Volume 1, Chapter 261 – Buddhist Dharma

Listening to the waves of pleasant Buddhist chanting, Su Lanyue could not help but slowly close her eyes. Her entire body relaxed, and the exhaustion that had built up over the past half year was swept away, leaving her mind clear and empty.

The chanting drifted like wisps of green smoke into the rear courtyard and seeped into Shi Lan’s room, carrying a faint Buddhist radiance that wrapped itself completely around her.

Golden Rainbow, covered in cracks, lay quietly to one side. The instant it was touched by that Buddhist light, it gave a slight tremble.

After an unknown stretch of time, Shi Lan, who had been lying in bed, suddenly opened her eyes and sprang upright. She stared blankly at the brocade quilt covering her for a long while before a little life gradually returned to her gaze.

Throbs of pain deep in her mind made Shi Lan want to clutch her head. The moment she raised her hand, she touched Golden Rainbow lying beside her.

She reached out and lightly ran her fingers over the cracks on the sword’s blade, softly murmuring her thanks. No matter what Golden Rainbow had been like before, at least when she had faced a life-and-death crisis, it had not retreated.

The Buddhist chanting at her ears could ease some of the pain, but it could not remove it completely.

Recalling the scene before she lost consciousness, Shi Lan suppressed the waves of agony and called inwardly,

“Samsara.”

“Samsara?”

“Samsara…”

No reply came for a very long time. Shi Lan froze for a moment, then pulled out the long-unseen interface of the All-Heavens Samsara System.

Host: Shi Lan Cultivation: Fourth Rank Cultivation Art: **** Items: None Resource Points: 0 Worlds Traversed: None Current Worlds Available for Traversal: None Overall Evaluation: **** Notice: The system currently lacks energy. Ninety percent of its functions are temporarily shut down. Please replenish it as soon as possible…

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Aside from the status panel, most of the All-Heavens Samsara System’s functions had already been paralyzed for a long time anyway, so the effect on Shi Lan was not particularly great. What mattered most was Samsara’s condition.

Samsara had saved her from death more than once. Along the way, it had helped her far too much.

Now the only thing she could do was find a way to replenish the system’s energy first. Perhaps then Samsara would awaken again.

The pounding pain in her mind was impossible to ignore. Shi Lan frowned and pondered for a moment, then took out a pill the size of an infant’s fist from her Qiankun Bracelet.

The Spirit-Transforming Pill was used to strengthen the soul when breaking from the Myriad Phenomena Realm into the Nascent Soul Realm, and it was as high as six-star in grade.

Her head felt as though it were splitting apart. After thinking it over, she could only conclude that her soul had been injured. The Spirit-Transforming Pill ought to have some effect.

Before this, however, Shi Lan had always used the Black Domain to slowly draw out its essence to nourish her soul. She had never used it to treat an injury, so it was hard to say how effective it would be.

The Black Domain spread out, enveloping the Spirit-Transforming Pill and slowly extracting a thread of its vital essence.

That essence rushed into Shi Lan’s mouth and nose, immediately easing the pain deep in her mind and finally allowing her tightly wound nerves to relax.

After regulating her breathing for half an hour and suppressing the pain, Shi Lan ended her cultivation and slowly got out of bed.

As she passed the mirror and saw the white hair claiming half her head, she froze for an instant. Her hand rose to touch her hair almost reflexively. Only now did she realize that eight or nine tenths of her life essence had already drained away.

Shi Lan fell silent for a while, then tied up her loose hair, pulled open the door, and walked out.

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Day and night, large numbers of martial masters stood guard outside Shi Lan’s room. But at this moment, all of their attention had been stolen by the Buddhist chanting, and no one noticed that Shi Lan had already awakened.

Following the sound of the chanting, Shi Lan quickly arrived at the reception hall. The instant she stepped through the door, the chanting came to an abrupt stop as well.

“A Lan…”

Su Lanyue came back to herself. Seeing Shi Lan standing in the doorway, she widened her eyes in disbelief. At once, tears welled up in her eyes, and in delight she rushed forward and pulled Shi Lan into a tight embrace.

“I made Mother worry…”

Shi Lan apologized softly, then looked toward the white-robed young monk who had already risen in the distance.

“Lady Benefactor, I trust you have been well.”

Wuya pressed his palms together and smiled as he bowed to Shi Lan.

“Little Monk, we meet again. You helped me once more this time. My thanks.”

Shi Lan nodded. Without Wuya, she had no idea how long it would have taken her to wake up. And because of him, she had already benefited more than once before.

After confirming that Shi Lan was no longer in serious trouble, Su Lanyue dismissed the attendants and left the reception hall. Over the past half year, she had already become exhausted in both body and mind. After being steeped in Wuya’s sutra chanting for quite a while, all she wanted now was to get some proper rest.

“You really are a hidden expert, Little Monk. When we first met, I’m afraid that was intentional on your part, wasn’t it?”

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Shi Lan sat down in the seat of honor and looked at Wuya curiously.

Compared with back then, her horizons were now incomparably broader, yet she still could not see through him in the slightest. But her intuition told her that Wuya was far from as simple as he looked on the surface. At the very least, his strength was no shallow thing.

“Lady Benefactor is someone who carries great merit. This poor monk merely wished to form a good karmic bond.”

Wuya smiled faintly and did not deny it.

“A good karmic bond…”

Shi Lan rubbed her fingertips together without comment.

“I’ll remember this favor. If you ever need help in the future, then as long as it is within my power, I will not refuse.”

Wuya’s eyes brightened for an instant, as though he were fully satisfied. He pressed his palms together, recited a Buddhist invocation, and then directly took his leave.

“Have you seen your master?” Shi Lan asked, recalling that powerfully built old monk.

“I have. But this poor monk still wishes to roam the world and is not yet willing to return to the temple.”

Wuya shook his head slightly. Without any hesitation, he turned and walked toward the doorway.

“This poor monk seeks a Dharma that can bring salvation to all living beings. If I sit every day in grand and splendid halls, eating vegetarian meals and reciting sutras, I will never find the true Dharma. All I will find are dry scriptures that are the same page after page, and I will never obtain true karmic merit.”

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Hearing Wuya’s words, Shi Lan fell into thought.

“The greatest confusion of my life is this: the Buddha says, ‘All living beings are equal,’ yet the Buddha himself stands outside the Five Elements. Perhaps only within the true Dharma can there be an answer to that question…”

Before his words had even fully fallen, Wuya’s figure had already vanished from the hall.

Shi Lan shook her head slightly. She did not understand Buddhism, and because of things she had absorbed in her previous life, she had never held much fondness for the Buddhist sect. But Wuya had caused some of her old views to change.

…

After hearing that Shi Lan had awakened, Shi Tianlu hurried back at once. Only after repeatedly confirming that there was nothing seriously wrong with her body did he finally set his mind at ease and return to the increasingly strained front line.

Over the past half year of war, the Xianwu Yin-Yang Grand Array had been damaged by nearly half. The city walls on all four sides were under tremendous pressure. Several times, sections of the walls had been smashed apart by beast tides, only to be repaired again after the tides were beaten back.

There were countless dead and wounded. The number of fallen Heaven-Men and Heaven Demons had long since exceeded ten.

For some reason, news of Shi Lan’s awakening quickly spread. The entrance to the Shi Residence, which had already begun to grow quiet, once again became as busy as a marketplace, drawing all sorts of riffraff.

Aside from a few familiar faces, Shi Lan refused everyone else at the door on the grounds that her injuries had not yet healed.

The lingering deterrent of Wuxu’s incarnation was still there. Though many were dissatisfied, no one yet dared to act rashly.