Chapter 442: West Buddha East Demon, White-Clad Pursues the Deer

On the peak of Mount Landa, a mud-brick enclosure that had served as a self-imposed prison for nearly forty years showed a slight loosening. In an instant, it radiated golden light, as if a clay Bodhisattva had cracked open to reveal a brilliant, undefeated golden form. Besides this earthen mound, an ancient monk sat cross-legged on the mountaintop, draped in a tattered kasaya. He was exceedingly old, his snowy white eyebrows not only reaching his knees but coiling on the muddy ground. Exposure to wind and sun had rendered his skin dark and wrinkled, like a parched field, making his two white eyebrows appear even paler. When he observed the earthen enclosure loosen and the mud fragments fall, though almost imperceptible to others, to the ears of this Esoteric Buddhist Dharma King, it sounded like a clap of thunder. His long eyebrows fluttered wildly, but his body remained as still as a mountain. As the venerable monk of Mount Landa, renowned for never speaking a single untruth in his life, maintaining purity in body, speech, and mind, he and another high monk had been taking turns waiting here for over twenty years. The white-browed old monk stood up, his gaze lowered humbly, watching the debris continue to fall, revealing a true form radiating golden light from head to toe. At that moment, Mount Landa resonated with sonorous chanting, and the mountain itself seemed to grow more majestic and solemn amidst the hymns. The old monk, who had been facing east, turned his head to look west as the sun set. He wondered if it was an illusion, but as the earthen mound, like a slumbering lion, finally awoke, shook off the dust, and prepared to engulf the world, the afterglow suddenly brightened. Compared to the glory of the midday sun, its brilliance was not diminished in the slightest.

The Great Sun Tathagata.

The aged Dharma King slowly turned his head. In his vision appeared an old monk, seemingly returned from the underworld to the land of the living, even more decrepit and frail than the centenarian white-browed monk. He was withered and emaciated, likely weighing less than ninety *catties*. Such a physique truly seemed too weak to withstand a breath of wind. Although Mount Landa was not known for martial arts, its past eminent monks, like Master Liuzhu, who was only a junior to him, possessed formidable cultivation. Bodhisattvas can show compassion with lowered brows, but also subdue dragons and elephants with wrathful gazes. Yet, the old monk in the white-browed high monk's view was silent, lifeless, and exceptionally still. Esoteric Buddhism advocated for achieving Buddhahood in one's lifetime, a concept long regarded as heretical in the Eastern Central Plains, primarily due to the animosity of Confucianism and Taoism. Now, with the Liyang Dynasty and Beiman almost simultaneously suppressing Buddhism—though in reality, they were targeting Chan Buddhism—the white-browed old monk sought to discern the broader trend following this Buddhist catastrophe. Unable to do so himself, he could only place his hopes in the pure, unblemished lion before him, who had vowed to achieve Buddhahood in this lifetime and enable all sentient beings to do the same.

The withered old monk finally spoke. Before his voice emerged, a mouthful of turbid breath, like grey smoke, slowly exhaled. "The defilements of one's own mind are like a glass bottle, which can be shattered with one hammer blow. But for the millions of glass bottles that are sentient beings, the great hammer lies in the East." The white-browed old monk's expression shifted. He pressed his palms together and uttered a Buddhist chant. "Heading from west to east, if I don't enter hell, who will?" After speaking these words, the withered old monk, even older than Mount Landa's centenarian Dharma King, stretched out a hand and placed it on his own head, as if striking himself with a hammer. Golden light scattered, and the mountaintop was filled with radiance.

The white-browed high monk's face showed sorrow. Shattering the glass bottle of mental defilements with a single hammer blow should have led to achieving Buddhahood in this lifetime, becoming an unsurpassed Dharma Body Buddha. Yet, the high monk knew that the monk before him was not like this at all. The unusually bright, glorious sun above the western mountain seemed to lose its support. After the monk's self-initiation, it rapidly dimmed, its afterglow receding, and swiftly plunged behind the mountain. The monk, whose white eyebrows reached his knees when standing, looked up again, but the old monk, who had attained forty years of enlightenment, was nowhere to be seen. It was said that the Two Chan Temple had a concept of sudden enlightenment, but this particular enlightenment seemed to have lasted quite a long time. With only the sound of chanting echoing through the mountain in his ears, the old monk sighed softly.

Outside Iron Gate Pass, an old monk traversed deserts and Gobi. Once, he stopped to use his finger as a knife, scraping flesh from his arm to feed young eagles in a crevice in the mountain wall. Another time, he squatted in the desert, watching insects crawl. When the old monk, whose appearance had previously suggested he was on the verge of death, arrived outside Kuimen Pass, he seemed to have grown younger by more than a decade. He stood outside the formidable pass, lost in thought, his eyes dim, simply observing the hurried comings and goings of travelers entering or leaving the frontier, for days and nights on end. When the garrison soldiers prepared to question him, the old monk had already vanished. The northern reaches of West Shu were fraught with perilous mountains and deep ravines, where the path to Shu was said to be harder than ascending to heaven. An old man in monk's robes moved like a swan, traveling as if riding the wind, scaling mountain peaks and treading on river surfaces. His skin, once like withered wood, began to glow as if winter trees had met early spring, yet his eyes grew increasingly hazy. His kasaya billowed, and his next footfall was wherever his whim took him. Once, encountering boat trackers pulling a boat over a shoal, the monk appeared at the stern, standing in the freezing, bone-chilling river water. Listening to the chants of the Shu men, he gently pushed the large boat for twenty *li* before vanishing in a flash. He then swept dozens of *zhang* through the deep mountains and ancient forests. With a thud, the old monk suddenly stopped. He cupped his hands around a winter bird he had accidentally killed, its flesh bloody in his palms. His eyes were bewildered; first, he awakened with silent sorrow, then plunged back into confusion, his eyes vacant. He stood there for half a fortnight, enduring torrential rain and bone-chilling snow. Until one morning, as the rising sun appeared in the east, he suddenly turned back and continued eastward. Along this journey, he traversed a thousand *li* of yellow sand, passed through impregnable fortresses, deep ravines, and winding sheep trails, finally setting foot in the Central Plains. He then took shelter from the rain under a shoulder-high wall in a small town, observed umbrella-carrying pedestrians, watched people washing clothes by a knee-high stream, listened to the night watchman's drum under a bright moon and sparse stars, and encountered frozen corpses by the roadside in famous cities and ancient capitals. On this day, the aging monk, now merely sixty years old, stood by a lonely grave in a desolate wilderness. On the weathered tombstone, he saw a single character. Despite traveling ten thousand *li* and seeing countless people, he had forgotten who he was, where he was going, and whom he had met. Yet, at this moment, he remembered only one word: Liu.

The bewildered old monk continued eastward. One day, he arrived at a green mountain where the wind rustled through the pine forest, sounding like waves. Driven by his spirit, he floated onto an ancient pine tree, gazing into the distance, listening to the continuous sound of the pine waves. Only after a full ten days did he hoarsely utter, "Pine waves." The word "Liu," which he had clung to, combined with the drumming sound of the pine waves at that moment. The old monk was no longer old; he appeared middle-aged, as if in his forties, a time of no perplexity. For this Mount Landa monk, who had traveled thousands of *li* eastward, forgetting his past, this moment truly marked a state of clarity. A smile appeared on his face as he said, "Liu Songtao."

Soon, the *jianghu* learned of a young, mad monk from the Western Regions. He traveled eastward, his mouth uttering something that was neither quite singing nor chanting. Wherever he went, he would sometimes kill those who displeased him and at other times personally impart Buddhist teachings. On a vast, boundless plain, the young monk, appearing to be in his twenties, chanted loudly as he moved with the wind. It was still the "Song of Uselessness" that had begun to circulate across the Central Plains. "Heaven and Earth are useless, they do not enter my eye. Sun and Moon are useless, they cannot coexist. Kunlun is useless, it does not come to me. Compassion is useless, cloaked in hypocrisy. Purity is useless, sleeves empty. The Great River is useless, it flows east and never returns. Wind and snow are useless, they cannot provide warmth or sustenance. Green grass is useless, it withers every year. Chan meditation is useless, what kind of Buddha can it achieve..." The young monk, striding boldly forward, suddenly stopped. He looked up and gazed into the distance, as if seeing the scenery hundreds of *li* away. He burst into hearty laughter, a string of "wah-ha-ha" sounds that instantly echoed throughout heaven and earth. Without suppressing his laughter, his tattered kasaya began to flutter and dance. Wherever he passed, leaving no footprints, he tore a gully in the ground. The young monk sped for six hundred *li*, broke through walls by facing them, snapped trees in forests, and leaped over mountains. Finally, six hundred *li* away, he collided thunderously with another monk in white robes who was also racing towards him. The ground within a three-*li* radius instantly caved in, forming a massive circular crater. After the collision, the young monk paused and shifted slightly, then continued to rush forward like a surging river flowing east, still laughing loudly. "Emperors are useless, lasting but a hundred years. Yama King is useless, he envies my freedom. Immortals are useless, mortals all laugh... The sun rises in the East, sets in the West, where am I? Where am I going...?"

Who in the world could stop this young mad monk? Deng Tai'a had gone to sea to visit immortals, Cao Changqing was dedicated to restoring his nation. Could it be Wang Xianzhi of Martial Emperor City? The world did not know that there was a mountain between the mad monk and Wang Xianzhi. The main peak of Zhulu Mountain, with three thousand white jade steps. A white-robed demon lord, recently established on Zhulu Mountain, reigned supreme. Two large spiritual fish, one red and one green, neither quite carp nor dragon, with exceptionally long whiskers, floated in the air as if swimming, subtly gliding around the white-robed figure. Besides the two mystical creatures, near the steps stood and sat two men of vastly different ages. The younger man, not yet thirty, was short and expressionless, sitting on the steps with his chin in his hand, gazing at the mountain scenery. The older man, around forty, carried a long cloth bag on his back, concealing a broken spear. The middle-aged man softly asked, "Leader, should we send Deng Mao to intercept that monk from the Western Regions?" It was indeed the language of Beiman. The white-robed man calmly retorted, "Can you stop Tuoba Pusa?" The man who called himself Deng Mao gave a self-deprecating smile and shook his head. The Leader's meaning was simple: only if one could stop Tuoba Pusa would they be capable of stopping that gray-robed monk. After all, even the white-robed monk Li Dangxin had failed to stop him. The short man said, "Even if he is Liu Songtao, who escaped that disaster back then, at his peak he might not have been able to defeat the current Wang Xianzhi and Tuoba Pusa." The white-robed man sneered, "Speak of this again after you've first defeated Deng Mao, the ninth strongest under heaven." Deng Mao chuckled softly, "It's only a matter of time. In the future, Beiman will have to rely on Hong Jingyan and this kid to save face." The white-robed man did not refute, and slowly descended the steps. Nearly a thousand demon lords, great and small, who were prostrate on the steps, bowed their heads. The white-robed man looked expressionlessly to the west. If Li Dangxin is unwilling to pursue this endlessly, then I, Luoyang, shall have a fight with you, Liu Songtao!