The mouth on the skull was far larger than a normal person's. I stared at it for a long time, thinking it might be a mask—but why was it wrapped in that piece of savage pelt and left here, in this hell behind the iron gate? Fatty and I couldn't figure it out. We noticed marks indicating the fur had been processed by hand, though we couldn't tell if it was valuable.

We paused to catch our breath, feeling ready to move. Seeing the increasing number of small weasels darting around the corners, we dared not linger near the pile of bleached bones any longer. We quickly left the spot, because once I saw the terrain beyond the iron gate, I understood: this gate wasn't meant to stop the Shizui Balu at all. It was there to prevent executed criminals, who hadn't died on impact, from escaping through the opening. The large holes in the sloped ceiling were the true entry points for those Shizui Balu. If another two managed to crawl in, things would become difficult.

Fatty rewrapped the strange mask with the savage's fur and tucked it under his arm. I climbed out of the secret passage first, with Fatty right behind me. Outside, the bright moon was high; it was the dead of night. The ground of the Samsara Temple was slick with blood—all that remained of Ah Dong after being gnawed on. The relatively intact pieces were his two pale, separated thighs. Aside from a few ribs, his upper body was mostly gone. The sight was utterly unbearable.

Fatty and I conferred. No matter what, he had traveled with us. We couldn't just leave him to rot here, but digging a grave would be too much trouble. We decided to simply toss the remnants of him back into the secret passage.

The two of us awkwardly threw Ah Dong's scattered remains through the black iron gate, and then we placed the silver-eyed Buddha statue back where it belonged. Stealing such an item must bring retribution; we decided it was best left in the hidden chamber. Then, we shut the iron gate again, barricading it tightly with broken bricks and rotten wood, before heading back the way we came.

On the way back, Fatty kept sighing, deeply sympathetic to Ah Dong's tragic fate: "I’ve discovered a truth: not everyone can be a heroic figure. Commander Hu was right; in the crucial moments, one must dare to play the bastard."

I told Fatty, "We can't always play the bastard. The blind man said something quite profound: people live in this world only to face unwarranted disasters. The dangers of the Jianghu are not just limited to storms. When facing various types of danger, we must adopt different countermeasures. As the ancient saying goes, 'To besiege a city is inferior; to attack the mind is superior.' We need to step up our psychological warfare efforts from now on, striving to dismantle the enemy mentally..."

As we walked and talked, rambling without end, we suddenly heard a series of footsteps behind us—it sounded like someone was tracking us. I grew instantly alert, stopped talking, and looked back. The silent, mountainous scrubland, cast in deep shadow by the moonlight, lay like monstrous, fierce beasts upon the desolate plateau. The mournful wind howled; the air had picked up. Perhaps it had just been my imagination.

Although I found nothing amiss, a chill ran down my spine, and I couldn't shake the feeling that something was wrong. So, Fatty and I quickened our pace, hurrying back to the fortress where the expedition team was camped. Slipping in unnoticed, we dove into our sleeping bags and pulled the covers over our heads. The next morning, Uncle Ming asked if we had seen that scoundrel Ah Dong. Fatty and I shook our heads like rattles. "No," I said. "Ah Dong probably found carrying the oxygen tanks too strenuous and deserted early to avoid the hardship."

Fatty put on an even more bizarre performance: "Ah Dong? Wasn't he in Beijing? Why would he be here? Uncle Ming, are you getting senile? Are you suffering from oxygen deprivation? Get an IV drip, quick."

Uncle Ming had to send Peter Huang out to search the vicinity. When he found nothing, he dropped the matter. After all, Ah Dong was just a lackey; his life or death had no bearing on the grand scheme.

That day, the guide informed us that we wouldn't be moving. The wind had blown hard for most of the latter half of the night, suggesting a major rainstorm was imminent today. Our team had too many yaks; on the plateau, yaks don't fear wolves or Tibetan brown bears, but they dread thunder. If they encountered lightning and thunder on the path, they would surely scatter wildly. So, we had to delay for a day and set off for Sengge Tsangpo tomorrow.

We figured that since we had a general grasp of the location of Kunlun Mountains' Karakoram region, even reaching it wouldn't allow us to enter the mountains yet, as our equipment and supplies hadn't arrived. Once everything was ready, the journey across the Tibetan Plateau would be long anyway, so there was no need to rush by a day or two. We stayed put in the ruins of the old fort. Sure enough, before noon, the sky grew thick with dark clouds, and the rain finally began to fall.

Everyone sat inside the ancient castle, drinking yak butter tea and waiting. Due to the rain, the atmospheric pressure dropped further, and Ah Xiang felt breathless, so she remained in the inner room sleeping. The rest of us discussed our next course of action, and then Fatty began regaling Uncle Ming and the others with tales of his spectacular tomb-raiding career, leaving them utterly dumbfounded.

I took the opportunity to call the Lama and Shirley Yang into the stone room where I slept. I showed them the savage's pelt and the paper mask. I briefly explained what had happened last night, but stressed that it was best not to tell Uncle Ming about Ah Dong's death, to avoid misunderstandings; he might suspect Fatty and I of murdering Ah Dong for his valuables, which would only bring us trouble.

Shirley Yang sounded annoyed when she heard: "You two have too much nerve, going into the ancient city ruins at midnight to play pranks completely empty-handed! After serving as a lieutenant for several years, you still lack any semblance of composure. What if something serious had happened?"

I said to Shirley Yang, "A hero doesn't dwell on youthful bravado; looking back, the years of intense effort were rich indeed. What happened last night, and everything before it, is now just a tiny ripple in the vast river of history. Let's not get stuck on what has already objectively passed. Look at the characters on this mask—can you identify them? This is the only item with writing in the Samsara Monastery. The Samsara Sect and the Demon Kingdom faith share many similarities; perhaps this holds some valuable intelligence."

Shirley Yang replied resignedly, "Your rhetoric is too good. You shouldn't have been a soldier; you should be a lawyer, or perhaps a politician." She took the mask and examined it, exclaiming, "This is the Bible written in Portuguese."

Besides my skill in Xun Long Jue, I have another talent: when someone asks me a question I don't wish to answer, I pretend I didn't hear it. So, I asked Shirley Yang, "You understand Portuguese? I thought those characters looked like strings of grapes."

Shirley Yang shook her head. "I can only understand a little, but I'm very familiar with the Bible. This is definitely the Bible; there’s no mistake."

With the Lama assisting, we finally confirmed that the mask depicted an image of a Samsara Sect devil. Crafting such a terrifying mask from pages of the Bible probably related to past conflicts over extinguishing religions in Tibet. The pelt of the Himalayan savage was a prized treasure favored by ancient Tibetan nobility; it was said to have warming properties, and wrapping a corpse in it could preserve the body. Royal nobles liked to wear it as a cloak while hunting, as it could conceal human scent in the wind; another theory suggests this fur could trap the soul, preventing its release forever.

Shirley Yang wanted to examine the mask for hidden secrets, so she carefully peeled back the dried pages of the Bible, layer by layer. Inside the scripture pages, she discovered many winding lines—it was a map, showing waterways, mountain ranges, castles, and towers, but we couldn't tell where it was.

Lacking any other reference, we could only deduce from the topography that this might be a map of the ancient Shangshung Kingdom in the land of the Garuda, or perhaps the map of the Phoenix Divine Palace in the Kunlun Mountains. This is because the long-vanished Guge Kingdom had deep connections with these two locations and likely preserved information about these ancient ruins. Some foreigner must have secretly copied it, planning to seek treasure or do something else, but met with misfortune before getting away, ending up thrown into hell to feed the Shizui Maru. The Bible used to sketch the map was turned into the face of a demon, wrapped in savage fur, and thrown into hell together. However, the precise details were beyond our ability to deduce. In any case, this map, which was almost unrecognizable, held some value.

Shirley Yang busied herself repairing the drawing, while I turned to go out and pour some more butter tea. The rain outside had eased considerably, but the thunder rumbled heavily, seemingly gathering strength for an even bigger downpour. The sky was dark as night; it wasn't clear if the weather would clear up by tomorrow. In the outer room, Fatty sat by the fire, in the middle of a rousing story. Uncle Ming, Peter Huang, Han Shuna, and the guide named Jixiang were all listening with rapt attention, mouths agape.

I heard Fatty saying, his voice full of energy, "Your Fatty once dismembered that old zombie in the big coffin into eight pieces. I buried the head by the roadside, the arms and legs in the east and west hills respectively, kicked the remaining torso into the river."

Fatty then turned to Peter Huang: "That Prince of Siam you mentioned, you know that old fellow? He came to China when that master was visiting. The streets were lined with waist-drum troupes welcoming him. The Foreign Ministry insisted I meet him. Damn it all, I didn't have the time; I found it too chaotic! So I snuck off to the countryside and moved into a notorious house where seventeen people had supposedly died. That’s my temperament—I don't believe in that stuff, haunted houses or yin dwellings. I stayed without hesitation. That night, I started counting the ritual objects I'd looted from the old zombie. As soon as I started making that 'kaka-ka' sound counting them, **! Guess what happened?"

Uncle Ming shook his head. "Are you serious? You won't tell us and then expect us to guess? How many ritual objects did you actually take?"

Fatty exclaimed, "Don't even mention it! Ritual objects, my foot! I had only counted about half when someone violently slammed the door open. Outside, thunder was cracking incessantly, and the door just flew open on its own. Something rolled in from outside—it was the head I had buried by the river!"

Uncle Ming and the others were bored by Fatty's tall tales. Though they knew he was lying, the continuing thunder outside and the dark, eerie atmosphere of the abandoned fortress made them tense up regardless.

I found it amusing, thinking, Fatty, you’re something else. Keep talking. Better scare the heart attack out of Uncle Ming so we have an excuse to ditch these burdens and search for the 'Dragon Top' in Karakoram.

I walked over to the teapot, raising my bowl to pour some tea, when I suddenly heard a woman's sharp cry from the inner room—it sounded like Ah Xiang. Wasn't she supposed to be asleep? At that moment, everyone in the room stood up, even the Iron Staff Lama and Shirley Yang emerged from the back.

Worried that something had happened to Ah Xiang, they started to move toward the inner room, only to see Ah Xiang running out barefoot, throwing herself into Uncle Ming’s arms. Uncle Ming quickly comforted her: "Sweet girl, don't be afraid. What happened?"

Ah Xiang scanned the faces around the room with vacant, wide eyes, and told Uncle Ming, "Godfather, I’m so scared. I saw Ah Dong, covered in blood, walking around in this room."

The others didn't think much of it, but those of us who knew about Ah Dong's death felt a cold sweat break out on our backs. Just then, the Iron Staff Lama stepped forward and said, "He has entered the Chönyid state. We must quickly perform the transference ritual for the deceased, or he will bring harm to the living people here."

The Iron Staff Lama explained that the Chönyid state was not a vengeful spirit, but very close to one. Esoteric Buddhism posits that the period between a person's death and their next rebirth is known as the Chönyid. The Lama asked Ah Xiang if she could see where the spirit body was now.

Trembling, Ah Xiang raised her finger. Everyone instinctively took a step back, only to see her finger pointing directly at the Iron Staff Lama.