Chapter Sixty-Two: Questions

The torrential rain pounded mercilessly upon the bamboo grove. One after another, the emerald stalks bent low under the wild onslaught, their leaves rustling and cracking in the wind, yet the bamboo bodies themselves refused to break. Water pooled on the yellow earth, flowing along the low-lying terrain to form puddles. The soil, now as soft as sludge, threatened to swallow a careless foot with every step.

Worms, centipedes, crickets, ants, and all manner of crawling things scurried in panic through the storm. Here and there, a few slender green snakes wound their way around the bamboo, searching for shelter from the rain.

From the muddy yellow earth, a pale hand caked in dirt reached out. The little finger and ring finger curled slightly, while the other three fingers swept through the air. The earth parted at their command, scattering outward, and with the rain’s help, a small hollow quickly formed.

Within the pit, Lin Lan spat several times, finally clearing the mud from his mouth.

“Heaven is clear, earth is tranquil, I cultivate longevity alone. Now that I have come to this place, may I not suffer wind and rain…”

He looked up at the raindrops, each as large as a pea, pelting him without mercy. Instantly, he recited the Rain-Sheltering Incantation in the tongue of the Dao, and the downpour parted at his body, sliding off to either side.

“Those greedy wretches, they even stripped off my undergarments!”

He glanced down at his body, slick with mud and earth. His black robe and the green brocade lining beneath had been taken, leaving only the ghastly, centipede-like knife wound across his chest as a reminder of violence.

Lin Lan still possessed a sense of dignity and shame. He climbed from the earthen pit and gathered bamboo leaves broken by the rain, fashioning a crude covering to shield himself as best he could.

“I thought Shen Zhongzhu was the problem, but it turns out the real issue was Li Xiaoyan—the one who transferred here with Warden Zhang twenty years ago.”

He touched his chest, recalling the instant when that narrow blade pierced his heart. The memory was fresh, vivid.

Yet even then, he had not panicked, for he knew that in this prison, the soul is not immediately claimed by the underworld’s envoys, but first sought by the prison’s own ghostly wardens.

But those ghost wardens never arrived. As the blade lingered in his heart, Lin Lan felt not only the fading of life but also his grip on his own soul slipping away.

Left with no other choice, Lin Lan slipped into the spirit world to seek another way back to the living.

“Could there be others with hidden intentions?”

His eyes narrowed as he considered the ruined bamboo forest before him.

He had encountered Li Xiaoyan on the way to the interrogation chamber—Li Xiaoyan, dragging along the warden accused of killing the alligator demon in the guards’ quarters. Shen Zhongzhu had followed soon after.

Behind Lin Lan were the eight top wardens of the Warden’s Office, while behind Li Xiaoyan stood those wardens allied with the alligator demon. Only one was missing: the warden named Gongyang Hao.

“If Shen Zhongzhu is also compromised, I’m in real trouble,” Lin Lan sighed.

He had spent decades in this prison without budging, avoiding transfers from the Ministry of Justice in the capital, all to steer clear of trouble whenever possible.

Raised in the Chaoyuan Monastery on Mount Pingdu, he would have gladly remained there for life if not for his master’s command to descend into the mortal world and face tribulation. As fate would have it, Lin Lan had barely gone fifty miles from the mountain before being summoned by a senior official of the Ministry of Justice sitting at a pavilion at the foot of the slope. Lin Lan never believed this happened without his master’s tacit approval.

He was then assigned as deputy warden of this prison—a position he held for fifty years.

Promotion never interested him; in fact, he hoped for demotion, which would make his cultivation and spiritual practice all the more convenient. And so, he began his red-dust cultivation in the prison without concealment.

He drew in the spiritual energy from Sangyu Island, tempered himself with the demonic aura of the prison’s monstrous inmates, and from time to time, communed with lingering spirits in the northern city, becoming drinking companions with one of the ghost judges there. They would trade stories, Lin Lan of the human world, the judge of the underworld.

This made his restless heart a little more at ease.

At first, none of the other wardens knew, save for one: in his twenty-seventh year, Shen Zhongzhu, also of Daoist background, became deputy warden as well.

Tricks that deceived ordinary folk would not fool a fellow cultivator, especially one of notable skill.

Yet, after discovering Lin Lan’s conduct, Shen Zhongzhu did not trouble him or report him to the court for neglecting his duties. After all, Shen’s own behavior was even more outrageous.

In the twenty-three years that followed, Lin Lan saw Shen Zhongzhu only rarely. Even at annual reports to the Warden’s Office, Shen almost never attended. In the past three years, Lin Lan had nearly forgotten his fellow deputy’s existence.

Three years later, when thunderclouds gathered above the Jade Prison’s dungeon, Lin Lan finally saw Shen Zhongzhu once more.

Of course, it was not Shen who killed the ninety-eight prisoners who vanished from the dungeon with his Cloud Thunder Technique, but he did strike down the dungeon’s guards.

“That ghost warden, Xie Miu’an, is also highly suspect. The fox demon could have been interrogated by me, yet Xie insisted on waving his soul-summoning banner and drawing the demon’s soul away.

We agreed to meet at midnight in the prison temple to share the results of our questioning with Shen Zhongzhu and me. But the only one I found was Li Xiaoyan, blade in hand.”

Lin Lan narrowed his eyes, rubbing his brow with a sigh. Was he the only decent man left in this whole prison?

“This rain is far heavier than what River Dragon King Shui Chen can conjure. Could something have happened while I was in the spirit realm?”

He raised his head and gazed at the relentless downpour—a curtain of rain so dense it blotted out the sky. In the darkness above, the shifting forms of dragons were faintly visible in the clouds, their bodies threading through the storm, each clawed foot bearing four talons.

Suddenly, a sharp pain crossed his back—a bloody gash.

“It seems that ghost warden Xie Miu’an is not merely suspect—he is certainly an enemy. Besides Shen Zhongzhu, only he knows of my ability to traverse the spirit world.”

Lin Lan strode forward, then turned to look at the rotting corpse emerging silently from the soil behind him. He narrowed his eyes to slits and murmured,

Not just one, but every corpse interred in this Stone Bamboo Mound over the past nine centuries.

Some were little more than lonely skeletons, others still bore traces of their features; aside from livid blotches and swelling, they looked almost like the living.

Lin Lan’s dark hair began to silver at the temples, and lines crept across his once-youthful face. His narrowed eyes opened a fraction, revealing irises as blue and vast as the sea.

“Master, is this the tribulation you meant for me to endure?”

Now, every movement radiated with Daoist energy. Calmly, he gazed at the gathering dead and spoke softly.