It all began when Zheng Shuyu, the small-business owner of a thangka shop, saw a ghost reeking of corpses in an elevator.
Afterward, a mountain of food deliveries from strangers directed him to a room in a shabby inn. There, he found a train ticket taking him to Wutun Lower Monastery in Tongren County, Qinghai.
A revered monk died in silence, and a grand funeral was held. Its true purpose, however, was to uncover the person who had murdered him.
Only later did he discover the temple's shocking secret. In the room where the monk had died, people found an image of a decapitated bodhisattva, blood streaming down it.
A horrifying ritual to worship a god of slaughter caused an uproar in the courtroom. Who was worshipping these things?
Of course, that wasn't the only secret. Deep underground, they worshipped an enormous Buddha statue with a pair of terrifying eyes.
And then there was the man who struggled to communicate, appeared and vanished without warning, and rescued him from certain death: a 185-centimeter-tall man who looked like a male model.
Reader advisory:
Heavy horror, suspense, Chinese-style Cthulhu, a touch of eldritch horror, though not too eldritch. The story is mainly about religion and ethnology.
Theme: Self-understanding
