Chapter 151 Prajnaparamita "Even if it existed in the past, it still exists now..."
A butterfly with a broken wing landed on his shoulder, gently fluttering its wings and casting the shadow of its other half.
The butterflies appearing on their own indicate that this is no longer the real world.
Is this a song about "The Peony Pavilion"? So they're in a "dream".
A futuristic sci-fi world... this might be a world of consciousness.
Boss Tang was still singing solo, and she precisely skipped over the lyrics of everyone else, as if there were ghosts on stage that Xue Chao couldn't see. Xue Chao asked, "Boss Tang, don't you have any questions?"
She sang a few more lines, then paused quietly: "Didn't you have something to ask me?"
She didn't make things difficult for him about the biological samples used to start the theater, as if she had expected it. Leaving him alone was to give him a chance to ask questions and to thank him for stopping the troublemakers.
She looked at him like the gaze of a figure in an old painting, blurred and indistinct across a century of dampness, leaving only the ghostly aura of bygone years.
Xue Chao, however, sensed another gaze lurking in the shadows, faint yet ever-present, which was none other than the vengeful ghost waiting for its chance to strike.
He suddenly remembered the plum blossoms in the garden and the line "gazing until the end of Meiguan Pass"... The defector Li Changying's forum account was called "Mei" and his profile picture was a plum blossom.
There's also the fallen plum tree in the courtyard of the Xibeishan West Gate, the old opera scripts piled up in the side room, the blood-written message "We'll meet again at the plum root," and the village chief's deceased younger brother who once had an opera troupe...
She is Li Changying, who betrayed the company to rescue the players in the dungeon.
He thought they would hide, but he didn't expect them to be so blatant... Have they already been assimilated by the dungeon?
The female voice on the record in Pu Fengchun's memory was her. She might be the one guarding the secret to the final victory, which makes his actions all the more intriguing.
Xue Chao's vigilance reached its peak, but just before he could speak, he changed the question: "Should Boss Tang know how to get into Wuliang Temple?"
Boss Tang looked at him for a while, as if to make sure that this was what he wanted to ask: "They say that all beings are equal and there is no discrimination. They take it as their responsibility to save people. So there is no threshold there. Anyone can enter. You can just walk in through the main gate openly and honestly."
She spoke with obvious disdain, then with a listless flick of her sleeves, she continued singing, ignoring any further questions Xue Chao might ask.
He had already figured out what she meant.
Because of the prestige of Wuliang Temple and various rumors surrounding it, players sneak in or infiltrate the temple, which naturally leads them to be perceived as having ill intentions, causing them to miss the real way to enter, which is actually quite simple.
He stepped out of the theater, and in a moment of disbelief, found himself back in reality, surrounded by a captivated audience, while the performance on stage continued unabated.
Xue Chao quietly left his seat. Boss Tang's beautiful voice was melodious and penetrating. Even after he was two blocks away, he could still hear that melodious tune.
“Originally, the flowers were in full bloom, but now they are all left to broken wells and crumbling walls. What a pity for such a beautiful day and lovely scenery! Whose courtyard now enjoys such delightful pleasures…”[1]
The voice came through the earpiece that Huang Haitao quietly slipped to Xue Chao: "Little boss, there are no weapons backstage."
"Understood." Xue Chao turned off his earpiece, hid in his curly hair, glanced at the plaque of "Wuliang Temple," and stepped inside.
The main gate was wide and imposing, but no one went in or out. When he walked alone through the temple gate, which was three times his height, he truly felt the insignificance of all living beings being looked down upon.
Palaces, towers, and Buddha statues lined the quiet temple grounds, but Xue Chao didn't see any humans or robots.
He walked to the west and saw the Hall of Rebirth. There seemed to be sounds coming from inside, like scriptures being played, but he couldn't enter through the electronic door, so he had to go somewhere else first.
As he rounded a small mountain-sized statue of Ksitigarbha Bodhisattva, a statue of Guanyin suddenly caught his eye in his suddenly expansive view.
Located on the left side of the main hall is the Thousand-Handed and Thousand-Eyed Guanyin statue.
It has eleven sides in total, three each at the top, middle, and bottom, with red, green, and white colors interspersed. These nine sides are calm sides, the top side is a three-eyed angry side, and the top side is the face of Amitabha Buddha, which is a miniature projection. The giant holographic Buddha statue is expanded from this point.
The Thousand-Hand Guanyin statue usually uses forty-two hands to represent a thousand hands. In addition to the two hands clasped together, there are twenty hands on each side, with each hand representing twenty-five hands.
But this Guanyin statue actually has a thousand hands. The two hands in the center are clasped together, and behind her, like a peacock spreading its tail, countless hands extend out, forming a three-dimensional metal wall.
Each hand has an eye and holds various ritual implements.
As Xue Chao looked up at the Guanyin statue, a thousand electronic eyes opened, lowered in unison, and focused their gaze on him.
Even he paused.
Besides the horror and chills, there was also a strange sense of intimacy. Perhaps it was because he had seen so many terrifying eyeballs that this scene felt like an unexpected encounter with an acquaintance.
He even thought the Guanyin statue was quite aesthetically pleasing, with so many eyes... Not to mention Wuliang Temple, it wouldn't be a problem to monitor the entire Pure Land; not an inch of land could escape his gaze...
"Hiss, is he having an occupational hazard as a host?" Xue Chao frowned. Could it be that his previous experience with AI had triggered some kind of perverted addiction?
That's not right either. In his second instance, all he wanted was to "stay alive." Sure enough, it was that unlucky wine. He regretted not using his points to redeem the Emotional Suppressor.
Other Buddha statues are surrounded by buildings, but this Thousand-Hand Guanyin stands alone, forming a continuous wall between heaven and earth, looking down on all others.
Xue Chao guessed that the Guanyin statue was the temple, so he fired the grappling hook gun to try to trigger the magical artifacts and find the temple entrance.
He first tried it at a low position. Although a thousand electronic eyes were following him, the arm did not move to drive him down.
When he finally discovered that the vase on the third hand on the left was the passage, he was surprised to find that he could enter the Guanyin statue without any hindrance. At that moment, he heard a commotion on the other end of his earpiece; something had happened outside.
The sounds of weapons humming, bullets whistling through the air, people running away, and curses filled the air in complete chaos.
"What's wrong?" Xue Chao turned on the watch's light function, but the light was limited, and he could only see that the metal wall was divided into sections. He searched the dark and empty Guanyin statue for any hidden devices.
Huang Haitao's curses rang out: "No need to look anymore, someone must have released that weapon, its destructive power... damn! This is a boss battle!"
As soon as he finished speaking, Xue Chao finally found the connector. He pushed in the machine syringe containing his own blood, and countless screens lit up at the same time, displaying everything that had happened in the Pure Land in front of him.
For a moment he thought this was the host's panel, but there were at most a hundred panels, while here there were a whole thousand screens, each connected to one of the arms of the Guanyin statue.
The flying weapon was speeding through the skies above the Pure Land, its shape appearing as if it had been pieced together.
The main body resembles a wheel, a treasure of the Wheel-Turning King. Inside the plate are six sacrificial vessels made of imitation jade, with a lid on top resembling cymbals. A vajra extends downward from the center, surrounded by vajra bells and trailing long banners.
Borrowing the shapes of Buddhist ritual implements, they were pieced together in a haphazard way, but the overall color was consistent, and the silvery-white metal shell coldly reflected the bombed-out sacred land.
It doesn't resemble the work of a true Buddhist; rather, it sounds like the "when in Rome, do as the Romans do" approach of an outsider like China Mobile.
This thing is incredibly fast. Every time it stops at a certain location, a component falls off, sinks into the ground, and transforms into a turret, simultaneously locking onto any living being within a hundred miles and firing indiscriminately.
A mass of people died; in some places, before people even had a chance to shout, it became completely silent.
This is the main weapon that Shenzhou Company transported this time, "Shana". "Ninety Shana make one thought, and one thought is one Shana that goes through nine hundred births and deaths"[2]...Weapons of this level cannot be brought in casually anywhere, and gangs and monks have no reason to destroy the land where they live.
The carjacking incident was orchestrated by Shenzhou Company to deliberately lure people into the robbery, all so that the weapons could be safely left in the Pure Land.
Xue Chao checked both the surveillance footage inside the Guanyin statue and the players' camera positions. After realizing that the weapons were not in the theater, the players had already retreated. He finally managed to find the surveillance footage from the theater.
The audience members hid in the second and third floor stage, backstage building, and closed corridors, their faces showing fear or gloom, but not the fear of their lives being threatened.
On the first-floor stage, Boss Tang was still singing in a low voice. Behind her, on the dark electronic wall, the dense text of the "Mahaprajnaparamita Sutra" flowed up and down continuously.
The walls, pillars, and plaques illuminated with scriptures, the beams carved with lotus flowers, and all other places related to Buddhism and equipped with technological devices were displaying flowing scriptures, deflecting the fleeting shots.
Xue Chao had a flash of inspiration and went to look at the shops between the slums and the gang district. Sure enough, the small dilapidated temple was also circulating scriptures. The surrounding area was riddled with ruins, but it alone, though damaged, stood firm.
The place where the Pure Land is least damaged is Wuliang Temple.
Even fireworks should make a loud noise, but the temple was solemn and quiet, not a sound could get in, as if it were two different worlds.
The bullets fired were like fireworks; they exploded before even touching the "sky" above Wuliang Temple.
The host panel has video call permissions, but can only call one person. This is not an investigation team instance, so he cannot use the dice system to send messages to all players.
Although the player had the superpower beforehand, the speed and destructive power of that instant were too much for them to handle head-on.
Without hesitation, he put the helmet from the seat on his head, and several wires were inserted into his unconnected native brain, with electrodes attached to key locations.
The images that Qianyan saw flooded into his mind. He didn't open his eyes and almost thought he had turned back into "Yotner" from Giant Harbor.
Anyone who has worked with AI knows that without any operation, as long as the user's consciousness is active and they "want" to do something, the command is issued and executed immediately.
Within the Pure Land, in a fortified Buddhist site, several bright red characters for "refuge" suddenly appeared amidst the scrolling scriptures.
Other components that did not form a physical location but contained Buddhist elements also triggered Xue Chao's warning, prompting them to flee into the former's refuges.
Players had long realized that relying solely on superpowers wouldn't suffice for this dungeon, and they had all acquired some local technological products to varying degrees. Faced with an imminent crisis of death, they received the information and immediately headed there.
The number of players dropped sharply at first, then slowed down, and after accounting for those who had already lost players, it remained at around 70-80 people.
After stabilizing the casualties, Xue Chao began to think about other things. This operation gave him a direct understanding of the control Buddhism had over the Pure Land... News of him could be found in almost every area, from temples of all sizes to high-tech, wealthy neighborhoods that outwardly complied but inwardly defied the rules, to gang-run neighborhoods that caused constant disturbances, to abandoned slums, and other neighborhoods.
People in the Saha world, in an attempt to appear cultured, worship small Buddhist shrines; gangs turn waste into treasure with their robot series codenamed "Arhat"; and even red-light districts display images of Guanyin.
Furthermore, the prosthetics and small parts worn by people in the Dharma-ending Age often contain scriptures and codes.
One player, who was already equipped with a prosthetic arm, saw his message on his arm and was quite startled.
After they all self-destructed in an instant, the crippled individuals were collected by robots from their respective neighborhoods, and the grotesque land gradually began to breathe again. No one cared about Xue Chao.
It seems that Wuliang Temple is indeed a place where people can come and go as they please, and it doesn't matter what happens. The thousand Buddha eyes just look down from above... But it is in this way that it silently infiltrates every aspect of the Pure Land.
Since no one was bothering him, Xue Chao didn't consider himself an outsider and naturally started looking through the surveillance footage.
As the rich woman said, he has a naturally sharp mind, unlike the locals who can have their chips removed. He has an interface, and his actions in his moment of panic were actually very dangerous.
In truth, his perception in the heat of the moment was quite subtle... He was in the safest place, in the best defensive fortress, so why was he in such a hurry?
Xue Chao was multitasking, reviewing surveillance footage for clues, monitoring camera positions to grasp the current situation, and dealing with a minor emotional dilemma.
But this last part annoyed him so much that he simply blamed it all on bad luck, cursed the freak a few times, and then put it down.
Because Xue Chao intervened in time and provided important clues, many players were saved, but inevitably injured.
The shortage of healing potions has forced players to modify their bodies and equip themselves with prosthetics. Moreover, given this boss-like attack, even those who are not seriously injured want to arm themselves as much as possible.
Therefore, for the next period of time, players will be seen in places such as illegal clinics and prosthetic shops, or they will use the information and connections obtained from side quests to change their identities.
Xue Chao was able to witness the process of equipping prosthetics. He discovered that all the replaced prosthetic components would rotate through a circle of scriptures when activated, like running code.
The prosthetic doctor called it "Mani". Xue Chao thought for a moment and realized that this strange syllable should be taken from the six-syllable mantra "Om Mani Padme Hum".
"This procedure is also called 'prayer wheel.' The prosthetic bodies you can obtain in the Pure Land all have this. It has the eight-syllable mantra or the six-syllable mantra on it, which are the mantras revered by Tibetan Buddhism in the Dharma-ending Age."
"They believe that the more times they recite the scriptures, the more devout they are to the Buddha, and the more they can be freed from the suffering of reincarnation. So, in addition to reciting the scriptures, they also make prayer wheels, put the scrolls of the six-syllable mantra inside the prayer wheels, and shake them by hand. Each rotation is equivalent to reciting the scripture once."
The cyborg doctor looked up and said, "It's just that monks keep chanting about gods and Buddhas all day long, and they're the ones who say we're in an era of Dharma extinction. Isn't that contradictory? Just treat it like their company logo."
The quack doctor used rather sophisticated language, while the unscrupulous businessman in another camera position cursed, "It's like a dog urinating, marking the place with its stench of urine."
Players accustomed to the supernatural and bizarre are cautiously seeking confirmation: "Are there really no ghosts or gods in this world?"
“Even if they existed in the past, they are dead now,” the cyborg doctor said indifferently. “All the myths recorded in the end times are imaginings born from humanity’s ignorance of the world in earlier times. Because they were beyond our control, we were in awe of them. Now look at the world. There is no unknown here. The world is just a resource.”
"Ancient humans said that they were created by Nuwa from clay, which is a joke in this era where gene sequences can be arranged at will. They also said that there is a palace on the moon where the fairy Chang'e lives, but now that place is the second extraterrestrial base of Shenzhou Corporation."
The player was taken aback and blurted out, "So you don't celebrate the Mid-Autumn Festival?"
The prosthetic doctor asked in confusion, "What is the Mid-Autumn Festival?"
The player opened his mouth, then closed it again.
Even if these people have some knowledge of the past of "ancient humans," it is only because of the awe-inspiring presence of Wuliang Temple that they know some Buddhist-related content.
The others have long since perished with the gods, leaving behind at most one or two names that are scorned.
Another player, whose prosthetic body had been activated, slowly woke up and was still getting used to the new half-faced mechanical mask. He said slowly, "It's the day when everyone can enjoy the moon together. I haven't seen the moon since I entered the Pure Land. Bad weather."
"Good weather is rare, and the moon is the private property of Shenzhou Corporation. They only light up that planet on the anniversary of their occupation of the moon, so that the light can reach the earth. But there's not much to see. What you see when you look up is their logo printed on the surface of the moon."
Having just survived a bombing attack, the black doctor still had many customers. He didn't care whether the player had any adverse reactions; he simply patted the player's newly acquired shoulder before leaving.
"Instead of thinking about these trivial things, we should try our best to live until tomorrow. Amitabha."
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