled at the Shijin Balu: "Hey! Haven't you ever seen someone relieve themselves where they stand?"

The shaggy white Shijin Balu was startled by the sudden noise, whipping its head around. Its two eyes gleamed like twin streaks of electric light under the moon. I thought to myself, Your eyes are bright, but let's see if anything is brighter than this. I raised my hand, hefted the "Wolf Eye" tactical flashlight, and shot an intense beam directly into the creature's eyes. The "Wolf Eye" is a tactical torch used not only for illumination and aiming. Its greatest feature is that at close range, shining it directly forward can cause instant blindness to the naked eye.

Some animals' eyes are extremely sensitive to light sources. Precisely because of this, they can see clearly in the dark. The closer the "Wolf Eye" beam hit it, the more intense the reaction. The Shijin Balu was caught dead-on and immediately lost its vision, emitting strange calls like those of an old mountain owl.

This trick works once, but not twice. Seeing the opportunity, I shouted to the Fatty on the pillar: "What are you waiting for? Hurry up and perform the physical bombardment!"

Hearing my signal, the Fatty closed his eyes and jumped down from above, landing solidly on the Shijin Balu. A normal person taking that impact would likely have been smashed so hard their intestines spilled out of their mouth, but this beastly Shijin Balu didn't seem to care. It struggled, trying to rise. The Fatty yelled, "Commander Hu, this move isn't working! This bastard is tough..." Before the words were finished, he was flung off. The Fatty rolled twice on the ground, narrowly dodging the Shijin Balu's blind lunge with its claws.

We intended to use the temporary blindness to escape, but our position was bad. The exit leading to the "Dharma Protector Temple" was blocked by the creature. If we wanted to leave the Guge Kingdom ruins, this was the only path down the mountain. The other exit from the Reincarnation Temple was a sheer cliff face, dozens of meters high, eroded by wind and rain—impossible to descend in a hurry. If we continued the attack, we had no weapons. We didn't mind tossing rocks like the heroes of Langya Mountain, but we feared that wouldn't finish it, and once its eyes recovered, we would lose the initiative.

I scanned the surroundings, already forming a plan. I beckoned the Fatty over and pointed toward the black iron door of the secret chamber, suggesting we shut that door first to block it outside.

Both of us dared not make a sound, inching silently toward the secret chamber. But we overlooked one crucial factor: even though the Shijin's ghoul had been severely dazzled by the strong light of the "Wolf Eye," its sense of smell remained acute. The urine odor on the Fatty's body had effectively become our tracking beacon.

The Shijin Balu had recovered from the shock of its temporary blindness. It seemed enraged upon seeing living prey and charged straight toward the Fatty. Seeing things turning sour, the Fatty and I took off running, but our bodies blocked the moonlight, plunging the path ahead into pitch blackness. I tripped over a piece of ruined wall, catching myself with my hand on the ground. As I reached up to get back on my feet and run, my right hand felt something furry. I snatched it up—it was a black muskrat.

The Fatty, running closely behind me, stumbled when I fell. I grabbed the Fatty by the collar and struggled to pull myself up. Behind us, two cold lights flashed—the Shijin Balu's eyes had recovered. I quickly threw the small muskrat toward it. The creature caught it with one hand, clamped down, instantly crushing the muskrat to death, and threw it into its mouth to chew.

I figured this thing, whether zombie or beast, probably had a habit: it wouldn't eat living prey; it had to kill it first. Although the royal ruins appeared steeped in silent death, they harbored many creatures active at night or in the shadows, including muskrats and snow spiders. If I had grabbed a snow spider earlier, we might have been poisoned. The secret grotto behind the black iron door was of unknown depth, but it was our only retreat. We had to steel ourselves and hide inside first.

The Fatty and I retreated inside the iron door, not even taking time to survey the space behind it, and hurriedly pulled the door shut behind us. Seeing the door's mechanism, the Fatty immediately cried out in despair: this door opened outward; there was no bolt inside, and it was impossible to brace it with our bodies—it could only be pulled backward, rendering any strength useless.

In that instant, a massive force pulled the iron door outward from the outside. The Fatty and I put all our strength into bracing the two halves of the door. The Fatty said to me, "This move failed too, Commander Hu. Do we have any emergency backup plan?"

I told the Fatty, "We have a Plan B. Since we can't escape and can't block it, the two of us will play the bastard and fight it to the death."

The Fatty exclaimed, "Why didn't you say so earlier? We should have struck when it couldn't see! Now I'm letting go and letting it in. We've risked it all; getting killed is just like losing a hat in the wind. We're going out to fight it to the death..." Saying that, he started to release his grip on the door.

I quickly stopped the Fatty: "When did you become so straightforward? I was just saying that! We need to preserve our fighting strength; we can't go head-to-head with this thing." I kicked the two iron chains lying on the ground—I had dragged them in from the outside when we ran in. These chains were originally used to lock the door to the Silver-Eyed Buddha statue outside; they served to secure the iron door. Now that I had yanked them inside, they acted as two additional levers to reinforce the closed door.

However, I never intended to close the door from the inside to block the Shijin Balu. This iron door was a ready-made crushing vice. I told the Fatty that when the time came, we would leave a gap in the door, and no matter what part of the creature stuck through, he was to wrap the chain around his waist and pull back with all his might, not showing an ounce of mercy—crush it dead.

The Shijin Balu outside didn't give us much time to deploy our plan. Its claws forced their way through the gap, prying the door wide open, and its head and one arm pushed inside.

The timing was perfect. The Fatty and I simultaneously roared, "Ura!" and with explosive strength, straining every sinew, we yanked the chains, causing the iron door to rapidly tighten. A sound like grinding bone echoed as the vice clamped down. The Shijin Balu shrieked in pain, unable to struggle free; its neck was caught, rendering any amount of strength useless. But it hadn't given up. One hand clawed frantically at the iron door, while the half-arm inside the door swiped wildly at us in the air.

To put all his strength into it, the Fatty picked up the Silver-Eyed Buddha statue and wrapped the chain around his waist. But this brought him closer; the Shijin Balu's claws were now close enough to his stomach—just a few millimeters away from ripping his guts open. I quickly pulled out my lighter and used the flame to scorch its arm. The Shijin Balu was in unbearable pain from the burns, but stuck fast, it could only let out desperate wails.

The Fatty and I had both been key members of the Red Guards; you could say a color of bloodlust and a desire for destruction had coursed through our veins since childhood. However, in later years, these urges had been suppressed by social morality and ethics. Now, they were unconsciously reviving a primal beastliness. Against an enemy, one must be as harsh as winter; the more agonizing the enemy's screams, the more energized we became. Thinking back afterward, even we found ourselves terrifying for what we did, but at that moment, we didn't dwell on it. We only stopped when the lighter fluid was completely exhausted, having roasted the Shijin Balu beyond recognition. The head and half the shoulder thrust inside the door were nearly severed in two. It was as dead as it could possibly be.

The Fatty and I had exhausted all our strength. At such a high altitude, doing this was extremely dangerous. We both began to feel difficulty breathing and couldn't move an inch. We collapsed onto the ground.

Lying there, I noticed there was no stench of rot here. If this secret chamber truly was the hell of the Samsara Sect, we needed to leave immediately. Who knew what else lurked here? But we were completely spent. Moving rashly while struggling for breath could trigger severe altitude sickness. I had no choice but to use one hand to turn on the flashlight and illuminate the surroundings.

The space inside the black iron door was carpeted entirely with white bones—some human, some animal. The walls were riddled with holes, some small enough for a muskrat to crawl through, others large enough for a Tibetan brown bear to enter. However, they were all set high up, difficult for an ordinary person to reach. Directly above us was another cavern; the entrance was an irregularly shaped circle, like a vertical shaft. Perhaps this led up to the royal palace on the peak, and anyone who offended the royal authority was thrown down from above by guards.

As I was studying the terrain, I heard the Fatty next to me say, "Commander Hu, look what skin this is?"

I mumbled, "What skin? Whose skin?" Glancing over, I saw the Fatty pull a large clump of dark fur from underneath himself. I took it to examine. It didn't look like a Tibetan brown bear's hide, nor did it look like human skin—it had too much hair. Perhaps it was the skin of a wild man?

With a shake, a piece resembling a human skull cap dropped out of the fur—like half a skeleton head, but the bone layer was astonishingly thick. No human could have such thick bones. I squeezed it—it was soft, not like bone at all. The Fatty and I looked at it, increasingly perplexed. We shone the flashlight on it and saw that the skull was densely covered with what looked like script. Although it wasn't the strange lettering of the Dragon Bone Heavenly Script, we couldn't recognize a single character...