Chapter 20: The Rotten God Blocks the Way

"A-Ying remarked, 'Originally, there was supposed to be a grand deity parade today with several temples joining forces, and the route was already set. I never expected an emergency task to pop up at the last minute...'"

The Yuanshi Temple was bustling with pilgrims coming and going.

Li Xuan lowered his voice and said, "I'm afraid we can't set off today, as we still need a key figure to locate the Chen Family Village where the Mother Buddha of Great Black resides..."

A-Ying said with a hint of pride, "Don't worry. Back when I first went to call my master, he was sitting there casting divination, and he gave me this, saying to look for it whenever I felt lost."

He pulled out a piece of paper with a string of numbers written on it.

Li Xuan stared at the numbers. Lost, searching... could these be Earth's geographic coordinates? With these, he could pinpoint the target location with extreme precision.

He opened his phone map.

Entering the numbers, the map loaded, and the arrow landed in a place called Xinzhu Township in Taipei. Looking at the blurry satellite image, the spot pointed to a small village, though no name was displayed. The village was surrounded by mountains on all sides, and one had to pass through a stretch of forest after leaving the main road to reach it.

It seemed they didn't even need Li Ruonan as a guide anymore.

Just then, his phone rang; it was Zhang Zhengze calling.

Li Xuan picked up: "Hello, Officer Zhang."

Zhang Zhengze said, "Just a moment ago, our patrol officers found a young girl lying on the ground. It was harrowing—both of her ears were gone... The wound on the left was old, but the one on the right was very fresh! The girl wouldn't speak. We checked the surveillance footage and saw Li Ruonan appear. As soon as she showed up, the girl, who had been walking fine, suddenly collapsed. Then, Li Ruonan knelt beside her, forcibly tore off the girl's only remaining intact ear with her bare hands, put it in her pocket, and walked away, leaving the girl on the ground crying in agony..."

Ah!

This connected to the plot of the film!

In the movie, after Chen Letong failed to break the curse, she went looking for the girl herself and was spotted by Li Ruonan. Li Ruonan, desperate to prevent her daughter's death, remembered that this girl had once been a sacrificial child for the Chen Family Village. Driven to madness, she sliced off the girl's ear as an offering and headed toward the village, intending to unleash the Mother Buddha of Great Black so that more people would face the curse, thereby lightening her own burden...

He had assumed this plot point wouldn't happen.

He hadn't expected that even without Chen Letong, Li Ruonan would still encounter the girl.

So next, she was likely heading to the Chen Family Village alone to attempt to release the Mother Buddha.

Zhang Zhengze continued, saying they had lost track of Li Ruonan after she passed a blind spot in the surveillance. Now, they could only wait and see if she returned to her daughter, Chen Letong.

Li Xuan said, "A friend and I will deal with the Mother Buddha of Great Black today. Officer Zhang, please just keep a close watch on little Letong."

Hearing this, Zhang Zhengze asked anxiously, "Without Li Ruonan, how do you know where the Chen Family Village is?"

Li Xuan replied, "I do."

Zhang Zhengze's voice grew louder: "I'm coming with you! It's too dangerous for you to go alone!"

Li Xuan chuckled: "We are professionals."

Zhang Zhengze coughed and said, "Are you referring to the kind of 'professional' who calls down a thunderclap to disperse the fog and then immediately faints?"

Li Xuan's sunny expression suddenly turned sour.

This Zhang Zhengze was too mischievous, picking at old scabs.

He said, "We have an even more professional friend providing backup, so it will be fine. My phone is turning off now."

He powered down, removed the SIM card, inserted a new one, and rebooted.

Zhang Zhengze was a man of principle, but the Chen Family Village was far too dangerous; if he went, it would be a suicide mission. Moreover, if trouble arose, Li Xuan and A-Ying might not be able to spare a hand to help him.

With the location of the Chen Family Village secured, A-Ying pulled up in an SUV and gestured for Li Xuan to get in.

The vehicle seemed to be used for the deity parade; the back seat was filled with various ritual implements, robes, incense, candles, and spirit money.

Li Xuan looked at the modern SUV being driven by a "White Crane Boy" and felt a bit dazed by the visual clash of such cultural contrasts. A breeze blew past, he snapped back to reality, and hopped in.

Let's go!

Xinzhu Township was a fair distance away. After driving for over an hour, they finally entered its perimeter.

A-Ying kept his hands on the steering wheel while using his other hand to tap the phone stuck in the air vent to check the location. "Actually, this is the first time my master has let me conduct an exorcism alone. I'm quite excited; it signifies a form of approval. But to be honest, I'm still a bit nervous. After all, this thing is a 'Great Black' and a 'Mother Buddha'—a malevolent deity. Its title is quite intimidating..."

Wait...

He looked pretty impressive in the movie.

Li Xuan couldn't help but ask, "Is there really a need to be this nervous? The 'White Crane Boy' persona you're playing is the attendant to the Primordial Lord of Heaven—very powerful. Do you know this line?"

A-Ying asked, "What line?"

Li Xuan said, "In the Heavenly Palace, you call me the White Crane Boy, and I don't hold it against you. But now that we've descended to the mortal realm, what should you call me?"

A-Ying was baffled: "Isn't it still White Crane Boy?"

It seemed he hadn't heard this particular meme.

Li Xuan puffed out his chest and said with a look of disdain, "You should call me the Immortal Venerable White Crane!"

A-Ying's eyes brightened, and his facial paint seemed to grow more vivid in the dim light of the forest. He said, "That makes sense! 'Immortal Venerable White Crane' does sound more imposing!"

The red hook-shaped markings at the corners of his painted mouth tilted upward significantly.

The SUV moved slowly through the forest. There had once been a road leading to the village, but as no one had walked it for years, the ground was overgrown with weeds.

*Snap.*

The car jolted to a halt, as if something had jammed the wheel.

Li Xuan stepped out to inspect it and found a heavily decayed wooden deity statue stuck in the wheel. He pulled it out; the decay was so severe that almost only a vague outline remained.

He knew it was a deity statue because, in the film, when Li Ruonan followed her boyfriend to the Chen Family Village for the first time six years ago, their car had been stopped by this very same statue.

This statue had been trying to stop Li Ruonan six years ago, and it was trying to stop them today.

Returning to the car, Li Xuan placed the statue on the center console and said, "This deity statue was what jammed the wheel."

A-Ying's expression turned grave. He examined it, failed to recognize it, and said, "The statue is so severely damaged that, theoretically, it should have lost all spiritual power. Yet, it still jumped out to prevent us from entering the village, which means the danger inside is far greater than we imagined..."

No sooner had he finished speaking than the statue split down the middle with a *crack*, and a large amount of black liquid oozed out.

A-Ying opened the window and threw the statue out, his face dark. "My miscalculation. I should have brought our friends along. With the deity parade guarding the streets, our energies would have bolstered one another, and that thing would have had nowhere to run."

Li Xuan understood the subtext: *We are in trouble.*

He asked, "Is the status of the White Crane Boy not high enough? Not powerful enough?"

A-Ying said, "Look at the eerie, ghostly energy ahead in the forest. Entering alone leaves us isolated and without support. We have no crowds to gather and nourish our spiritual energy, no drum and gong troupe to boost our morale, and no other friends to form the parade procession! My cultivation only allows me to embody the White Crane Boy—no, the Immortal Venerable White Crane—for a maximum of three minutes, unless you can act as the drum and gong troupe to bolster my momentum!"

When Li Xuan was a child, he had played the *suona* and drums in the school band, only to be inexplicably reassigned to the funeral music troupe for the villagers...

He only found out later that each member of the small funeral band was paid ten yuan per session.

He looked at A-Ying: "I started playing the *suona* and drums when I was a kid. Boosting your momentum? No problem!"