The day we returned from fetching the scriptures, Mount Ling had become a mountain of corpses.
The Buddha sat upon his lotus throne, utterly bloodless, as pale as a paper effigy.
Wukong shoved us off Mount Ling and roared, “Run! Don’t look back!”
In an instant, a vast sheet of white human skin blotted out the sky and fell from above, wrapping around every Buddha.
With my final glance, I saw an ancient Buddha whose entire body was rotting. It pulled back its own face to reveal a sinister smile.
By the Flowing Sand River, Bajie suddenly pointed at the scriptures. “Master, this stuff... it’s made of skin.”
I looked down and found that the scriptures in my arms felt warm to the touch and were faintly rising and falling.
Deep beneath the river, countless human skins bobbed with the current, chanting sutras in low voices.
