Chapter 155 Prajnaparamita Is this the other shore after the sea of suffering? ...
Xue Chao, who was originally monitoring the situation in the Pure Land through the shared access he had autonomously accessed via his chronic illness, suddenly asked, "Why did you kill the boss?"
Jiang Ming chuckled and said, "You never ask, I thought you weren't interested."
"I wasn't interested before."
"What's different now?" Jiang Ming leaned closer and gently embraced Xue Chao, like the thin, cool moonlight draped over him in the dead of night. "Is your state of mind different?"
He insisted on listening to Xue Chao's heartbeat, making it impossible for Xue Chao to lie, but Xue Chao admitted: "Yes, it's you..."
The sound of artillery fire interrupted their conversation.
After the initial success of the Compassionate Voyage Project, the consciousness group uploaded to the Mechanical Spirit Tower awakened, and this sea of consciousness formed an electronic space exactly like the Pure Land, named "Paradise".
Bliss is the nest of consciousness. The implanted chips are transported to the wealthy district via the waterways by mechanical spirit towers. Robots line the waterways, inserting the chips into their bodies and acquiring their souls.
Holder said that most of the robots in the wealthy area were independently developed by Shenzhou Corporation in order to establish themselves in the Pure Land, but now they have all benefited Wuliang Temple.
People's useless bodies are killed by the virus carried by the prayer wheels, leaving them limp on the ground, and cleaned up by robots like garbage.
After a dizzying experience reminiscent of time travel, Xue Chao awoke again. He tried to raise his hand, but felt a sharp pain in his head. Countless hands rose up, and he suddenly opened his eyes. The Pure Land was right before him—he was now a statue of the Thousand-Handed and Thousand-Eyed Guanyin.
His consciousness replaced that of Subhuti and was uploaded to the Thousand-Hand Guanyin statue.
Wuliang Temple did not get what it wanted.
After overcoming their initial confusion and fear, the new humans who had completed their mechanical evolution began to attack each other more boldly.
Shedding their frail bodies, ironically, made them truly unrestrained.
Novelty, anger, some are ecstatic about evolution, while others feel they are already dead and vent their frustrations.
Players with high mental strength like Naga and the twins are few and far between. The complete mechanization of their bodies causes most players to lose their mental stability after losing sanity, and they also get caught up in this chaotic battle.
Because of their greater combat experience, they became the leaders who stirred up trouble, almost like they were on drugs!
It doesn't matter if they fall down, as long as Bliss remains intact, the cloned chips and mass-produced robots will allow them to stand up again, and they will gain immortality.
Pure Land, thanks to the power of Wuliang Temple, has lived more peacefully for decades than other regions in the background, and now it has made up for the madness it missed in one night.
Is this the other shore after the sea of suffering?
The Baoxiangyuan Opera House has been reduced to ruins by the gangs who were venting their anger. Boss Tang has nowhere to perform, so he performs in the Blissful Electronic Space, where the opera house will always remain.
She casually flicked her water sleeves, but there was no melody; it was like the ramblings of a madwoman, saying irrelevant things: "Love arises without knowing its origin, and deepens with each passing moment. The living can die for it, and the dead can live for it. If one cannot die for the living, or be brought back to life after death, then this is not the ultimate expression of love..."[1]
As she sang these words, her affectionate gaze swept outwards, looking into the virtual paradise and the real-world sanctuary, landing on whomever she looked. She paused, then rose again in a loud voice.
"Why must the love in a dream be unreal? Are there not many people in the world who dream?..."[1]
Main Quest 4 has been updated.
【Main Quest 4-2 "Phase Two of the Compassionate Journey Project": I will lead them all to Nirvana without remainder and deliver them from suffering.】[2]
[Mission Details: Advance the second phase of the Compassionate Voyage Project.]
The Pure Land has fallen into a chaotic melee of machines, while the Paradise is the Pure Land of the past, where people still look like humans, and are natural people without prosthetic bodies.
Xue Chao found a monk in the cemetery in the Pure Land and asked, "What is the true purpose of the Compassionate Voyage Project?"
“Even after they have overcome the four sufferings, they are still human beings and have not become Buddhas. Even if they reach the other shore, the other shore will become another human realm.” The monk squinted his eyes. “Their suffering is not physical, but spiritual. They have no reverence.”
Wuliang Temple terrified them? Xue Chao suddenly understood what the monk meant. Even if it was Wuliang Temple, they only felt fear, not respect.
“They need a god.” The monk’s face flashed, and for a moment it was a jumble of gibberish, all shadows, not like a monk, but like a demon. “Mechanical evolution is the goal of the researcher that Shenzhou Corporation found. It is the first phase of the Cihang Project, so he tried to become the abbot and become a part of us. The second phase of the Cihang Project is to recreate a god in the Pure Land and awaken people’s sense of awe.”
The power of Wuliang Temple is not strong enough. Even if Amitabha Buddha's golden light shines all over the Pure Land, people will not feel that they are facing a god or Buddha.
Therefore, they want to create a god in the space of consciousness, a god with absolute power.
The core of this god is Subhuti; fill him in, and the boss is formed.
The main quest 4-2 is to advance the hidden boss battle. Players are divided into two factions, attacking each other, but in the end they all have the same goal.
But the core was killed prematurely, just like how Helena wouldn't emerge from the cocoon of the Goddess of Light's butterfly without Bai Bai, so now the boss can't become one.
As soon as Jiang Ming appeared, Xue Chao knew the boss was doomed, so he changed his strategy.
He needs to find the secret of the final mission and also find the traitor. Killing the boss's reserve is more advantageous for him, so that the game won't end immediately.
But he doesn't think that a next boss won't emerge.
In the Joy and Sorrow Mountain instance, if the main quest fails, the system will guide the boss to awaken in order to continue the game. In this instance, the system can guide a consciousness to replace the current Subhuti and become the new boss core.
Jiang Ming said that since becoming the boss NPC is predetermined, finding a backup will take time.
Therefore, the second phase of the Compassionate Voyage Plan could not be launched for a long time, which was the perfect time for him to take action.
Xue Chao wasn't worried about the boss for the time being; he was worried about the traitor.
During the Dharma assembly, a player with a chronic illness gave him a new headset. Xue Chao received the Guanyin statue and asked, "Old man, looking for..."
He stopped talking, and a mechanical spider the size of a small car crawled sideways across the pagoda, quickly reaching the Thousand-Hand Guanyin statue. The smallest of its eight eyes opened and handed over a storage chip.
Xue Chao: "The 'spider' of intractable disease?"
The spider nodded.
Xue Chao first connected to the electronic donation box, which then malfunctioned, reversing the flow of the donation channel and causing the components that had been transferred to spray out like a money-scattering boy.
Upon connecting to other palaces, he found the walls filled with red warning symbols, rendering them unusable. A bad feeling rose within him.
Xue Chao didn't know how long it would take for the spider to tame its eight legs, but he knew it would take time to adapt to a thousand hands and a thousand eyes. When he connected the chip to the device, the other hands that moved along with it swatted the spider away.
When the spider finally crawled back in a disheveled state, Xue Chao said "sorry," then held up the chip and approached the spider, seemingly trying to insert it into the spider's interface.
The spider skillfully maneuvered its eight legs to dodge the attacking hand, like it was tap dancing: "Are you trying to ruin me...? This is what the boss gave you, only you can get this information! Little boss... new boss!"
A bad feeling grew stronger, and Xue Chao stopped: "So what is this?"
"Your former boss said this was something he promised you, and now it's all yours."
Where are the others?
“I don’t know,” Spider said. “The former boss wouldn’t report his whereabouts to us. You’re his student, so if you don’t know, then we certainly don’t, boss.” They were just weapons.
Xue Chao was enlightened. Before the dungeon started, Holder shared some experience and chatted casually. He said, "This isn't the first time I've worked for the company. I've made contributions and worked hard, so as I approach retirement, the company is giving me benefits."
In this instance, players don't need to sign a waiver to bring in S-level items. Even though high popularity and high room ranking are required, the dual-host setup makes it less difficult.
This is what Xue Chao considered to be the "benefit".
But as an excellent veteran employee, Holder actually has other advantages. For example, since there are two hosts, if one of the hosts quits midway... the other host will be there to cover for him.
Host #1 has reached the maximum score.
[Host #1 is leaving the stage...]
Therefore, as long as the popularity value of this game is enough for the last bit of points that Holder is missing, Holder can leave the game first and retire with his ticket.
As for what happens next in the dungeon, whether the popularity rating will drop, and where the traitor is, those are all Xue Chao's problems alone—the old man has called him to take responsibility! No wonder he was asked to "shoulder the heavy burden"!
Xue Chao's face was grim, and the thousand eyes of the Guanyin statue searched for Holder's whereabouts: "Where did he last appear?"
Spider said that Xue Chao couldn't catch up with the Shenzhou Corporation headquarters building in the wealthy district, but Holder's consciousness must have been uploaded to Paradise.
Xue Chao carefully removed one of the ritual implements from the Guanyin statue. The chip destroyed the implement again. If the chip were inserted into the Guanyin statue, this behemoth might collapse again.
Only he can obtain information... The Guanyin statue once had the consciousness of this Subhuti, and it has been washed away by the virus that is about to be discovered, so it is not absolutely safe.
So Xue Chao pulled his body out of the Guanyin statue. After waking up, he hid his body inside the Guanyin statue and inserted the chip into the back of his head.
This connector was temporarily created for him by the chair, and it also has a prayer wheel program. However, after his consciousness was uploaded, these prosthetics completed their mission, and the program was automatically destroyed. Now it's just for show.
However, after connecting to this chip, a large amount of information flooded into Xue Chao's mind. It was all the information that Holder had collected, including information from inside and outside the copy.
His overloaded brain struggled to process the information, while his consciousness released a shimmering butterfly in ecstasy, searching for Holder.
Holder's consciousness had met him in the electronic space of the cemetery; the morpho butterfly had cast a shadow on him, making a mark.
He followed the trail of debris, but soon the system notified him that "Host #1 has successfully exited the stage," and he took over the room.
Xue Chao punched the tree in frustration, and the leaves were sucked away halfway down the tree. The paradise was greeted by its first sandstorm.
He thought it was simulating the weather in a real paradise, but then he realized it was unnecessary. Wasn't the purpose of paradise to create a utopia?
Striving for this kind of realism in a virtual world? You might as well go back to living a hard life!
The entire scene of the Blissful Space turned black, and the streets, buildings, thick clouds in the sky, and living beings were outlined by neon lights, like scrolls being drawn in the darkness, with the scriptures flowing within them.
The dust storm was composed of violently rotating scriptural codes, higher than the clouds, like the boundary of paradise, a wall blocking all living beings.
The second phase of the Compassionate Voyage Project!
The instance finds a new consciousness that becomes the boss's soul.
They are definitely not ordinary people, and they have a place in the story of the dungeon.
The sandstorm is located at the electronic cemetery. The "cocoon" that is brewing the boss already contains the consciousness of the previous Subhuti. It is only missing the final finishing touch of the soul. Will it be another monk from Wuliang Temple? Or, Boss Tang?
So Xue Chao went against the retreating crowd and rushed into the sandstorm. The closer he got to the Wuliang Temple in the Blissful Realm, the more realistic the resistance he felt. A little bit of the scriptures on his body scattered and flowed into the sandstorm, which was a bit of his consciousness being sucked away.
He turned around, and the scriptures on people's bodies flowed over, like shooting stars streaking across the sky, gathering towards that dust storm "planet" that attracted all things.
This is treating their consciousnesses as nourishment! Is it because they can't find a boss core to replace this Subhuti, so they're taking a little from each of them?
He crawled into the Thousand-Hand Guanyin statue in the Pure Land, occupying the highest point of Wuliang Temple, and released the shimmering butterflies at close range, trying to see clearly whether these consciousnesses gathered together to merge into a collective or to see who would emerge victorious after a competition. He wanted to see what the core of the boss really was.
But he overestimated himself and the poor butterfly; the storm was too thick for him to see anything clearly.
The Broken-Winged Morpho Butterfly could be considered the remains of the boss Helena. He thought that since it was also a boss that had been conceived, this child would discover something, but the butterfly fluttered back and chose to avoid it.
A strong wind was blowing, but the butterfly hovered in the air. Xue Chao didn't know if it would be crushed, so he reached out and caught it. The moment he touched the butterfly, his heart stopped for a moment, as if the air around him had been sucked away, and he felt a sharp pain.
He felt fear, and something even more intense than fear...
A fierce gale swept across the entire area; it was an electronic storm.
Xue Chao felt all his senses fail him, his vision went black, and his ears were ringing.
[Ding dong! Hidden BOSS battle has been triggered!]
[Dungeon Boss: Prajna]
[Defeat the BOSS to win the hidden BOSS battle! Clear the dungeon!]
Let your passion and youthful vigor flow, and slay the gods of war!
Prajna? Doesn't Prajna mean supreme wisdom?
Xue Chao struggled to open his eyes. Right, Tibetan Buddhism also has Prajnaparamita, who can give birth to all Buddhas.
Even with all the Buddhas presiding over Wuliang Temple, it couldn't evoke people's reverence. Choosing the Buddha Mother as the new deity was indeed appropriate...
The golden Buddha Mother with one face and four arms sits in the vajra posture on a lotus moon disc. She is larger than the holographic projection of Amitabha Buddha, towering into the sky. Her jeweled crown pierces through the clouds, like a mountain standing on the clouds. She is adorned with colorful skirts and necklaces, and her appearance is solemn and dignified.
The Buddha Mother slowly awoke, opened her eyes, and with just this one movement, another storm was stirred up.
The Buddha Mother of Bliss fell silent because of this terrifying power, and people looked up at her in fear.
Xue Chao also watched His every move warily, but in the long silence, His first action was to raise His noble head, as if looking up at the sky.
But He is higher than the heavens, what is there to aspire to? Look at the tiny new world before us?
...
Look up, gaze at the sky?
The first thing I should do upon fully returning to the real world is look up.
Ideally, it would be a sunny day with sunshine, so I can see the real sky.
Xue Chao stared intently at the head of the Buddha Mother. A small patch of the electronic cloud was dispersed by her, like the rain stopping and the clouds clearing, revealing the night sky. The scripture code was like stars. He felt his blood run cold.
He recalled the conversation he and Jiang Ming hadn't finished.
He witnessed Helena's birth; perhaps the boss also grew up little by little, like a child, nurtured by the story of the dungeon.
How did Ke Ming meet the other bosses? Did he even know the bosses in their incomplete state? Were they innocent and ignorant in the same "womb" before their birth? Or did the bosses also have past lives?
His thoughts drifted aimlessly over many answers, but he grasped nothing.
Now he knew the answer. He also remembered what Pu Fengchun had shown him during the disastrous inspiration test.
He not only heard Zhao Yingtang chanting the Rebirth Mantra, but he also glimpsed a secret... a shocking deception.
He suddenly thought of Bai Bai. Even though she had lost her head, he sometimes felt that she was watching him. What was she? Was she also a host? Was she a player?
The fear that had puzzled him, and the anger that was even more intense than the fear, finally found its place, becoming crystal clear, as if filling the void in his heart.
With a majestic gesture, the Buddha Mother raised her hands, and an electronic storm appeared throughout the Pure Land, engulfing the helpless consciousnesses within it.
To give them the most realistic fear, their senses were fully restored, and the code that flowed out was red blood, so that they could truly feel pain and despair.
In the Pure Land, due to spiritual fear, the machines slowed down, some trembled, and others collapsed, launching indiscriminate attacks.
The players are among them.
Popularity soared, comments section was enthusiastic, and the room topped the charts.
We don't know who fell, or whose blood was spilled before our eyes. The unknown dangers packaged everything as a "game," but this is not a game. They may be called "players," but they are human lives.
A gust of wind blew by, and Xue Chao glanced sideways. A sigh, seemingly crackling with electricity, seemed to echo from the Hall of Rebirth, saying:
"Namo Amitabha Buddha".
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