Volume 3, Chapter 88 – The Monster Kingdom (Two-in-One)

These monks were not good people.

With her excellent eyesight, Bai Xiang had already seen the expressions on their faces while the helicopter was descending. They were full of doubt and rejection. Many of them had their brows knitted tightly, and their eyes were full of gloom and malice.

She could not help glancing sideways at Bolu, which made his scalp prickle, but he did not dare ask why she was looking at him.

After landing, Bai Xiang came out with Aurora. When she lifted her head and swept her gaze across the crowd, it was obvious that the monks’ eyes held even more confusion and hostility than before.

Especially toward her. Those vicious, naked stares. Did they take me for the wheelchair girl’s bodyguard? Think a mere serving attendant is easy to bully?

The hostile atmosphere eased a little once Bolu came out. At the very least, the robed old monk at the front looked much better. Staff in hand, he quickly walked over, chanting a Buddha’s name in a slow, drawn-out tone. “Immeasurable Mofo above.”

“This old one is Guangping.”

“The fact that you two laywomen have brought monks of my humble temple across such distance, whatever your purpose may be, is already a merit of goodness.”

“Please, come in.” He gestured behind him to show the path. “The temple’s vegetarian fare is simple and crude. I must beg your forgiveness in advance.”

Judging from etiquette alone, Bai Xiang could not pick out any fault in him. If she had not read the booklet Aray had handed over beforehand, she would have taken this Master Guangping at face value as well, assuming him to be as kindly and upright as he appeared, a righteous eminent monk.

It was not just her who felt this way. Aurora’s attitude was pure dependence and did not count, but even Bolu himself gave Guangping a deep look that clearly held the flavor of “this is the first time I am truly seeing you.”

Guangping narrowed his eyes. The reactions of these three… he really could not figure out what their relationship was.

He had originally assumed the girl in the wheelchair held the highest status, so he had mainly been speaking to her side. But this girl was extremely careful to avoid letting her wheelchair roll past that “bodyguard’s” position, which was a very deliberate way of highlighting the other’s standing.

What is going on here?

Is this “bodyguard” actually the real master?

Only when he saw the golden eyes under the brim of Bai Xiang’s hat, then remembered how Bolu’s group had fallen into disaster, did his body tremble slightly, and he realized that he had been completely wrong from the start.

This was no mere female bodyguard. She was that Bai Zhixing who had stirred up wind and rain in Xinzhou of Great Yu herself.

Why is she here?

Guangping had imagined many possibilities. He had even considered that Bolu’s group might be executed by cultivators in Great Yu, and that the court of Great Yu would then put diplomatic pressure on the entire Luohou Kingdom and come to Fuhu Temple to settle accounts. But the one thing he had not considered was that Bai Xiang would personally come.

He was nervous now.

Sensing the change in qi presence, Bai Xiang could tell the mood had tightened again.

On top of that, after cultivating the Sun-Chasing Scripture as a body-forging manual and opening the origin orifice of the Hidden Field, her perspective was different from before. She could directly see the minute changes in the muscles between Guangping’s neck and shoulders and work out that he might strike at any time.

The fact that Yao Qingyuan had been able to subdue this man was proof enough that he was a bully who feared the strong and preyed on the weak. The fact that he had engaged in human trafficking only further proved that he had no moral bottom line. There was no need to talk to him of jianghu honor.

So…

Bai Xiang pulled down her mask slightly and smiled. On the surface, it looked like she was trying to show goodwill to Guangping.

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Her smile stunned him for a beat, and he reacted a little late. Then he forced out a smile of his own and started to cup his hands for a greeting.

Just then, Bai Xiang raised her right hand and opened her fingers, and with a motion that was so slow it could be seen clearly not only by Guangping but by all the watching monks, she reached over and grasped the hilt of her life-bound sword in her left hand.

As she moved, the expressions on Guangping’s and the other monks’ faces seemed to switch into slow motion, shifting from confusion to surprise, from surprise to shock, anger, and the feeling of being threatened.

Zheng.

A streak of blood-colored light flashed by. Bai Xiang loosened her grip on the hilt again.

“You… you, you…”

Guangping glared at Bai Xiang with bulging eyes. His lips trembled, but he could not get a word out.

There was no need.

A line of blood slowly spread from the center of his brow at the top of his head. As his robes were dyed crimson, one half of his body collapsed and slid away along the cut, leaving the other half still standing upright against his staff, a grotesque and terrifying sight.

“Venerable!”

“Venerable! Venerable!”

The monks were all horrified. Many were already holding their monastic ritual blades and meditating on their swords, and in a surge of shock and rage, they all rushed toward Bai Xiang at once.

None of them noticed that after Bai Xiang released the sword hilt, a wisp of faint red yin wind swept in and was drawn into the blade.

“Don’t…” Bolu turned pale as well. He had just raised his hand to warn his fellow monks when another clear sword cry rang in his ears. The bodies rushing forward changed expression midair, and by the time they landed, all of them had been severed cleanly at the waist.

The stench of blood flooded across the platform square. At last, this ruthless display intimidated the rest of the monks who had wanted to attack. They still looked at Bai Xiang as a mortal enemy, but none of them dared charge directly anymore.

Crack.

A soft sound came from the ground.

Everyone turned to look and saw that behind Chan Master Guangping, in the stone floor, a smooth sword mark had appeared. As fragments of plaster flaked off with a soft crackle, a narrow, long gouge was revealed, so deep it looked bottomless.

With this kind of martial force clearing the way, any conversation would go much more smoothly.

A few minutes later, Bai Xiang and her group arrived at Fuhu Temple’s most spacious “Meditation Courtyard,” and under the guidance of another old monk in plain robes, they stepped into the central Changping Hall.

All along the way, Bai Xiang kept observing the architectural style of Fuhu Temple. She discovered that although the courtyards and halls here still preserved traces of Great Yu’s Buddhist tradition, the carvings under the eaves and the statues in many places had already gone completely off track. Even the things being worshipped were no longer the same.

Take the Meditation Courtyard they had just passed through. The statues by the gate that should have been arhats had been replaced with demon-like figures similar to yakshas. The extended eaves had a very obvious curved arc and looked like bat wings or the wings of some similar creature.

Because of these details, the entire temple carried a dark, demonic air. To be honest, she did not like it here, and she was even more resistant toward these people’s twisted “Mofo” doctrine.

“Mofo” referred to a Buddha that had been distorted.

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From the information Bolu had provided and the fragments of Chan Master Guangping’s lingering soul that she had just absorbed, she pieced together that this was a dark faith distinct from orthodox Buddhism.

In normal people’s minds, the Buddha should represent light.

Even if many viewed it as hypocritical or double-faced, at the very least they acknowledged that it was excellent at putting on a proper façade.

The Mofo faith was different. It not only inherited ideas like the original sixfold cycle of reincarnation and “all beings are equal,” it also tampered with the root. “The Buddha and bodhisattvas deliver all beings from suffering” was twisted into “the Buddha and bodhisattvas personally take on all calamities.”

In one text, The Black Heaven Scripture of Saving from Suffering and Deliverance, whose author no one knew, the concept of “taking on calamity” was first proposed.

The Black Heaven descends, and all beings are in suffering.

The author claimed that the night sky was like the unavoidable hardships and cataclysms of human life. A night that never ended meant all beings continued to live in suffering. But those with firm faith should not abandon themselves to despair. Instead, they should actively take on calamity and taste the supreme Buddhist truths within suffering.

So the Buddhas and bodhisattvas all fell into the mortal world.

The Buddha became the “Burning-Body Buddha,” the “Maimed-Body Buddha,” the “Hollow-Eyed Buddha,” the “World-Hating Buddha.”

The bodhisattvas became the “Night-Weeping Bodhisattva,” the “Demonic-Wheel Bodhisattva,” the “Medicine-Basket Bodhisattva,” the “Entering-Suffering Bodhisattva.”

And the Eight Brahma Heavens that included monsters like Ena from before were all rolled into this as well. Their prototypes had been righteous deities in Buddhism and were nowhere near as sinister as they now appeared.

The most incomprehensible thing was still Mofo. According to The Black Heaven Scripture of Saving from Suffering and Deliverance, Mofo had already merged with suffering and with the night. Each passing day was a new night. This not only foretold the arrival of new hardships, it also signified a new cycle of Mofo’s reincarnation.

Yes, they worshiped the night. They believed that every new night was a new incarnation of Mofo.

The moon was the single eye at Mofo’s brow. The stars were Mofo’s countless eyes all over His body. He watched all living beings calmly from the sky, taking on calamity in their place and drifting through the sea of suffering alongside mortals.

The Black Heaven Scripture of Saving from Suffering and Deliverance claimed that once this cycle continued for ten thousand great kalpas, Mofo, the other Buddhas, all the bodhisattvas, arhats, Brahma beings and believers, everyone would transcend the “sea of suffering” and cross the edge of the era into the far shore.

To put it plainly, the author believed that letting suffering continue unchecked was courting destruction, and that one day the world would be completely destroyed because of it. Yet he did not advocate eliminating suffering or defeating suffering. Instead, one had to “become suffering,” “turn into suffering,” “dance with suffering.” Only then could one “savor the supreme Buddhist truths” and seek a great Dao of ease and transcendence.

Was there any logic in that?

Bai Xiang could not say.

Bear in mind, Buddhism, whether in the Nuo lands or in Great Yu, was extremely self-consistent in debate and logic. Even Daoists had trouble picking holes in it.

How many “Buddhist–Daoist debates” had there been in history? Almost all of them ended with the monks winning overwhelmingly.

If you sent those monks here to read this stuff, and then listened to Fuhu Temple’s monks babble about “all beings falling into suffering, Mofo reincarnating,” they would probably be “red-heated” after a few lines, breaking their precept against anger and then breaking the precept against killing right after.

“All beings in suffering” was nothing more than a cliché kind of darkening that even elementary school children would find trite.

Originally, Bai Xiang had considered moving Fuhu Temple in its entirety back to Maozhou and perhaps even seeing if it could be merged with the Shenming Sword Dao. But once she understood the Mofo faith, she abandoned the idea.

Such a demonic and unreasonable religion could not be allowed to spread back there.

Moving the whole temple back was impossible now. All she could do was do her best to see if any monks here were still salvageable and take them along when she left.

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She would also take the legacy Chan Master Jingling had left behind and bring it back to hand over to the Benling Sword Dao.

“Amitabha.”

Stepping into the Changping Hall, the plain-robed old monk chanted a Buddha’s name. It was not the “Immeasurable Mofo” the monks here were used to, and in Bai Xiang’s ears it sounded very familiar and dear.

This was one of the reasons she had specifically named him as their guide. On one hand, Guangping had followed Yao Qingyuan in cultivating an evil art that tore the soul. In the end, he had failed to form a soul avatar and instead left his own soul fragmented and incomplete. Even the memories he had stored were broken and discontinuous, so she could not be without a guide.

On the other hand, this groundskeeper monk had recited something different when he first saw them. It took only one glance to see he was not a follower of Mofo.

Followers of the Black Heaven Buddhism were easy to recognize. That group of Luohou Shinu people who had gone to Qizhou University’s Sword Institute for the sword-viewing ceremony had not just had darkened skin. Their features had also carried a faint sha aura.

This old monk was different. You could still see accumulated sorrow between his brows, but he could still be called “kindly-eyed and benevolent-faced.”

According to Guangping’s memories, his name was Guangyuan. Back then he had been a warrior monk of the same generation, but because he refused to cultivate Black Heaven dharma, he had been removed from the Relief Monastery and could only do odd jobs in the temple, hauling water and plowing fields with the lay workers, and even cleaning up filth and night soil on a daily basis.

“This place is not bad.”

After passing through the main hall, they entered a shabby meditation room behind it. Inside, they discovered that the offerings were still the Three Buddhas of the past, present and future.

Judging from the disrepair of the building, it must have been built quite early. This was likely one of the very few surviving carvings left behind by the Benling offshoot.

Everywhere else, even in the Changping Hall, the central statues had long since been replaced with three distorted demonic Buddhas.

“Let us talk here, Chan Master Guangyuan.”

“Tell me what is going on with the Ranxian Demon Kingdom.”

The Ranxian Demon Kingdom was the place where Daokong’s yaosui had wanted to lure Bai Xiang.

Geographically, it lay further south of Fuhu Temple, deep within a vast stretch of primeval jungle along the border between Luohou and the Qinghuai Kingdom.

Before coming here, Bai Xiang had already obtained most of the information on the Demon Kingdoms in this area from Starwater Company. She learned that there were three Demon Kingdoms nearby: the Heiyan Demon Kingdom, the Lilu Demon Kingdom, and the Ranxian Demon Kingdom.

The Heiyan Demon Kingdom and the Lilu Demon Kingdom were both Demon Kingdoms that had already revived. They had not been back long, and the demon disasters and unrest they caused were not yet severe, so no one had dealt with them.

In the eyes of the Luohou people, this was perfectly normal.

If the trouble was inside their own borders, that would be one thing. But this was only the borderlands. Who said the demon unrest had to be aimed at them?

Luohou was at war with Qinghuai right now, and even in peacetime they would not bother with such places.

What, were all the people of Qinghuai dead? Did they seriously expect us to clear their border threats for them?

Impossible. No matter what, that was impossible.

Unless things grew especially severe, unless ignoring it might lead to terrible losses in population and industry, only then would the Luohou royal clan and the capital corporations send out forces for a perfunctory sweep.

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Bai Xiang did not even dare imagine what it would be like if this kind of situation occurred in Great Yu.

Remember, Luohou was not Great Yu.

Void realms that held Demon Kingdoms were several times more common inside Great Yu’s borders than outside.

The difference was that the local gazetteers had fully recorded the information on those Demon Kingdoms. Where there was a Demon Kingdom and what kind it was, all of it was clearly marked, with only very rare omissions.

As for the Shenming Ancestral Ground, that did not count as a Demon Kingdom and naturally would not appear in the records.

Compared to the other two Demon Kingdoms, which would revive from time to time and cause trouble, the Ranxian Demon Kingdom seemed very low-profile.

Starwater Company also had a base in Bako City. Their presence in Luohou might not have been that early, certainly not earlier than the founding of the ancient Shinu state, but after they established their own dominant position, they collected many ancient texts and artifacts and learned that there was indeed a Ranxian Demon Kingdom in that region.

Legend had it that this Demon Kingdom revived only once every eight hundred years. No matter what form its demons took, their mouths would constantly drip poisonous drool. That drool would ignite when it met the wind, and swell as it burned. It glowed with a ghastly green light and could not be extinguished or suppressed by ordinary means. Hence the name Ranxian, “Burning Drool.”

The last revival of the Ranxian Demon Kingdom had been more than seven hundred years ago. There was still some time left before it would revive at the eight-hundred-year mark again. Starwater’s internal assessment of its threat level was “extremely low.”

Yet based on the vague information from Daokong’s yaosui, Bai Xiang was certain that the Through-Meridians Method and the sword embryo were hidden within the void realm where the Ranxian Demon Kingdom lay.

That meant she had to find someone knowledgeable to guide her in searching out the void realm entrance of the Ranxian Demon Kingdom.

Ideally, they would also know how to break the misty Demon Pool at the Demon Kingdom’s gates, saving her some effort so she could go in and retrieve the items directly.

“The Ranxian Demon Kingdom, that…”

Guangyuan looked troubled.

“What is it?” Bai Xiang watched him closely. “Does Master have some difficulty he cannot speak of?”

“I cannot bear the title of ‘Master’.” Guangyuan shook his head repeatedly. “If the laywoman wishes to seek the exact location of the Ranxian Demon Kingdom, I fear that cannot be settled here.”

Bai Xiang said nothing.

From his tone, she could tell he had more to say.

“The only convenience I can offer the laywoman is to open the Scripture Tower for you to read as you wish,” Guangyuan said quietly. “Perhaps the scriptures passed down from the Patriarchs will contain some record.”

“If they do not…”

He lifted his head to meet Bai Xiang’s gaze.

“Then what you seek may have to be found in the other two Demon Kingdoms.”

“I cannot speak for anyone else, but those demons and demonfolk most certainly know where the Ranxian Demon Kingdom lies.”