Chapter 405: What is Gabala |
Dong Xiwen reached the inn at the foot of the Snow Mountain as evening fell.
Beneath a dimming sky, the mountain was a stark, greyish-white, looming like a grim tomb against the horizon.
He could have arrived much earlier, but Qi Si, feigning a keen interest in everything, had insisted on browsing one shop after another, all under their guide's increasingly dangerous stare.
As an unwilling companion with no freedom to speak of, Dong Xiwen could only trail behind with the other one, a woman named Zhang Yiyu, their eyes vacant. They exchanged idle, weary glances, wondering if they were about to stumble into some fatal trap.
The young man in the clown mask and bloodstained white shirt, however, showed no concern for the looming threat of death. Cradling a recorder he'd produced from nowhere, he strolled leisurely out of the last shop, stopped in the middle of the street, and pressed play.
The bizarre, solemn chant—"What is Gabala, Om Mani Padme Hum, Om Mani Padme Hum"—filled the air. Oblivious to their bewildered stares, the young man grinned. "Almost every shop was playing this song," he remarked. "I thought it was catchy, so I recorded it."
Catchy? What kind of taste was that? Dong Xiwen was stunned into silence. He was just about to voice his sarcastic disbelief when he heard footsteps cutting through the music.
The footsteps were faint and furtive, drawing closer under the cover of the chant's static. They were just behind him now, and it sounded as if... something had been drawn in by the music.
A chill shot through Dong Xiwen. He spun around to see a figure swathed in sackcloth, kneeling in a bizarre posture, inching toward him with every prostration.
This was it. He had triggered a death trap. A monster had locked onto him...
Dong Xiwen grabbed one of his items, ready to strike, but the young man beside him simply switched off the recorder with an air of detached curiosity. "So the chant attracts monsters," he mused. "Interesting. I wonder if distance affects the pull, or if it would work up on the mountain itself."
Dong Xiwen: "..."
He could only conclude that Qi Si was genuinely unhinged. He didn't just disregard the lives of others; he seemed to have a startling lack of concern for his own.
Dusk had now fully settled. With the chant silenced, the believer lost its target. It turned and resumed its previous course, moving away.
A mountain wind, laced with the biting chill of the peaks, howled against the inn. It rattled the windowpanes with a sharp "tap-tap-tap" and set the wind chime on the door clanging, "clang-clang."
Prompted by a look from the young man, Dong Xiwen pushed open the door and stepped inside. The sounds of a heated discussion immediately drifted from the main hall.
"Old Lin, I knew you weren't the type to die so easily! You have no idea what I've been through these years..." an exuberant male voice rattled on at high speed. "I've endured, I've persevered, I've toiled in obscurity, all to finally make it into the Babylon Tower... Crap, if I'd known it was going to be like this, I would've brought a jacket."
Another voice, crisp and calm, cut in. "Xiao Xiao, from what you've just said, I can deduce two things. First, the outside world generally believes me to be dead. Second, we have been missing for a very long time. Is that correct? And is 'Babylon Tower' the name you've given the tower in the Sunset Ruins?"
"That's right," the first voice confirmed. "Back when you all gathered your forces in the Sunset Ruins, fire rained from the sky and the earth buckled. It became known as the Twilight of the Gods. They eventually found most of the bodies, but yours, Sister Chu's, and a few others just vanished from the real world. I knew right then and there that something was up."
"How many people died?"
"Too many to count. The Ark was completely annihilated. I had to step up in the face of disaster, work my fingers to the bone, and pull a new guild together from the ashes..."
"I see," the crisp voice interrupted, his tone shifting. "So, due to ideological differences, you took half the survivors and formed your own guild. Let's return to the matter at hand. If my reasoning is correct, this is the Final Instance the Main God spoke of. If we can clear it, we can rewrite the rules.
"I arrived only ten minutes before you, which means the passage of time in the real world has been drastically compressed within this instance. I also need to know the year on your timeline."
"It's July 11, 2025, for me... Man, this Final Instance really came out of nowhere. When I entered the tower, the system interface and the stream icon didn't even load. I thought the game had bugged out."
"So, it's been eleven years already?" the calm voice mused. "That's longer than I thought..."
Dong Xiwen listened from behind a folding screen, his expression growing grim.
From the sound of it, these players were from different points in time. Some were relics from decades past, and while it was unclear if any came from the future, the group was clearly filled with legendary figures.
Moreover, the man who had gathered his forces in the Sunset Ruins eleven years ago should have died in the Twilight of the Gods. There was no conceivable way to survive a cataclysm of that scale.
So, were the "players" in the hall truly alive? Or were they the lingering ghosts and phantoms of those who had died? And if they were dead... what did that make him, for being here to meet them?
This instance was far stranger than he had anticipated. No wonder he hadn't seen the legendary Lin Wuya anywhere. God only knew where he had been thrown this time.
As his thoughts spiraled, Dong Xiwen was struck by an even more dreadful possibility.
From his perspective, any player from a past timeline was already dead, lingering on without knowing it. The fact that the Weird Game continued proved they had failed to clear the Final Instance.
But what if there was a player from the future? Someone who would look at him and say that he, too, had failed? That the game would drag on for decades more, perhaps without end?
No, that couldn't be. There wasn't that much time left. Yuan had told him in the dreamscape that the world was about to be rebooted. If they didn't change the rules, everyone would perish in the coming apocalypse...
Dong Xiwen wasn't afraid to die. When Qi Si had given him the small identity card, inviting him into the Final Instance, he had felt honored to play a part in saving the world rather than just waiting for the end.
But what if you knew, right from the start, that you were doomed to fail? Anyone would find that a bitter pill to swallow...
Dong Xiwen's brow furrowed slightly. He stepped into the main hall, trying to think of a suitable opening line, but his thoughts were cut short. He recognized several figures in the crowd immediately.
A young man in a white suit and rimless glasses sat at the center of the group, his expression tense, his fingers trembling almost imperceptibly.
A man with a long ponytail and a gray overcoat—every bit the artist—paced back and forth, driven by either excitement or anxiety.
And a long-haired girl in a beige hoodie sat in a wheelchair, head down, scribbling furiously in a notebook.
Dong Xiwen had only heard rumors of these individuals and couldn't be certain they were who he thought, but there was one person he recognized without a shred of doubt.
Standing in the corner was a middle-aged man with gray-blue eyes, pale gold hair, and a rugged jawline dusted with stubble. It was, impossibly, the leader of the Balance Church who had just spoken with him recently—Yuan!
"Brother, is that really him?" Dong Xiwen asked silently in his mind. "You know him better. Confirm it for me."
Dong Ziwen's voice echoed back: "It is."
"Our leader plays his cards close to his chest. Any idea which one he's holding?"
"No clue," Dong Ziwen replied coolly. "He never told me."
"Well, damn. So what's the plan? Do we pretend we've never met?"
Before they could settle on a plan, the young man beside him stepped forward. He offered the early arrivals a disarming smile. "Good morning, everyone. My name is Zhou Ke, and I'm from May 5th, 2035." He paused, adding, "And for the record, 'Zhou Ke' is an alias. I hope no one takes offense."
Dong Xiwen immediately understood the young man's strategy.
Based on the timeline, they were the latest arrivals. No matter what names they gave, no one here would have heard of them. That would make it easy for the others to size them up as either nobodies or inexperienced latecomers.
By openly declaring his name was fake, he was wrapping himself in mystery, letting them guess at his true identity.
"You've got to be kidding me, man," the man with the ponytail scoffed. "Pulling the fake name card at a time like this? That's some Sila Guild paranoia right there." He then introduced himself. "I'm Xiao Fengchao. And yes, that's my real name. I'm currently the president of the Listening Wind Guild. You know, the one ranked second on the power charts."
Dong Xiwen overheard and thought, *Holy hell.* His first impression had been right on the money. It really was him.
The man was a minor celebrity who had been missing for a decade. The forums were still rife with speculation about what had happened to him. And now, here he was, in the Final Instance.
On the other hand, if so many renowned veterans had died here, what chance did a nobody like him have? He was probably first in line to get killed off...
The other travelers introduced themselves in turn. Some names were familiar, while others were obscure enough to draw a blank.
Following Zhou Ke's lead, Dong Xiwen and Zhang Yiyu gave their real names but claimed they were aliases. It didn't matter. To them, this whole group were practically ancient history; they'd never know the difference.
The man in the white suit was clearly their leader. Once the introductions were complete, he extended a hand to Zhou Ke with a faint smile. "A pleasure to meet you. I'm Lin Jue, president of the Ark Guild. I entered the Final Instance on January 1st, 2014.
"I'm both pleased and saddened to meet you all here," he continued, "but I believe that if we work together, we will clear this instance."
Lin Jue. The name had been lost to time for years, but there wasn't a single person in the room who didn't recognize it.
He was a legend, a tragic hero, a fallen savior from a bygone era. Even now, countless players on the forums spoke his name with reverence, nostalgic for the age of hope he represented.
Zhou Ke smiled as he shook Lin Jue's hand. "President Lin. It's an honor."
...
Meanwhile, Sang Ji stood at the top of the stairs. "Which room is yours?" he asked, not turning around. "I'll show you the way."
His tone held a subtle urgency, an overeager hospitality that felt all wrong.
Lin Chen remembered the man's fascination with the human-skin thangkas and felt a prickle of suspicion. Was this NPC the type to sneak into their room at night and try to skin them alive?
Qi Si, however, seemed unfazed. He offered Sang Ji a placid smile. "You've already gone to enough trouble getting us here, sir. We can find our own way from here."
Sang Ji shook his head. "That won't do. The sacred chant has begun. To walk the halls now, you must turn a prayer wheel and recite the sutras. It's the only way to pass *them*."
Qi Si nodded gravely. "In that case, sir, you should go and rest. Just lend us the prayer wheel for the night. We'll return it once the chanting stops."
Sang Ji: "..."
After a tense moment, Sang Ji finally relented. He hunched over and descended the stairs, the ancient wood groaning under his weight with a sound that set one's teeth on edge.
In the flickering candlelight of the stairwell, Qi Si caught a glimpse of the exposed skin on the back of Sang Ji's neck. Dark, purplish-brown patches of livor mortis were spreading through the wrinkles like mold.
The edges of the patches were ulcerated and black, and a foul, yellowish fluid seeped from beneath the decaying flesh, trickling slowly down the channel of his spine. With each of Sang Ji's shuffling steps, the blotches seemed to ripple unnaturally, as if something were writhing just beneath the skin.
—Livor mortis. The telltale sign of a corpse.
Only when Sang Ji's silhouette had vanished completely did Qi Si unlock the door to Room 6. He and Lin Chen stepped inside, one after the other, and Qi Si immediately bolted the door behind them.
The inn was ancient, its walls thin. Even with the door shut, the sounds of chanting and singing drifted in and out, now faint, now near. A gale carrying flakes of snow and shards of ice screamed through the cracks, a sound like the wailing of damned souls.
The room's furnishings were just as dated. There were none of the usual hotel amenities—no electric kettle, no telephone, no television. The only light came from the white candles on a holder, their orange flames sputtering low and listless, casting a weak, hesitant glow.
A large wooden bed dominated the center of the room, flanked by two nightstands. The one on the left was bare, but the one on the right held a garishly painted wooden carving.
It appeared to be a Buddhist deity, its face the color of dark iron, its eyes wide with fury. Six arms, gnarled and contorted like the legs of a spider, stretched out in a predatory pose, poised to lunge at any moment.
A rust-spotted chain was coiled around its central left arm, and from the end dangled a small, human skull. The carving was so lifelike in its gruesome detail that it sent an inexplicable shiver of dread through the beholder.
Lin Chen studied the effigy for a moment. "This must be a Six-Armed Mahakala," he whispered. "The front hands hold a sword, the middle left holds a human head, the middle right a ewe, and the rear hands hold an elephant hide. He wears a garland of skulls. He's also known as the Great Black One, a symbol of enlightenment and a savior figure. He's a dharmapala in Esoteric Buddhism—a protector deity—and also a guardian of tombs."
He paused, his gaze shifting worriedly toward the window. "Qi Si... do you think we're near a burial ground? What if Shangri-La... what if the whole place is a tomb?"
Qi Si knew little of Esoteric Buddhism. The memories of Qi were a chaotic, sprawling archive, and specific details like this had long ago been compressed into fragments too dense to easily retrieve or decipher.
He gazed toward the window. "It's possible," he said quietly. "At the very least, this mountain is one massive grave."
The room's window was enormous, taking up nearly half the wall. Beyond it was the mountain, its frozen cliffs rising up so sheer and close they seemed like a wall built right outside.
When they were outside the inn, the mountain had seemed distant. Now, the glistening ice and snow were just a few feet away, close enough to touch. The surface of the ice was etched with bas-reliefs depicting the myths of creation, the same ones Qi Si had seen on the temple murals. The carvings were fluid and beautiful, untouched by the heavy hand of a craftsman, as if sculpted by nature itself.
Through the translucent outer layer of ice, one could faintly make out rows of dark silhouettes embedded deep within. Given what they knew, these had to be the bodies of the dead, buried within the mountain. Unprotected by coffins, the corpses were sealed upright in the ice. At first glance, it looked as if a line of people were standing just outside the window, watching the players in the room with a cold, unending stare.
Perhaps to enhance the 'experience,' the window had no curtains. Standing before it felt like being inside the mountain itself, with nothing but an endless expanse of white ahead.
Snowflakes swirled toward the glass on the wind, carrying with them an ancient, desolate sorrow that magnified one's own insignificance. It was like being a speck of dust submerged in a boundless, frozen lake, where memories, emotions, and thoughts ceased to matter. All that remained was an empty void, impossible to see, impossible to grasp.
Everyone dies. The final destination is always a small plot of earth. What was the difference, really, between the living inside the window and the dead outside? One day, they would all lie side by side beneath the ice, their joys and sorrows, their greed and hatred, all scoured away by the passage of millennia.
And Qi Si realized, with a sudden, cold clarity, that in this instance, he was thinking about death once again.