If it weren’t for the serious atmosphere of their conversation, Yun Ziliang and Li Changxun might have burst into laughter.
"You can deceive both people and animals, but now you’re deceiving the mountains and rivers. Is it really true?"
Yun Ziliang found Zhou Xuan’s words sowhat amusing.
Zhou Xuan said, "Whether it’s true or not, I’ll perform my technique and you’ll see."
Rather than contemplating, Zhou Xuan, being action-oriented, imdiately entered a ditative state like an old monk, closing his eyes and concentrating intensely.
Yun Ziliang stood up, took a towel to wipe his sweat, and said, "Putting aside whether Xuanzi’s technique of ’Attuning with Heaven’ is effective or not, he has extraordinary patience, absolutely first-rate."
Whether a person can quickly enter the state of "ditation" is related to their ability to quickly concentrate their spiritual power; naturally, it’s also related to the surrounding environnt.
If the surrounding environnt is noisy, the difficulty of entering "ditation" increases significantly, especially when the tower’s inside is extrely hot, and the scorching heat makes it hard to stay calm.
In such circumstances, Zhou Xuan’s ability to quickly ditate shows that his concentration of spiritual power is extrely high.
"At this mont, only my ditative speed can compete with the great master’s."
Li Changxun’s strange competitiveness began to act up again, making Yun Ziliang feel slightly overwheld,
"Changxun, how do you manage to keep talking tough even when you’re being sowhat cowardly?"
"..." Li Changxun.
...
Zhou Xuan, in a ditative state, imagined himself as a river pebble, lying quietly in the stream.
The outside world’s vicissitudes and bustling noise no longer related to him.
"My heart is at ease, how can worldly storms and fleeting clouds concern ?"
Zhou Xuan seed to disappear from this world, rging into a new realm, truly attuning with heaven.
Whoosh~ Whoosh~
A gentle breeze brushed past Zhou Xuan’s body, and he slowly opened his eyes. He now stood at the bottom of the thirty-three-story tower.
He was still inside the tower, but it seed like he had entered a new world.
No monks were visible in the tower, and the initially plain white walls revealed countless crow carvings.
"Crow?"
Zhou Xuan recalled seeing a "human sheep boiling" tattoo on an infant’s belly at the inn, featuring a crow ready to fly.
He also rembered the elderly man’s words—the infant’s soul would transform into a crow during the human sheep boiling and fly to the Western Pure Land, accompanying the Ancient Buddha’s Golden Body. After three hundred and sixty years, they would reincarnate into a wealthy life.
"The old man’s words are half-true, half misleading rhetoric from the Mahayana Temple!"
The infants’ souls in Yunlu Town indeed turned into crows but did not enter the legendary "Western Pure Land."
They flew into this Mahayana Temple.
"But, what use does the Mahayana Temple have for these crow souls?"
Zhou Xuan walked to the wall, touched the crow carvings, and at the slightest contact, they seed to co to life, slightly quivering as if ready to fly.
Though just minor movents, nothing substantial occurred.
Zhou Xuan didn’t discover any significant insights and continued forward.
He followed the tower staircase to the second level and saw that the central Buddhist Hall had disappeared, replaced by a black iron wall.
He touched the iron wall, wiping it a bit, and found his fingers covered with black residue. Bringing it to his nose, there was the sll of coal ash, with a burning sawdust odor mixed in.
"How did the Buddhist Hall beco an iron wall?"
In the real-world Mahayana Tower—each level’s central section houses a towering Buddhist Hall.
Naturally, a Buddha statue stands inside these halls, consistent across all levels.
"Let’s go up and see."
Zhou Xuan wiped the coal residue off his hands with a cloth and continued upstairs.
The third level was the sa—no Buddhist Hall, only iron walls.
The fourth, fifth, sixth level... up to the twenty-third level, the highest open to visitors at the Mahayana Temple, had no Buddhist Halls, only iron walls.
"What lies behind the iron wall?"
Zhou Xuan’s curiosity grew stronger, and he continued ascending.
The twenty-fourth level turned out to be the turning point in unveiling the Mahayana Temple’s secrets.
Zhou Xuan looked up, and in the distance, clearly saw—surrounded by iron walls, there was a bottomless pit.
The pit’s depth wasn’t just about the levels one through twenty-three; it extended further underground.
Zhou Xuan gazed down into the pit, seeing boiling lava and fierce flas dancing within it.
The whole pit was a gigantic furnace, and the Mahayana Temple was rely one segnt extending from the furnace.
"Initially, I thought the Mahayana Temple was a large Pill Furnace, but now I see—the entire Yunlu Mountain is the grand Pill Furnace."
At this mont, Zhou Xuan recalled how Li Changxun ntioned slling the "Immortal Pill" scent when they first entered the mountain pass.
Back then, Zhou Xuan and his companions were still quite far from the Mahayana Temple.
Now, realizing the entire Yunlu Mountain is a Pill Furnace, Zhou Xuan understood Li Changxun’s remark.
"Using the mountain as a Pill Furnace, what kind of pill is this massive Mahayana Temple refining?"
"Every one hundred eighty years, a Shariputra appears at the tower’s top, and soone from the heavens cos to retrieve it."
Zhou Xuan quietly pondered, "That Shariputra must be the product of refining at this mountain-as-furnace scale, but... with such a vast mountain and a hundred eighty years, it only produces one Shariputra?"
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