Chapter 612: I Am Wronged (2)

They said the Repentance Hall needed preparation, so she would enter tomorrow morning. They’d feed her well with Spring Festival dishes. She could go out freely in the meantime.

Qing wasn’t a disciple of Kunlun, so they couldn’t force her, nor could they treat it as a real punishment. From Qing’s side, then—fine. She could use the chance to practice the mind-method Ahab had lent her. With a proper manual, she wouldn’t need that filthy knead-and-engrave brain-carving method; she could get initiated in a few days.

Leaving the Sect Leader’s hall, they went to visit the patient. He’d treated his severed arm himself—bold enough to deserve respect—but the wound festered, fever raged, and his face was pallid; the outlook was poor. Still, he hadn’t uttered a single groan all the way to the Kunlun Sect—truly a tough old man; the nickname “mad monk” was well earned.

“Ahab, happy new year.”

“Huh. You primitive Middle Kingdomers—this is not New Year. It is the dead middle of a cold winter. How is it a new year? If midnight passes, it becomes morning? Mindless barbarity.”

“Want to just say it in Tibetan then?”

“[How can you claim the new year has dawned when winter still holds fast? As the moon must set and the sun rise for morning to be called morning, so must winter pass and spring arrive for a year to begin.]”

“So the Tibetan calendar begins with spring, huh? But if you can speak Tibetan perfectly, why do you speak the Central Plains tongue like that?”

“[Because this monk understands your language more deeply than you Middle Kingdomers do. My Han speech is so advanced that Middle Kingdomers find it difficult. They don’t truly know their own tongue. A lamentable thing indeed.]”

Shock: Amukhablap reveals his Central Plains diction is “extremely high-level.”

“Eh? What was that?”

“[As with martial arts, the inferior cannot comprehend a master’s technique when they see it. Language is the same, so they cannot fully grasp my fluent Han speech. Are you not a master of languages, more proficient in Tibetan—a tongue sixty-seven times superior to Han? You know well how frustrating the masses’ stupidity is.]”

So that bizarre manner of speaking was his attempt at style. Qing thought about objecting—then, why bother?

“Mm. Not wrong. Sometimes you really do want to scream at how dense the low-level ones are.”

“[It is your burden to bear with patience. You cannot expect dull, lacking commoners to understand the vocabulary of geniuses like us. Be the one who understands.]”

“Can’t be helped. That’s a master’s lot.”

“[Excellent. Even if the masses are too dense to understand, would the Buddha grow angry? The greatly compassionate Buddha embraces them like children. You, too, as one who stands above, must keep this in mind.]”

“Mm. I’m not used to this.”

If he used Tibetan, he sounded like a perfectly normal monk. All for the sake of “style,” huh. Back home too, there had been crowds of ghastly headcases who thought being different for its own sake was stylish.

To be charitable? He’d come to the Middle Kingdom as a representative of Tibet. Maybe he was trying to raise his homeland’s prestige with a touch of grandeur. Or he was just drunk on the image of himself speaking a foreign tongue fluently.

“Anyway, I heard. You said we’d make it all my doing—stringing them up, using Human Shields—that it was all under your orders. You didn’t have to.”

“[Long ago, the Buddha’s disciple Juhlapantaka was known as the fool of the world. When a fool did something foolish, people found nothing remarkable in it. The fool’s folly is expected.]”

Juhlapantaka was Śākyamuni’s disciple—the legendary fool who attained arhatship while sweeping the courtyard. Couldn’t memorize a sentence if it had four words, they said.

Hehe, the Buddha told me to sweep the yard.

Juhlapantaka sweeps! Sweeps clean!

Juhlapantaka has swept it all clean!

And while I’m at it, I’ll sweep away the mind’s afflictions!

That was the logic.

“[Likewise, since I am known as a mad monk, if I show cruelty on a whim for a moment, the world will not find it extraordinary.]”

One more blot on an already stained body—what did it matter.

“Will that really be okay?”

“[In truth, as a Buddhist—and even as a senior martial adept—I found your merciless hand pleasing to behold. Those things were subhuman ghouls who slaughtered not only villagers but even our temple’s monks—our family who shared a single plate of tsampa. My temple’s disciples would have looked on with satisfied smiles before the Gate of Rebirth. You were praiseworthy and I was grateful. That is all.]”

“Oh, please. I did it because it pleased me.”

Qing was wearing a proud smile when—

“[However, as a Buddhist—no, as a senior martial person—I say this: it caused real harm. Junior, do not do such a thing again.]”

“What? You just said you liked it!”

“[I have already lost disciples who were like family to those beasts. I wouldn’t mind chopping them to bits, salting them into pickles, and eating them as a side dish. But what of Tianjun’s people? If those foolish masses come to think it right to abuse criminals as spectacle?]”

“Ah.”

“[Punishing the guilty is rightful justice; it is also chivalry. But that justice must not become amusement, a pastime.]”

If cruel justice begins giving the masses pleasure, then under the name of justice they’ll start seeking out “criminals” purely for sport. Even if no innocent is caught, it will still be a great evil. At first they’ll hunt those who truly wear human skins without human hearts—but then? The threshold will sink; the list of “crimes” you can torment and toy with will grow lighter, until they’re stringing someone up, burning and beating him bloody for stealing a few coins. Like when King Zhou, cavorting with the demon woman Daji, killed people and drank to their screams. Like when Tibetan monks once plucked out commoners’ eyeballs for a mere impudent glance.

“[And the masses, when it comes to vice, are quick to indulge and sink into addiction—pitiful, foolish beings. You have entered the Buddha’s gate; do not forget the masses are foolish, stupid beings—and for that reason, ones we must care for.]”

“Eh? When did I ‘enter the Buddha’s gate’?”

“[You have already gained karmic affinity with the Thousand-Hands Tathāgata and learned the Tathāgata Divine Palm, and—most of all—you have inherited the immaculate teaching of the root Buddha, Vairocana. If you are not a Buddhist, who is? I bestow upon you a Buddhist name: Pannyaśī—Na’al. Pannyānara. A fine name.]”

Qing’s language ability was absolute; she understood at once—yes, the same old joke. “Wise Dairy Cow.”

“Who said you could—were you still not over that?”

“[In your tongue: Guan-sa—Uwol... mm, Guanwu. Too stout for a woman’s name; let us call you Uwol then.]”

Qing decided to say nothing. He wasn’t called “mad monk” for nothing. He wouldn’t listen anyway.

“[Pannya—since you avenged my kin, you are my benefactor personally. But in a Tibetan city, not a Middle Kingdom one, you brought harm with such methods; this must be sternly rebuked.]”

“So it would’ve been fine in a Middle Kingdom city.”

“[Thus, my taking the infamy was not solely for your sake, Pannya. I have standing to punish those verminous shavelings. If it is known that I ordered it, even the foolish Tibetans of Tianjun won’t dare imitate it. Therefore it is a yoke that rightly falls on me. You, Pannya, have no need to thank me.]”

“That Pannya—Pana—doesn’t it trip the tongue? And now I want a banana. Think they have them down in Yunnan?”

He gave her a look as if at a lunatic. From anyone else she might have accepted it; from Amukhablap, never. A vein bulged on Qing’s brow.

“Ugh. Whatever. Rest well. Oh—what about that ‘Temple of the Untrustworthy Old Woman’—what are you going to do?”

For some reason, it had turned into a temple that didn’t trust old women, but Amukhablap didn’t care about slight errors in the Central Plains tongue.

“[In my heart, I would storm in now and butcher every last maggot-demon. But as you wished, Pannya, I will grant the Middle Kingdomers the chance to assist me and accumulate merit.]”

“Good choice.”

No point nitpicking; Qing let it pass. Ahab was Ahab. Besides, without him, even if the elders came, it would be hard to attack the Blood Thunder Sound Temple at will. So “granting a chance to help” wasn’t entirely wrong.

At the mad monk’s request, they would punish the Blood Thunder Sound Temple—the ones who colluded with foreign powers, murdered their own disciples, and massacred commoners.

As opposed to: We were offended by their plotting to invade the Middle Kingdom, so we preemptively destroyed them. The difference was immense. In the latter case, people would grumble that you knocked them over because they were an eyesore and made excuses after; headaches would follow.

People believe what they want to believe. Qing had learned that bitterly, hounded by seekers of the Absorbing Essence Devil Art. It was also why Amukhablap so casually called the masses foolish, primitive, crippled, feeble—speaking of “the masses” like some objective truth.

Anyway, so be it. After she came out of the Repentance Hall and spent the rest of the Spring Festival, perhaps her master would arrive.

****

Qing’s idea of a Repentance Hall was this: a stifling, cramped room sealed on all sides, with only a tiny barred window near the ceiling. The wrongdoer goes in, faces the wall, and spends time reflecting—a punishment room. “Punishment room” sounds grim—so, Repentance Hall. A cave of repentance. A reflection chamber.

The Divine Lady’s Gate had no Repentance Hall. It was a hidden mountain sect, a women’s sanctuary. Qing had no “common sense.” She was Qing. What she had was what she’d seen and lived—or the bits Ximen Surin had hammered in with a true teacher’s heart.

So she figured—even if it’s stuffy—she’d finally get some solid practice in. There’d be manuals to read; surely it wouldn’t be too dark. In her mind, it was basically a reading room.

They’d said they’d send in plenty of Spring Festival food and she could step out if she needed, so Qing took it lightly.

Except... didn’t the place feel off? Didn’t it look a bit like a prison?

It did. The Repentance Hall was a prison. Typically, disciples guilty of crimes on the level of “murdering kin and exterminating clans”—those who harmed their masters and brothers, or sold the sect’s honor for profit—betrayers went here.

And publicly condemned villains of the martial world—demon-heads who had brought great harm to a sect or region, and other grave offenders. It was a prison. Not an officially licensed state dungeon, but in practice, when the authorities nabbed some notorious demon-head too big to touch, they quietly handed him to the biggest local sect.

This was “civil authority noninterference”! Let the martial handle the martial! We are absolutely not doing this because we fear retribution or find it troublesome! This is custom—and custom must be respected!

So when the Sect Leader ordered five days of wall-facing in the Repentance Hall, it was far more serious and weighty than Qing had imagined.

Ah. True Person Cheon Bija had been dead serious. And here I was thinking she meant a quiet reading room to sort out my thoughts.

Well. It can’t be helped.

Not that Qing was shocked anew. She’d sleep under a straw mat by the roadside if she had to—what’s a prison to her? She could come out for air when she wanted, and they’d be sending in generous Spring Festival food besides.

In the end, her “reading room” was merely turning into a “prison experience.”