“Qingshan! Qingshan! It’s time for us to go!” A stern and weary voice urged him.
“Hmm? Who is it… calling for who?”
The qilin woke up blearily and quivered suddenly, opening his eyes. “I remember now. I am Li Qingshan!
The Li of Li Qingshan, the Qing of Li Qingshan, the Shan of Li Qingshan.
Waking up from his great dream, the memory fragments merged together, all becoming clear.
Before the towering grand hall, he sucked in a deep breath. The flower fragrance continued to linger, and the lotus flowers bloomed even more gorgeously.
To his surprise and joy, not only had his powers completely recovered, his cultivation had reached a higher level too.
The Qilin’s Conventions of Longevity had reached the fourth layer. For the first time in his life, he transformed into a qilin beast.
Indeed, he had only just realised this change. This was very extraordinary. The fourth layer was no longer very low anymore, yet using the transformations of the demonic and divine still required him to focus.
Particularly for the first time, so how did he unconsciously transform?
With a clop, he raised his hoofs and looked around. “Where is this?”
The qilin was not particularly tall, where its shoulders only reached around three metres tall. However, its four hooves levitated, its deer antlers soared, its mane danced, and its green scales glistened, giving off the dignity that belonged to the sovereign of all beasts.
His tiger-like eyes were instead gentle and indifferent, devoid of joy or sorrow, overlooking the living.
The Upraised Light abbot gazed at him and also felt amazed. This legendary divine beast was extremely rare, basically extinct already. In Sukhāvatī, they could not even find regular beasts, let alone qilins.
“Oh right, this is the Great Thunderclap temple of Sukhāvatī! Oh no, we need to leave now!”
With the return of his memories, it also meant the beginning of assimilation, but this time, he was unable to fend it off anymore.
The qilin was just about to soar off when he glanced backwards at the lotus pond. The flowers bloomed gloriously, green, violet, red, and white, refreshing but not gaudy, drawing him in deeply.
With a step, he arrived above the lotus pond and bent down over the green lotus, taking in a deep sniff with his nose.
At that instant, the green lotus wilted and fell. The petals that resembled green glaze fell into the deep, silent water one by one, stirring up ripples.
As the green lotus wilted, the spiritual mountain trembled gently, and the light rapidly dispersed.
“Hold on! This must be-”
The Upraised Light abbot realised what was going on. The lotus pond was the “core” of the spiritual mountain. Of course, that was only a metaphor. Everything on the spiritual mountain formed naturally. There was no such thing as a formation or a core.
The lotuses were not regular lotuses either, nor some kind of exotic herb, but the manifestation of laws.
This was also a metaphor. The buddha’s metaphors corresponded with a name of this place, “the place where the lotuses bloomed”.
However, since they were laws, how could Li Qingshan cause them to wilt?
The sixth heavenly tribulation was just Refining Qi into Soul, the final stage of the Origin Soul. They could observe the existence of laws, but they still could not truly make contact with the laws.
And the laws conformed with one another without contradiction. Let alone a measly sangharama guardian, even if they were true gods and True Immortals of Forging Soul back into the Void, they could not influence these laws unless the paths they took happened to coincide with the laws of the lotuses.
Li Qingshan was completely submerged in the wondrous fragrance. After sniffing the green lotus, he went to sniff the red lotus.
“Stop!”
With a whoosh, the Upraised Light abbot assumed a visage of fury, raising his staff and striking viciously towards the back of the qilin.
In the final moment, the staff stopped mid-air. The Upraised Light abbot’s forehead bulged with veins as he heaved heavily like he was possessed.
Suddenly, he turned around and glared at the grand hall, crushing the green tiles with a stomp. “What’s the point of this Nālandā? What’s the point of this Sukhāvatī? You might as well have it all destroyed!”
The hall full of gods and buddhas stood silently and shook gently. The spiritual mountain beneath their feet was shaking.
The red lotus had wilted, so he sniffed the white lotus. In the blink of an eye, all of the lotuses wilted, and all of the leaves withered away too.
As a result, the light dispersed completely, and the spiritual mountain shook violently.
The walls peeled in the imposing halls and towers as they became covered in cracks. Even the vermillion paint on the pillars and the gilded gold on the buddha statues lost their colour.
Meanwhile, plants grew vigorously, from the top of the mountains to the bottom. The grass poked through the cracks between the tiles, the vines sprawled over the speckled walls, the trees burst through the ceilings of the halls…
In a single moment, the buildings fell into ruins, weeds covered the ground, and trees rose up with shade as if a thousand years had passed.
As it turned out, the glorious Great Thunderclap temple seemed to be sealed in the long river of time, left behind in the beautiful dream. As the seal was removed, the dream turned to reality, immediately washed away by the flow of time and left in ruins.
With a clank, the Upraised Light abbot threw aside his staff. He knelt down on the ground and clutched his head, sobbing away painfully.
His young, handsome appearance was just like the Great Thunderclap temple, becoming much older all of a sudden. Many wrinkles appeared on the sides of his mouth and eyes. Every single wrinkle hid indescribably sorrow.
A gust of cold wind blew by with snowflakes. The climate that was as warm as spring no longer existed. Only then did they suddenly remember that this was the top of a mountain.
Great altitudes were cold. The stormy snow was freezing. All of this was natural phenomena.
He finally found his answer, and only then did he discover that he was unable to handle it.
Li Qingshan seemed to have drained the spiritual mountain of all of its spiritual qi with a single breath. The Qilin’s Conventions of Longevity actually climbed up higher, reaching the fifth layer.
The lotuses in the pond had all wilted away, but they all bloomed at the bottom of his heart. Never had his mind been so bright and clear.
It was different from the spirit turtle, which pushed divination and calculations to the extreme. Instead, it was comprehension and understanding of his own self.
These lotuses must have been personally “planted” by the buddha. They possessed a similar aura to the notice.
The only question was why could he touch these lotuses?
“Because I’m a qilin? No, that’s not all.”
As a divine creature of nature, qilins could sense the existence of the Dao from birth. Compared to those naive, clueless living creatures, they basically won right at the beginning, and under the guide of the Dao, they basically had no inner demons or bottlenecks.
However, they still had to go through the process of cultivation, constantly accumulating power before being able to clearly understand the Dao and further touch the Dao.
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With his current comprehension, he was still incapable of something like that, so there was only one explanation.
“It’s this world that gave me this power, allowing me to perceive it, allowing me to touch it. The feeling here is extremely similar to Ruin’s End, like returning home.”
The world resonated with all of his actions, overlooking the plants that grew vigorously across the entire mountain.
“Then there’s only one answer. This isn’t some Sukhāvatī, but the homeland of qilins.”
“This must be the world that the primordial qilin turned into.”
And just like the primordial spirit turtle, it was very likely to have fallen in the Battle of Mending Heaven, turning into this paradise afterwards. Buddhism had occupied it, making it become the so-called “Sukhāvatī”.
Little did he know that as the lotuses wilted, the paradise sank into chaos. Demonic beasts prowled everywhere in the cities, walking under the light of day.
“How bold of you two! How dare you remove the seal without permission and destroy the Great Thunderclap temple! Do you know your crimes?”
A furious voice boomed through the sky. The Sangharama God had become even larger than the spiritual mountain, his face darkened and his eyebrows raised furiously. His teeth creaked away like thunder, and he wielded a pair of swordbreaker clubs in his hands.
Protecting the temples was the most important duty of the Sangharama God, and the Great Thunderclap temple on the spiritual mountain was the priority amongst priorities. However, ever since this place was sealed, he could not visit it as he pleased either.
As soon as the Great Thunderclap temple was opened, he sensed it and immediately flew over. However, he was obstructed by the weakwater, preventing him from flying over the river. It took him quite the effort before he finally crossed the River of Flowing Sand.
When he saw the miserable state of the Great Thunderclap temple, he was overcome with wrath, basically as furious as he could get. If it were not for the sake of the Great Thunderclap temple beneath, he would have smashed them to minced meat with a swing of his club.
Li Qingshan’s heart lurched. He immediately understood what they meant by the hellish might of a god.
“Err… we’re in deep trouble now!’
Could I pass myself off as an innocent, passing, naive, gentle little qilin? Everyone knows the qilin is a beast of utmost benevolence and never does anything bad. Though, if the Sangharama God finds out I’m Li Qingshan, he’ll probably lose his shit!
The Upraised Light abbot knelt down. “Great god, it’s all my fault. It has nothing to do with Li Qingshan.”
“You-” Li Qingshan began coughing up blood.
“Li Qingshan!?” The Sangharama God narrowed his eyes and immediately saw through the qilin’s identity. “So it’s you! It’s actually you!”
Li Qingshan laughed dryly. “Ah, it’s me. Long time no see, leader. Look, considering the fact that we’re visiting the same temple, why don’t you just let us go! Actually, we never intended to do this either, right, Upraised Light master?”
The Sangharama God’s wrath suddenly vanished, tossing aside the two swordbreaker clubs, which led to two great thumps.
Li Qingshan eased up inside. He never thought sucking up to people and exploiting connections would actually work.
The Sangharama God brought his palms together and bowed towards the sky. “Great teacher, I’ve been useless, having produced a vile spawn like this under my watch. Today, I will lift the precept of taking life and purge him!”
