We had been circling among the stone pillars for nearly an hour. I hadn't figured out what anything was, nor had I discovered anything special about these stone pillars.
Fatty and Bai Hanyan were the same as me; we were completely stumped looking at these stone pillars.
The only one we could count on was Wang Yue.
However, this woman was either looking for an exit or studying the scriptures. As she read, she kept taking notes on her laptop.
She even had Fatty and me take turns holding the flashlight for her.
“Teacher Wang, did you figure anything out?” I couldn’t help but ask.
She glanced at me and nodded slightly, “I discovered that some of the scripture pillars are incomplete, which causes some of the scriptures to be not very coherent.”
“What do you mean? Have you found a way to break the maze?”
She pointed to the stone pillar in front of her, then to the stone pillars behind, “Actually, this isn't a maze at all. As long as you can understand the scriptures on them, you won't get lost here. The scriptures are the direction.”
I was stunned for a moment and said, “Do you mean to say you knew the way out from the beginning?”
She shook her head, “I didn’t know at first. I only figured out the pattern later. The missing scriptures are the path that guides us out.”
With that, she led us in a certain direction, and every few steps, she would examine the stone pillars in front of her.
After walking for another half an hour like this, a stone door appeared before us.
I asked Bai Hanyan if she had been here before.
She shook her head, “This place is different from where we went before.”
I was taken aback and glanced at Wang Yue, “So, this means there are many stone chambers like this?”
“Probably,” Bai Hanyan replied.
“Brother Xiang, should we go in and take a look?” Fatty asked, walking up to the stone door.
I glanced at Wang Yue, and she seemed hesitant too. I thought for a moment, “Let’s go in and see. Maybe we can find some clues.”
Just as Fatty and I were about to push the stone door open, Wang Yue suddenly called out to us, “Wait a minute!”
We turned to look at her. She walked over, shone her flashlight on the stone door, and gently wiped away the dust on it with her hand. Soon, several characters appeared.
Of course, I couldn’t understand the writing on it, so I had to ask Wang Yue what it meant.
She said, “This is Deng Huo Di Yu.”
“Deng Huo Di Yu?” Fatty asked, looking confused.
I, on the other hand, remembered something and couldn’t help but ask, “Are you referring to the Deng Huo Di Yu from Buddhism’s Eight Hot Hells?”
Wang Yue seemed a bit surprised, perhaps not expecting me to know, and nodded, “Correct.”
“What does that mean?” Fatty asked.
I explained, “In Buddhism, there are what are called the Four Types of Hells, and the Eight Hot Hells are one of them. You can think of them as eight levels of hell.”
“What are the eight levels of hell?”
“The first level is Deng Huo Di Yu, the second is Hei Sheng Da Di Yu, the third is Zhong He Di Yu, the fourth is Jiao Huan Da Di Yu, the fifth is Da Jiao Huan Da Di Yu, the sixth is Jiao Re Da Di Yu, the seventh is Da Jiao Re Da Di Yu, and the eighth is A Bi Di Yu…”
Fatty listened, dumbfounded, “Brother Xiang, aren’t there supposed to be eighteen levels of hell? Why is it…”
“Eighteen levels of hell is a general term. After detailed classification, it becomes four types of hells: the Eight Hot Hells, the Eight Cold Hells, the Border Hells, and the Solitary Hells.”
Fatty asked, “You mentioned A Bi Di Yu just now. Is that the Wu Jian Hell?”
I nodded, “Indeed.”
“Why isn’t it called Wu Jian Hell, but A Bi Di Yu?”
“A means without, and Bi means interval. Together, it means without interval, or in-between. So, A Bi Di Yu is also called Wu Jian Hell.”
Fatty looked at me with admiration, “Brother Xiang, you really know a lot.”
Even Wang Yue’s gaze towards me changed, filled with admiration.
In truth, all this knowledge I had came from reading a book called "Wang Sheng Yao Ji" when I was researching ancient Buddhist statues years ago.
This book provided detailed records of the Eight Hot Hells.
“So, does that mean we’ve arrived at the entrance of the first level of the Eight Hot Hells, the Deng Huo Di Yu?” Fatty asked, looking at the stone door.
I glanced at Wang Yue and found her seemingly at a loss for words.
Bai Hanyan said, “The stone chamber we entered before was similar to this one, but we didn’t notice the writing on the door at the time.”
Judging by our progress, this place should have been a sacred site of Mahayana Buddhism in the past.
Therefore, it wasn't strange to build representations of the Eight Hot Hells here, much like how some temples have a Mahavira Hall.
You couldn’t say that just because a place was labeled as Mahavira Hall, it was actually Mahavira Hall, right?
So, this so-called “Deng Huo Di Yu” should be similar, but what was inside was unknown.
For safety’s sake, before pushing open the stone door, I told everyone, “Our objective is to find people. So, after we open the stone door, if anything seems out of the ordinary, we should retreat immediately, understand?”
Fatty and Bai Hanyan had no objections to my words, but Wang Yue seemed hesitant.
“Teacher Wang, our supplies are running low. If we don’t find anyone soon, it might be difficult for us to even get back,” I said.
She nodded, “Alright, I understand.”
I nodded and said no more.
When Fatty and I pushed the stone door open, we found that the stone chamber was not large, only about thirty square meters. It was empty, with nothing inside. The surrounding walls were covered with murals.
They all depicted various kinds of evil spirits, and at first glance, it truly had a hellish feel.
However, upon closer inspection, the abstract evil spirits seemed to be executing some kind of process, appearing to be descriptions of the punishments in Deng Huo Di Yu.
According to the murals, people who committed the sin of killing would be cast into Deng Huo Di Yu, where they would be made to kill each other and then be tormented by evil spirits.
Things like decapitation, dismemberment, and so on.
Although the murals were abstract, they were not difficult to understand.
“Did you find anything?” I asked after scanning the area.
Everyone shook their heads.
“Then let’s go out,” I said.
After we came out, following Wang Yue’s reasoning, we continued to search for incomplete scripture pillars, and soon arrived at “Hei Sheng Da Di Yu.”
After entering six “hells” one after another in this manner, we still hadn't found Guan Zhenwan and Ma Xuejin.
This whole ordeal took another two hours. Now we had to face two choices.
The first was to go back the way we came. I calculated that if we returned from our current location, it would take about three hours if we were fast, and four hours if we were slow.
Even calculating for three hours, we would likely be exhausted by the time we got out.
The second option was to continue searching for the remaining two hells, and only return the way we came after confirming that we couldn’t find anyone.