Nightfall

Refreshing breeze slightly passed by on the cliff plateau. The White Tower was reborn in the shattered temples and brims, which had lost its splendid glamour from the admiration of the thousands of people by the lake in Chaoyang City in the past. Now, it looked decadent due to its dead appearance.

Rainstorm caused countless leaves to fall, while the wind slightly knocked down hundreds of fruits. The branches of the green tree on one side of the cliff were scattered. They were as pitiful as clothless women. The waterfalls down the cliff seemed to be scornfully laughing at it.

The chessboard was lying on the cliff plateau.

Even the light had vanished as the gilding scriptures dispersed with the loose clouds. Petals were no longer falling, and the bell tones and sutra-chanting had stopped.

The crowd of monks walked out of the temples, and looked up at the cliff plateau. Their upset was settled down gradually and they went back to the temples. Everyday-routined lessons were restored accordingly.

The bell tones in countless temples across the world stopped as well. The elders and abbots in the temples stared at the statues of the Buddha, and fell into silent frustrations. Suddenly, a welcome monk reported that the princess or throne prince from some prefecture came for incense offering.

It did not matter if they were the elders or abbots, but once they heard such news, they poses as eminent monks, and moved toward the front door to welcome them, while considering how much incense money they should ask for. Of course, they will not ask for so much that they will be disliked. At that moment, they all abandoned the Buddha.

Countless believers in the human world also woke up. They touched their bloody foreheads which resulted from the kowtowing, and were confused about the surroundings. They had no idea what had happened before that.

A old woman heard the crying of her grandson, and found her beloved baby had fallen below the bed. The strange thing was that a similar bump appeared on both of them, which made them flurried and confused.

She was numb and stood up with a limp, held up her grandson in her arms and soothed him for quite a while. She hit the ground again and again, with nothing else to blame. She didn’t have the Buddha in mind at all.

In the shabby Buddhist nunnery out the capital city of the Yan Kingdom, widows stared at the distorted bell that couldn’t make a sound, no matter how hard they hit it. They were startled. Will they not be able hear the bell tone any more? All of a sudden, they started to howl fiercely. How could they spend their lives in such a miserable way? Who cared how blissful their afterlives would be? They lifelessly walked back to their rooms, kneeled down with their two palms together devoutly, and kept praying to the Buddha.

In the Wilderness, millions who were kneeling down on the ground woke up as well. Nobles found themselves kneeling with the poor. They couldn’t help but feel indignant. As a result, they waved the whips in their hands, hit a few serfs, and then felt relieved to see the open wounds.

The bleeding serfs were in great pain and were too dreadful to fight back. They could only work with their worn-out bodies and ate very terrible food at night. Before bed, they started praying again, and silently asked the beneficent Buddha to take them to the Western Paradise as soon as possible.

The Buddha or Haotian were both easy to be forgotten. Of course, on the contrary, sometimes they were hard to be forgotten as well.

Happy people could easily forget their beliefs, which were the last straw for the unlucky ones. From this perspective, perhaps belief could be good, but at the same time bad events would possibly happen.

On the other hand, non-believers were growing at the back hill of the Academy, exactly due to that. At their positions and stances, these people couldn’t and dared to shed a light on this issue.

Master Huang Yang walked out of the Zen room. He was feeling the scent of serenity from countless temples, while listening to the sutra-chanting on and below the mount. He also found that it seemed nothing had happened at all.

However, a lot of things did happen.

Sangsang and Ning Que entered the chessboard without an invitation. However, at the stance of Xuankong Temple, it was assumed that Buddha had deployed supreme Buddha Dharma and had Haotian as well as her attendant sucked into the chessboard.

Master Huang Yang, in cloth as light as the air, climbed up the mountain pass, and was about to reach the cliff plateau.

He was about to pick up the chessboard, because Ning Que was in it. Ning Que was too important to the Tang, so he couldn’t just sit and watch him die.

Master Huang Yang was an eminent monk of Buddhism, but above all, he was a citizen of the Tang.

At this point, a serene and solemn voice echoed from the distant. “I heard that, a mountain, named Prajna, weighs as heavily as eighteen thousands times of the Tianqi Mountain,” the Scriptures Chief Monk said. The sound came from the distant ground on the precipice.

This was the highest initial approach in Buddhism. Power came along with the words.

Years ago, the Scriptures Chief Monk preached the same sutra to the First Brother in the White Tower Temple in Chaoyang City. It described a mountain named Prajna. The huge mount where Xuankong Temple was located was Prajna.

Once said by a Buddhist, it was responded with echoes, as high, steep and magnificent as Prajna. All out of a sudden, it became heftier. Master Huang Yang, rushing through the mountain pass, stopped abruptly.

Click. Master Huang Yang’s leg bones were fractured. It was the cracked mountain itself that had severely injured him!

…

…

At the fringe of the Giant Sinkhole above the precipice, the Chief Monk of Scripture ‘s body was still buried under the ground, only with his head showing. With his white eyebrows drooping, he was pale and very faint.

Chief Monk was melting into the ground by Sangsang’s divine ability. Over the days, he had been fighting against the endless extrusions of the earth. His exhaustion caused him to suffer even more.

An autumn wind blew over, and a super light aroma of wine spread out in the wind of wilderness. The Drunkard, still in his long gown, showed up like that in front of the Chief Monk of Scripture without any omens.

He didn’t pay much attention to the Chief Monk’s funny face at the moment, yet rather stared at the cliff plateau. He looked quite pale. The restless sights filled up his eyes.

The Chief Monk tried to look up toward him and said, “It appears you already know what had happened.”

The Drunkard’s expression looked terrible and said, “Such a big event has already shaken the human world. What’s the difference even if I were pretend to be ignorant?”

During the time when the bell tones and sutra0chanting were everywhere in the human world, he was in the small town on the border between the Yan and the Song. Even though he was with the Butcher, he still felt extremely unsettled. Thus, he had a long tea time with Owner Chao.

“Little did I think that you would actually attack Haotian,” the Drunkard murmured.

The Chief Monk said slowly, “It was the Buddha’s plan.”

The Drunkard saw the small rapture under his neck, grasped a stone, and then threw it in.

The crack between Chief Monk’s neck and the ground were dilated inside, as it was the Buddhist immeasurable state.

Shortly, Chief Monk of Scripture climbed from the bottom of the ground. As a indestructible body of the Buddha, no scars were left, but his kasaya, and the Buddhist Monk’s staff were already squeezed into powder. At this moment, he stood in the autumn wilderness and no looker looked like an eminent monk of Buddhism.

The Chief Monk took a garment from the Drunkard and said, “That year, you learned the immeasurable dharma from the Buddha. Considering it now, everything has been within the Buddhist predestination.”

The Drunkard said, “This is the Haotian’s world. The god’s will has been unpredictable, so there is no such a thing as the Buddhist predestination. If she didn’t go into the chessboard, then I would have had no method to get you out of the ground. In this case, it had nothing to do with the Buddhist predestination, but more to do with the god’s will.”

The Chief Monk said, “From now on, there would be no god’s will on earth anymore, but only the Buddhist predestination.”

The Drunkard said, “I’m always wondering where your confidence comes from.”

The Chief Monk said, “Come with me.”

The two left the cliff precipice and went to the cliff plateau.

The Chief Monk watched the wretched pear tree, fell into silence, and then said,” This tree was planted by the Buddha himself. Pear has the same pronunciation with ‘leaving’, which means parting with the human world.”

The Drunkard said with a dignified expression, “It blossoms every five-hundred years. Does it mean that Haotian’s separation was that long?”

The Chief Monk said, “In it, it is hard to recognize years and days. In that sense, Haotoan might never come back to the human world.”

The Drunkard said with his eyebrows slightly up, “If she were to kill the Buddha, Haotian will come back.”

The Chief Monk said calmly, “The Buddha had undergone Nirvana. How could he be killed?”

The Drunkard frowned. Up until that moment, no one would have known whether the Buddha was alive or not. The huge mountain named Prajna was made of the Buddha’s body, and in that sense, where was the Buddha’s consciousness?

The Chief Monk kneeled down toward the chessboard, and praised, “The Buddha can perceive things five-thousand years ago and five-thousand years later. He is not in Xuankong Temple, or in the Buddha’s body. It is predictable that he is in the chessboard as small as one square meter, waiting there for Haotian for the past five-thousand years until they meet each other. How wise and beneficent he is.”

The Drunkard looked lost. If the Buddha’s consciousness was indeed in the chessboard, why did you say it couldn’t be vanished by Haotian? What exactly was Nirvana? He stared at the chessboard and thought for a long time, but still had no clue.

This chessboard was set up by the Buddha as the fighting field, where the Buddha was waiting for Haotian. Unless the Headmaster were to come back to the human world, no one else would be able to get in. Rather, no one was qualified to participate. It was impossible even for him.

One thing worth thinking was that, when Haotian entered the chessboard, another man was beside her. Indeed no one could possibly enter into the chessboard, but that man was able to. What kind of impact would he have on the war?

“There was a problem.”

The Chief Monk said, “What is it?”

The Drunkard said, “Someone.”

In the chessboard, besides the Lord and the Buddha, another man was there as well.

The Chief Monk said calmly, “Although his state has improved, Ning Que is only at the State of Knowing the Destiny. How come he is qualified to be part of an affair at this level?”

The State of Knowing the Destiny was the Zenith of the Five States. However, the Chief Monk of Scripture and Drunkard were the supremely powerful beings who were above the Five States. That was why they didn’t pay much attention to him. Even they couldn’t be part of the war between the Lord and the Buddha, neither did Ning Que.

The Drunkard said with a dignified expression, “Even if he couldn’t affect the result in the chessboard, he could have effects on the human world outside the chessboard. As he in in it, how could the Academy stand by?”

In the Academy, the First Brother and Twenty-Three-Year Cicada were all super powerhouses beyond the Five States, and it was hard to exactly predict Jun Mo’s state after he went wild. If they knew that the Buddhists had trapped and murdered Ning Que in the chessboard, what would they do? Would Jun Mo go wild?

The Chief Monk smiled and said, “Since the Abbey Dean had asked you to send a message, does it mean he already had calculated the current situation?”

…

…

No one would have thought of where Sangsang and Ning Que were now, including themselves.

Looking at the familiar streets, they seemed to have some memories, but people’s clothes were hard to recognize. They were silent for a long time. Ning Que had something on his mind, and even forgot to put away the big black umbrella.

A lot of shrines were alongside the street. In them, statues of the Buddha or the Venerable were worshiped. A scent filled up the room. It was a combination of food spices and incense. It was a peaceful place and people were happy.

He and Sangsang went into the chessboard. To their surprises, they came to Chaoyang City.

“What is wrong with that?”

“You ask me, but who do I ask?”

Ning Que looked at Sangsang, and sighed. “Of course, it should be you who will ask for the Buddha.”

Sangsang walked into the middle of the street, with her hands behind her back. She said, “We should look for him first.”

…