Chapter 151: Come, Kneel Down

"Baohu, you've been inside the Ancient God Temple. Tell me, what's abnormal about it?" Tang Long asked.

The mountain path was growing increasingly steep, but the group's pace did not falter, nobody falling behind. Team leader Baohu had said that at their current speed, it would still take at least two full days to reach the entrance of the Ancient God Temple from here.

Baohu shook his head and offered a wry smile. "Junior Uncle, it's hard for me to describe. I followed the others inside last time, but... it felt rather eerie once we reached the entrance of the Ancient God Temple!"

Tang Long nodded. For an ancient temple like the 'Ancient God Temple'—one omitted from official histories—or rather, an 'ancient tomb,' if it didn't possess a touch of the bizarre, grave robbers would have ransacked it hundreds of times over. It could never have survived until the present day.

"Did people die?" Tang Long was asking if an accident had occurred the last time Baohu entered the temple.

Baohu nodded. "Out of the twenty-odd people who went in last time, only four came out alive. I was one of them."

His words caused the expressions of the surrounding team members to grow tense. They knew their leader's capabilities all too well, and they understood the terrifying nature of this mission.

A near-death ordeal with a slim chance of survival!

Of course, for this operation, the Yang family had offered a price that made people willing to risk their lives. Regardless of whether they made it out alive, their families would be left with no financial worries—a guarantee made personally by the Yang family, who had even advanced a portion of the bereavement funds beforehand.

Any problem that could be solved with money was not a problem. When those words came from the mouth of a Yang family member, it was certainly not an empty boast.

The Yang family's most abundant asset was money. To make people risk their lives, they naturally had their own unique methods.

"What is inside the Ancient God Temple?" Tang Long asked. He had explored and experienced his fair share of terrifying regions, each one a brush with death, and he had grown somewhat accustomed to it.

Baohu said in a deep voice, "If I told you I don't remember, would you believe me, Junior Uncle?"

"You don't remember?" Tang Long frowned, repeating Baohu's words.

Baohu nodded. "That's right, I don't remember. Everything that happened inside the Ancient God Temple has completely slipped my mind. I only remember things up to the entrance of the Ancient God Temple and after we came out. As for what happened inside, I can't recall a single thing!"

Yang Wuchan chimed in from the side, "I can vouch for this. Regarding Baohu's amnesia, we used the best equipment available and consulted the most authoritative experts, and their conclusions were always consistent."

Amnesia? And fragmentary amnesia at that?

Tang Long nodded and asked, "Could hypnosis not retrieve those memories?" It was unclear whether he was asking Baohu or Yang Wuchan.

Yang Wuchan shook her head helplessly. "It's useless. Whether it's instrument-assisted or chemical hypnosis, or manual hypnosis, none of it works on Baohu. Drugs can only induce light or deep sleep; we cannot penetrate his brain, and manual hypnosis has no effect whatsoever."

"No effect?" Subconsciously, Tang Long used his left thumb to rub and twist from bottom to top, repeating the motion twice.

Normally, no matter how strong a person's mental fortitude was, it was impossible to resist chemical agents. Manual hypnosis might fail, but given a sufficient dosage, even someone with exceptional mental strength—even himself—could be hypnotized by a machine. Modern technology was extremely powerful, and humans were, after all, human; there was simply no resisting that aspect.

If even drugs and instruments failed to induce a hypnotic effect on Baohu, it could only mean one thing: he was protected by certain forces, and there was artificial interference at play.

The possibilities for this were vast. It could be the result of certain rituals, specific scents, talismans, or even curses.

In this world, many things existed in reality even if people were ignorant of them!

Just because something was unknown did not mean it didn't exist; it only meant that current humans and science did not yet understand it.

Tang Long had encountered such phenomena before!

"After coming out of the Ancient God Temple, did you have trouble sleeping every night?" Tang Long asked, turning to Baohu.

Baohu nodded. "Yes, I wake up in a cold sweat from nightmares every single night. But... every time I wake up, I can't remember what I dreamed about. I only know I had a nightmare and I'm drenched in sweat."

Tang Long nodded and asked, "You said four people came out last time. Besides you, there were three others. Where are they?"

Baohu furrowed his brow, a look of helplessness and a flash of sorrow crossing his face before he quickly masked it. He said in a deep voice, "One of them jumped off the roof of a hospital building after returning. Another went crazy and died in a car crash two years ago. Right before he drew his last breath, people heard him muttering, 'It's coming, it's here again.'"

Tang Long's left fingers tapped rapidly. The Heavenly Stems, Earthly Branches, Five Elements, Eight Trigrams, and Nine Palaces were all gathered within his fingertips—he was casting a divination.

*One is Kan, two is Kun, three is Zhen, four is Xun divided in the center, five is the Central Palace, six is Qian, seven is Dui, eight is Gen, nine is the Li Gate.*

Excluding his thumb and little finger, the remaining three fingers possessed nine joints, each joint representing a number.

"Two of the four are gone, leaving one more. Where is that person?" Tang Long's brows twitched as he asked.

Baohu fell silent and did not speak.

Leopard Print, who was walking behind them, said in a gloomy voice, "The remaining person is me!"

Tang Long stopped dead in his tracks. When he turned his head to look at her again, he noticed that Leopard Print's body was shrouded in a dark, ominous aura.

He cursed inwardly, *Damn it!*

Someone was going to die here.

Feeling somewhat helpless, he hesitated for a moment before saying, "Stop for a moment!"

Everyone halted, looking at Tang Long with puzzlement, unsure of what he intended to do. However, this team possessed strict discipline, and though doubt filled their hearts, no one voiced any questions.

Tang Long walked over to Leopard Print, looked at her, and said, "Come, kneel down."

"..."

Yang Wuchan, standing nearby, frowned, not understanding what this fellow was up to. Even Baohu's expression turned somewhat ugly.

Ordinarily, Leopard Print would have been quite pretty, but a terrifying, centipede-like scar on her face ruined everything.

She stared straight at Tang Long!

Tang Long stared calmly back into her eyes. "Kneel down. I won't repeat it a third time."

After hesitating for a few seconds, Leopard Print dropped to one knee, though her stubborn, icy gaze continued to lock onto Tang Long, as if waiting to see what kind of trick he was trying to pull.

Tang Long breathed an inward sigh of relief. He raised his hand, bit down on his middle finger until a single bead of blood formed, and then traced an invisible talisman in the air before pressing it onto Leopard Print's forehead.

"Evacuate the malevolent spirits! Scatter!"

A cool sensation spread from her forehead throughout her entire body, and Leopard Print felt immensely more comfortable, though she wasn't sure if it was just her imagination.

Having finished this, Tang Long said calmly, "Consider yourself lucky you ran into me. Get up!"

Yang Wuchan couldn't help asking, "Tang... Boss Tang, what on earth is going on here?"

Tang Long said with a hint of helplessness, "She has gathered a baleful aura on her body. The reason she hasn't died all these years is probably because that scar on her face suppressed the entity attached to her, allowing her to barely survive. However, as we enter the Qinling Mountains and get closer to the Ancient God Temple, the suppressing effect of that scar grows weaker. Back in the mountain village at the foot of the mountain, her baleful aura wasn't this dense. In just this short amount of time, it's grown strong enough to kill her."

Could it really be that miraculous?

The team members muttered doubts to themselves. Each of them could be considered a veteran of numerous battles, and they weren't necessarily convinced by the things Tang Long was talking about.

Yet Leopard Print herself could clearly feel it. Earlier, she had felt her body growing heavier and heavier, and it had seemed as though a red bloody mist was obscuring her vision. She had assumed it was just hallucinations caused by a poor night's sleep, but hearing Tang Long put it this way, she realized something was seriously wrong.

"Many thanks, Boss Tang!" Leopard Print said in a low voice. There were some things outsiders didn't know, but as the person experiencing it, she could feel it acutely. This delicate-looking young man possessed genuine skills, and formidable ones at that. Kneeling just now was by no means a loss.

"Don't mention it!" Tang Long grinned, dispersing much of the oppressive atmosphere hanging over the group.

He turned to Yang Wuchan and said, "There's no major issue for now, but everyone still needs to pay close attention to yourselves. If anyone feels unwell or notices any bad omens, speak up early. This job is a bit eerie and won't be easy to handle!"

He spoke the last two sentences in a very low voice—they hadn't even reached the Ancient God Temple yet.

"Let's move!"

The team packed up their gear and continued on their way. The journey was still long; they wouldn't arrive anytime soon.

"Are you the same as Baohu, unable to remember anything that happened inside the Ancient God Temple?" Tang Long asked Leopard Print as they walked.

Who knew what was going through people's minds to give a woman such a nickname?

Leopard Print paused for a moment before replying, "No, I have memories."

"Oh?"

Tang Long frowned and glanced at her, confirming that the baleful aura gathered on her body had completely dissipated. He asked in surprise, "What do you remember?"

Leopard Print said, "I remember a pair of eyes looking down at me from above. They were always watching me. The memory is exceptionally clear—exceptionally, exceptionally clear."

A pair of eyes? Staring down at her from above?

Tang Long seemed to realize something. "Were those eyes vertical? Or rather, did they seem to become vertical at certain times, as if they could move?"

"How do you know?" Leopard Print gasped in terror, looking at Tang Long in disbelief.

Tang Long frowned and said softly, "The Hundred-Faced Malevolent Spirit. This is going to be tricky!" He did not answer Leopard Print's question.

His left thumb tapped rapidly against the joints representing the *Kan* trigram, as if recording the information.

*Kan* stood for water, representing 'yin'. In terms of trigrams, it was depicted as two yang lines sandwiching a yin line—solid at the top and bottom, empty in the middle.

"Have you seen the pair of eyes Leopard Print described?" Yang Wuchan asked, unable to help herself as she walked beside Tang Long.

Tang Long hesitated before nodding. "I have. In a primitive African tribe, people worship the 'Hundred-Faced Malevolent Spirit.' Legend has it that this pair of eyes can see through human hearts and gather baleful aura. Anyone who refuses to revere it and lays eyes upon it will meet a violent death!"

"Africa? A primitive African tribe?"

Yang Wuchan said in astonishment, "Could you be mistaken? If there's truly something in the Ancient God Temple, how could it be connected to a primitive African tribe?"

Tang Long shrugged and gave a wry smile. "If you ask me, who should I ask?"

This world was mysterious to begin with; it was just that she didn't know it. Although Africa and their domestic territory were far apart, after all... everyone lived on the same planet. In reality, it wasn't all that far.

"That pair of eyes seemed to be trying to convey something to me, but I've never been able to grasp its meaning," Leopard Print said.

She didn't know if the pair of eyes in her memory was the 'Eyes of the Hundred-Faced Malevolent Spirit' that Tang Long spoke of, but they appeared in her dreams every single time.

Sometimes they were horizontal, and sometimes they were vertical, floating in a void of utter darkness. The eyes themselves were pitch black, yet extraordinarily distinct!

"This Hundred-Faced Malevolent Spirit isn't easy to deal with. Say, did you guys bring any black donkey hooves with you on this trip?" Tang Long asked, offering a dry smile to Yang Wuchan as a thought crossed his mind.

Black donkey hooves?

Yang Wuchan shook her head. "We didn't bring any!"

Just as Tang Long was about to speak, Yang Wuchan added, "However, we did bring accessories crafted from black donkey hooves. Would those work?"

Accessories crafted from black donkey hooves?

The team stopped. One of the members lowered his marching pack and opened it to reveal a full, large bag packed with items: 'black donkey hoof bead bracelets,' 'black donkey hoof peace plaques,' 'black donkey hoof crucifixes,' and 'black donkey hoof rings.' There were more than enough of them.

"They've all been consecrated by eminent monks!" Yang Wuchan said calmly.

Tang Long smacked his lips. Having money really was something else. Without another word, he picked out two bracelets that caught his eye and strapped them onto his wrists—one on each arm—while slipping a warding pendant around his neck. He muttered under his breath, "Why didn't you take these out earlier? Put them on, everyone put them on! It's better to believe they work than not. Caution is paramount!"

"..."