POTG chapter 2: The Coffin Building

Su Jiang was frightened: “Fuck, broken palm Guanyin? It’s too evil.”

Yang Mian’s eyes changed, obviously she did not expect such a strange Guanyin statue under the red cloth.

Gao Yan whispered: “Trouble.”

Yang Mian: “The middle-aged man wearing Taoist robe said just now that this is a beginner’s dungeon. As long as you complete the requirement of ‘find the last pair of gods’ arms, you can clear the level. It shouldn’t be too difficult.”

Gao Yan : “He’s right, but there is still a six-day time limit. If we fail to clear the level after six days, what will happen to all of us?”

Once the time limit is exceeded, no one knows what will happen to all the players in the dungeon.

Yang Mian: “It stands to reason that since it is a novice  instance, the difficulty is not high.”

Gao Yan: “I thought so before when I saw this Avalokitesvara statue.”

Su Jiang: “Brother, what do you mean?”

Gao Yan raised his eyes: “Which demons and ghosts have you seen dare to hit the gods?”

Su Jiang pondered carefully, and suddenly realized and he high-fived: “God’s game! And this statue of Bodhisattva… The real boss is God! Isn’t that means to lie down and wait to die?”

Gao Yan sighed, and Yang Mian was speechless.

Su Jiang was aggrieved and hugged into a ball, he knew that he had said the wrong thing again.

“Gods such as Bodhisattvas generally have the ability to suppress ghosts and kill them, and ghosts are afraid just by hearing their names. Now the situation is upside down, ghosts and demons pretend to be bodhisattvas to tease players, and even maliciously smear the gods—” Gao Yan pointed to the god Avalokitesvara with broken palms and eight arms: “The statues have always been regarded as the incarnations of gods. Just now, the rules mentioned ‘Guanyin deceives the world and steals names’, which is obviously malicious.”

“Although I don’t know the real situation of the so-called game, I can guess the game. The ‘gods’ are not the gods who are merciful and solemn in our conception.”

Yang Mian followed Gao Yan’s words: “In the folk, the relationship between gods and demons is very clear. But there have also been demons who pretended to be gods to maliciously slander and deceive people’s incense offerings to achieve the purpose of replacing gods”.

Not only the demons and spirits occupy the idols that have not been worshipped for a long time in small temples in the mountains, they even use sorcery to deceive believers to obtain incense for worship.

Over time, the statue will become its legal body, and the wild god who has come from an unrighteous path can gradually be turned into a small god in a place.

If someone encounters a wild god who has a wrong mind, it will be the end of their house and the loss of the whole family.

Su Jiang finally understood, “It means that in the copy of ‘Guanluoyin’, the evil spirits are pretending to be Guanyin instead of the real gods, and the evil spirits are very hostile to the Thousand-hand Guanyin.”

Gao Yan: “You can say that.”

Su Jiang touched his head: “The situation is so complicated.”

Yang Mian asked Gao Yan, “What else do you see?” She asked, as if she recognized Gao Yan as the leader of the team.

Gao Yan lowered his eyes, put the red cloth back on the head of the evil Guanyin with eight arms and severed palm, and then randomly found a rag bag to take the statue of Guanyin out of the front desk: “There are two important information when explaining the rules, one is ‘Guanyin’, the other is the sentence “Thousand-handed Guanyin has only nine hundred and ninety-eight arms”, missing a pair of arms.”

Guanluoyin is a Taoist saying in Fujian and Guangdong, and in the north it is Xiayin Cao etc, the essence is almost the same.

“Thousand-handed Avalokitesvara is great compassion. Thousand-handed Avalokitesvara has one eye on each palm, so it is also called Thousand-handed and Thousand-Eyed Avalokitesvara. Ordinary statues have 998 arms, or 42 arms, 16 arms and 8 arms. Eight arms are the main arm, which is equivalent to a thousand hands and a thousand eyes. As for why one pair of arms should be omitted… According to folklore, the last pair of arms of Guanyin is on the worshipers who bow down to her.”

“Fuck!!” Su Jiang touched his two arms. ‘I don’t usually feel anything strange, but when I hear it now, why do I feel terrified?’

Yang Mian twitched her eyelids: “Do you mean to put the evil spirit on the bedside to sleep with?”

Gao Yan threw the rag bag on his back, and was surprised when he heard the words: “Do you want to be a god?” Being single should also have some dignity.

Yang Mian: “?” Is that what she thought it meant? “No, I don’t want to.”

Gao Yan: “Then why do you think I want to?”

Yang Mian: “…” Did our teammates go too far?

Gao Yan smiled, he was still warm and moist like that, looking at him, he looked like a good man who let others go wild and had no temper.

But that’s just the appearance, reality can’t be judged by appearance!

Su Jiang couldn’t be more clear, and Yang Mian vaguely knew that Gao Yan didn’t seem to be as gentle and harmless as he looked on the surface.

The three of them walked upstairs. This is an old-fashioned nine-story residential building with narrow corridors that can accommodate two people walking side by side.

The walls were mottled, the paint fell off, the doors of each room were a gloomy dark green, the corridors were empty, no one was there.

The landlord accidentally mentioned that the player had booked a room on the fifth floor, so the three of them continued to walk upstairs. The sound of footsteps was particularly loud on the dead corridor, as if it was trampling on the heart, which made people panic unconsciously.

Su Jiang and Yang Mian walked in front, and Gao Yan walked in the back with a rag bag with a broken palm evil Guanyin inside it on his back.

When he stepped on the last step, he suddenly turned his head and looked down –

the empty corridor, the dark green closed door, dead silent and cold. There is a small black hole above each door, and behind those black hole cat eyes, there seem to be residents who are staring at the player coldly, their eyes full of greed and appetite.

Gao Yan looked down a little and saw that there was a bowl of raw rice at the door of each household, with three Buddha incense sticks stuck on the raw rice. The Buddha incense burns to the end, leaving only the thin red bamboo handle.

Upstairs is the fifth floor, and the three stopped at the entrance of the corridor.

Su Jiang: “We only walked two floors to the fifth floor, and there are two floors underground.” This time he responded very quickly: “Why not call it the first floor and the second floor?”

Gao Yan walked forward: “It’s a coffin building. The underground is yin, the ground is yang, yin and yang* live together, and people and ghosts live together.”

*yin is negative and yang is positive*

Su Jiang: “It’s so yin and evil.”

Yang Mian was surprised at Gao Yan’s knowledge of ghosts and gods, and at the same time she was very worried.

The feng shui of the coffin building is extremely fierce, and the high-level boss that belongs to the gods in the game is encountered.

She began to wonder if she was really entering the beginner level dungeon?

This is obviously a high-level instance for the bosses and cannon fodders. The bosses comes to gain experience, and the cannon fodder sends ingredients* to the conscientious ghosts.

*They becomes meal of ghosts/ they are killed easily*

There are a total of nine rooms on the fifth floor, each of which is exactly one for nine people. The rooms near the corridor were all cleaned up, leaving only the three innermost rooms in the corridor. The doors of the three rooms were wide open, and the room was dark like a man-eating beast, while the doors of the other six houses where people lived were closed.

Su Jiang: “Should we live separately?”

Yang Mian: “Let’s stay together, that would be safer.”

Gao Yan doesn’t care about this. He and Su Jiang has a relationship of the landlord and the tenant.

Su Jiang signed a two-year contract and lived with him for more than a year. Usually, except for the one from his family who returned to congress*, he went out to live for a month or two. At other times, he lives with Gao Yan, so Gao Yan won’t feel awkward.

*congress means friendly meeting*

On the other hand, Yang Mian, as a girl, directly proposed the idea of living in the same room. Although the insurance is safe, it is quite surprising.

Gao Yan and Su Jiang had no objection, but Yang Mian felt uncomfortable. She asked, “Aren’t you going to persuade me?”

“We don’t mind.” Su Jiangi turned his head to look at her, thought for a moment, and said, “Oh yes, we are both gay, so don’t worry.”  (T/N: , but they aren’t cp)

The tone and demeanor were both light, as if this was a very casual thing!

Yang Mian: “??” ‘Did my words mean I was going to propose them?‘

Gao Yan put the severed palm and eight-armed Guanyin at the foot of the bed, and the red cloth covering Guanyin’s head still did not lift off.

Su Jiang stretched out his hand to pull the red cloth off, but Gao Yan quickly stopped him: “Don’t lift it.”

Su Jiang retracted his hand obediently: “Brother, why do you say this?”

Gao Yan: “The red cloth covers the top and blocks its evil.”

In fact, he wasn’t sure whether the statue was evil to the player.

Yang Mian was about to say something when a door opened which interrupted her thoughts.

The three of them looked up together, and saw a middle-aged man in a Taoist robe and another thin man with a low sense of presence standing at the door of Room 3.

The two were talking, but after noticing the three of them, they immediately cut off the conversation and stared at them coldly.

The layout of the fifth floor is U-shaped, and the room numbers are numbered clockwise. Gao Yan and the others chose room 5 in the middle, while rooms 4 and 6 are unoccupied. Yang Mian suddenly walked towards Room 6 and closed the wide open door.

She stood at the door, smiled at the middle-aged men in Taoist robes, and did not speak.

The middle-aged man in the Taoist robe had a panoramic view of the three people’s reactions, and after making a judgment in his heart, he took the initiative to show his favor: “Did you find it(the statue) in the downstairs hall?”

Gao Yan: “Information exchange?” 

The middle-aged man in the Taoist robe was startled and looked somewhat displeased.

Gao Yan: “Anyway, I see that you have expelled the three of us from the team, and I think the three of us will die in the game. There is no other way, we can only form a team by ourselves.” He stared at the middle-aged Taoist lazily with a smile on his lips: “We did find something downstairs, so… exchange?” 

The middle-aged man in Taoist robe stared at Gao Yan, and after thinking for a while, said: “As long as you cooperate, obey, don’t act without authorization, and if you don’t break the rules, I’m still willing to accept you.”

“There’s no room for your request.” Gao Yan refused without thinking.

The middle-aged taoist man choked. He originally thought that Gao Yan would at least pretend to think about it. He refused the the request so fast that he lost his face. He was annoyed, and he reaffirmed in his heart that the three of them must never enter the team.

The middle-aged taoist wanted to throw his sleeves and leave, but he really wanted to know the clues Gao Yan and the others got, so he said with a cold face: “Okay, information exchange. But you have to tell me first, what did you find?”

Gao Yan did not tangle on this point, but happily told the legend of the last pair of Avalokitesvara’s arms of the believers and the discovery of the coffin building.

When the middle-aged taoist heard the former information, his expression did not fluctuate much but when he heard the coffin building, his face changed drastically and it became ugly.

Gao Yan raised his chin and said, “It’s your turn.”

“The landlord’s mother died of illness not long ago, and he will perform the contemplation of the shadows on the sixth day. The instruments will be delivered tomorrow, and the mage will be here on the sixth day. Guanluoyin will definitely worship Guanyin, so the Guanyin arm we are looking for should be among the magical instruments sent one after another.”

This is very important news.

The thin man next to the middle-aged taoist man hurriedly entered room 8 diagonally opposite, and the middle-aged taoist man also closed the door – it seemed that he was sending the man with a low sense of presence out of the door just now, but just happened to meet Gao Yan and others.

Yang Mian also closed the door of Room 4 on the opposite side, and then entered the door of Room 5.

Gao Yan closed the door: “Zheng Weimin has a problem, you two should guard against him.”

Zheng Weimin was the name of the middle-aged taoist man, and they introduced themselves to each other when they were in the hall. The three of them remembered the name and knew that he was the head of a Taoist temple in a neighboring city.

Gao Yan: “The game configuration of this dungeon is too high, and it is a waste of resources to say that it is a primary(beginner) field(instance)”.

Su Jiang was stunned: “If it wasn’t a primary field… what level does it have to be?”

Yang Mian said with a cold face: “The level of death. When two people died at the beginning of the game, you know how cruel it is. Don’t believe what Zheng Weimin said, he probably cheated us all. Gao Yan said just now that the three of us will die. In the game, Zheng Weimin didn’t react at all. Obviously, in his eyes, we are dead, and this is contrary to what he said before that we will not die.”

Su Jiang suddenly realized, and immediately scolded Zheng Weimin for being bull-nosed* and black-hearted.

*Being evil-hearted, having evil intentions*

“He’s actually a Taoist priest. Why wasn’t he killed by the lightning?” 

Gao Yan’s eyes fell on the Guanyin statue covered with red cloth, and suddenly asked: “Are you sleepy?”

Su Jiang was very angry and his anger sky-rocketed, he wanted to kill Zheng Weimin by grabbing his hair!

GaonYan knocked on the door: “I’ll go to sleep first.”

“…” Su Jiang’s anger died immediately: “I’ll sleep with you.”

Gao Yan looked at Su Jiang and said softly, “Although the two of us are at most double-yolk eggs when we sleep together*, I am also a noble and unhatched egg, and I do not accept the company of someone’s husband to sleep with.”

*maybe here it means that they live together so they also sleep together because double-yolk eggs means two yolks in same egg shell, but Gao Yan said that even if we are double-yolk eggs, I still have some privacy? So he doesn’t want Su Jiang’s company*

Su Jiang knelt down to his brother Yan, and went to sleep on the sofa without saying a word.

The author has something to say:

Gao Yan: a noble, unhatched egg.

Chu Suibi: I understand, eggs for dinner.