Chapter Eighty-Six: Straight into the Black Hole

At the satellite phone came Xiao Huo's voice: Sister Gu, we have found the spot marked by the red agate on the key. After digging away the grass roots and rubble on the surface, we uncovered an octagonal well mouth, about three meters across, already packed with earth and stones. The rim is about a foot wide, carved with sealing script in Tibetan. A rough reading suggests something like: "With all our strength we cast out evil; with our lives we uphold righteousness. By the power of the hidden spring, may the eye of demons be forever sealed." The brothers have already begun digging. Please rest assured.

The three raised their binoculars. Through the lenses, Xiao Huo was waving vigorously toward them. Beside him, a crowd of men swung spades and crowbars, digging with all their might. Curiously, Gao Xiang was not helping; instead, he stood with folded arms, pacing around the group.

The excavation was going poorly. Xiao Huo kept phoning in reports: the gaps in the rock were filled with a stubborn mixture of rice paste and sawdust, bonded so firmly that even the pick tips could not get in. Three hours passed, and they had only dug down a little over a meter.

"A small charge. Take care not to damage the walls," Gu Qingcheng ordered over the phone.

Breathing hard, Xiao Huo replied, "The well was cut directly into the mountain; even if we wanted to damage it, we couldn't. At this point, blasting is the only way forward."

After that, short explosions rang out continuously from the opposite ridge, and wisps of blue smoke drifted through the valley of Mount Niseri.

No one knew what lay within that black void. She only hoped they would still have time to do something, rather than face a chaotic, ruined defeat. Gu Qingcheng paced back and forth in agitation, peering across from time to time through the binoculars.

The longer things dragged on, the more likely they were to attract attention and bring unnecessary trouble.

There was no need to fear disorder. So long as there was a mandala, all chaos could be swept away, because the mandala was the very symbol of order, standing opposite to disorder. Delays, changes in plan, harsh conditions, and the like — all of these were chaos. What they had to do was establish a mandala and transform chaos into order. Isn't that right, Guan Wen? Because Guan Wen was there, Bao Ling remained calm throughout.

"Yes," Guan Wen said with a smile.

The mandala could be understood in this way: it could represent almost everything that exists in reality or in the mind — the human body, a monastery, a royal palace, a city, a continent, a thought, a vision, even a political structure. All of these were mandalas, and all could be expressed through the art form of the mandala.

The demoness used limitless illusions to bewitch hearts and disrupt the normal lives of the people of Tibet. She was the source of all disorder. They had risked their lives entering the black void in order to end the chaos and return Tibet to the clear and peaceful age that had existed before the demoness appeared.

Guan Wen was not formally a disciple of Tibetan Buddhism, yet at this moment his understanding of its doctrines and aims was no less than that of eminent monks who had cultivated for decades. Besides, in spiritual practice, what mattered was each person's awakening, not the length of time spent meditating and chanting.

He knew that in Tibetan Buddhism, every thing in the world was formed according to a primordial mandala structure. This structure could not be seen by the human eye, yet truly existed in the emptiness of space. Take this place, for instance: it was itself a mandala, with Lhasa at the center and snow mountains encircling it. Lhasa too was a mandala, with Jokhang Temple at the center and various monasteries and dwellings clustered around it. Jokhang Temple was also a mandala, with its main altar at the center and the surrounding halls guarding it. Extend this reasoning further, and all things under heaven were nothing other than mandalas. Thus, the mandala was an indispensable tool for Tibetan Buddhist practitioners, containing all the fundamental principles of the cosmos.

This profound and mysterious doctrine was akin to the saying in Han Buddhism that a grain of sand contains a world, and a flower contains a Buddha realm. Since the demoness had shattered the existing Tibetan mandala, he had to rebuild it with the pen in his hand and repair the world that had been broken.

Gu Qingcheng turned to look at Guan Wen, uneasily tapping her fingernails. "I keep having this feeling that something terrible is about to happen. It has been a long time since we heard anything from the Azure Dragon Society. Those monsters eyeing Mount Niseri would not simply give up. Maybe at any moment they—"

As she spoke, cheers rose from the opposite ridge, and a pillar of white water shot straight into the sky, soaring more than ten meters before raining down in all directions.

Over the phone, Xiao Huo cried excitedly, "Sister Gu, the well has been opened. I can hardly believe it — all kinds of gold jewelry have actually burst out of the water..."

Suddenly Guan Wen understood. In the years of war long ago, the monks of Tashilhunpo Monastery had thrown the treasure into that well and then filled it with giant stones. It was a twofold solution: to bury the treasure deep for the day when the monastery might rise again, and to block the spring so that the pressure of the water would be held back and accumulated, then diverted into the force that sealed the black void's entrance.

Modern people believed that such physical knowledge did not exist in ancient times, and that it could not have been achieved with the technology of the day. But clearly, the archaeologists had all been wrong.

"Let's go." Guan Wen ran toward the cliff edge and was the first to grasp the rope and slide down.

The moment they reached the outside of the black void, a chill pierced their skin, and every hair on their bodies stood on end.

Guan Wen did not rush ahead. Instead, he switched on a powerful flashlight and shone it into the opening. The original floor inside was gone, revealing a two-meter-wide stone stairway, pitch-black and descending far below.

Xiao Huo and Gao Xiang led the others back. Everyone wore an expression of strange excitement.

"Let's go. Stay alert, everyone. I'll take the lead." Xiao Huo stepped out first, and the group slowly descended the stairs.

The discovery of the treasure had not rattled Xiao Huo. He did not mention the treasure again, not even once. One hand on his gun, the other holding a flashlight, he went steadily forward step by step.

The steps and the walls were wet, as if they had just been washed by water. This also confirmed that the entrance to the black void had been held shut by water pressure; once the spring was opened and the pressure rushed out from the other side, the void's gate would swing wide.

After descending about three hundred steps, the passage suddenly opened into a vast circular space, like a giant open-air arena. Where they stood was the entrance at the highest point of the arena. Looking down from there, the lowest part of the arena glimmered with rippling water, while the enormous steps around them, each two meters high and two meters wide, gave off a faint white glow from within.

"This place is truly strange — Sister Gu, what should we do?" Xiao Huo asked.

"Go down. We'll speak when we reach the end of the steps," Gu Qingcheng replied softly.

In truth, it was not only the stone steps; every inch of this place radiated white light, as if low-watt frosted bulbs had been installed inside it. Of course, Guan Wen could tell from experience that this was a wondrous effect created by luminous moss.

After descending more than two hundred additional steps, they came to the edge of a pool over a hundred meters in diameter. The water was clear, and thick gray water plants swayed slowly at the bottom.

Straight ahead, a narrow pebble path only wide enough for one person led directly toward the center of the pool. There, on a round platform at the pool's heart, lay an old monk in dark crimson robes.

"Be careful. No one act alone." Xiao Huo raised a hand to command.

Two men approached the water, scooping at the surface as they turned back with smiles. "The water is clean. It should be the same as where we drilled through. Whoever's thirsty, come drink a couple of mouthfuls—"

Gu Qingcheng suddenly shouted, "Get back! Don't touch the water... no, the water plants!"

Her warning came too late. Two thick water plants suddenly shot up through the air, one biting into a man's arm, the other clamping directly onto another man's head, dragging both men into the water in an instant.

"Back off! Back off!" Xiao Huo shouted.

The two men offered no struggle at all. The exposed skin on their bodies turned black as ink the moment they entered the water, and as soon as they sank, more water plants coiled around them, wrapping the two corpses tightly. Within two minutes, they had vanished beneath the surface, their clothes dissolved away entirely.

The water became still again, just as it had been when they first arrived at the pool's edge.

It was merely a kind of man-eating water plant. Don't be afraid, everyone. Divide into two teams at once and scatter the medicine I gave you earlier along the edge of the pool. Xiao Huo issued the order calmly. With a sweep of both hands, his men immediately moved around the pool and scattered a colorful powder into the water.

During the process, though everyone was extremely careful, one man still strayed a little too close to the edge and was dragged into the water to his death.

Once the medicine had been thrown in, Xiao Huo looked at his watch and waited in silence, biting his lip. Very soon, the water plants in the pool began to thrash wildly, like a great mass of writhing serpents, the tallest of them rising more than ten meters above the surface. After a while longer, the water plants weakly collapsed and floated on the water, their former living gray-black color turning a withered yellow.

"All right, who goes first?" Xiao Huo asked Guan Wen.

"I do." Guan Wen stepped forward without hesitation, the first to set foot on the path.

"Thank you for trusting me so much." Xiao Huo followed, then turned back to tell the others, "Everyone stay here. Once the danger is cleared, I'll give the signal."

This time, Gao Xiang stepped forward. "I'm a man too. We'll go together."

So the three of them went along the path straight to the center of the pool.

The platform was more than twenty meters across, its surface smooth like a huge gray crystal.

Guan Wen walked up to the old monk, crouched down before him, and looked at that gaunt, pale face. In earlier visions, he had seen this face before, though they had never spoken at length or truly come to know one another.

The old monk raised his head. The two of them regarded each other in silence, exchanging thoughts through their eyes.

"You have finally come."

"Yes. I heard your summons and came at once. I am sorry. We spent too long wandering through obstacles and arrived late."

"No, not late. So long as the Rakshasa demoness has not broken through the barrier, it is never too late."

"What should we do next?"

"I do not know. That is the question you must think about. As for me, I am nothing but a failure. I can only maintain the crystal demon-subduing formation established by the wise ones before me, and guard her here, but I cannot destroy her at the root. I am an unworthy exorcist, and I have no face to meet the predecessors who have ascended to the kingdom of souls."

"Senior, you are too modest. If not for you, the demoness would long ago have flown into the heavens and brought disaster upon Tibet. History may not bear your name, but in the hearts of countless demon-subduers, the name of Master Doge Gyatso will always be remembered."

"Forget that name. The moment I decided to lead seventy sages into this place, we no longer had individual names. We had only one name: the Seventy Sages of Tibet. Only by joining forces to unleash the Divine Dragon Demon-Subduing Hand could they force the Rakshasa demoness, who had already escaped from the earth veins, back into her true form and seal her once more within the earth veins. They all died, body and soul destroyed, vanished without a trace. Now I alone remain here, waiting stubbornly for the successor to arrive. Look there—"