Volume 3, Chapter 89 – Demonic Sound (Two-in-One)

With Bai Xiang, this murderous star, backing him, Guangyuan leapt in one stroke from menial monk to lord of the temple.

The monks of Fuhu Temple were all privately displeased, but all the capable warrior-monks, including Guangping, had been casually cut down by Bai Xiang. They could see the gap between the two sides was like heaven and earth, so they could only swallow their anger. On the surface they cooperated with Bai Xiang and took orders from Guangyuan; in private they avoided meeting him whenever they could, only coming if Guangyuan or Bolu personally came to call.

During this time, Bolu had been following at Bai Xiang’s side. Seeing all this, nothing showed on his face, but deep inside he was torn.

He knew Guangyuan and had some impression of him in his mind. He remembered that when he was young and training, he would often see Guangyuan get beaten and scolded for the slightest thing. His master, Chan Master Liaokong, had only scorn for Guangyuan’s choices, saying he only knew how to “read scriptures to death,” “clutching old ideas and never knowing how to adapt.”

“Buddhism in the lands of Great Yu is upright and moderate, but what has that moderation brought?”

“Thirty years shut in the deep courtyards swinging a disciplinary staff, thirty years under a green lamp chanting old sutras. When you look back again your brows in the mirror are already white, and your whole life has been rushed and muddled and careless, ending up drawing water with a bamboo basket, all for nothing!”

“Even the World-Honored One can manifest as Black Heaven and dance with calamity. For us to cling to the past is meaningless!”

“Bolu! You must never learn from that man!”

Bolu had grown up in the temple, and he had heard words like these more times than he could count. In the past, he had thought they seemed to make some sense.

But ever since Bai Xiang tossed him that little booklet, letting him learn that the temple had long been involved in human trafficking and organ trading, such evil dealings, his faith and perseverance on this point had collapsed.

On the surface they spoke so high-sounding, saying they must “become calamity and dance with calamity.”

And in reality?

They were mixing themselves up in petty thievery like this.

If Chan Master Liaokong hadn’t been so steeped in sin that he was beheaded on the spot by the Demon Suppression Bureau during interrogation, Bolu truly would have wanted to find a chance to ask him again: what exactly did you mean by “becoming calamity”?

Hadn’t they really become calamity in the most literal sense? Stirring up hatred and pain among people for no reason, what benefit did that have for so-called Buddhist cultivation?

And he had also realized that his parents might never have been sold off to Great Yu at all.

It probably wasn’t as Chan Master Liaokong had said, that they had been seized by the people of Yu to do rough work in mining or well-digging. More likely, they had already died long ago.

They had died on this man-eating land, their blood and bones turning into fertilizer to nurture the evil blossoms of the Luohou royal house and Luohou Fuhu Temple.

He had already realized this back on the plane. After all, with so much time as a buffer, his emotions were no longer as low.

But now that he had returned to this land that could be said to have raised him, the sights stirred his feelings. Looking at those corners of walls and courtyards so familiar in his memory, he could not help feeling sorrowful and feeling a deep rift between himself and the temple.

“Bolu! You traitor!”

This was the path toward the Scripture Pavilion, continuing up the mountain. The group had been climbing the steps led by Guangyuan when a few little novice monks in brown-red robes blocked the path midway.

The one in the lead was about thirteen or fourteen, his face still round and childish, but there was already a hint of rakshasa ferocity between his brows. One hand on his hip, he jabbed a finger straight at Bolu and shouted, “We all treated you as a role model, and you actually go and side with the people of Yu! Being a dog for a demoness!”

“Tell us! Have you been worthy of your master and the elders’ cultivation of you?”

“Do you dare say clearly where Elder Liaokong is now?”

Naturally, he was dead.

Bolu stared at those little monks who were bristling with hostility. He had wanted to argue, but suddenly found he no longer had the heart for it.

Even if he made the truth clear, what would it change?

Fuhu Temple might well be his enemy, and his parents might indeed have been killed or sold off by this pack of demonic monks.

But he had only survived thanks to the care of the monks of Fuhu Temple, and only had the chance to study martial arts and swordsmanship because of them. That too was a fact.

Favor and hatred cancelling one another out, he had never known what attitude he should take when facing his fellow disciples. But this sudden turn of events shattered the last illusions in his heart and made him resolve to break away from this place and go seek out the meaning of his life anew.

“Dao Lord Bai.”

He did something no one had expected: he dropped to his knees in front of everyone and bowed to Bai Xiang.

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“Whatever Dao Lord Bai does next, may I follow you the whole way?”

“Mm?” Bai Xiang had just been watching the show from the side. Seeing this, she could not help letting her brows relax, thinking that this big oaf had finally come to his senses.

But someone was even more worked up than she was. The little monks all went into “berserk mode” at once. Shouting “Demoness, die!” they rushed at her with wooden staffs and wooden swords, as if desperate to swallow her alive and grind her into whetstone for their Zen hearts.

“Presumptuous!”

Guangyuan, whose face had been lined with sorrow just a moment ago, suddenly flared up. He swept his sleeve and stirred up a wild wind. No one even saw how his arm moved before red palm prints appeared on the faces of all the little novices. Wrapped in the wind, they screamed as they tumbled off the cliff.

“Amitabha…” It was Bai Xiang, instead, who intoned the Buddha’s name.

“Master, impressive technique.”

Judging by that qi response and the strength of those muscles, he had to be at least at the third-turn Core Tribulation.

“Before Dao Lord Bai, I dare not call myself ‘Master’.” Guangyuan bowed to her modestly.

This old monk still remembered old ties.

His strike just now had looked ruthless and merciless, and there was no saying that the novices who fell would not break their legs or be crippled. But if he had not acted and let Bai Xiang do it, the outcome would have been nothing like this.

True enough.

If he were not someone who remembered old ties, how could he have been willing to do menial work around the temple for decades after being treated like that, without a word of complaint?

Bai Xiang did not agree with his way of doing things, but that did not stop her from finding people like him easy to work with and worth trusting.

She asked Guangyuan, “Master, would you be willing to gather your lineage and come with me, count it as retiring in your old age?”

Guangyuan shook his head. “My days are numbered. Dao Lord Bai, I beg you to let me go.”

Bai Xiang asked again, “What if I had a way to let you live longer?”

Guangyuan froze, a gleam lighting in his eyes. “Do you speak the truth?”

Bai Xiang said nothing. Her right hand opened in midair like a lotus, and from it flew out two formless threads of Qi-Origin, each one aiming at the space between Guangyuan and Bolu’s brows and drilling straight in.

It was spirit-pointing on the path of qi. She was already very practiced at it now, no longer needing to touch a fingertip to the brow.

The two of them shuddered all over. Because Bolu was young and his body tough, Bai Xiang used a somewhat rougher method on him, making him spit out a mouthful of black blood as every pore of his body began to seep that same black blood.

Guangyuan was better off. At first his body temperature only rose and steam puffed from the top of his head, then purple-black blood-qi kept steaming out from his pores.

Bolu quickly entered this stage as well. Both of them understood what kind of opportunity this was, and without another word they sat down cross-legged and entered a cultivation state.

Bai Xiang stood on the stone steps looking out over the scenery, while Aurora’s face was full of curiosity.

All the federations knew a fair bit about the mysteries of cultivators; the Star Tower Group was no exception. They had even captured some weak cultivators and, using the cultivation methods they had gathered, conducted research. It was thanks to that research that they had managed to develop transcendental powers suitable for themselves, the Augu God-Warriors and the Tyrant Warriors.

The former were the development and utilization of demonic power, that is, Augu particles; the latter combined demonic power with biological nuclear energy, making them even stronger in destructive force.

Precisely because she knew something of the principles, Aurora was curious what Bai Xiang had done to them.

It seemed Bai Xiang’s method really was bizarre. As she moved, Aurora never saw any sign of that signature “fishy wind and bloody mist” of Yu cultivators.

Was it that they were not worth using it on?

Or was it that…

Aurora was still lost in speculation when Guangyuan and Bolu’s “switch of paths” was already done.

Bolu was young, with a good foundation and fast recovery. Bai Xiang simply decided on her own to disperse all of his demonic-power cultivation, and even pinched and refined the Demon Pool inside his sword, distilling out a thread of Qi-Origin as a primer and dropping it into the qi sea of his dantian.

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As for Guangyuan, well, he was old. Bai Xiang could only help him open the door to “switching paths.” Just as with Xiang Xian’s switch, it would take time. To change over completely, he would still need to polish himself slowly.

The two of them also knew what a benefit they had received. Joy and shock flashed in their eyes as they bowed together.

“Many thanks for the grace of transmitting the law, Immortal!”

“I dare not be called ‘Immortal’.” Bai Xiang borrowed Guangyuan’s own phrasing to answer him. “Master, are you willing to leave now?”

Guangyuan bowed again. “I will do as the Immortal commands…”

It was not that his attitude had changed so wildly for no reason. It was that Bai Xiang’s technique truly merited being called an immortal art.

When he said earlier that his days were numbered, he had not been lying. He really did occasionally have a premonition that “that day” was not far off.

But after that thread of Qi-Origin surged into his body, his inner body-scape was first ravaged and sliced open like by a surgical blade of sword-Qi, then gathered back together by that sword-Qi and driven around, rebuilding the circulation of his inner body-scape.

Once that circulation formed, a vigorous surge of blood-qi burst out on the spot, making him cough up a small mouthful of black blood. His whole face looked plainly younger, as if he had gone from “ninety or a hundred” down to “seventy or eighty.”

With a method like that, how could it not be called “immortal art”?

Previously, Guangyuan had obeyed Bai Xiang because he had heard she was vicious and ferocious and knew full well he was no match for her. If he butted heads with her, it would only bring catastrophe down on the whole of Fuhu Temple.

But now he no longer thought that way at all.

What Chan Master Liaokong had told Bolu was not wrong, actually.

The longer one cultivated and pursued the Dao, the more one smelled the stench of one’s own decay, and the more a cultivator’s thoughts leaned toward “longevity.”

Do not talk about whether some enlightened high monk had “seen through life and death” or not. If you can keep living, who wants to die?

“Get up,” Bai Xiang ordered.

“When we leave, I will give you time to choose which monks to take.”

“First, take me to the Scripture Pavilion.”

“That is the real business.”

Guangyuan nodded, then finally rose and went ahead to lead the way.

The Scripture Pavilion was at the top of the mountain range, a separate compound built around a stupa tower.

“Amitabha.”

Seeing the stupa, Guangyuan could not help chanting the Buddha’s name again.

Because in a Buddhist temple, the stupa housed the relics of eminent monks throughout the ages.

He had made his choice and would soon follow Bai Xiang away. Confronted now with the faith he had once held, he inevitably felt a sigh rise in his heart.

Yes, Fuhu Temple had fallen into the demonic path now.

But in the early years, it had not been like this.

Inside that stupa were also the relics of the founder of Luohou Fuhu Temple, who had inherited from Chan Master Jingling, Monk Suizhen.

When he got the chance, he would go through the ledgers in the treasury and see which people had kept their hands clean.

Putting aside stray thoughts, Guangyuan led Bai Xiang and the others into the compound. In the center stood a small three-story building, which was where Fuhu Temple stored its ancient texts, Buddhist scriptures, and account books.

Bai Xiang took a look at the scale inside. Estimating that she would not get out of here in less than a day, she ordered Guangyuan to arrange lodgings in the compound for Aurora and Bolu, then directly activated Jade Spirit, using her eyes as cameras as she started copying the scriptures.

The pace actually was not slow, because many of the texts were ones she had already seen in the Scripture Pavilion on Mount Wuqiu. Another portion were purely Buddhist sutras that were also recorded in the Yuming Library. The part she truly needed to copy and record only accounted for about a third of the total.

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During this time, Guangyuan sent people over to ask if she needed food or water, but she refused them all. Bai Xiang relied solely on pills to replenish her expenditure.

In this way, a day passed. She set down the last scroll with a sigh and was about to go out and stretch her muscles.

The copying work was basically done, but the gains were disappointing. Not only was there no detailed account of the Burning-Saliva Demon Kingdom, she had not even gotten hold of the odd, out-of-the-way methods she had been expecting.

Very strange.

Bai Xiang was still turning this over in her mind as she stepped outside.

If, back then, Fuhu Temple had split and Monk Suizhen had brought a group of high monks here to establish a separate lineage, and their methods had originally been the same as the main Fuhu Temple’s, that would make sense.

But as the saying goes, “Oranges grown south of the Huai River are oranges; north of the Huai, they turn into trifoliate oranges.” If even trees were like that, how could people who moved to a new place stay exactly the same?

Even if everyone’s lineage and methods had been the same at the start, after the new Fuhu Temple in Luohou had developed separately for so many years, could they really have failed to create even a single new technique?

A success like the path of qi was asking too much; she did not insist on that. But for them to not even have something with the creative spark of The Scripture of Returning to Origin and Transforming Qi, that was abnormal.

The older a cultivator got, the crazier they became. Most of the “crooked and strange arts” throughout history had been cooked up by these old codgers.

The new Fuhu Temple had gone through so many generations; Bai Xiang did not believe they would not have left behind a single work on new methods.

She called Guangyuan over and asked him, “Who was in charge of scripture transmission and the texts here before this?”

Guangyuan answered with what he knew. “My senior brother… uh, that is, Guangping.”

But there had been no such thing recorded in the fragments of Guangping’s soul.

Bai Xiang frowned.

At the very least, that mental picture she had had of “someone secretly taking away the demonic methods and hiding them” clearly had not happened.

“What about the vault catalogs?”

Guangyuan brought out the accumulated vault catalogs for Bai Xiang to inspect, and she found that each item listed matched up.

That really was strange.

Bai Xiang narrowed her eyes, resting her cheek in one hand as she sank into thought.

From the traces she had so far, the only possibility was that some great power, or a force like the Star Tower Group, had secretly interfered, quietly spiriting away this part of Fuhu Temple’s collection while also erasing those entries from all the records, to produce this effect.

But the problem was that there were thousands and thousands of failed new methods. Unless you plastered them with lies, like the “Nine Tribulations Nine Swords” legend that cheated the world, everyone knew such things were not worth much.

Failure was failure.

If you could not cultivate it, you could not cultivate it.

Was that supposed to be precious?

Precious how?

It was only that the Yu people’s internal network was hard to search. Once you left the country, even here in a place like Luohou, as long as you could afford a phone and the fees, anyone’s search would turn up a pile of “evil methods.”

West-Heaven Body-Refining Art, Hundred Generals Marching Art, Divine-Illusion Entry Formula, New-Ra Yoga, any random person could compile a bunch.

In the early years, the Luohou royal house had also worried that the spread of such things online would have bad consequences. But later they found that most of them involved ridiculous stunts like “soaking in gold solution” or “flooding the body with mercury,” and anyone who practiced them openly was just seeking death. So they simply relaxed the restrictions, and it ended up that even the lowest folk of Luohou all knew those were scams. That movie-plot scenario where someone tricks a kid out of a lollipop with a martial arts manual was absolutely impossible in real life.

Who would spend so much effort on trash like that, and then even more effort to cover their tracks?

So after thinking it over, Bai Xiang decided no one had interfered with this process.

Either the Suizhen line had completely given up on seeking longevity, each generation just complacently eating the old savings and finally falling in with the local gangs, rolling in the muck together and only caring about money-making ventures.

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Or there really was some new method, but it was hidden too deeply and she had not yet uncovered it.

Hidden too deeply… too deeply…?

Her body suddenly moved. Bai Xiang looked toward a point in the empty air, a brilliant light flashing in her golden eyes.

Could it be that it was not hidden too deeply at all, but too shallowly? Or in other words, not hidden at all?

“Black-Heaven Dharma.”

She murmured the words, then raised her head to look at Guangyuan. “From when do the earliest alterations to this Dharma date?”

“I do not know either.” Guangyuan shook his head. “Judging from the records in the texts, it began about seventy years ago. But many legends, I mean among the common folk, some of the things in them can be corroborated by this Black-Heaven Dharma, and those go back several hundred years.”

Bai Xiang could basically understand what he meant.

Take monsters in mythology like “Ena” and the “Eight Brahma Heavens.” The earliest record of them on Fuhu Temple’s side might be from seventy years ago, but they had existed in folk tales for much longer. That was enough to prove that the Black-Heaven Dharma and the talk of the Demon Buddha had been around for a very long time.

Naturally, that made her think of another source for the Black-Heaven Dharma, one that was highly suspect, Golden Cicada Temple.

Fuhu Temple did not have the ability to come up with this system on its own.

Black-Heaven Buddhism, incarnating as suffering, and claiming that by doing so one could cross to the other shore and be reborn. Could that be connected to some special cultivation method?

This suspicion had not arisen out of nowhere. Over these past couple of days, Bai Xiang had met plenty of monks from Fuhu Temple and noticed that any monk who believed in the Black-Heaven Dharma had a faint murderous aura between his brows.

Explaining it away with “the face is born from the heart” was clearly not enough. She had also run tests on Bolu. When he switched to cultivating the path of qi, she had used that thread of Qi-Origin to carefully examine his body and had not found any major problem.

It seemed she could only try it herself.

After thinking it over, Bai Xiang had Guangyuan fetch a copy of the Black-Heaven Scripture of Deliverance from Suffering and Salvation of the World. She planned to personally test whether this foreign Dharma had a problem.

The scripture was brought quickly, a slim, thread-bound booklet with the text written in tiny cramped script. Each character had to be carefully picked out to be read clearly.

Bai Xiang flipped open the first page and locked directly onto the four small characters: “Thus have I heard.”

This was not written in the script of Great Yu but in the local Brahmic language of Yu, which Bai Xiang understood. After reading the first passage, she could summarize the gist.

[Thus have I heard: the World-Honored One unites with the Dao, and all beings must meet calamity.]

[Thus have I heard: Black Heaven turns the wheel of rebirth, and all souls are born anew.]

[Thus have I heard: calamities temper a hundred times over, sinking into the sea of suffering.]

[Thus have I heard: transcending the mortal world, transforming and returning to the other shore.]

That was basically the line of argument. It was probably meant as the general preface of the scripture.

After reading it once, Bai Xiang still did not find anything wrong.

So she began to recite it.

Using the pronunciation of the local Brahmic language of Yu.

“Yi ma mai a ru nuo ke… bo qie fan ye na mo qie…”

Hm?

She had only read two lines when Bai Xiang’s face changed.

She could very clearly feel that as her throat and lungs vibrated to form the sounds, those syllables seemed to be given life. Character by character, they converged at a point between her heart and lungs and actually formed a faint wisp of black qi.