The Great Sage?!
Lu Liangsheng was quite surprised to hear the words of Sun Wukong coming from his sleeve. He had landed in the western land and due to the long distance, he could not contact him through magic power. Now he could hear his voice, which meant that he was not far from the territory of the Sui Dynasty.
"Great Sage, is that monk the Buddha of the Western Paradise?"
碦… This was the hoarse hum that the monkey forced out of his throat, and the golden hair swayed a few times as if to vent his emotions. "It was he who deceived my old man. He is now just a Dharmadhatu. Leave this place quickly and don't fall into his trap."
Lu Liangsheng pursed his lips and exchanged a glance with the Toad Taoist, who quickly jumped off the small table, ran to the bookshelf, closed the small door, carried the gourd horizontally on his back, and looked at his disciple outside through the gap.
"Liangsheng, we are going to run into trouble soon. Your master will come out to hold us back for a while, and you can leave when you see the situation is bad!"
"Um."
Over there, Lu Liangsheng walked to the window lattice and took a look at the Buddhist temple at the other end of the courtyard in the distance. The lights were still on. He stretched out his fingertips through the window to feel the flowing air, and there was no formation arrangement like the Dharma Realm.
No barrier was set up to trap us
He turned around, blew out the oil lamp on the table, cast a spell to make the bookshelf float up, and pulled it behind him. He walked out of the room silently and came to the thatched shed next to the house. The old donkey propped himself up on the straw. The mermaid who was sleeping nearby saw the approaching figure and wanted to shout out in joy, but the scholar who came over shook his head to stop him.
The floating bookshelf fell off the donkey's back by itself. Lu Liangsheng led the old donkey out, patted its head, and lowered his voice.
"Old Donkey, go and wake up those four scholars, and ask them to go outside and walk east along the road. And you, come with them."
Having said that, he threw the mermaid onto the donkey's back, turned around and walked towards the Buddhist hall over there. Listening to the sound of chanting inside, he pushed open the door with a creaky sound and walked in.
The dim light flickered, and a moth flapped its wings and flew around the flames, bumping into the burning wick. It was caught by the fingers that stretched out from the side, and then the fingertips on the other side released the moth, allowing it to fly out of the temple gate.
The old monk withdrew his hand, stopped chanting the scriptures, turned his head to look at the scholar standing on the other side of the curtain, smiled and stood up.
"Master Lu, you have come a long way, why don't you take a rest earlier?"
"Even after a long journey, as we are getting closer to the Great Sui Dynasty, I am even more afraid to sleep peacefully." Lu Liangsheng also laughed, walked to the small reception table over there, lifted his robe and sat down, "Master Faxian sincerely worships Buddha day and night, but does he know where Buddha is?"
hehe…
The old monk chuckled and bowed to the clay statue of Buddha in front of him. He came over and sat next to Lu Liangsheng, looking into the scholar's eyes. "All living beings follow fate. Everything has its own law. Everything has its own spirit. Where is not Buddha? Why should we care who is Buddha?"
"No, no... I think..."
Lu Liangsheng stared into his eyes, shook his head, dipped his fingertips in the clear water in the bowl, gently wrote a word "Buddha" on the table, drew a line, and pointed to the old monk opposite.
Continuing with the last sentence: "I feel that the Master is the Buddha."
The light flickered, and its reflection on Faxian's face flickered and uncertain. The old monk stared at the scholar with his Dharma seal upright, smiling and remaining silent.
Knowing that the words had been made clear, Lu Liangsheng stood up, put his hands behind his back, turned to face the Buddha statue, his eyes drifted to the courtyard behind the temple, guessing what was going on over there, turned his head sideways, and looked at the old monk sitting in the dimness over there… Delay as much as possible, don't hit someone who smiles at you, just be polite, the other party won't be able to take direct action after all.
After a moment, he suddenly laughed out loud.
"Since you are a Buddha and are willing to live in a dilapidated temple, I think you have something to tell me."
The tense atmosphere suddenly relaxed. The monk Faxian was stunned for a moment, but he seemed to see through the scholar's thoughts and nodded: "I talked to Mr. Lu about the rat theory before, with the intention of persuading him, but your tongue is particularly powerful. I am convinced, but there is one thing I don't understand, please enlighten me, Master."
Lu Liangsheng turned around and stretched out his hands to him.
"Master, you can say whatever you want."
Faxian nodded, stood up and slowly walked closer, also looking at the clay sculpture on the altar: "The five elements in the world are mutually generated and restrained, and dynasties have their own elements. The Han Dynasty replaced the Qin Dynasty, and then the Jin Dynasty replaced the Han Dynasty. After leaving the suffering of the chaotic world, there is a desire to create eternal peace. The world is eternal and unchanging, and things will not change. People have no way forward. I don’t know if it is a good thing or a bad thing?"
"If the master says so, it's one-sided."
When it comes to eloquence, Lu Liangsheng is not vague. If he really wants to quote classics, he can keep the other party talking for days and nights. "The heart of eternal peace is not for advancement, but for thoughts. Master, you have become a monk and forgotten the suffering of thousands of living beings in the world. But these sufferings, Master, don't you know that they will continue after you start business? Decades and hundreds of years are a cycle, dynasties change, and people suffer. How can there be a way forward? They can only rely on incense temples to pray to gods and Buddhas to bless their families with peace and panic in their hearts. These things that should not have happened originally, didn't they start after the Conferred God? The Human Emperor fell, and the power was taken away by Haotian. Since then, temples have been built in various states of the world, and incense is prosperous. Doesn't the master think that these are as they should be?"
Lu Liangsheng spoke louder and louder. He turned around and flicked his sleeves. His words were so sonorous and powerful that the window frames and doors of the Buddhist hall buzzed.
"The eternal peace was originally meant for the human world. The Three Sovereigns and Five Emperors reclaimed wasteland, dug mountains, and controlled floods, which led to the world we have today. It is right for us, the younger generations, to worship him. But you took away the power and made the human world a mess with the five elements. Don't you think your methods are a little dirty? Don't you think you are unworthy of the word God?"
The monk and the scholar just faced each other. In the flickering firelight, Lu Liangsheng suppressed his anger, raised his hand and bowed heavily: "My words were a bit harsh... I apologize to the master. It's late at night, so I will go back to my room to rest first. I have to travel tomorrow."
He walked out of the room without hearing a word from the old monk. He took two steps out of the eaves, turned around, and hurried towards the road. However, before he left the courtyard, the sound of a bronze bell came from the side, and four scholars carrying bookshelves and bags were seen stumbling over and running around the old donkey.
Lu Liangsheng frowned, glanced at the Buddhist temple over there, and hurried over.
"Why haven't you left yet?"
"We left... but we came back again." Wang Feng wiped the sweat off his forehead and pointed to the side door of the courtyard. "After we left the door, we walked to the road, but in the blink of an eye, we saw the temple standing on the side of the road again..."
Zhang Ti nodded in agreement: "Yes, Imperial Master, we have walked back and forth three times, otherwise we would have run away long ago."
"Liangsheng, this is the Xumi Realm."
Just as the words of Toad Taoist were heard from the bookshelf, the lights in the Buddhist hall suddenly dimmed.
"Amitabha-"
In the darkness, the majestic Buddhist music rolled in like a tide.