Volume 3, Chapter 94 – Demon Buddha

About forty minutes later, Bai Xiang rode a bus into Baco City. After asking around a few times, she found the largest local Buddhist temple, Luofu Temple.

She had not flown over, partly because she did not want to draw too much attention, and partly because she wanted to train this so-called “Taishang Premonition,” the name she had casually just given her sensing method.

Those scriptures loved to toss out things like a “Taishang Response Chapter,” yet the actual content was nowhere near as profound or practical as what she had. So what was wrong with her borrowing the title for herself.

Bai Xiang did not feel she was overstepping in the least. On the contrary, she thought she had a real knack for naming things.

As for the Heaven-and-Earth energy she was sensing, she decided to call it “Heaven-and-Earth primordial qi.”

Humans had primordial qi and the small circulation of the inner body-scape.

Heaven and Earth naturally also had primordial qi and the great circulation of the outer scape.

It was perfectly reasonable and nicely symmetrical.

Training “Taishang Premonition” meant shutting off her other senses and relying solely on analyzing Heaven-and-Earth primordial qi to construct a model of her surroundings. First, that required a sufficiently dense amount of informational elements nearby. Second, it was best if any mistakes she made would not interfere with other people.

With all that in mind, taking the bus was the best choice.

She did not need to do anything at all, just lean back in a seat toward the rear, put on the cheap black sunglasses she had bought from a street stall, add the black windbreaker, black hat, black mask, and the long sword in her arms to the mix. Any passenger who saw her kept a respectful distance, and she could quietly focus on experiencing the sensing method.

“The stall owner who sold me the sunglasses said these black crystal Buddha figurines come from Luofu Temple. They are carved from ‘black crystal ore’ and can be used to suppress the ‘Black Crystal Curse.’”

Getting off at the stop, Bai Xiang stood by the signboard studying the map, roughly locating where she was.

Luofu Temple was diagonally across the road, very close. From afar she could already see the golden towers.

It was a workday, but there were still many people coming to the temple to pay respects. Bai Xiang was a foreigner and did not have to line up with the locals. She found a monk on duty at the side and, after talking with him for a bit, was taken inside just as she had hoped.

The monk was called Nuocha. She did not know if that was his given name or his Dharma name. He was fairly talkative; whenever they passed one of the tall towers or murals, he would explain it to Bai Xiang. His only flaw was that his Yu language was a bit awkward.

“Please look over there, benefactress. That is our most famous Golden-Light Pagoda.”

“Legend has it the Golden-Light Pagoda was once the hand-held Dharma treasure of Golden-Light Treasure-King Buddha. During the Prehistoric Calamity, this treasure was used to suppress and refine quite a few demon kings. It has eight tiers and eight corners, and is also called the Eight-Spired Pagoda or the Eight-Hued Demon-Refining Heaven-and-Earth Vase.”

“And this is a mural depicting the Prehistoric Calamity.”

“This one is Golden-Light Treasure-King Buddha.”

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“This one is Jade-Reed Wisdom Buddha.”

“And this is Suffering-Bearing World-Purifying Buddha.”

“In the legends of Luohou Buddhism, it was precisely these Buddhas of great power who held back the calamity, allowing Ancient Luohou, also called Ancient Shinu, to survive and preserving this lineage up to today.”

Nuocha recited the mythic history with great fluency. He was probably cultivated by the temple specifically for this.

“What exactly was this Prehistoric Calamity like?” Bai Xiang asked him.

As far as she knew, there was no such concept in the history of the people of Great Yu.

“It is normal that a benefactress from Great Yu would not know,” Nuocha nodded. “The lands of Yu received natural manifestations of the sacred and Heaven-and-Earth’s favor, producing several Sacred Emperors. Relying on that, they established transcendent Dao lineages, so naturally they did not face this kind of trouble.”

“But as for other regions, they might not even have been able to withstand the aftershocks of the great war. It is entirely possible that during that period some defeated demon clans fled to Luohou to eat people and were precisely the ones blocked and beaten back by those mighty Buddhas.”

He was quite straightforward about it.

Bai Xiang nodded slightly in her heart.

The attitude of today’s Luohou people toward Great Yu was awkward. On one hand, they feared the transcendent methods Great Yu commanded and missed that comfortable era in the past when Great Yu had helped govern them. On the other, they were deeply influenced by aid from the federal nations and in turn saw Great Yu as decayed and backward.

This was a very real phenomenon. You could see it in the level of social openness, the spread of smartphones, and the penetration of an open internet. In all of these, Luohou was ahead of Great Yu.

So naturally, Luohou people developed a rebellious mentality. The earlier dispute over land reclamation and the controversy over renaming the Luohou Protectorate both had the Prince of the South’s Manor pulling strings behind the scenes, but they were also inseparable from this mindset.

“So you are saying this Prehistoric War refers to the war between Great Yu’s Sacred Emperors and the demon race?” she pressed Nuocha.

“May the Great Buddha be above,” Nuocha nodded. “It should be so.”

But did southern Buddhism really go back that far?

Bai Xiang frowned, feeling that something was off.

She had previously thought southern Buddhism was brought in by Tiger-Subducing Temple, but after thoroughly reading the scriptures on the subject, she realized that was not the case at all.

The nine Dao-circuits of Great Yu had been enfeoffed in sequence, with Benling as the ninth and final one, which meant it came quite late in chronological order. By then, the southern lands were already dotted with temples. Buddhism here had flourished long before and had nothing to do with Tiger-Subduing Temple.

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Back then Bai Xiang had already begun suspecting Golden Cicada Temple. Its lineage had been destroyed about seven hundred years ago. If the remnants of Golden Cicada Temple had fled south at that time, then the rise and prosperity of southern Buddhism should also have been a matter of only the last six or seven hundred years.

Yet Nuocha’s account completely overturned all her guesses.

Prehistoric Calamity, Prehistoric War.

If those corresponded to Sacred Emperor Gu raising his banner in revolt against the demon race, that had to be at least sixteen hundred years ago.

Sixteen hundred years ago, Golden Cicada Temple probably did not even exist yet.

If the records here were accurate and there were already great Buddhist powers in the southern lands back then, the reason Buddhism had taken root here must be something else.

Bai Xiang had come here intending to ask about the black crystal Buddha figurine, but she had not expected to gain so much on the historical side. For the moment she put her earlier intentions aside and began discussing these legends and stories with Nuocha.

There were many things in them that existed only here in Luohou.

She wanted to learn them and cross-check everything one by one with the Yuming Library, in hopes of digging up some secrets behind the disappearance of the ancient human race.

“Since I came to Luohou, I have looked up a lot of information online these past few days. I found that even the federal nations have records of things like a ‘Prehistoric Calamity.’”

Bai Xiang asked Nuocha, “Is that for the same reason?”

“This…” Nuocha’s expression turned slightly hesitant. He lowered his head and said, “It involves other races. This humble monk does not dare make reckless judgments.”

“What if I insist on you analyzing it?” Bai Xiang refused to let the topic drop.

Seeing Nuocha’s face twist in struggle, she took out the checkbook Aurora had given her, wrote a number on it, tore out a check, and waved it in front of his eyes.

Nuocha’s eyes went blank. He swallowed with difficulty and murmured, “In that case, I suppose it should more or less be the same…”

After asking him a few more questions, Bai Xiang handed him the check and said she wanted to walk around the Buddha hall alone.

Nuocha tactfully excused himself.

This was the rear hall, which was not open to ordinary tourists, so Bai Xiang finally had a moment of peace to herself. She studied the faded murals as she mulled over her gains.

Nuocha had just told several mythic stories, among them one about a Buddha called Jade-Reed Wisdom Buddha, who was said to be a demon that attained true fruition after converting.

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The instigator was once again Golden-Light Treasure-King Buddha. In the story, Golden-Light Treasure-King Buddha subdued this demon and asked why it had committed evil and plagued the region. The demon protested, saying its original dwelling had been on the Upper River Plain, but a traitor had appeared in its clan, so it had had no choice but to wander everywhere.

It was all very fantastical.

Bai Xiang had thought most of these myths were made up, but she had indeed noticed that many of them included this sort of conversion arc.

And there were many common motifs as well, including but not limited to the Prehistoric Calamity, the Prehistoric War, the Great Flood, and so on.

She had also asked Nuocha later, if these Buddhas were so powerful, why had they not remained. The answer she got was not very detailed either. He only said that after the Buddhas held back the disaster, they simply vanished.

It had to be remembered that southern Buddhism did not forbid reproduction.

That meant the Buddhas and arhats worshiped in southern Buddhism could legitimately leave descendants.

“Just going by myths still is not enough to trace back to what really happened.”

Shaking her head, Bai Xiang was almost ready to give up.

At that moment, on a sudden whim, she snapped her golden eyes toward a corner of the mural above.

There was a spot where the pigment had faded and flaked off.

An ordinary person would never notice anything and would just assume the white pattern showing through underneath was the natural texture of the stone bricks.

But after browsing so many murals and taking in so much information, she had already categorized and summarized them. Instantly, she recognized that particular line was not just anything, it was the flowing sash of the kasaya Golden-Light Treasure-King Buddha wore.

What was this supposed to mean.

There was another mural under this mural.

She did not care anymore what kind of diplomatic incident she might cause. Feixiang Heaven left its sheath; with a sharp sweep, she scraped off the paint layer covering the mural’s surface.

There was another layer beneath that one. It looked very blurred, but it still was not the hidden mural.

She kept scraping.

The second layer.

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The third layer.

Finally, another mural in a completely different style from the previous one appeared before her eyes. She saw a great dragon-headed demon seated above, wearing Golden-Light Treasure-King Buddha’s kasaya and sash. Below it, countless monks knelt in worship, every one of them with a demonic appearance. Not a single member of the assembly had a human face.

What was this supposed to mean…

Bai Xiang narrowed her eyes, suddenly thinking of that talk of conversion, and along with it, the split-acting theory Aurora had mentioned.

The demon race…

Could southern Buddhism actually have been founded by demons.

Jade-Reed Wisdom Buddha was a demon.

Was Golden-Light Treasure-King Buddha also a demon.

Wait, could the so-called “avoiding the calamity” mentioned in those myths actually be referring to the Illusory Realm.

“Then it would not be a story from sixteen hundred years ago…”

Bai Xiang frowned, her expression turning a little dark.

In that instant, the image floating up in her mind was Dr. Hannah’s lizard-person face.

According to Hannah, the ancient demon lineage had been cut off five hundred and forty million years ago.

From that point five hundred and forty million years in the past onward, all fossil traces of ancient demonic life-forms abruptly ended, as if some power had simply wiped them all away.

If they had hidden in the Illusory Realm because of some calamity…

Then now, to the outside world, it looked like there was no calamity anymore.

Would they come back again?