False evidence

Chapter 498 The Masked Monk
A man's knees are worth gold; he doesn't kowtow to just anyone. Besides my grandfather and Old Man Bai, there's only one other person I can kowtow to: Pidan's mom, my current mother-in-law.

The fourth thing that could make me kneel down was preserved egg. Of course, that was under specific circumstances, and the location... was in bed.

It's now certain that there's something fishy about those three coffins in front of us.

Leaving aside the middle, the left and right sides are almost certainly like two doorways, with a staircase or secret passage leading to an unknown location.

I gritted my teeth, raised my foot and kicked the coffin on the left. I didn't use much force, but judging from the sound, the coffin was made of solid material and would be difficult to break without tools.

I couldn't very well kowtow to the coffin, so I looked for a suitable tool to smash it open. I vaguely remembered that there was a hammer in the corner of a shelf in the front room, so I immediately turned around and walked out.

Before I even stepped outside, a voice suddenly rang out from the courtyard: "Amitabha."

I suddenly stopped and looked in the direction of the sound. There, I saw a monk in a khaki robe standing in the courtyard.

The monk was standing in the courtyard with his back to the door. I couldn't see his face, but I could tell that he was tall and thin.

I couldn't tell the difference between a human and a ghost at that moment, but when I saw the other person's back, I immediately remembered something Old Li had said before.

He ran a food stall in Tanjiaqiao and had once seen a ghost monk, also tall and thin. This monk in front of him, apart from the Buddhist chanting he had just been doing, hadn't made a sound, as if he didn't exist at all. Could he be the ghost monk Old Li had been talking about?
"Master?" I reached into my backpack while trying to ask the monk, "What are you doing here so late?"

"Wait someone."

In my memory, monks are always gentle and kind, and aside from being polite, they mostly speak only ambiguous Zen sayings. But the monk in the courtyard was surprisingly straightforward; he uttered two concise and decisive words, and then turned around.

He turned to face me, but I still couldn't see his face because he was wearing a very distinctive mask.

I couldn't tell what the mask was made of; all I could see was that it was a yin-yang face, divided in the middle, one side white and the other black. The white half was a wild and arrogant smile, with a black mole near the corner of its upturned mouth; the black half was a crying face, with a single white tear under its drooping eye.

“Master, shouldn’t monks be more upright than ordinary people…”

"You don't need to think about why I wear a mask right now, and I don't want to answer you either," the monk interrupted me, without any of the reserve one would expect from a monk. He was so straightforward that I didn't have time to think about it.

The monk's mask was peculiar; the nose protruded upwards, while the eye sockets were sunken inwards, so much so that in the dim light, I couldn't see the monk's eyes clearly. But I could sense that he was scrutinizing me, and very seriously and carefully.

The masked monk spoke again: "Buddha did not lie to me, I have finally waited for you."

I wanted to say, "Is the person you're waiting for me?" However, this strange monk not only spoke plainly, but also had a special aura. He didn't feel oppressive, but he made me feel that I had to be as direct as him when talking to him, and that saying anything else would make me look stupid.

The monk looked at me for a while, then suddenly chuckled: "You think differently from me, but I can tell that you and he are the same kind of people."

"Who is he?" I couldn't help but ask, "Duh."

“It is him,” the masked monk said.

I suddenly felt a strange sense of relief. In my eyes, the monk had finally become "normal" and started to "not speak human language".

The masked monk said calmly, "Oh, you don't know who I am, then you don't know who he is. He is my uncle." "Your uncle?" A nerve in my brain suddenly twitched.

Looking at the strange monk in front of me, recalling the ghost monk Old Li mentioned, and then the uncle the masked monk mentioned... why did this bizarre thought suddenly pop into my head...?

The masked monk nodded, then shook his head slightly: "Let's put everything else aside for now. I'll open the door for you, go and save the people."

As he spoke, he suddenly walked straight towards them.

I instinctively took two steps back and stepped aside, watching the masked monk enter the room and walk to the coffin.

My gaze had been following the monk, but as he entered, I caught a glimpse out of the corner of my eye of a figure seemingly hiding at the back door of the front room.

Cao Xinyun?
The first person I thought of was him, but then I thought, this person could also be Yan Fengwei.

The reason is simple: in this situation, ghosts seem to act openly and honestly, while people act furtively and suspiciously.

In this "world" where reality and illusion are indistinguishable, the only living people who could possibly be here besides me are these two missing buddies.

The person who was hiding must have realized that I had discovered him, because he stopped hiding and came out of the darkness.

"How come it's you?" I was genuinely not surprised at all.

This person was neither Yan Guangtou nor Cao Xinyun, but a woman, who seemed to be my "ancestor".

Fang Ling walked up to me and gestured to the side with her chin: "Don't ask me why I'm here yet."

I nodded slightly and glanced at the masked monk.

The masked monk, who had originally clasped his hands together in front of his chest with a long string of prayer beads hanging from one hand, now stood before the coffin in the center, his arms, which had been lowered, slightly outstretched at his sides, his head slightly bowed as he looked down at the coffin.

From my angle, I could only see his profile behind the mask, not his expression, but I could sense an aura unlike that of ordinary people. It was like a majestic and powerful dragon, hovering in mid-air, looking down upon all living beings.

Good heavens! Could this ghost monk really be that guy? Otherwise, how could he have such a powerful aura?
The masked monk slowly turned to face me and said, "Twenty-one."

"Huh?" I was taken aback. He actually knew my nickname?
“Nine, and then another nine,” the masked monk continued. “In total, there are thirty-nine steps. Count them as you go, and don’t step on anything that leaves a nine.”

The monk was really becoming less and less able to speak "human language," but I still managed to understand what he meant.

The coffin contained a secret passage, and a downward staircase. He didn't initially point out my nickname, but rather announced the number of steps on the staircase.

Twenty-one, nine, nine… My mind suddenly skipped a beat. I had visited the Forbidden City before, and while listening to the tour guides, I vaguely remembered hearing that the steps in front of the Hall of Supreme Harmony, also known as the Golden Throne Hall, have twenty-one steps on the first section, and nine steps on the middle and third sections!

With the same thirty-nine steps and the same layout, could it be that the secret passage in this coffin leads to the emperor's palace?

(End of this chapter)