Chapter 117 Nirvana Statue "This uses the mountain mist to create a fog barrier."...

As night fell, the temperature in the mountains plummeted, and the biting cold air penetrated his lungs, slightly alleviating Zhou Yaren's pain. Of course, it was also possible that the large handful of pills he had swallowed were gradually taking effect.

The wind and sand eroded the rock face, leaving deep grooves that pressed coldly against Zhou Yaren's back. Before he could ask any more questions, a series of chaotic footsteps echoed up the mountain path, indicating that there was more than one person approaching.

Zhou Yaren subconsciously tensed up and listened intently.

The footsteps of those who practice martial arts are usually very light and easily overlooked if you don't listen carefully, but the ones who came were clearly in a hurry.

"Senior brother, are you coming this way?"

This is the sound of the trees.

Those teenagers from Taihang Road actually caught up with us.

“There’s no mistake, that smiling man just went up the mountain, and here… listen to the wind!” Wen Yi was speaking when he suddenly saw Zhou Yaren emerge from behind an ancient pine tree, leaning on a wooden stick, her clothes stained with blood.

"Listen to the wind." Five teenagers rushed forward. Li Liuyun asked, "Are you alright?"

Zhou Yaren shook her head, exhausted, and swayed slightly.

Lin Mu immediately went to help him up: "Where is that smiling man?"

Zhou Yaren was deathly pale: "They must have left."

Lin Mu: "Then let's hurry up..."

“There should be a temple on the mountainside not far ahead,” Zhou Yaren interrupted. “I can’t walk any further, so I’d like to stop there for a while.”

But so much time has passed, I wonder if that dilapidated temple is still there. Perhaps it has long since collapsed and disappeared into the vast expanse of time. After all, temples inhabited by wicked monks are places people avoid like the plague, and if they are not regularly visited or maintained, they usually don't survive more than a hundred years.

But he still wanted to "take a look," even if only a few dilapidated ruins remained.

Since we're already here...

Wen Yi was tall and broad-shouldered. He took the initiative to squat down and carry Wen Fengzhi on his back.

Zhou Yaren couldn't refuse, and since her leg injury was indeed causing her great pain and making it difficult to walk, she accepted the young man's kind offer.

But……

The group of teenagers walked for a long time through the pine forest, circling around the mountainside, and slowly began to wonder: "Where is the temple?"

Zhou Yaren didn't know the exact location either. He held the Death Report Umbrella, which of course didn't give him directions: "It should be nearby."

So the boys continued on their way, and a mist gradually rose in the mountains. At first, it was thin and light as smoke, but as night fell, the mist grew thicker and thicker.

"It's foggy." Lian Zhao brushed aside the pine branches that were obscuring the view and led the way.

“Never mind…” Zhou Yaren was about to tell the boys to turn back when Li Liuyun said, “Strange.”

The mist and night enveloped them, making each person's face appear somewhat hazy and distorted.

Lin Mu quickly asked, "What's wrong, Senior Brother Liuyun?"

Li Liuyun practiced swordsmanship in the Taihang Mountains, but he was most skilled in formations. He had an extraordinary sensitivity to all kinds of strange formations, so the Celestial Master often mentioned that he had a natural talent for wisdom.

It's not unusual for mist and fog to rise in the deep mountains and high peaks, but Li Liuyun had an unusual intuition: "There's a formation here."

Yu Heqi was somewhat surprised: "What?"

Wen Yi pressed further, "What formation?"

Li Liuyun couldn't figure out what kind of formation it was for the time being, and always felt that the smog was a smokescreen.

The moisture rises from the foot of the mountain along the towering peaks. As night falls, the temperature at higher altitudes gradually drops, and the condensed moisture forms uphill mist that permeates the entire mountain forest.

The boys' legs were stuck in the milky white fog, and they gradually lost sight of the path beneath their feet. In this situation, it was easy to lose one's way and even more likely to fall off the cliff.

Zhou Yaren sensed the increasingly cold and damp atmosphere around them and reminded them to be extra careful.

Based on everyone's descriptions, Zhou Yaren recalled the scene she saw in the movie "The Death Umbrella". When Bai Yuan arrived, the mountains and fields were shrouded in mist, and the temple was hidden in the thick mist, with only a corner of its eaves vaguely visible.

The thick mist lingered for a long time, like a fog barrier that isolated the world.

Zhou Yaren subconsciously wanted to use empathy to inquire about Bai Yuan. The death umbrella was also shrouded in mystery, as if Bai Yuan had also walked through the fog for a long time before finally finding He Yan.

The milky white mist clumped together, and Lin Mu subconsciously waved his hand to brush it away, but he couldn't disperse it at all. His palm accidentally hit a pine needle, which actually pricked his hand quite sharply.

Lin Mu hissed, and Yu Heqi, who was beside him, asked, "What's wrong?"

Lin Mu didn't take it seriously: "It's nothing, I just got pricked by a pine needle."

The shrubs and vegetation in the deep mountains are diverse, and there are also thorny brambles growing everywhere. Because of the fog, it is difficult to avoid them, and they will occasionally scratch the hem of the boy's clothes.

Li Liuyun carefully observed each step, and whenever he stepped on some scattered pebbles, he would bend down to examine them one by one.

The gray stones were covered with a layer of moss, scattered among the grass stems and soil.

In fact, using stones as formations is the most common method. Every blade of grass and every tree can be used as a formation. True formation masters are skilled at adapting to local conditions, perfectly integrating the formations they place into the mountains and rivers, making them difficult for people to detect.

The area is covered with pine forests, and if you can't find your way out overnight, you'll definitely start to suspect that you're lost.

Li Liuyun plucked a clump of pine needles and poked them between his fingertips, then suddenly spoke: "Listen to the wind and you'll know."

"Your Highness, please speak?"

"Can you still ride the wind? Can your body withstand it?"

"It's not a big problem."

"Then I'll trouble you to explore this mountain."

The other teenagers were puzzled, but they didn't ask any further questions.

Zhou Yaren dismounted from Wen Yi's back, stood up straight with a wooden stick, and took a moment to regulate his breathing to suppress the chaotic energy surging in his lungs. He unfolded his folding fan, turned his hand into a gust of wind, and stirred up a thick fog like surging white waves.

The green robes and ribbons fluttered in the wind, carrying a hint of blood.

A long wind swept up the mountain mist, rising like clouds, stirring up the boundless vegetation and forming a huge white vortex that surrounded them.

Just as he expected, Li Liuyun said, "The wind can't blow it away, so the fog and mist gather in these mountains and forests, making it so thick that you can't tell where you are."

As the wind speed increased dramatically, Zhou Yaren chimed in, "This is using the mountain mist to create a fog barrier." Of course, it had little effect on the blind man who couldn't see.

Lian Zhao asked, "Could it be that something is hidden in these mountains?"

Zhou Yaren had a premonition: perhaps the temple where He Yan was located was in this place protected by the thick fog.

Li Liuyun pressed his brows tightly together, and through the huge vortex of wind, he could vaguely see a few pine trees standing still.

This was clearly not right. All the surrounding pines were strong and upright, swaying gracefully in the wind, but there were a few sturdy pines that remained motionless, not even the tiny pine needles trembling.

If he hadn't been able to hear the wind and control it, he probably would have had to go through a lot of trouble to find the key to the position.

"Stay close to me," Li Liuyun said, then strode toward the unmoving pine tree.

A swirling mist enveloped the mountains, and the tall, ancient pines resembled the spire of a pagoda. In that instant, Li Liuyun felt that these pines were just like the seven-story pagoda described by the Buddha.

As they stepped over the pagoda-like pine trees, a building with upturned eaves immediately appeared on the cloud-shrouded mountain ridge.

Holding the umbrella that announced the death, Zhou Yaren immediately saw a distant scene: Bai Yuan emerging from the vast fog and arriving alone in front of this Buddhist gate.

Lin Mu exclaimed in surprise, "There really is a Buddhist temple!"

Lian Zhao said, "This Buddhist temple is actually hidden in a formation deep in the mountains."

Li Liuyun approached step by step: "No."

Wen Yi, unaware of the situation, asked, "What do you mean, 'not'?"

“It’s not a Buddhist temple,” Li Liuyun said, “it’s a Buddhist pagoda.”

"Huh?" Yu Heqi didn't know much about Buddhism and Taoism. "A Buddhist pagoda and a Buddhist temple are pretty much the same, right?"

Zhou Yaren explained: "The pagoda is specifically for enshrining Buddha's relics, also known as sarira, and is also a burial mound for storing the remains of eminent monks after their death."

As they spoke, they pushed open the rusty tower door, which creaked loudly in the silent forest.

As the tower gates opened, the memories within the Death Umbrella were also unlocked, and they, along with Bai Yuan, stepped into this sealed land across a thousand years.

Last time, because the fog was too heavy in the Death Umbrella, everything was shrouded in mist and couldn't be seen clearly. In addition, Zhou Yaren's attention was entirely on He Yan, so she didn't have time to observe her surroundings.

Just then, Lin Mu's voice rang in my ears: "Hey? Why is this Buddha statue lying down?"

Lian Zhao followed and said, "This is a reclining Buddha."

Li Liuyun said, "It's also called the Nirvana Statue."

Zhou Ya finally saw clearly through the death umbrella the Nirvana statue of Shakyamuni that had made He Yan kneel for so long.

The altar is actually a Nirvana platform. The Buddha statue faces west with its head to the north, lying on its right side with its eyes slightly closed and its expression very peaceful.

"Senior brother, look over here!"

On the left side of the Nirvana statue, there is a mural depicting disciples supporting the coffin in mourning, with countless monks and nuns, and in the middle, a grand scene of cremation is carved.

The word "荼毗" means burning, and it refers to the cremation of a monk's body after his death.

The Buddha sits on the cremation platform, with a raging fire burning below him, and above him is a seven-story pagoda, signifying that the Buddha was enshrined in the pagoda after his Nirvana.

Through the umbrella that announced the death, Zhou Yaren saw He Yan, wrapped in a wide monk's robe, squatting in front of the stone wall with his back bent. His hands, covered with incense scars, held a chisel and carved numerous statues on the stone wall with each hammer blow.

Unable to resist, Zhou Ya moved forward and touched the engravings. He wondered in his heart if these were all carved by He Yan.

Why did He Yan, after converting to Buddhism, not enter a temple to cultivate himself, but instead stay in a pagoda deep in the mountains to carve Nirvana images and cremation pictures?

Why exactly?

The next moment, something was pulled out of the crevice in the Nirvana Platform by Lin Mu.

It was a stone box, quite heavy. Lin Mu almost tripped and fell, but luckily Li Liuyun next to him raised his hand to support it in time.

Lin Mu breathed a sigh of relief: "It's probably a relic. It would be ruined if I smashed it."

Li Liuyun opened the stone box, which was filled with ash.

Lin Mu was quite surprised: "Ash? How come it's a box of ash?" Since the scene of Nirvana and cremation was carved on the stone wall, Lin Mu guessed casually, "The ashes of monks and nuns?"

Li Liuyun stared intently at the engravings on the stone box and uttered, "Undying People."

Zhou Yaren suddenly turned her head.

The phrase "undying people" seemed to have stirred up a hornet's nest, causing a sudden landslide and a dramatic change in the weather, resulting in a sudden natural disaster.

The images came rushing in, fast as lightning, flashing past my eyes in a flurry, so fast that they were almost impossible to catch.

"The Undead?"

"The Undying".

"The immortals from the Classic of Mountains and Seas?"

"What does it mean that the stone casket is engraved with 'Undead'? Could it be that it contains the ashes of the Undead?"

"No way, isn't that just a legend?"

"There are no immortals in this world."

The deafening roars around him were so chaotic and mixed that Zhou Yaren couldn't tell whether they were the voices of the Taihang Road youths or the voices from the Death Umbrella.

“The immortal people are to the east; they live long and never die.”

"It is said that there is an immortal country where all the people are surnamed 'A', eat sweet wood, and live forever."

Zhou Yaren's heart trembled. The Undying Kingdom was inhabited by people all surnamed 'A'—A Zhaosu.

"Ah Zhaosu, your sins are unforgivable, you deserve to die ten thousand times!"

"Heaven has punished you for your sins. From this day forward, Azhaosu shall be banished from this land and never be allowed to return!"

"It is not immortality in the ordinary sense, but rather that after death, when buried in the ground, the heart or internal organs remain incorruptible, or for some other reason, it is unclear and the records are not detailed, but after several years or even a hundred years, one can be reborn."

Zhou Yaren felt dizzy and could no longer see any of the scenes in the Death Umbrella.

Countless voices chattered in my ears, each one deafening.

The phrase "buried in the ground after death...can be resurrected after several years or even a hundred years" almost made him lose his footing.

A Zhaosu, He Yan, Guan Lan... Having experienced so many identities, shouldn't he be reincarnated as himself in the end? Shouldn't he be going through one cycle of reincarnation after another?

In the end, it's not about reincarnation, but about rebirth, one rebirth after another.

That's why Bai Yuan once guarded A Zhaosu's grave so persistently, and then said to He Yan with certainty, "You are A Zhaosu."

That's why He Yan affirmed so painfully and helplessly: "I am not He Yan, I am A Zhaosu."

He is Azhaosu, an immortal.