Chapter 647: Joint March (3)

Muhak smiled faintly and said,

“Child, I owe you an apology. I ended up testing your heart, so you may think a nasty old man played a mean trick. But I wanted to be sure there was truly hope for that child. When I was young, it felt like I could do anything; now, perhaps because I have so much to lose, fear comes first—that’s age. In any case, your master was every bit as confident as she looked.”

“An old monk spouting useless nonsense.”

It seemed the mood would slide along amiably like that—but fresh news arrived at once.

—Senior. The Great Pagoda Celestial Sovereign has awakened.

Word came that the Great Pagoda Celestial Sovereign, who’d been beaten until the dust shook out of him and lost consciousness, had opened his eyes.

****

The Great Pagoda Celestial Sovereign wore a surprisingly calm face.

Beaten like a dog, his core shattered—and he was wearing a monk’s serene detachment. An eyesore.

If it were up to Qing, she’d have cracked him one more time, but with the elders present, she couldn’t.

Amukhablap could.

“Your mother and father are hereby replaced with this.”

SPLASH! A sudden stench of stale piss billowed out.

Amukhablap stood there, chest heaving proudly, holding a chamber pot of unknown provenance.

Well—he was a lama from Blood Thunder Sound Temple; finding a long-fermented pot wouldn’t have been hard.

Martial Buddha clicked his tongue.

“Come now, man.”

“This villain rotted inside to the core—his stench is unbearable. I, against my will, poured something cleaner. Between rot-stench and piss-stench, piss is the best choice.”

Soaked in well-aged urine, the Great Pagoda Celestial Sovereign was bound hand and foot to a thick hall pillar and couldn’t even wipe himself; he could only grimace like he was chewing wormwood.

Then, meeting the looks of disgust, he suddenly forced a grin.

The look said: you’ll never see me give you the satisfaction.

A viciously stubborn play, yes?

“Kh-heh-heh, you— pthoo, urgh, urgh, pthoo!”

The ferocity was fine, but opening his mouth only triggered violent heaving; he all but hauled his guts up.

By the time the pity of those watching had mixed, faintly, with the disgust, the Great Pagoda Celestial Sovereign, wretched as he looked, let out a chuckling, forced sound.

“Kh-kh, go on, laugh your fill. But you’ll get nothing from me. Perhaps this wretched body, one day, will break to you. But not today!”

Then he stuck his tongue out long and—CRUNCH!

The severed tongue flopped to the floor, and blood poured, soaking his front.

The spectacle was that even then, he stared at them, beaming as if to say “how do you like that.”

He’d chosen to cut his own tongue and make himself mute—before torture or persuasion could wear him down.

It had a certain gallant air.

But it was premature.

“You—y-you bastard, to throw us away—! Was that Potala’s will? To use us and discard us...!”

The basics of interrogation: confront them with their own.

The lamas from Blood Thunder Sound Temple, dragged in bound, lunged at the Great Pagoda Celestial Sovereign in fury, only to be yanked short by their ropes.

Only—their faces... what? Didn’t sleep?

Every one of them had black rings like smeared paint drooping beneath their eyes, hollowed out.

Sure, a martial man whose core is shattered won’t sleep the sleep of the blessed—but even so, they all looked wrecked.

The Great Pagoda Celestial Sovereign’s eyes widened.

By any thinking, the lamas had no reason to hate him.

As comrades of a shared cause, they should feel something, seeing his severed tongue.

As fellow believers in the same ideal, they might not go so far as to cut their own tongues—but they wouldn’t bow to these Central Plains dogs.

He had believed that.

Then Lhundup Rinchen’s words made him realize something was deeply wrong.

“He made us offerings for the formation. Because of that, we...”

GRRIND! Teeth ground together; a sound stained blue with hate.

But only for a moment. In an instant his downy hair stood up, gooseflesh like a plucked chicken, and he suddenly dropped his stance and pleaded low.

“Sir—sir, that formation... what is that formation? Why does it not end? How does one—how do we, in this nightmare—hck—no, no, that can’t be...”

Lhundup Rinchen twitched and suddenly flattened himself to the floor and began slamming his forehead down.

Not pantomime—truly trying to crack his skull.

“Right, it’s not a dream. Not a dream. Hoo... Sir, what in Heaven’s name is that formation, what kind of thing is it?”

A question wrung from the heart.

Namgung Daero clucked his tongue and answered coldly.

“The Blood Cult’s evil art. A horrific absolute formation that grinds three thousand lives. An extermination array that borrows the Ten-Thousand-Slaughters to trap you in monstrous phantasm. Looks like that Blood Cult fiend meant to kill you lot too, to gag you. A man who’ll cut his own tongue that way won’t think twice about cutting other people’s throats.”

“Aiyaa! Aah-urgh—koff, khak!”

Gag them?

Why would I harm the virtuous monks of the Plateau!

The Great Pagoda Celestial Sovereign moved to deny it, too late—but a severed tongue does not regrow.

The tongue stump, which had just begun to clot, spurted again; he hacked in a fit, and blood ran from his nose, making him look even more wretched.

Even so, he forced a shout.

Slander—slander! I’m being framed!

In truth, framed he was.

Funny how it turns. Karma? The real culprit was elsewhere.

But the only beings who knew Qing had, as a side measure, trapped the lamas inside a formation were Qing, the child, and a lonely star without friends whose existence was not certain.

“B—Blood Cult? Those depraved human dregs? Impossible! No matter what, that’s impossible!”

“There’s proof. In that big hall over there, we’ve got Blood Cult monsters alive in chains—hm. No; tell me—were you truly ignorant? If Blood Thunder Sound Temple and Blood Cult hadn’t colluded—what then—”

“Nonsense! Forty years ago, when the Blood Cult ran wild, our Blood Thunder Sound Temple helped destroy those evil-doers! We may hate you Central Plains oppressors, but how could we take hands with monsters who betray Heaven’s bonds!”

“Who knows. Maybe he is Blood Cult. Maybe Potala joined hands with them. But an upright man doesn’t slice out his own tongue to silence himself, does he?”

Namgung Daero, scabbard in hand, pointed at the bit of tongue lying by the Great Pagoda Celestial Sovereign’s feet.

Lhundup Rinchen’s mouth fell open.

His trembling, unbelieving gaze swung to the Great Pagoda Celestial Sovereign.

“Is this—truly? Are you, the Celestial Sovereign—no, you—were you a running dog of the Blood Cult? That... no, no. It must be Potala. At Potala, Gelwa Rinpoche—ha... ha-ha... I see. Potala joined hands with the Blood Cult.”

His speech kept slipping between honorifics and bluntness; the lama’s confusion lay naked.

“Aiyaa—aiyan aiyaa!”

Tongueless, the Great Pagoda Celestial Sovereign thrashed his head and shrieked.

Rumors that Potala had joined hands with the Blood Cult must not spread.

Will you drown the nation’s long-cherished hope in a latrine?

That’s not it.

The Blood Cult is a means, a tool to wield—a knife is a knife; who asks if it’s clean.

A dirty blade is discarded when it’s served its use.

The true cause is elsewhere; the future we dream is not that.

It’s not the filthy collusion you think.

But human meaning lands only when words or writing reach.

He had cut his tongue too early.

And so what if he had—cut tongues don’t reattach or regrow.

All the lamas had left was hate.

Then—

“[Whom do you blame now, you foul thing! Did you not butcher countless innocents for using Central Plains custom! The wronged have already cursed you; they will press you down. Blind to the plot playing you for fools, you who would not see people as people—how are you any different from the Blood Cult!]”

“[We have already paid the price! What do you know! We have already—already...]”

Lhundup Rinchen’s shoulders sagged.

“I will cooperate as needed. But it seems I have not yet escaped the Blood Cult’s vile formation. I ask that you devise a way to free us from it.”

In Qing’s eyes, these bastards still hadn’t sobered up.

Even here, they clung to their own skins. Well—men like this are exactly the sort who can do inhuman things without a blink.

They were the sort whose own safety came first—so of course “patriots” like them went from village to village slaughtering Tibetans.

The orthodox Translucent elders turned, with grave faces, to True Person Cheonbija.

Since when was the formation over—and they’re still babbling?

Was there something about the Blood Cult’s formation we don’t know? Has it grown stronger?

What is he talking about? Do you know anything?

So asked the eyes of Muhak, Ximen Surin, and Namgung Daero.

True Person Cheonbija slowly shook his head in reply.

Why are you asking me? said the look.

Thus the interrogation ended.

As for the Blood Cult, it yielded no particulars.

But it yielded enough.

We’d had no intel tying Blood Thunder Sound Temple to the Blood Cult—now we’d learned the Blood Cult was writhing even on the Plateau, reaching the very foremost under Heaven there.

Perhaps even the rulers of the Plateau—Potala itself—had their claws on them.

What followed was politics.

The Great Pagoda Celestial Sovereign would have the sinews of all four limbs cut and be transferred to Shaolin’s Repentance Hall for safekeeping.

The man is who he is—and a big fish the Blood Cult might meddle around. Among Repentance Halls, Shaolin’s is the most infamous.

The criminals of Blood Thunder Sound Temple, Lhundup Rinchen included, would go on to confess their atrocities in the cities of Qinghai and testify that Potala had joined hands with the Blood Cult.

Whether they truly had or not doesn’t matter.

What matters is that the lamas testified to it themselves.

Whether they had or hadn’t, Potala would be forced to deny it—and for a time, they wouldn’t try anything rash.

And in return for handing the criminals over to the orthodox, Amukhablap would receive support to rebuild Blood Thunder Sound Temple.

Not a single disciple left; he had to start with a first generation on the spot. Elixirs to raise them and instructors from orthodox schools.

Why help and help again and take a loss, you ask?

In truth, it’s a massive gain.

All under Heaven would know the Martial Alliance aided Blood Thunder Sound Temple’s rebuilding.

From now on, unless the Alliance was clearly at fault, Blood Thunder Sound Temple could never openly oppose it.

The world would point and say they were thankless wretches.

Even aside from that, instructors of the Alliance would help raise their disciples; that connection alone is priceless.

They would be the future first-generation seniors—those who would hold office and lead the sect.

Only—

“You’ll be all right? You wanted to beat those bastards to death.”

“Worthy one, but Blood Thunder Sound Temple’s restoration weighs more than my personal grudge.”

The rebuilding of Blood Thunder Sound Temple takes priority over personal hate.

If only he didn’t mangle Chinese, he could pass for a respectable monk. Then again, they don’t call him Mad Monk for nothing.

“Thus. Worthy one, now I make you an offer you cannot refuse. If you take refuge right now, you are offered the chance to become a master of Vajrayāna.”

“No thanks. Also—come to think of it, I haven’t seen any nuns among the lamas. You’re not like Shaolin, some kind of women-forbidden sanctum, are you?”

“The full ordination for nuns from India did not come to us. But you are Han; we are a mature people who respect practitioners without drawing lines between Indian Buddha and Central Plains Buddha. Your taking refuge is not a problem. Rather, worthy one, you could confer the vows upon the women of the Plateau.”

Words that would make the Plateau foam at the mouth.

Plateau Buddhism has no bhikṣuṇī lineage; they cannot produce nuns on their own.

He was blithely proposing to make Qing the founder of a bhikṣuṇī order on the Plateau.

In other words, they would split from the Plateau entirely.

For the Tibetans of Qinghai—a new Buddhism, if you want to call it that. Qinghai Buddhism.

Qing had no idea.

How could she.

She doesn’t even believe in Central Plains Buddhism; how would she know the inner workings of Plateau Buddhism.

So her impression was—

Persistent and dogged as ever, huh.