Chapter 79

It couldn't quite be called pitch black — inside the temple door, the three red points of the incense sticks glowed faintly.

Liu Zhiyi gripped the scissors, hesitated a few seconds, then stepped through the door.

First she looked up at the shrine behind the incense.

By the incense's faint light, Liu Zhiyi saw that it was dark there, empty.

No statue? Or had the statue gone somewhere else?

Liu Zhiyi startled herself into a cold sweat with her own imagining, and quickly pressed down her wild thoughts, going on with her survey of the temple.

The smoke rising from the burning incense seemed to become an extension of the red light, spreading and draping from above down to the floor.

There, at the end where the red thread joined, was a red yarn cat, its belly cut open.

At the sight of the yarn cat, Liu Zhiyi's heart lurched into a race, but she at once drew a few deep breaths and forced her feelings down.

Then she slowly drew near.

The yarn cat lay motionless on the floor; the incense smoke flowed down from above, pouring into its wide-open chest cavity and leaking out again through the split in its belly.

In and out like this, the smoke seemed dyed red by the yarn, turning like flowing blood.

In just a few seconds, this outflowing smoke laid a layer across the floor, curling and drifting.

Liu Zhiyi didn't know what breathing in this smoke would do, so she could only work to hold her breath and take in as little of it as she could.

But a person can't go without breathing.

Hold it too long and you can't help drawing a breath.

That one breath would stir up some smoke, but as the smoke neared her body it suddenly scattered.

The movement of that reference point gives one the illusion of walking oneself.

Liu Zhiyi felt as if she'd walked into a wall of smoke.

The smoke gathered before her, then scattered, as if a door had been pushed open.

Behind the door, she saw an enormous Buddha statue.

The statue looked like a projection with a poor signal, now clear, now blurred, and faintly, amid the flickering, she could see a great black shadow wrapping the statue within it.

This scene, Liu Zhiyi had seen before.

When she'd first faced the false god, the big boss behind all these dungeons, it had worn just this now-there-now-gone form.

But looking closely, this statue was a little different from the one she'd seen then.

It was cloaked in a layer of golden light.

This false Buddha actually had a few touches of a true Buddha about it.

Liu Zhiyi gripped the scissors and slowly drew near, surveying the scene around her for any clue to work out the cat's feelings.

This dungeon had, in the end, been born from the cat's body, so it would carry some projection of his feelings.

But apart from the statue, there was nothing here.

Liu Zhiyi could only study the statue more closely.

She noticed the golden edge on it wasn't like light, but more like a gas — the way a person in fierce heat gives off a vaporous mist.

And this ring of golden gas didn't drift upward; it spread out in all directions.

No — rather, golden mist was converging from all directions, cloaking the statue.

And the black shadow surging within the statue was bound fast inside that golden edge.

This… was it trapped?

Could the false god be trapped too?

Liu Zhiyi followed the golden mist with her eyes, out into the dark.

The flowing mist spread through the dark, casting a dim road of light; from afar it looked like a beam thrown by a flashlight.

Liu Zhiyi walked a few steps forward.

She saw the beams weren't one — countless dim beams were cast from the dark, and because there were so many, gathered together they looked like mist.

Liu Zhiyi suddenly realized these beams were probably from the flashlights in the rescuers' hands.

"Strange, isn't it."

A human voice, accompanied by a cat's cry, sounded.

Liu Zhiyi turned quickly toward the sound.

She saw the disemboweled little yarn cat limping over.

Yarn cat: "I'd never seen people this united before."

Liu Zhiyi startled, then frowned.

"Isn't that normal? Facing a disaster, people have always been united."

The yarn cat paused, giving a muffled "meow" with a long trailing note, sounding like a person's sigh.

Yarn cat: "True. I'd forgotten there was such a thing."

It walked shakily to Liu Zhiyi's feet.

Liu Zhiyi paused, glanced at the red thread on her hand, then at the yarn cat that couldn't even walk steady on the ground, and in the end still didn't step back.

The yarn cat gave a laugh. "A miscalculation."

Though it said so, its tone wasn't low as it spoke; it even lifted a little, sounding rather happy.

"It's good."

Liu Zhiyi heard it say.

"It's good this way, too."

After it said this, it curled into a ball, pressed against Liu Zhiyi's feet, and didn't move.

Then a bolt of lightning cut across the sky.

Liu Zhiyi looked up at once, her eyes catching the lightning.

But looking closely, she found it wasn't lightning — it was beam after beam of light.

These beams covered the whole sky, all but tearing the pitch-black dome apart.

Liu Zhiyi: "There's more light… you're going to lose."

"Yes, because more rescue teams have arrived."

The yarn cat's tone was very steady, without much rise or fall.

"I never quite understood before — this foreign false god's invasion, why it would turn into a two-faced Buddha. They say these things are shows of human thought…"

Yarn cat: "So people have a bad side and a good side. I was too one-sided."

Liu Zhiyi thought a moment, and still urged him.

"Then… close the dungeon."

The yarn cat laughed, braced itself up, lifted its head, and gently laid it on the top of her foot.

"A dungeon, once it starts, is hardly mine to control."

Liu Zhiyi knew this well, of course — she'd understood it since the hospital dungeon.

"…Are you still human?"

The yarn cat rolled over, turning its hollow chest toward her.

"Do you think I am?"

Hearing this, Liu Zhiyi suddenly felt a touch of sorrow; she knew the cat had come to this end by its own choices, yet she still felt grieved.

Yarn cat: "The road ahead — you really will have to walk it alone."

Liu Zhiyi paused.

"I know."

And then she added a line.

"I'm ready to live alone."

The cat paused, its open mouth closing and opening, and in the end forced out only one line.

"…Sorry. I always can't help worrying."

Liu Zhiyi actually had a great deal she wanted to say, but the words reached her lips and she didn't know what she could say.

"You're only influenced by the prop…"

"This feeling is good." The yarn cat cut her off. "Loving someone is wonderful."

Yarn cat: "Pouring your whole heart into another person, thinking of her constantly, breaking your own principles without meaning to — happy because she's happy, sad because she's sad."

It shook its yarn paw, and the red thread joined to Liu Zhiyi's hand swayed with it.

"I love you."

Liu Zhiyi hadn't thought it would say this, and froze in place.

"Said too much again by accident." The yarn cat lifted its head and nuzzled at her ankle. "But I think you and your mother always hold things in, some words hard to get out — so I want to say some of them."

Yarn cat: "I love you very much."

In that instant — maybe an illusion, maybe because of the prop on the cat —

Liu Zhiyi seemed to hear her mother's voice.

That line she'd never heard, never said aloud, finally fell into her ears.

Yarn cat: "In a moment they… those mice will come to do the belly-filling. You know how your grandmother's story ends."

Her grandmother had made up plenty of her stories.

Perhaps to make the tale more thrilling, this temple-building story ended with a person carrying the statue into the temple.

Yarn cat: "You just carry me in."

Liu Zhiyi: "You'll be the statue that gets its belly filled?"

The yarn cat gave a laugh, turned its head, and faced the two-faced Buddha's projection.

Yarn cat: "The false god's power comes from human feeling. I remember you said — why not believe humanity can defeat the false god?"

As it spoke, it gazed at the ring of light cloaking the two-faced Buddha.

"Now I believe it."

"A story always needs a villain to be knocked down anyway." The yarn cat cocked its head and nuzzled her ankle several more times, then lay belly-open on the top of her foot. "Such a good chance — let me be it."

Liu Zhiyi opened her mouth, still not knowing what she could say.

—Clang.

The sound of gongs and drums came from behind.

Liu Zhiyi turned; several black shapes walked out of the drifting smoke.

They moved fast, but their steps weren't in time, the suona and drums mixed together, a mess with no rhythm.

Liu Zhiyi felt something was off, but soon the black shapes broke through the smoke.

An old woman carrying a lantern walked at the front — a familiar face.

Liu Zhiyi paused.

This crowd was grimy and disheveled, their Daoist robes in tatters, the things in their hands broken and in pieces.

So they'd won the fight?

Liu Zhiyi was about to ask when she saw the old woman at the front wave a hand at her, as if telling her not to speak.

Yarn cat: "The belly-filling has its rules — not every word can be said."

Liu Zhiyi shut her mouth at once.

Yarn cat: "You're the exception. Though this dungeon is affected by many factors, in the end it was produced by me."

Hearing it, Liu Zhiyi felt rather helpless, and a little amused.

She was about to explain the situation to the old woman, but saw her, on seeing the light-cloaked statue, walk straight over.

The old woman picked up the yarn cat from the ground and, muttering, began to chant something indistinct that sounded a bit like a Buddhist scripture, a spell.

The people behind the old woman gathered round too, beating gongs and drums, walking to and fro with rather stiff movements, dancing and singing.

For a moment, a whole troop of demons cavorting.

Not frightening at all, Liu Zhiyi thought.

A little funny, even.

And as they beat and clanged, the smashed silverware and yellow talismans were stuffed one by one into the cat's belly.

Liu Zhiyi couldn't follow this whole procedure, but the old woman clearly could.

A veteran player like her needed no deliberate explaining; she'd read the key points of the dungeon just by watching.

The old woman's group, for all their scramble, had order in the chaos, and before long the yarn cat's belly was stuffed full, the red thread joining Liu Zhiyi wound in with it — like winding a ball of yarn, wrapping its belly tight.

Looking at the shortened red thread, Liu Zhiyi took the now-fatter yarn cat and carried it on her back.

This time, the old woman spoke.

"Take care on the road."

In that instant, Liu Zhiyi had an inexplicable feeling.

Maybe it was the setting, maybe the old woman's tone, or maybe the feeling conveyed by the dungeon the cat had built.

Liu Zhiyi was back at the tail end of a holiday.

She'd packed her luggage, shouldered it, and turned to walk out, amid her mother's or grandmother's parting words.

The instant she turned, everything around went dark.

Some faint sounds, like an infant crying, rose in the dark, mixed with a faint, half-there cursing.

"Carrying the statue into the temple stirs quite a commotion."

Her grandmother's voice sounded.

At last the dungeon had reached the ending of the ghost story.

Grandma: "Those big ghosts and little ghosts are afraid too — once the statue's brought into the temple, what good days would they have?"

—Whoosh.

A bone-chilling ghost-wind rushed at her, blowing Liu Zhiyi into a stagger.

But the yarn cat on her back suddenly grew heavy, pressing her down a moment, steadying her whole body.

Grandma: "Can't find the way into the temple. What to do?"

In the pitch dark, Liu Zhiyi stopped; she realized she'd met a ghost walling her in again, and grumbled to the yarn cat.

"Can't you help a bit more?"

The yarn cat sighed. "The dungeon may have started because of me, but the false god fights back too. Still… we'll win."

Liu Zhiyi marveled at the yarn cat's change of view — it had been so set on its own way before, refusing hers.

Liu Zhiyi: "You switched sides without the least hesitation."

"What's there to hesitate about?" The yarn cat said. "I always wanted us to win. As for how we win, that doesn't matter."

Grandma: "In the pitch dark, all at once a road appears."

A white flashlight beam pierced the dark, shining over from not far off.

Liu Zhiyi saw at the beam's end countless points of flashlight light.

The rescuers seemed to have grown more.

"Still, it's rather interesting." The yarn cat gave a laugh. "The false god draws its power from human feeling, and yet is countered by human feeling."

Liu Zhiyi stepped onto the road of light, carrying the cat.

In that instant, the ground trembled, the light flickered.

In her memory, the several times she'd left home to hurry off to work away, the stairwell's sensor lights had flickered like this too.

Yarn cat: "Keep walking on."

Grandma: "Walk and walk, and the temple gate appears."

The two voices overlapped.

The scene in her memory slowly overlapped with the road before her.

A little temple stood at the end of the road of light.

Liu Zhiyi stood before its door.

The two springs on her face were welling water again.

She still couldn't get used to partings, Liu Zhiyi thought.

At this point, the rustling around her, along with her grandmother's storytelling voice, all vanished.

Very quiet.

Liu Zhiyi suddenly hesitated.

It seemed people always hesitate a little facing a choice — but she only hesitated a second, then pushed the temple door open.

Inside, the light was bright.

Liu Zhiyi looked up.

An incandescent lamp hung from the temple ceiling, the shrine empty.

Liu Zhiyi tugged the joined red thread, but the moment she pulled, she heard a "twang," and the thread snapped.

A little clay-sculpture cat dropped to the ground and rolled to her feet.

Liu Zhiyi looked down, patted the dust off the little cat, paused a few seconds, and in the end still set the little cat on the shrine.

Then a gust of wind surged in, smoke rolling into the temple.

A whirlwind rose in the temple, spinning upward…

No — from the top down; even the unseen smoke in the empty air seemed drawn into the whirlwind, all of it surging toward the clay cat on the shrine.

Then —

—Clang.

The brass gong led, the suona following close behind.

Liu Zhiyi saw the whirlwind of smoke suddenly cinch tight, as if it had caught something.

That something was like a shadow, yet cloaked in a layer of golden light.

The false god, sucked in?

As the smoke poured in great volume into the clay cat —

her grandmother's storytelling voice sounded again.

Grandma: "Only by sealing the god inside can it hear people's prayers and do things for them."

Liu Zhiyi froze; the wind in the temple suddenly turned direction, pushing her backward.

She was blown up off her feet; outside the temple door was pitch black, only a long, bright road of light spreading out from under her feet.

This road was very long, stretching all the way to the horizon, joining a distant, brilliantly lit city.

It was the city where she was born and grew up.

The shadow cloaking the city had scattered.

The watch on her wrist buzzed, and a new alert popped up on the task bar.

[Congratulations, players — the game is cleared.]

Along with the wind came a muffled cat's cry mixed with her grandmother's voice.

"After praying to gods and Buddhas, in the end you still rely on yourself."

"Goodbye, Zhizhi."