Благословение Небожителей. Том 6 (ЛП)

Looking at this divine statue so closely was like staring into a mirror. Even that smile, previously kind, now seemed disturbing.
Xie Lian couldn’t help but feel shaken by the sight of it. “This…”
“Are you still going to tell me I’m wrong?” Mu Qing said coldly.
With much effort, Xie Lian finally squeezed out, “…Why would one of my divine statues be here?”
“One?” Mu Qing replied. “Not just one. Look closely.”
Then he yanked the veil from another divine statue—it too had a face that was undoubtedly Xie Lian’s!
He pulled the veils from the faces of five or six more divine statues. They were all identical!
“This certainly is a Cave of Ten Thousand Gods,” Mu Qing said. “But there’s only one god worshipped here!”
Only Xie Lian!
He was surrounded by endless copies of his own face. It was like Xie Lian had fallen into a bizarre, hallucinatory dream. His mind spun for a good while before he abruptly realized something.
“Wait. Mu Qing. You didn’t get a chance to see these statues’ faces earlier, right? You were going to remove the veils, but he stopped you.”
Mu Qing humphed. “I don’t need to see the statues’ faces to know that you’re the subject.”
“How would you know?” Xie Lian asked.
Mu Qing rolled all the silk veils into a ball and tossed them to the side, his veins popping slightly. “How would I know? Because all your clothes, accessories, and daily living needs were my responsibility back then. I washed for you, I mended for you—and every item in your wardrobe was unique. These statues are too detailed—everything is there, exactly the same, completely! When I saw those clothes, of course I knew whose face they would have!”
Xie Lian fell silent. He put a hand over his forehead and thought back on Hua Cheng’s odd behavior along the way.
Next to him, Feng Xin said, “He wouldn’t let us look at those statues, which proves he knows exactly what’s weird about them. That whole excuse about how we all dropped in by accident after the avalanche was bullshit. He must know what this place is.”
“Not just that. I bet he was the one who threw us into that pit of silk webbing,” Mu Qing added. “He was serious about killing us.”
“But…why are these statues like this?” Xie Lian wondered.
The statues had all been carved with such precision that they seemed nearly alive. The details were more than detailed, almost to the point of being frightening. It was clear to see just how closely the sculptor had observed their subject. Xie Lian didn’t think even the work of Xianle’s most renowned sculptors had reached this level of detail. It was as if the sculptor’s mind was filled by Xie Lian and Xie Lian alone, as if his eyes saw nothing else.
The three of them were surrounded by countless statues that all bore the same face, and Feng Xin shuddered violently.
“Honestly, what the fuck. Too creepy… They’re too fucking realistic.”
And there were so many.
“I suspect these statues are components for some wicked spell. Let’s destroy them,” Mu Qing said.
He moved to shatter one with a chop of his hand. Xie Lian’s mind was instantly pulled back to the present; he stopped him.
“Don't!” he cried.
Mu Qing looked at him. “Are you sure? The spell could be aimed at you.”
Xie Lian pondered it, but in the end still said, “Let’s not act recklessly. I think the chance that it’s a wicked spell is very small.”
“I think it’s very large,” Feng Xin said. “Honestly, what the fuck… Doesn’t the sight of these things scare you?”
Mu Qing stared at Xie Lian, who stared at him right back. “And what are you basing that off of?”
“Nothing,” Xie Lian said. “But these divine statues are quite nice and very meticulously sculpted. If we destroy them before we find out about them, we might regret it.”
After a pause, he added, “San Lang…might have lied to me about something, but I truly don’t think it’s anything that would harm me.”
Mu Qing couldn’t believe his ears. “…Did he cast some spell on you to bewitch your mind? I think if he wrote ‘suspicious’ on his face, you’d suddenly forget how to read.”
 
While they were talking, Feng Xin snapped to alertness, like he was about to face a dangerous foe. “Watch out!” he cried.
Xie Lian and Mu Qing both tensed and demanded, “What is it?”
“That spider silk is coming at us again!” Feng Xin exclaimed.
The palm torch illuminated the stone walls ahead; they were covered with large patches of dense white silk. The three cursed mentally, gearing themselves up for another clash. Yet unexpectedly, this white silk wasn’t as aggressive as the silk in the pit; it neither moved nor attacked. It was acting like a gecko lounging on a wall.
After they had waited for a while, Xie Lian observed, “These silk nets don’t seem alive.”
“If they’re not alive, then what are they for?” Feng Xin questioned.
Xie Lian had an answer in mind, which he confirmed when he went over to study it. “I think they’re covering something.”
All three of them stood before the stone wall. Xie Lian gave the white silk a tug and pulled off a large section. As expected, the strands were tough and difficult to tear down, but he could manage it with effort.
The veils had concealed the identity of those divine statues. So what was being hidden on these stone walls?
The other two joined him in tearing down the webs, each taking care of different areas. Soon, a section of the wall was revealed on Xie Lian’s side.
“It’s a mural!”
The webs had been hiding a giant painting. The entire surface of the wall was densely packed with lines, colors, and little people. The mural was divided into smaller pieces, each with a different style: some were coarse and wild, some elegant, some exquisite, some peculiar.
After studying it for a while, Xie Lian stated, “…He painted this.”
“He?” Mu Qing echoed. “Hua Cheng? Are you sure?”
“Yes,” Xie Lian said softly. “There are words on here, and he’s the one who wrote them.”
He pointed at a little blood-red person on the wall. Right next to it, there were a bunch of messy, twisted, indiscernible characters—it looked like they had been written in a state of delirium or scrawled to vent the author’s feelings during a period of extreme suffering. Based on those characters, Xie Lian could guess that the little blood-red person painted there was Hua Cheng himself, but for some unknown reason he had depicted himself as extremely ugly and disfigured.
Feng Xin glanced at it and couldn’t help but comment, “That handwriting…it’s so ugly I’ve gone blind. I bet even I write better than him.”
Handwriting uglier than Feng Xin’s was truly beyond saving. Xie Lian was dazzled; there was so much to see that he didn’t even know where to start looking. Now that he’d confirmed this was Hua Cheng’s work, it was like he had discovered a treasure trove. His fingertips began to tremble slightly.
Mu Qing seemed to have discovered something nearby and called out. “Your Highness, come quick! Come and see!”
Only then did Xie Lian snap out of it. “What is it?”
Feng Xin and Mu Qing were already rendered speechless and could only point at one of the images. This piece was considerably larger than the other ones depicted. Right at its center was a tall tower connected to a city wall. Below, a sea of people surrounded a magnificent stage. The lines were simple, yet they captured the scene perfectly with only a few strokes.
Mu Qing pointed at the center of the mural. “So…that…that was him?” he said with a trembling voice.
Xie Lian was also staring at that section.
This piece was mostly colorless; only two figures had been colored within it. There was a small figure at the bottom that had been painted pure white; it seemed to be glowing. The figure was looking toward the sky with hands outstretched. It was about to catch another little figure who was falling from the tower.