This divine statue was also made in his likeness, except with a thinner face and plain white robes, no longer extravagant. After Xie Lian took away the liquor jug, the statue tried to snatch it back, but its strength in its dazed state was no match for his own. Its attempts sent it spinning in circles, and then, suddenly, it clung to Xie Lian and began to cry in frustration.
Xie Lian gaped.
“There’s no need for you to cry either…”
The statue sobbed even harder at this; it cried like a man with infinite problems. It stopped grabbing for the liquor and instead clutched Xie Lian and refused to let go.
Xie Lian had no idea he was so clingy when he got drunk. He had no choice but to hug it and gently rub its back.
“All right, all right…” he soothed.
On second glance, Xie Lian realized that the “liquor jug” in his hand didn’t have any alcohol in it, so it didn’t matter if he returned it.
He asked, “Have you seen a man dressed in red? Where did he go?”
The divine statue pointed him in the right direction, and Xie Lian returned the liquor jug. As he continued on his way, the statue stopped crying. It sat back on the ground, hugging the jug, and drifted into dreamy distraction.
Xie Lian looked back and let out a sigh, then moved on.
After walking for a while longer, he heard a sound like the creaking friction of metal chains. He soon came upon a spacious cavern.
A swing hung from the domed ceiling of the cave, and a divine statue was seated upon it. It was sprightly and filled with the air of youth, and it wore the cultivation uniform of a Royal Cultivation Hall disciple—this was probably him at sixteen or seventeen. It was gripping the swing’s chains and pulling on them hard to make it rock back and forth, but it kept failing because it was sitting on it. It wore a troubled expression, clearly upset by its plight.
At the sight of this, Xie Lian went over to give it a push or two. The swing finally began to move, which made the statue in cultivation robes happy.
Xie Lian took this chance to ask, “Have you seen a man dressed in red? Where did he go?”
The statue in cultivation robes pointed in one direction, his other hand still holding the swing’s chain.
Xie Lian gave it another few pushes before he said, “Goodbye, then.”
The swing rocked back and forth dozens of times but eventually came to a stop once more. Without anyone to push him, the statue in cultivation robes sat there in a daze, and the troubled expression resurfaced on its face.
I should reach him soon, right? Xie Lian thought as he walked on and on.
Just then, he heard a small voice that sounded like it was suppressing pain. Confused, he wondered aloud, “What’s that sound? Gasping…?”
The voice was coming from a cavern just ahead. When Xie Lian went in, he saw a stone altar with what appeared to be a divine statue lying on top. A sheer white cloth covered it from head to toe and draped down the altar to brush the ground. The figure beneath the silk was writhing in shadowed contour, at times curling into a ball, at times tossing and turning. It looked like someone struggling painfully and suffering grave torment.
Speechless, Xie Lian was just about to go over and pull off the white sheet when a hand reached out from behind him and covered his eyes.
“Gege,” sighed a low voice, also from behind him.
Xie Lian chuckled. “San Lang, do you think I don’t know what this is even if you don’t let me see it?” he asked gently.
After a long silence, another sigh escaped Hua Cheng. “Gege, I was wrong.”
Xie Lian pulled down his hand and looked back to face him. “The Land of the Tenders?”
The one standing behind him was a tall man dressed in red. It was, of course, Hua Cheng.
Now that he had been caught, he raised one hand to hold his troubled brow. “…Yes,” he finally admitted.
No wonder. If that's what it was, it was no surprise that Hua Cheng wouldn't let him look at the statue.
“You came here tonight hoping to hide this statue, didn’t you?” Xie Lian asked.
Hua Cheng’s gaze shifted elsewhere as he answered. “Yes.”
Xie Lian didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. Was Hua Cheng really so afraid of letting him see it?
“Why hide it?” he asked. “It’s not that big a deal, really. But now we have a troublesome problem on our hands…”
The troublesome problem being that Xie Lian’s arrival had unintentionally animated all the divine statues.
It wasn’t really too much of a concern, but to this statue in particular, it was an agonizing affair—for the sculpted idol beneath the silk cover was a depiction of the seventeen-year-old Xie Lian who had been poisoned by the Land of the Tenders inside that cave out in the wilderness.
The other divine statues depicted sword-dancing, or drinking, or swinging on a swing—all of that and more. This one, however, was the unfortunate representative of the time Xie Lian had been laid low by that dreadful flower yao’s poison, so when it came alive, it had to suffer the grave torment of the poison of desire.
The agonized gasping from under the sheer cloth was unbearable to hear—it forced Xie Lian’s mind back to that harrowing, torrid night.
“It’s awful, what it’s going through right now,” Xie Lian said. “If I leave, will it return to being a simple stone statue?”
If it did, it wouldn’t need to suffer further torture.
“I’m afraid not,” Hua Cheng replied. “Gege, you’re in pretty much your most powerful state right now. Every divine statue in the Cave of Ten Thousand Gods has been affected by you, and they will remain animated for a long time even if you leave.”
It wouldn’t be right to simply abandon this statue to its pain. “Then…is there any other way?” Xie Lian asked.
Indeed, Hua Cheng was a man of ways. With a slight nod, he said, “I was just attending to this matter. Come with me, gege.”
He led Xie Lian to a different stone cavern, and Xie Lian’s eyes widened when they entered the room. Inside stood a stone sculpture of a man—tall and slender, with a handsome face and lips that curled slightly upward. An eyepatch covered its right eye.
This statue was an almost exact replica of the red-clad man who’d led him here. It was a ghost king statue!
“This is…” Xie Lian trailed off.
“Something I carved in a hurry when I realized things were going wrong,” Hua Cheng explained. “I haven’t sculpted in years, so I’m a little rusty. Gege, look. Does it look like me?”
After examining it in detail, Xie Lian declared, “Very much so! But…”
“But…what?” Hua Cheng asked.
Xie Lian grinned. “It doesn’t look quite as good as the original.”
Hua Cheng smiled as well, then Xie Lian returned to the subject.
“So, San Lang, the idea you mentioned is…?”
Was it to have this ghost king statue help…“detoxify” the divine statue poisoned by the Land of the Tenders?
After a brief silence, Hua Cheng’s smile disappeared and his expression went serious. Looking Xie Lian in the eyes, he stated, “Yes.”