The Bodhisattva simply smiled without saying a word.
As Sun Wukong laughed, he suddenly realized that something was not quite right.
Looking down, the colorful lotus throne beneath the Bodhisattva, which should have been bathed in Buddha's light and glow, now looked like a candle being covered by a tattered sack, with several parts of it dark.
—If Sun Wukong had ever been to Earth, he would know that this looks like a neon light that has lost power.
Upon closer inspection, it became clear that many lotus seeds on the lotus platform had been removed, leaving only pitted holes, which didn't look very appealing.
“The Bodhisattva is very frugal. There is a five-colored jeweled lotus platform in the lotus pond, but she is reluctant to use it. Instead, she sits on a tattered lotus platform.”
As soon as Sun Wukong said it casually, a dark aura appeared on the Bodhisattva's gentle face:
"...This is the Five-Colored Lotus Platform."
Sun Wukong: "???"
The man and the monkey stared at each other in bewilderment when they heard the guardians of the Purple Bamboo Forest announce that Sudhana had returned.
This was the first time Sun Wukong had ever seen "murderous intent" on Guanyin's face.
"Sudhana? Where did you go just now? Do you know what happened to my five-colored lotus platform? Why is there only half a bottle of nectar left in my jade vase?"
The Red Boy, who had just been in high spirits, froze, looking at the sky and the ground but not at Guanyin.
Guanyin smiled slightly, gently raised her wrist, and with a flick of the willow branch, Red Boy was suspended upside down, a large pile of things falling out of his bellyband:
A half-eaten candied hawthorn, a bite taken out of maltose and sugar cake, half a delicate pastry, several fruits offered before the Buddha, some children's toys, dried fish specially fed to the piglet, and a dozen or so lotus seeds gleaming with golden light—
“I took some marbles, and later when I saw that little phoenix call me senior brother, I gave her a few. I fed the nectar in the jade bottle to my mount, and it grew much taller in a single day… Great Bodhisattva, I know I was wrong. I shouldn’t have stolen the koi you kept in the pond, nor should I have pulled up your newly planted lotus flowers, and I certainly shouldn’t have stolen the offerings before the Buddha—”
Red Boy confessed everything in one breath with a bitter face, while Sun Wukong, who was watching the commotion, covered his face.
This isn't admitting a mistake; it's adding fuel to the fire.
Guanyin simply smiled gently:
"It's nothing, it's nothing—"
No one knows exactly what happened that day, only that Red Boy's screams carried far and wide, startling the birds in the Purple Bamboo Forest.
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