Chapter 130 The Most Savage and Shameless Bandits of Xiawei Temple
[My God... was the headless stone demon really this kind and gentle before?!]
[This headless stone ghost truly embodies the compassion of Buddha... It's hard to imagine what he went through to become like that...]
Although the Headless Stone Ghost didn't appear particularly dangerous during the live stream of this dungeon run, the almost ingrained vigilance and wariness shown by the Butterfly Monk towards it, along with the nearly materialized resentment emanating from it, suggested just how ferocious the Headless Stone Ghost truly was. It's just that the Great Demon King was too powerful, managing to tame this terrifying being into a docile and obedient large beast.
The fragmented scenes in the illusion were too disjointed and kept jumping around. I couldn't tell at all whether the rehmannia flower was transplanted from somewhere by the headless stone ghost or created by him. If it was transplanted, then the time-controlled world he was in might be...
[Damn, when I saw the cave with rehmannia flowers in the headless stone ghost snow mountain, I was wondering if this male guest had kidney deficiency and was planting rehmannia flowers in his place. They looked so out of place in the snow! Now the mystery is solved, it wasn't kidney deficiency, thank goodness!]
[I'm dying of laughter, hahaha! But I still want to say that the kidney in Traditional Chinese Medicine is not the same as the kidney in Western anatomy!]
【What are you guys thinking? Let's not even talk about whether there's any possibility of scenes in 'Heartbeat 1000%' requiring male guests' kidney function to occur; even if it did, we wouldn't see it at all in the live stream!】
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It's difficult to determine the dynasty based on the clothing and appearance of artisans, but the clothing and appearance of ordinary people, especially the wealthy or powerful, can reveal a lot of information in this regard.
Yu Naixin saw the elegant young lady in a colorful brocade dress kneeling gracefully before the headless stone ghost, silently praying for her seriously ill grandmother to recover soon.
For three consecutive days, a young scholar wearing a turban came to offer incense to the headless stone ghost, sincerely praying that the gods and Buddhas would bless him to perform exceptionally well in the upcoming examination and pass the imperial examination with flying colors.
A middle-aged man wearing a braided robe limped up the grotto, burning incense and chanting that the war must not spread to his hometown.
The woman with her hair styled in a high bun donated a lot of money to the grottoes, hoping that her youngest daughter could marry a good husband and have a happy marriage.
A couple dressed in traditional Chinese clothing held an infant in their arms and prayed to the headless stone ghost for the child's lifelong peace and longevity.
Over 1,200 years have passed, spring after spring, autumn after autumn, cold after cold, and heat after heat. The spiritual power coefficient of the headless stone ghost has been steadily increasing, and the fragments have been changing in an irregular manner.
How nostalgic...
[...I can now confirm that the headless stone demon was transplanted from the Rehmannia glutinosa flower; it wasn't created by itself.]
[I don't know how the time flow in this special memory illusion works. How many of these memory fragments have been played? There must be hundreds, right?]
[Thinking about the headless stone golem's empty head... I can pretty much guess what will happen next...]
This feels like watching a video about the evolution of hairstyles and clothing across different dynasties.
[Has no one said the headless stone ghost's presence is so weak? The butter flower monk's thoughts and actions in that illusion were quite obvious, but the headless stone ghost has been around for at least a thousand years, and it seems like it hasn't done anything except actively cultivating goldenrod flowers on the stone wall? The female guest, an outsider who entered the illusion, can't do anything either. It feels like the main characters in this live stream have become these worshippers.]
To be honest, the headless stone ghost is actually always doing something. Everyone who comes to worship him has the potential to receive his spiritual blessing. However, the headless stone ghost's own spiritual power is limited, and with so many people coming, the amount of spiritual power he gives out is extremely low. Only someone with a high enough spiritual power coefficient and strong enough perception can see this process. We, the audience, can't see anything.
I think that the headless stone ghost is exactly what people expect "gods and Buddhas" to be like: without sorrow or joy, yet kind and compassionate, silently and quietly offering protection.
When Yu Naixin saw the last comment, she nodded in agreement.
In this peculiar dreamlike realm of memories, the headless stone ghost is both the least noticeable and the most prominent individual. We can't see him doing anything particularly obvious, yet he is omnipresent.
As the possessor, Yu Naixin also had an exceptionally weak presence. She lay on the fleshy protuberance on the headless stone ghost's head in spirit form, which felt not much different from when she sat on the headless stone ghost's shoulder before.
Because nothing dramatic ever happened in the illusion, and the pilgrims who came briefly would leave after praying and worshipping, all the stories that might have contained intense love, hate and grudges faded over time, making it difficult for Yu Naixin, an observer, to have any emotional fluctuations.
Moreover, these stories lack any coherence, are fragmented and chaotic, and the more you observe them, the more you feel like you are watching countless grains of sand in a desert.
Yu Naixin thus had plenty of opportunities to read and understand every single comment on the system screen, including the comments she could see in the previous two dungeon shows, which she could also pull out and take another look at.
Scrolling to the latest comments, some viewers who had left the live stream before coming back were exclaiming how cute Yu Naixin's current ghost form was, while others were tirelessly trying to get Yu Naixin's attention and interact with her.
Yu Naixin finished reading it expressionlessly and then yawned.
The timeline of this special memory illusion keeps jumping around. According to Yu Naixin's own rough estimate and feeling, the actual time she experienced it was probably only about a year, which is not as long as the illusion of the butter flower monk.
Yu Naixin didn't finish her yawn.
Because the scene before them suddenly changed, there was no one left to be found around the entire grotto.
Even before the reputation of the headless stone ghost spread, there were always a few people coming to this cave. This was the first time that there was not a single person in sight.
Even in times of chaos, when there were no pilgrims, the monks guarding the grottoes would still be active. Now that even they have left, it can only mean that this land has suffered a disaster far more severe than ever before.
Yu Naixin's eyes narrowed.
...It's coming.
Sure enough, the scene changed again, and a group of people in military uniforms swarmed in like locusts.
They stood on the grotto, gesturing and chattering at the Buddha statues, spitting as they spoke. Then, they eagerly picked up machetes, chopped off the neck of a small Buddha statue, and picked up the head as if it were a priceless treasure.
I knew it...
[No, I don't want to watch anymore. I'm leaving the live stream for a bit.]
These things are worse than animals...
In fact, these exquisite sculptures from the "rich and mysterious ancient country of the East" are indeed very valuable in their eyes.
Since the entire Buddha statue is embedded in the stone wall, it is difficult to take it all away, and transportation would be extremely troublesome. So, taking away the most important part, the head, would be just as good.
There wasn't just one group of people wearing military uniforms; in the following scenes, Yu Naixin saw at least five or six completely different types of military uniforms.
They differed in size and skin color, but they all shared the same fervent desire to steal and plunder the sculptures in the grotto, leaving no inch untouched.
If you can't steal or rob it, then just destroy it, leaving behind a mess, and then laugh heartily as you leave with your spoils.
This is something only the most barbaric and shameless robbers would do.
The grottoes, which had witnessed countless battles and the rise and fall of dynasties over the past thousand years, were destroyed in this short span of time.
The headless stone golem was finally severed from the base of its neck by a group of yellow-skinned bandits with square mustaches.
The Buddha head, which had been lying on for over a thousand years, rolled into the hands of the robbers.
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Author's Note: This story is fictional, but I believe everyone should be able to understand it.
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