Dragon Raja 3; Chapter 251: Divine Hall of Murals (5)

Dragon Raja 3

Throughout world mythology, creatures with human faces and serpentine bodies have appeared repeatedly—from the Chinese ancestors Fuxi and Nüwa, to Taihao of the Three Sovereigns and Five Emperors, to the mysterious serpent deity seen by Duke Huan of Qi in Zhuangzi, to the lamp-bearing deity Zhulong from the Classic of Mountains and Seas, to the Naga of Sanskrit myth and Medusa of Greek myth. These creatures, existing somewhere between gods and demons, symbolize temptation and the ultimate mystery. Mythologists have long struggled to explain why these monsters appear so consistently across different cultures. If they could see this horrifying yet “beautiful” creature, they’d understand: the ancients truly witnessed such beings crawling, swimming, or lunging before their very eyes. They were so terrifyingly grotesque, it’s impossible to believe that a benevolent god created them—they must have been a cruel joke played by the devil. That image, like a bolt of lightning, seared itself into the minds of the early people, passed down through generations as myth.

The boy reactivated the laser pointer, aiming the red dot at the center of the fish’s forehead like a vivid vermilion mark. The human-faced fish’s pale visage was momentarily lit up. Ignoring the horrifying lower half, the face could almost be described as charming, with her mischievous smile and captivating eyes. She reached out with her deformed claws, trying to grasp the red dot, but her claws, though sharp, only produced a grating sound as they scraped the glass. Frustrated by her failure, the fish became enraged, unleashing a soundless scream, her enormous mouth opening to reveal long, jagged teeth. Only now was her horrifying mouth structure fully visible—what had seemed like delicate cherry lips concealed hidden slits extending all the way to her ears, and when she opened her mouth, it was as if her entire skull had split apart.

“You look ugly like that,” the boy said.

The human-faced fish’s silent scream lasted only a few seconds before a massive claw from behind pulled her back into the center of the tank. The boy extinguished the laser pointer, silently observing the ensuing slaughter. A dozen or so human-faced fish swarmed their smaller kin, biting down on her body parts. They violently thrashed their long tails, using their powerful twisting motions to tear her apart. It’s a scene reminiscent of how great white sharks hunt baby blue whales—they drag the baby to the ocean floor and viciously tear it apart, leaving behind only its mangled bones by the time the mother arrives. The prey and predators formed a grotesque flower, a monstrous bloom with snake-like petals, each petal writhing and twisting as red plumes of blood rose toward the surface.

“How ugly this world is,” the boy muttered, his face devoid of emotion.

A slight cracking sound traveled from top to bottom through the entire glass wall, and the metal frames supporting it quickly twisted and deformed. The human-faced fish, busy devouring their mangled prey, sensed the change in the glass wall and abandoned their meal to swim toward it, much like prisoners hearing the creak of an iron gate and instinctively looking toward the door. The glass wall swayed precariously, and then one of the massive glass blocks, a square meter in size and half a meter thick, was forced out of the metal frame by water pressure. More blocks followed, each weighing several tons. Water shot out from the openings, spraying several meters into the air. Within seconds, the entire transparent wall collapsed, unleashing a deluge of tens of thousands of tons of water, carrying along an untold number of human-faced fish.

It was a deadly flood and a deadly spectacle, with the falling glass blocks reflecting ice-like brilliance in the eerie blue light. Black, dragon-like shadows soared through the light—a scene of apocalyptic beauty.

The boy did not run. Before the blue torrent engulfed him, he sighed lightly.

“Water sounds!” Caesar frowned.

Even without the heightened senses from his Yanling Kamaitachi, Caesar’s hearing was many times more sensitive than a regular person’s. He could hear water—this wasn’t the soft trickle of a pipe but the swelling roar of an ocean. Yet, Genji Heavy Industries was in Shinjuku, four or five kilometers away from the nearest coastline.

“The Iron Dome must be releasing water again,” Chu Zihang said while busy taking pictures of the murals, not turning his head. “The weather forecast mentioned heavy rain tonight. Without a drainage system of this scale, Tokyo would have collapsed long ago.”

Caesar looked around, searching for a window to see if it was indeed raining outside, but the mural hall had none. That made sense—Snake Hachiya had likely installed central dust and humidity control systems on this floor to protect the murals from further oxidation and pollution, so opening windows was not an option.

“Hold the flashlight higher. Let’s see this mural in full; it must have some special significance,” Chu Zihang instructed.

“Just this once. Next time, don’t talk to me like I’m your lighting crew,” Caesar grumbled as he raised the flashlight, illuminating the entire mural.

Wherever the beam touched, the mural gleamed. Like the painting of the Madonna they had seen in the warehouse, this mural used a substantial amount of gold as pigment. In Europe, by the time of the Madonna painting, gold was abundant, exchanged for glass beads along the Gold Coast of Africa. But Japan didn’t produce gold, and two thousand years ago, gold was a rare metal, painstakingly imported from China. Sailors risked their lives crossing the northern winds of the Zhoushan Archipelago, where their boats were often overturned by the waves. Such precious gold, meant for seals and jewelry, was lavishly used on this mural, showing its paramount importance among these artworks.

Chu Zihang studied the mural carefully, moving from top to bottom. He could take photos, but to examine the pigments and details closely, the original mural was indispensable.

The painting was highly abstract, depicting a winged skeleton gifting a bone to a human. Strangely, the skeleton and the human formed the structure of a “yin-yang fish.” The golden skeleton lay against a black background, while the golden human lay against a white background. Their hands, one skeletal and one human, met as they grasped the bone, with the entire image swirling in a vortex. Even Caesar, with no knowledge of metaphysics, could sense that this painting symbolized the cycle of life and death—the skeleton representing death and the human representing life. The key lay in the bone being passed from skeleton to human—what mysterious thing was being transferred in the cycle of life and death?

“A Taiji diagram?” Caesar guessed.

Chu Zihang shook his head. “The Taiji diagram originated from the early Song Dynasty’s Chen Tuan, but these murals predate the Song. Similar motifs have appeared in other ancient civilizations, like twin fish swimming in opposite directions or two serpents coiled head to tail. It symbolizes copulation.”

“Copu—what?” Caesar’s Chinese faltered.

“Copulation,” Chu Zihang simplified.

“Copulation between the living and the dead? That’s the most disgusting thing I’ve ever heard. Is this some kind of twisted Japanese perversion?” Caesar grimaced.

“No, it’s symbolic. The focus isn’t the act of copulation itself, but rather what the skeleton is passing to the human—the symbolic ‘life’ that the bone represents. The artist drew the entire mural around that bone as the focal point,” Chu Zihang explained. “So the key is the bone.”

“What do the annotations in seal script say?”

“There are a lot of archaic and variant characters here. I don’t know seal script well, so I can only make out parts of it. But I’m confident about eight of the characters,” Chu Zihang paused, then said slowly, “The Ancient Way of the Yellow Springs… the Path to Deification!”

“I don’t get it. Isn’t ‘Yellow Springs’ another word for hell in Chinese?”