Chapter 84: Opening the Door Unaware

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I stood before the iron-shears-gold tomb gate, holding my breath, calming my mind, lowering my eyes in silent contemplation for several minutes. My strange actions baffled everyone; none could guess what I intended, yet none dared to intervene, so they stayed behind, watching.

With my mind at peace and my tongue pressed against my upper palate, I focused my gaze inward—eyes to nose, nose to mouth, mouth to heart, heart unified—so that the chaos within and the pain in my arm seemed to vanish. In the darkness before me, specks of starlight appeared, like the Milky Way. I felt as though I were suspended in the center of the universe, with galaxies spinning around me. My body seemed to float, all conscious thought dissolved in that instant.

When awareness returned, I had no sense of how much time had passed. Slowly opening my eyes, I was instantly startled. The posture of the misaligned Paravati Mother statue had been corrected, and the Buddha of Guidance, who had lost his lotus ritual implement, now inexplicably held an iron-shears-gold lotus.

I stepped back two paces and looked behind me. Everyone still stood at the edge of the black stone platform. Ghost Face Zhang frowned deeply, his expression strange as if he’d seen a ghost. Black Cloak and Mengya wore inscrutable half-smiles. The others looked either shaken or as if waking from a dream, leaving me at a loss for words.

The awkward silence lasted several minutes before I could no longer contain my confusion. “Wh—what’s wrong?”

No one answered. Only Ghost Face Zhang took out a cigarette, lit it, inhaled, and stepped forward, sizing me up until goosebumps prickled my skin.

“What was that just now? What kind of trick did you pull?” Ghost Face Zhang hesitated, a hint of unease in his voice.

I nearly spat blood in his face. How should I know what happened? I had kept my eyes closed, then lost consciousness. I wanted to ask him what had happened, and now he was asking me instead. Shaking my head, I replied, “I honestly have no idea what happened. I remember closing my eyes and then nothing.”

“What?” Ghost Face Zhang exclaimed in disbelief. “Impossible—are you telling the truth?”

“Why would I lie? That’s exactly what happened; I don’t know anything.” My patience frayed, I answered irritably.

Ghost Face Zhang clearly didn’t want to believe me, but my expression didn’t seem deceitful. He signaled Black Cloak to come over.

“He says he doesn’t remember anything,” Ghost Face Zhang whispered to Black Cloak.

“How could that be?” Black Cloak was equally astonished, scrutinizing me. “Qiutong isn’t one to lie, but what on earth happened just now?”

“Stop talking in riddles. Tell me what happened so I’m not left in the dark,” I protested.

Ghost Face Zhang and Black Cloak exchanged glances and nodded. Ghost Face Zhang took a drag, sighed, and began recounting the strange events surrounding the “opening of the tomb gate.”

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“You stood before the gate as if you were dead, scaring us into thinking you’d been cursed. After a few minutes, you opened your eyes and looked back, but your gaze wasn’t your usual one. Without a word, you turned and sat down, meditating before the tomb gate in the Five Hearts Toward Heaven posture.”

I quickly interrupted him, “I’m not you; my legs can’t do Five Hearts Toward Heaven. If you said Four Limbs Facing Heaven, I’d believe it.”

“I’m not joking. You sat like that for about fifteen minutes. The decorations on the tomb gate began to change.”

“Change? What kind of change?” I asked.

Ghost Face Zhang took a drag, glanced at the now-raised tomb gate. “Do you remember the gate’s decorations?”

I nodded.

“The central dragon head spat out water patterns that started to slowly extend outward, at first very slowly, then faster, finally spinning into a vortex that wrapped around the central lotus.”

That sounded a bit superstitious to me. No matter how ingenious ancient tomb mechanisms were, they couldn’t possibly wrap an iron-shears-gold lotus in the gate like that. This wasn’t stage magic; even David Copperfield would struggle to pull it off.

“I just sat there the whole time?” I asked, hesitant.

“Mm.” He took another deep drag, nodded, and pointed to the Paravati Mother statue. “Once the water wrapped around the lotus, that statue over there changed posture, becoming as it is now.”

I nodded, signaling Ghost Face Zhang to continue.

He paused, exchanged another look with Black Cloak, then nodded. “After the statue changed, the lotus in the center of the gate closed into a bud. You stood up, walked to the base of the gate beneath the bud, and recited some unknown mantra.”

“Unknown mantra?” I paused, recalling the long-forgotten Sanskrit ‘prajñāpāramitā.’ I hesitated, “Could it have been ‘pāramitā’?”

Ghost Face Zhang waved his hand. “I’ve heard that Sanskrit phrase so often my ears are callused. It wasn’t that one.”

I grew more puzzled. I was a ‘Chan’ practitioner, but knew only a few familiar mantras: the Six Syllable Mantra, the Mahā Prajñāpāramitā Heart Sutra. Anything else, I couldn’t remember. This was truly bizarre.

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“Kaleidoscope!” Ghost Face Zhang shouted. Kaleidoscope hurried over. “What mantra was Qiutong reciting just now?”

Kaleidoscope smiled at me, his usual mocking arrogance replaced by a hint of respect. “Third Brother, just now the Young Nephew in front of the gate was reciting Tibet’s ‘Great White Umbrella Mantra.’”

I was stunned. The ‘Great White Umbrella Mantra’? Isn’t that part of the ‘Great Buddha Top Surangama Sutra’? Not to mention Sanskrit, I can’t even recite the Chinese Surangama Sutra in full, let alone in Sanskrit—was this some kind of joke?

I looked at Kaleidoscope skeptically. “Uncle, are you sure you didn’t mishear? Maybe I was singing ‘Pleasant Goat and Big Big Wolf’ and you mistook it for Sanskrit?”

Kaleidoscope chuckled. “Young Nephew, if it were anything else, maybe I could mishear. But when it comes to ancient cultural texts, not to boast, but in the Beijing Nine Gates, who has seen more than your Uncle Wan?”

I laughed inwardly—what nonsense! In the Beijing Nine Gates, Ghost Face Zhang, Iron Crutch Liu, and Dragon King are all illiterate. The master is an antique dealer, Jun Ye’s become a traitor, and the only literate one, Ren Tai’an, has ‘returned to the sea, riding a crane to the west.’ Comparing literacy with a bunch of illiterates—what is there to be proud of? Shameless!

I waved my hand, “Whatever mantra it was, please continue.”

Ghost Face Zhang nodded. “As you recited the ‘Umbrella Mantra,’ a vine of iron-shears-gold grew from the lotus bud’s core, slowly but steadily stretching toward the statue that lacked its implement.”

I nodded, beginning to understand.

“As you finished the mantra, the vine landed in the statue’s hand. The lotus core detached from the gate, becoming the head of the lotus implement. Instantly, the water patterns on the gate withdrew into the dragon’s mouth. The gate rose, and that’s how you opened it.”

After he finished, my mind was blank. Was this really my doing? I had no idea, not even the faintest sensation. Yet Ghost Face Zhang’s serious tone wasn’t joking. I nodded, “I honestly have no recollection whatsoever.”