Volume 5, Chapter 113 – Buddha Kingdom

The coordinates of the ruins of Jinguang Temple were not limited to just one location.

The earliest set of coordinates had roughly been obtained through “Zhou Yi,” the false body planted by the Zhengtian Dao Lord. Later, before Bai Xiang’s decisive battle with Pang Tiandao, she ran into Zhang Dai, the leader of Tianfu Mountain, and Deng Hai, the inheritor of Jinguang Temple. After killing Deng Hai and devouring his soul, Bai Xiang learned of four ruin coordinates in total.

She later traded those coordinates to the Silver Sea Merchant Guild in exchange for their continued supply of materials to the Bai family while the calamities raged. At the time, it had seemed like a fair deal.

After all, exploring ruins was dangerous work. Even the ruins left behind in the main world were constantly surrounded by tales of people being swallowed whole. Not to mention ruins that had been swept away by the Void Tribulation and drifted into the void cosmos. The dangers inside those places might come from thousands or even tens of thousands of years ago, and could very well annihilate both body and soul.

Bai Xiang had things on her mind, so she simply left control of the vessel to Li Wenyu. She herself sat in a nearby chair, looking as though she were resting with her eyes closed, while in truth she was drawing on the data stored within the Yuming Library and repeatedly cross-checking the entry on Jinguang Temple.

Jinguang Temple, the predecessor of Great Yu’s Golden Cicada Temple.

The Yuming Library held no small number of books, no fewer than the Feathering Sect’s library. But no library had ever fully escaped the effects of the Void Tribulation. There were bound to be large amounts of information and records that had been lost.

Jinguang Temple was a perfect example. Bai Xiang had already obtained the Yuming inheritance when she fought against Southern King Yao Qingyuan, yet she only learned of this temple’s connection to Great Yu’s Golden Cicada Temple, as well as the legends surrounding it, after heading south to Luohou Kingdom.

Back then, she had gone to investigate Luofu Temple, the most famous temple in Luohou Kingdom, only to be stopped there by a monk named Xuanyi.

Xuanyi had pointed out her identity as an Imperial Daughter of the Great Xuan. He then explained to her the differences and shared roots between the Buddhism of the two lands. Most importantly, he was the first to reveal to Bai Xiang the truth behind terms such as the main world, the Illusory Realms, and the Void Tribulation, opening her eyes enormously at the time.

Although she had ultimately still killed him, his contribution had not been small, and Bai Xiang remembered all of it clearly.

The inheritance of Jinguang Temple was older than sixteen hundred years.

Bai Xiang silently calculated just how old this temple might be.

According to Xuanyi, Jinguang Temple in the southern lands of Luohou had already existed before Great Yu Taizu severed the connection between Heaven and Earth.

“Jinguang Precious King Buddha”—that dragon-headed demon-buddha dressed in splendid kasaya robes—was a figure from that era.

When the connection between Heaven and Earth was severed, a great war had accompanied it. The ancient demon clans and nether clans chose to support Yao Yu in breaking with the other demons. At the time, some powerful beings fled in all directions to avoid the warfare in the Central Plains. One great demon came south to Shinu, the old name for Luohou, and when it tried to eat people to stave off hunger, it was intercepted and defeated by Jinguang Precious King Buddha. Later, it converted and entered the faith, receiving the title “Yulu Linghui Buddha.”

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Going by that account, Jinguang Temple had existed before Yao Yu was founded, but exactly how many years earlier remained unknown. The information from that period was missing.

As for that “Jiuluo Guangyu Buddha”—

Although the title of that thing sounded strikingly similar to the Buddhas of Jinguang Temple, so much so that they seemed to come from the same line at a glance, the materials Li Wenyu knew did not mention Jiuluo Guangyu Buddha as belonging to Jinguang Temple, so no direct connection could be assumed.

And yet Bai Xiang had an intuition.

After all, she had already begun tinkering with things like void divination. More often than not, her intuition was uncannily accurate.

She felt that Jiuluo Guangyu Buddha came from Jinguang Temple, and that Jinguang Temple might even have been founded before the Xuan Dynasty.

If that were true, then Jinguang Temple was a force whose history could rival the Demon Court.

Jinguang Precious King Buddha. Yulu Linghui Buddha. Chengnan Pure-World Buddha. Jiuluo Guangyu Buddha.

Which of those Buddhas were sapient beings capable of communication, and which were like the Buddha corpse, the sort of “divine image” shaped from gathered wish-power?

A thought stirred in her mind, and Bai Xiang suddenly realized that she had never investigated the origin of the Buddha corpse.

That thing had almost no concept of memory or consciousness at all. Its thoughts were a blur of muddled confusion, and ordinarily she could not even be bothered to read them.

Reading something like that was like getting used to classics and masterpieces, then going off to study novels spit out by early AI. Forget the plot. Even the wording and sentence construction were a mess.

It was more like words had simply been kneaded together at random. Reading it amounted to mental pollution.

“Divine buddhas, immortal buddhas…”

“These terms are always spoken together, but Buddhas are ultimately different. They have doctrines, and those doctrines formed teachings and sects. That means there must be a one-way source.”

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“In other words, there must be a very first Buddha. All later Buddhas and all forms of Buddhism are merely branches extending from that earliest concept.”

From that angle, the Buddha corpse and Jinguang Temple really did share the same root.

“We’re almost there.”

Li Wenyu suddenly spoke.

“But there’s nothing on the star chart… I don’t see anything at all.”

Bai Xiang pulled her thoughts back and looked toward the star chart. Sure enough, the space ahead was bleak and empty.

This was far removed from when she had gone to Shenwu Heaven. A place like a ruin had to have some sort of physical carrier.

There was no mist-shrouded domain like Shenwu Heaven. But could there not at least be some drifting fragments of stone?

Before Li Wenyu could get a response from Bai Xiang, the vessel suddenly shuddered violently.

The screen ahead flared with white light, forcing Li Wenyu to narrow her eyes.

And when the light finally faded and she looked at the screen again, the scene before her left her stunned.

It was as though the vessel had passed through some intangible barrier and entered, in an instant, a sealed-off little world.

There were mountains and rivers here, sun and moon, stars and flowing streams. Looking down from the height where the vessel hung in the sky, one could even see patches of farmland fitted together below.

It was the mark of civilization.

No matter how one looked at it, it had nothing to do with the word “ruins.”

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Bai Xiang had Li Wenyu lower the vessel and chose a secluded, quiet forest in which to land. After they got out, she put it away with her personal storage jade token.

What came next was naturally to find local people and gather information.

Their target was a village ringed by fields. Bai Xiang brought Li Wenyu closer, then swept the area from above with her powerful spiritual sense and confirmed that the village held men and women, old and young alike.

Although they all wore coarse cloth garments and looked little different from ancient people, the language was mutually intelligible, with only a slight variation in accent at most.

That was good news.

But there was bad news as well. She found that the people in the village behaved in distinctly unusual ways.

She saw with her own eyes a child lying gravely ill in bed, but rather than panic, the child’s family was overjoyed. They hung up decorations and lanterns as if preparing to gather the villagers together for a celebration.

“Blessed by the Buddha!”

“Blessed by the Buddha!”

When all the villagers heard the news, they too were delighted. They kept repeating that phrase, pressed their palms together, bowed toward the west, then helped the family purchase supplies and arrange a banquet so grand it looked like a farewell feast for someone important.

That was a little eerie.

What was the reason for this? It looked almost like some principle of a Demon Pool.

After some thought, Bai Xiang planned to bring the vessel back out, have Li Wenyu wait inside, and go into the village herself to investigate.

But all at once her nerves tightened, and a prickling current ran across her scalp.

She spun her head around sharply, only to see Li Wenyu as well with her palms pressed together, kneeling toward the west, eyes closed and lips moving in muttered prayer. Her expression was almost exactly the same as those eerie villagers.

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Oh…

Seeing this, Bai Xiang narrowed her eyes slightly.

It was obvious now that the influence of the ruin was still in effect.

There had to be some kind of power there, one that not only affected the entire little world but could also immediately influence intruding living beings and even alter their beliefs.

Li Wenyu’s cultivation was not high, so she had been captured by that influence at once.

But Bai Xiang had never feared this sort of interference or illusion-inducing method. If Li Wenyu had not been there as a reference, Bai Xiang might not even have noticed so quickly that such an influence was present at all.

This place was far more dangerous than it looked.

Bai Xiang decided that Li Wenyu should stay with her after all.

She wrapped Li Wenyu in her spiritual sense, cutting off the external influence on her, and Li Wenyu gradually recovered. Looking dazed, she asked Bai Xiang, “I… what happened to me…?”

“You were bewitched.”

Bai Xiang answered simply.

“This place is strange.”

“Do not leave my sight.”

With that, she started walking toward the village, and Li Wenyu hurried after her.