Chapter 69.2

Editor: Kat

Proofreader: Junyans

Amala’s hands were constantly shaking, and it didn’t look like she could hold the milk tea. Wei Xun simply handed the bowl to the mouth of the old woman. Amala paused and slowly took a few sips of milk tea, then turned her head away and refused to drink it.

“What does Dgahldan Palcho want you to do?”

Amala finally spoke. Her voice was unusually hoarse and awful to the ears, and she spoke rather quickly. It was mixed with accents of many dialects, but Wei Xun could understand it. Given his knowledge of the Tibetan language, he shouldn’t have understood it, so Wei Xun felt that the title of “Archaeologist” had played a role.

“No matter what he asks you to do, the godly mountain doesn’t welcome you. You have the mark of the devil on you. Get out of here.”

When she said these words, she stared at Wei Xun’s left shoulder with a determined attitude. In fact, Amala’s original words were much ruder, and also mixed with various Bon religion languages. The words she said towards Wei Xun were basically, “Devil, scram.” However, Wei Xun didn’t care, and was instead curious.

It was said that the heaven-bestowed poets on the Tibetan plateau, regardless of age or gender, could usually recite the whole Epic of King Gesar when they awakened their abilities, and their eyes could see the “extraordinary.”

Did Amala mention the “devil’s mark” because she saw the gold-patterned silver-inlaid skull and wet corpse on his body, or did the descendant of the eagle flutist leave some marks on him? Or, she was looking at his left shoulder——Wei Xun’s left shoulder had a tattoo of the Maria Butterfly.

Could she perceive the existence of the Travel Services?

“I saw the Dragon God at the holy lake last night.”

Wei Xun said in a chatty manner, “Someone had engaged in the sacrificial ceremony and led the Dragon God out of the lake. I happened to be passing by the lake at that time. The Dragon God felt that it was destined to meet me, so it gave me some treasures.”

Facing Amala, who was still indifferent and obviously didn’t believe what he said, Wei Xun took out the human skin thangka map and flashed it in front of Amala’s eyes.

“Here, this is the gift the aquatic reptile gave me.”

“Ah!”

Amala’s eyes suddenly widened, almost as if they were about to pop out of her sunken eye sockets. She rushed over like a lunatic and reached out to grab the map in Wei Xun’s hand.

Wei Xun didn’t shy his hand away from her, and directly gave her the human skin map. However, his eyes fell on the blanket that had been tossed away due to the old woman’s violent movements.

The legs of the old woman, which had been under the blanket, were exposed. They were like two pitch dark bones. Because they were extremely thin, they appeared terrifying! The old woman’s feet were even more shockingly twisted and deformed, and Wei Xun could not see her toes. The whole foot was like a flat crescent moon.

The dark skin on her legs sagged like a cloth, hanging down beside her hemp-like ankles. The old skin had holes and the edges of the skin were black, rotten, and leaking pus. The stench in the tent came from the old woman’s legs.

The old woman didn’t care about Wei Xun. She grabbed this human skin thangka with trembling hands. Her current actions were a complete contrast to how rude and crazy she had been when grabbing the thangka. She now cherished the human skin map as she held it. She kept mumbling something, and tears welled up in her eyes.

She struggled, trying so hard to enshrine this human skin in front of the butter lamp that her forehead had blue veins popping out. However, her legs were still powerlessly laying on top of the blanket. The old woman was like a fish that couldn’t move out of water. She looked a little pitiful amid her madness.

It was Wei Xun who moved the butter lamp in front of the old woman and watched her carefully offer the human skin thangka. With difficulty, she turned around, knelt, and kowtowed to it reverently while chanting sutras.

After reading the scriptures, Amala looked at Wei Xun again. Her skeleton-like eyes were deep and made whoever she stared at feel uncomfortable.

“It came to life,” Amala suddenly uttered.

“What came to life?” Wei Xun asked.

He was keenly aware that what Amala said next would be the focus of his branch scenic spot task.

“The human skin.”

The old woman grinned nervously, revealing her shrivelled, toothless gums. In a trembling tone of mixed panic and disgust, she spit out words that would cause a chill to climb up one back’s, “That human skin, it came to life!

“How can human skin come alive?”

Wei Xun was not frightened. He even said in a normal tone, “If a person is skinned, they will die, and the skin is just an ordinary skin.”

“That’s no ordinary human skin!” Amala retorted fiercely, with a solemn tone, “That skin is from a great villain who was possessed by devils, and even gods and Buddhas can’t completely suppress it. It’s a supernatural skin.”

Immediately after she said that, Amala half-recited and half-sung something. Wei Xun listened carefully and found that she was singing one of the chapters of “Tibetan Epic of King Gesar,” called “Xiangxiong Pearl Chapter.”

The general idea was that the rich and powerful Xiangxiong Kingdom was rich in pearls, and there were merchants from the Xiangxiong Kingdom who traded with other countries, but the great villain Trotung had robbed the merchants of the Xiangxiong Kingdom.

The Xiangxiong King was furious and had sent someone to seize Trotung’s property, which had caused a war between the two countries. After a difficult battle, the mighty King Gesar had broken through the Pearl City and shot the king of Xiangxiong, Tenpa Gyaltsen, to death with a divine arrow, obtained a large number of pearls, and transported them back to Ling country.*

“The Tibetan Epic of King Gesar” was one of the longest and most magnificent epics in the world. It told the story of King Gesar, the son of the gods who had descended to earth to slay demons and exorcise demons, conquer everywhere, and bring peace and happiness to the Tibetans. The opposite of King Gesar in the epic was King Gesar’s insidious and cunning uncle, Aku Trotung.

If King Gesar was a positive hero, then Trotung was a negative example in “The Tibetan Epic of King Gesar.” He was greedy, lustful, treacherous, cunning, and cowardly. Many battles in the epic had happened due to him, just as in this “Xiangxiong Pearl Chapter.”

Many epics could be compared with events in history, similar to the one Amala had sung just now. However, the story she sang was subtly different from the content of The Tibetan Epic of King Gesar:

“The evil Trotung attracted the great devil Rakshas Tal. The devil inspired greed to stir up wars, and led lives to ruin. The advent of the great devil attracted the Buddha Tonpa Shenrab, who had returned to the high heaven. The Buddhist light encapsulated the land, and the great king of Xiangxiong and the noble gusin received guidance. Because of this, the king of Xiangxiong tattooed the figure of the god and Buddha on the gusin’s body with his own hands.

“The gusin, who was tattooed with gods and Buddhas, achieved great perfection in his cultivation. After his death, the next gusin peeled off his skin and made a human skin thangka with supreme power. The King of Xiangxiong and the gusin used the human skin thangka to subdue the great devil Rakshas Tal. They peeled off the skin of Trotung who was possessed by the devil, tattooed the gods and the buddhas onto it, and made his skin into a thangka, suppressing it under Tagzig Olmo Lung Ring.”

But later, the skin thangka of the gusin, which had also been used to suppress the demon, disappeared unexpectedly. Then, the big devil had revived and cursed the Xiangxiong Kingdom. Since then, Xiangxiong Kingdom gradually declined and perished in war.

The gusin was the most noble Bon shaman in the Xiangxiong Kingdom. He was the master of the Xiangxiong King. The king must seek the advice of the gusin on any important national affairs before acting. The most important temple building “Xikang” on the map of the human thangka in Wei Xun’s hands had been specially built for the gusin to live in.

There were many horrific facts about the human skin thangkas on the internet. There were posts about thangkas being made by skinning serfs and pouring liquid mercury into the skull of a living person to make the whole human skin peel off completely. In fact, many of them were based on falsehoods.

Simply speaking, the making of thangkas was an extremely sacred and religious activity. How could someone that had such a low status like a serf have their skin be qualified to be made into a thangka?

According to Amala, only eminent monks and people with great virtues were qualified to be made into thangkas after passing away. They would take secret medicines before they died, and when they were alive, they would have special people draw the gods and Buddhas on their backs. And in fact, the act was equivalent to body cultivating.

Every time you recited sutras, every time you performed a sacrificial ritual, it was equivalent to blessing the thangka behind you. After their death, this piece of their skin would be cherished and made into a human skin thangka and enshrined in the temple.

“This is the Gusin thangka that had been lost that year.”

Amala carefully held the human thangka in front of the butter lamp and handed it back to Wei Xun. Her shriveled, skeleton-like old face was filled with awe.

“This was because the Buddha Shenrab Tonpa sensed that the great devil would return to the world, so he asked the Dragon God to send the lost human skin thangka back to the world.”

“However, the descendant of the eagle flutist only said that it was a map of the Dragon God’s waterway, and using this, one could find the horned crown of the Garuda.”

Wei Xun raised his eyebrows. “From this point of view, this human thangka itself should be more important than the map.”

“Certainly.”

Amala glared at him. “You were chosen by the Dragon God, and you are being followed by the holy beast of the snow-capped mountains, so I will tell you this.”

Wei Xun squinted his eyes thoughtfully. The snow leopard had not entered the tent. He could feel that the snow leopard was in a hidden mountain crevice diagonally opposite the tent, always paying attention to the movements here.

However, Wei Xun only knew the location of the snow leopard because of his connection with the snow leopard. How did Amala notice this? Did she really own a pair of “heaven’s eyes”?

“It’s a surprise that Dgahldan Palcho doesn’t know this. He has always wanted to return to Xiangxiong, but I have always refused his request to enter the mountain. Who knows where he found the poisonous (evil) fool (devil). He actually wanted to return to the Ruins of Xiangxiong Kingdom before Rakshas Tal awakes.”

Amala didn’t know what Wei Xun was thinking about. Her face was full of worry as she stated, “Never feed Shambhala, who feeds on blood and man. Otherwise, it will break free from the shackles of the human skin’s restriction and cause a catastrophe in the world.”

She hammered her legs hard as her dry lips trembled slightly. “My legs were once grabbed by it, and I almost lost my life. But I have been reciting Kangyur, and after it sucked my blood, it wilted and didn’t take my life away.

“If, if my legs were okay.”

Before Amala could finish her words, she hammered her leg again and again, as if she could not feel the pain at all. Apparently, Amala meant that if her legs were still intact, she would personally bring the Gusin‘s human skin thangka to subdue the resurrected demon.

“Sa, please tell the Lama of Xiaolin temple about the resurrection of the devil and the reappearance of the Gusin thangka.”

Amala took a string of beads from her neck and gave it to Wei Xun solemnly. “It will bless you and bring you good luck.”

This was a string of beads, and each bead was as large as a jujube stone. The quality of the beads felt like agate, and they were dark brown, almost black. On the surface, a mysterious, mystical, round, and white pattern that appeared like an eye was embedded on the surface.

The strange thing was that there were nine circles of eye patterns on each bead, and they were almost the same size and evenly spaced.

The title of [Archaeologist] was very useful in this case. Wei Xun knew at a glance that the beads on this string of beads were the famous Tibetan Dzi Beads.

Legend has it that the Dzi Beads were the relics of eminent monks and people of great virtues, or treasures passed down from generation to generation. It was a sacred object of the Yungdrung Bon religion and one of the seven treasures of the Tibetans.

This was really good stuff! Even the young fox that was hard to lure out popped out. It laid on Wei Xun’s shoulder, its greedy and slender body sliding down like a noodle. Its little paws eagerly tried to fish for the Dzi Beads, and it couldn’t help but softly and coquettishly say to Wei Xun, ‘Master, let me store it, let me store it, okay?’

The demonic mosquito didn’t like the scent of this string of beads and buzzed as it flew from under the hood of Wei Xun’s windbreaker to Wei Xun’s shoes, staying the farthest it could from the Dzi Beads.

Because the Dzi Beads were not a task reward from the Travel Services and Wei Xun did not have titles with appraisal functions, he could only roughly understand from the feedback from the young fox and the demonic mosquito that this string of Dzi Beads had a strong energy. It was comparable to the paper man Wei Xun had fed the young fox that time, or may have even surpassed the energy levels of the paper man.

The paper man had the functions of attack and communication, while these Xiangxiong Nine-eyed Dzi Beads contained a powerful and pure energy, a purely defensive array. It could rebuff all evil and ghosts.

Amala also saw the mink on Wei Xun’s shoulder. The old woman who seemed to be very difficult to get along with was fond of animals. She even waved at the mink and led it to drink the milk tea in the bowl. This was also shown by how she had never asked Wei Xun’s name from beginning to end, but directly called him “Sa” (Snow Leopard in the Tibetan Language).