The sun was setting.
At the summit of Chu Lu Mountain, there stood a crude earthen prison that had confined someone for nearly forty years. A slight tremor rippled through it, and in an instant, golden light blazed forth like a clay statue of a Bodhisattva cracking open, revealing a radiant, undefeated golden body. Besides this mound sat an aged monk, wrapped in tattered robes, cross-legged on the ground. His white eyebrows were so long they reached past his knees, twisting slightly on the earth. Years of wind and sun had darkened and wrinkled his skin, like a parched, barren field, making his white brows seem even paler. When he noticed the earthen prison trembling slightly, the tiniest of cracks forming, it was nearly imperceptible to the naked eye. Yet to this venerable Vajrayana Dharma King, it sounded like thunderclaps ringing in his ears. His long brows fluttered wildly, while his body remained as immovable as a mountain.
As the senior monk of Chu Lu Mountain, known for never uttering a single false word his entire life, he had maintained perfect purity in body, speech, and thought. He and another senior monk had taken turns guarding this place for over twenty years. Now, the white-browed monk rose slowly, eyes lowered, watching as fragments of earth fell away, revealing a radiant golden body. The true form of a living Buddha was emerging. At that moment, the mountain echoed with the chanting of sutras, and the mountain itself seemed even more majestic, exuding a sacred and solemn aura. The old monk, facing east, turned his head westward. The setting sun cast a golden glow. Whether it was a trick of the mind or not, the earthen mound seemed like a sleeping lion finally awakening from its doze. As it opened its eyes and shook off the dust, it began to devour the mountains and rivers with its might. The fading sunlight flared brilliantly, rivaling even the midday sun in splendor.
Vairocana Buddha.
The aged Dharma King slowly turned his head. In his line of sight appeared an old monk who seemed like a soul returning from the underworld to the land of the living. This monk was even older and more frail than the white-browed elder, so emaciated and weak he probably weighed less than ninety jin. Such a frail body could barely withstand a gust of wind. Although Chu Lu Mountain was not known for martial prowess, its past abbots, like the six-pearl master who was considered a junior to this elder, had possessed formidable cultivation. A Bodhisattva may show compassion with lowered eyes, but he could also glare fiercely and subdue beasts. Yet the old monk in the white-browed elder’s vision was silent, lifeless, and eerily still. Vajrayana Buddhism preached the attainment of Buddhahood in one’s present body, but it had long been regarded as heretical by the Confucian and Daoist traditions of the Central Plains. Now, with the Liyang Dynasty and the Northern Liang both attempting to suppress Buddhism, it was actually Chan Buddhism they targeted. However, the white-browed elder sought to understand the grand pattern emerging from this Buddhist catastrophe. He himself could not achieve this, so he placed his hopes on this ancient monk before him, who had vowed to attain Buddhahood in this very body and lead all sentient beings to enlightenment—a pure and immaculate Lion of Dharma.
The withered old monk finally spoke. Before his voice emerged, he first exhaled a breath of stale air like gray smoke.
“My own inner defilements are like a glass bottle—shatter it with a single hammer. But for a million such glass bottles of all sentient beings, the hammer lies in the East.”
The white-browed monk was visibly moved, clasping his palms together and chanting a single word of the Buddha.
“Going from West to East, if I do not descend into hell, who will?”
After uttering these words, the gaunt old monk, even older than the century-old Dharma King of Chu Lu Mountain, stretched out one hand and placed it on the top of his own head, as if striking himself with a hammer. The golden light shattered, and the mountain summit was bathed in radiant illumination.
The white-browed monk’s face was filled with sorrow.
One hammer had shattered the glass bottle of inner defilements, and he should have attained Buddhahood in this very body, achieving the supreme Dharmakaya. But the monk knew that the monk before him was not doing so. On the western peak, the sun, which had been shining unusually brightly, seemed to lose its support. After the monk performed the self-initiation rite, it quickly dimmed, its golden glow fading, and hurriedly sank behind the mountain.
The white-browed monk, whose eyebrows reached his knees when standing, looked up again, but the old monk who had been in meditation for forty years was already gone. The Two Chan Temple had once spoken of sudden enlightenment. This awakening, however, had taken quite a long time. The only sound in his ears now was the mountain-wide chanting of sutras. The old monk sighed softly.
Beyond the gates of Tietie Pass, an old monk flew across deserts and wastelands. He paused once to use his fingers like a blade, slicing off a piece of flesh from his arm to feed a young eagle nestled in the crevices of a cliff. Another time, he sat cross-legged in the desert, watching insects crawl. When the old monk, who had once seemed on the brink of death, arrived outside the Kuimen Pass, he appeared to have grown a dozen years younger. Standing before the mighty fortress, he gazed blankly into the distance, his eyes dazed as he watched travelers entering or leaving the border, moving with haste. He watched them for days and nights. When the guards were preparing to question him, the monk had already vanished. In the northern borderlands of Xishu, where steep mountains and deep ravines abounded, and where even the The Road to Shu (Shudao) was said to be more difficult than ascending to heaven, the old monk in tattered robes moved like a soaring crane, gliding as if borne by the wind. He leapt over high peaks and stepped lightly across rivers. His withered, tree-like skin began to glow, as if winter wood had found the first signs of spring. Yet his eyes grew ever more dazed. His robes fluttered in the wind, and his next step followed his thoughts without constraint. Once, he encountered boatmen pulling a vessel along a shallow bank. The monk appeared at the stern, stepping into the icy river water, listening to the chants of the Sichuanese men as they pushed the boat forward for twenty miles before vanishing in an instant. He swept through deep forests in great leaps, covering dozens of zhang in a single bound. Suddenly, with a loud thud, he came to a halt. In his hands, he cradled a winter bird he had accidentally killed. Blood and flesh smeared his palms. The monk’s eyes were filled with confusion. At first, he seemed to awaken with a start, then grieved silently, before falling back into a haze, his gaze empty. He stood there for half a month. During that time, torrential rains battered him from above, and snow added to his misery, soaking through his very bones. Then, one morning, as the sun rose, he suddenly turned and resumed his journey eastward. He passed through a thousand miles of desert, crossed golden cities and fortified strongholds, traversed thousand-fathom ravines and narrow paths, and finally entered the Central Plains. In a small town, he sheltered under a shoulder-high wall while it rained, watching pedestrians with umbrellas pass by. He stood by a stream no deeper than his knees, watching women pounding clothes. Under a moonlit sky, he listened to the night watchman strike his gong. In ancient cities, he saw the frozen corpses of the poor by the roadside. One day, the old monk, now appearing no older than a man in his sixties, stood at a lonely grave in a desolate wilderness. Before a weathered tombstone bearing faintly visible characters, he saw one word. Somehow, after traveling ten thousand miles and seeing ten thousand faces, he had forgotten who he was, where he was going, and who he had seen. Yet at that moment, he remembered only one character: Liu.
Confused and dazed, the old monk continued eastward. One day, he arrived at a verdant mountain. The wind shook the pines, their sound like crashing waves. Drawn by his thoughts, he floated up to the top of an ancient pine tree, gazing into the distance, listening to the roaring pines. After a full ten days, he finally spoke in a hoarse voice, “Pine waves.”
One character, Liu, remembered with painful clarity. And now, the sound of the pines like drums.
The old monk no longer looked old. He appeared to be a middle-aged man of about forty, untroubled and wise. For this monk from Chu Lu Mountain, who had traveled ten thousand miles eastward and forgotten all his past, this moment could truly be called “untroubled.” He smiled and said, “Liu Songtao (Pine Waves).”
Before long, the martial world learned of a young, mad monk from the Western Regions traveling eastward, singing and chanting in a strange rhythm. Wherever he went, he would suddenly kill those who displeased him or preach the Dharma to those he met.
On an endless plain, the young monk, appearing no older than twenty, sang loudly as he flew through the air, still chanting the same useless song that had begun to spread across the Central Plains.
“Heaven and earth are useless, not entering my eyes. Sun and moon are useless, unable to stay together. Kunlun is useless, not coming to me. Compassion is useless, hypocrisy reigns. Purity is useless, sleeves empty. The great river is useless, flowing eastward never to return. Wind and snow are useless, cannot warm or feed. Green grass is useless, dying each year. Meditation is useless, what Buddha can be achieved…”
The young monk, swaggering forward, suddenly stopped, gazing into the distance, as if seeing the scenery hundreds of miles away.
He burst into loud laughter, a string of “wahahaha” echoing through the heavens and earth.
Still smiling, his tattered robes began to flutter and swirl. As he moved, no footprints were left, only a deep furrow torn through the land. The young monk dashed six hundred li, smashing through walls, breaking trees in the forest, leaping over mountains.
Finally, he collided head-on with a white-robed monk who had also been rushing toward him from six hundred li away.
Within a radius of three li, the ground instantly caved in, forming a massive circular crater.
After the collision, the young monk slightly shifted his course and continued running eastward, like an endless river flowing toward the sea. He still laughed loudly, chanting,
“Emperors are useless, only lasting a century. King Yama is useless, envy my freedom. Immortals are useless, ordinary men laugh at them… The sun rises in the east, sets in the west. Where am I? Where am I going…”
Who in the world could stop this mad young monk?
Deng Tai’a had already set sail to seek immortals at sea. Cao Changqing was devoted to restoring his kingdom. Could it be Wang Xianzhi of Wudi City?
The world did not know that a mountain lay between the mad monk and Wang Xianzhi.
On the main peak of Zhulu Mountain, there were three thousand white jade steps.
A white-robed demon lord, who had recently taken control of Zhulu Mountain, stood at the summit, surveying all beneath him.
Two strange fish floated in the air beside him—one red, one green—neither carp nor dragon, with long, flowing whiskers. They swam in mysterious patterns around the white-robed man as though gliding through water.
Beside the white-robed man, apart from the two strange fish, stood two men of vastly different ages near the steps. The younger one, not yet thirty, was short and had a blank expression, sitting on the steps with his chin resting on his hands, gazing at the mountain scenery. The older one, around forty, carried a long cloth sack on his back, containing a broken spear.
The middle-aged man asked softly, “Master, shall I send Deng Mao to intercept that Western monk?”
It was spoken in the Northern Liang tongue.
The white-robed man replied indifferently, “Can you stop Toba Pusa?”
The man who called himself Deng Mao gave a self-deprecating smile and shook his head. The Master’s meaning was clear: only if you can defeat Toba Pusa would you have the ability to stop that gray-robed monk, for even the white-robed monk Li Dangxin had failed.
The short man spoke up, “Even if he is Liu Songtao, who escaped back then, at his peak he may not have been a match for Wang Xianzhi and Toba Pusa today.”
The white-robed man sneered coldly, “Wait until you defeat Deng Mao, the ninth under heaven, before speaking such words.”
Deng Mao chuckled softly, “It’s only a matter of time. In the future, Northern Liang will rely on Hong Jingyan and this young one to uphold its dignity.”
The white-robed man did not refute, slowly descending the steps.
Nearly a thousand lesser and greater demons prostrated themselves on the steps.
The white-robed man looked westward, expressionless.
Li Dangxin did not wish to prolong the fight. Then let me, Luoyang, face Liu Songtao in battle!
Tai Sui Yellow Amulet Paper FuLu Taoist Love Talisman Traditional Chinese Spiritual Charm Attracting Love Protecting Marriage