Chapter 11

Chapter 11

Song Tianming tested the waters first. He lifted the quilt and sat up. After sitting there for about half a minute, the room remained silent. Everyone else was still sound asleep.

Only then did Song Tianming creep out of bed, slowly shuffle over to the window, and push it open.

When he saw Hua Yuling and me crouching outside, he pointed at Hua Yuling, clearly surprised.

“There are two of you?”

I was just about to speak when a soft rustling came from inside the room, like a quilt rubbing against clothing. I turned my head and saw that the man who had just been asleep was awake again, his limbs pressed to the wall as he crawled up onto the ceiling.

Panicking, I grabbed Song Tianming and yanked him toward me.

“Get out, now! The wall-crawler’s awake again!”

Song Tianming’s face went visibly white with a whoosh. Trembling all over, he braced one hand against the wall and pushed hard with the other, trying to climb out.

But he was so tense and terrified that his legs had gone weak. He tried several times, yet his body stayed frozen in place like it had been nailed there.

Seeing that wall-crawling man was almost above Song Tianming’s head, I stood up, grabbed Song Tianming under both arms, and with one hard pull, lifted him straight out like yanking a carrot from the ground.

The very next second, the wall-crawler reached the window.

His body was still on the ceiling, but his head hung down from the top edge of the window as he stared at me upside down.

This time, I finally got a clear look at his face.

He had no face. No, not exactly-he had no features. His entire face looked like a lump of melted wax, or a clump of sticky, rotten mud.

As he moved, black fluid dripped steadily down, splattering onto the windowsill.

Song Tianming screamed at the top of his lungs.

It was like a drop of cold water falling into a pan of hot oil.

Song Tianming’s scream made the whole room boil over. Everyone threw off their quilts and, moving in perfect unison, crawled up the walls onto the ceiling, surging toward the window.

Song Tianming grabbed my arm in a panic.

“Run!”

He dragged me toward the temple’s rear courtyard, with Hua Yuling following close behind.

As we fled, I glanced back. Those people were crawling on all fours like animals. Some had climbed onto the roof and were leaping straight down through the air.

When they jumped, they spread both arms wide as if gliding, using the wind to move at incredible speed.

Song Tianming was scared out of his mind.

“Run faster! If they catch us, we’re dead!”

We sprinted north the whole way until a Buddhist pagoda appeared at the end of our line of sight.

It was a traditional octagonal pagoda. Between each tier of eaves were layers of carved reliefs, but the night was too dark to make out exactly what they depicted.

While running, I casually swept my gaze over it and realized this pagoda actually had only six stories.

Traditional Buddhist pagodas always had an odd number of stories. That was because odd numbers were yang and even numbers were yin; since Buddhism honored light and greatness, they chose yang numbers.

Some pagodas had as few as five stories, while taller ones could have nine or even thirteen, but the most common was usually seven.

A seven-story Buddhist pagoda represented the seven emotions and six desires of the mortal world: joy, anger, worry, thought, grief, fear, and shock. As the saying went, “Saving one life is better than building a seven-story pagoda.” That seven-story pagoda referred precisely to this kind of structure.

I just didn’t know why this one was missing a level.

There was no time to think. The people behind us were drawing closer and closer, so the three of us charged headfirst through the pagoda’s main doors, then worked together to slam them shut.

The moment we got inside, an icy, bone-chilling aura rushed straight at us.

I couldn’t help shivering and moved closer to Hua Yuling.

Outside, those people were pounding madly on the door. Bang, bang, bang.

But the wooden doors were sturdy, and the three of us were bracing them with all our strength. After they battered them for a while, they still couldn’t break through.

Gradually, the sounds outside disappeared, and everything around us fell quiet.

Song Tianming collapsed onto the floor and gasped for breath.

I asked him what the hell those things were.

“Song Tianming, why are they chasing you?”

Song Tianming lifted his head in shock.

“Who are you people? How do you know my name?”

I stared at him in confusion. “What are you doing? Did you lose your memory or something?”