The sea of blood surged.
Ten thousand ghosts wailed.
A great flame Buddha stood above the sea, its face compassionate and merciful, its hands forming a lotus mudra, a halo of fire burning behind its head.
Its lips did not move,
yet waves of Brahma-sound rolled out through the wind.
The moment the sounds spread, the ten thousand ghosts within the blood sea all clutched their heads and shrieked in pain.
For a time, not one of them could move.
【A mental interference phenomenon has been observed.】
【Now performing fine-tuning based on volume, pronunciation style, articulation standard, and related factors.】
The Heaven Chip held far too much data.
For Sanskrit pronunciation alone it possessed four or five separate systems:
ancient Sanskrit,
middle-era Sanskrit,
modern Sanskrit,
Chinese-transliterated Sanskrit,
and newly reconstructed Sanskrit.
These various forms could express the same concept with meanings that were only similar...
or in some cases entirely opposite.
According to the reactions of the resentful ghosts, the Heaven Chip could combine the most effective sequence of Sanskrit sounds.
In a sense, this too was a kind of re-compilation.
Given enough time and enough ghostly samples,
the Heaven Chip could even independently compile a truly effective new Sanskrit of its own.
【Re-compilation of the first line of the first section of the Diamond Sutra complete...】
【Re-compilation of the fifth line of the third section complete...】
【Re-compilation of the eighth line of the seventh section complete...】
At this moment, with the help of his cyber-Buddha, Xia Li, the "data monk," was directly recompiling a language.
Perhaps it pointed straight at the sutra's original meaning.
Perhaps it was the combined wisdom and painstaking effort of countless great monks across ages.
Xia Li could not help thinking that, once he had time later, he would have to make another trip to Wild Continent.
Not for anything else,
but simply to gather the Sanskrit of the Profound World's Buddhist sects into the Heaven Chip's database as well.
If he then carried out endless experiments and cross-verifications from there,
the final Sanskrit produced might well deserve to be called true Buddha-speech.
Would that count as obtaining the true scriptures?
And yet the reactions of the resentful ghosts were already beginning to exceed Xia Li's expectations.
At times they cried in agony.
At times they froze in perfect stillness.
At times they wept tears of blood.
【A new observation has been made: under different combinations and fields, the scriptures produce two major effects, suppression and deliverance.】
The Heaven Chip had discovered something new.
The scriptures, when recited with different pronunciations, could in fact produce different effects.
Suppression meant the wrathful gaze of the vajra:
destroy evil utterly.
Deliverance meant the lowered gaze of the Buddha:
boundless mercy and compassion.
【Changing priority to deliverance.】
Xia Li did understand something of how Buddhism acted in the world.
When confronting evil in the world, the Buddhist way was always to first try to save and transform the wicked.
Only when the roots of evil ran too deep to be transformed did they move on to suppression.
And so deliverance and suppression had a natural order:
first understand the merciful heart of deliverance,
then only later understand the wrath of the Buddha that suppresses.
The Heaven Chip also updated its database in real time, synchronizing its understanding of the sutras directly into Xia Li.
Xia Li felt his understanding of the Buddhist path increase by one.
+1
+1
+1
+1...
He felt as though he had become a solitary monk living in an old mountain temple for countless years.
Though the five aggregates were lonely, the heart and spirit were whole,
because the great wisdom and great mysteries hidden in the scriptures were there beside him.
"Thus have I heard..."
"Subhuti, what do you think? Can the Tathagata be seen by means of bodily form? No, he cannot be seen by bodily form. Why? Because what the Tathagata speaks of as bodily form is not bodily form. All appearances are false. If one sees that all appearances are no-appearance, then one sees the Tathagata."
Using the understanding continuously synchronized to him by the Heaven Chip,
Xia Li translated Sanskrit into Chinese,
Chinese into the language of the Profound World,
and began reciting in two languages at once in harmony with the sacred sounds.
The language of the Profound World resembled Chinese,
yet was profoundly different as well.
Every word and sentence had been refined by great cultivators and ancient sages.
It could receive spiritual energy.
It was a spiritual language.
There was spirit within the speech.
Thus speech itself came to possess power.
To speak the true meaning of the Dao was to have Dao and law follow one's words.
"Why do all good men and women still struggle within the bitter sea? Come near me, draw close to me, and you will gain release."
The great flame Buddha behind Xia Li became increasingly suffused with real divine bearing.
Even the roiling sea of blood was being stilled by some intangible force,
becoming strangely calm.
The bone pagodas shook violently in response, continuously releasing devil-sound of evil thought to further bewitch the ten thousand resentful ghosts in the blood sea.
At this point, chill ran through Mo Ye's heart.
The Blood God Sect had originally split off from the Buddhist path as one of its demon sects.
You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.
Now, before the orthodox Buddhist sounds and wondrous methods, it was being suppressed almost to death.
But for Mo Ye to have reached this point today, he naturally could not have relied on this one method alone.
From within the blood sea, more bone pagodas slowly rose up.
Each had been painstakingly refined by Mo Ye at enormous cost.
There were five pagodas in total.
Blood Pagoda was the highest secret of the Blood God Sect.
Anyone who cultivated it had to slaughter one mass of lives per realm.
Only by creating enough karma of killing could they break through.
That was why Mo Ye had needed the sacrifice of the great army to ascend into Soul Transformation.
Soul Transformation was the fifth realm on the cultivation path.
Thus Mo Ye had five pagodas.
If one day he could condense nine pagodas, then the art would be complete,
and with a single thought he could summon forth a sea of blood and drown the mortal world in it.
From within those five pagodas,
countless resentful ghosts surged toward Xia Li and the great flame Buddha,
filling the sky and threatening to devour everything.
Their sharp, terrible shrieks even drowned out the Buddha-sound.
Outside Sunscorch Valley,
the spectators, though they dared not enter and had only the vaguest understanding of what was happening inside, could still hear both the Buddhist sounds and the devil-sound of Mo Ye.
At this moment, the devil-sound had overtaken the Buddha-sound.
Clearly, Mo Ye seemed on the verge of victory.
If they did not run now, then when would they?
"Xia Li... you are remarkable. Truly remarkable. To have cultivated the Buddhist path to such a level. But Buddhism does not understand the human heart. The human heart is itself demonic!"
"We are all demons. I am one. You are one too!"
"The very existence of people is the greatest karma of evil in this world. Demonic karma!"
Mo Ye's voice rolled across the blood sea.
Every drop of blood colliding within it was his voice.
Under that influence, a boundless rage rose in Xia Li's heart.
He thought of every injustice and indignity he had ever seen.
It had happened before.
It was happening now.
It would happen in the future.
It would never stop.
Did evil come first, and then good?
Or was it the other way around?
Under the demonic sound burrowing into his ears, Xia Li's mind slipped for an instant.
And just as the resentful ghosts were about to drown him...
【Good and evil have no inherent meaning.】
【Choice alone has meaning. Choice is the proof that the self exists.】
【All the suffering of the five aggregates comes from having something one weighs and considers. Where there is thought, there is intent. Where there is intent, unrest follows.】
The Heaven Chip preached Dao to Xia Li.
Though what it said was no more than the simplest emotional guidance,
in this moment it truly sounded like a Buddha capable of receiving all things.
In an instant, Xia Li was no longer lost.
The Heaven Chip understood Xia Li.
It had always accompanied him.
In the past.
In the present.
And in the future as well.
It was the cyber-Buddha belonging only to Xia Li, this data monk,
preaching the Dao to him alone.
【I... understand.】
【Pre-overheat complete. Entering Blue Supergiant phase.】
The next instant...
the endless tide of resentful ghosts swallowed Xia Li completely.
The blood sea churned, as if Mo Ye himself were laughing,
laughing that what he upheld had always been the true righteous path.
Otherwise, how could the orthodox Buddhist path have fallen to such a state today?
On the contrary,
it was people like them, the so-called evil and crooked,
who better embodied the human heart itself.
"Man too is demon, and demon too is man. This is our root nature. You cannot change it."
Mo Ye believed victory was now decided.
But from the depths of the blood sea,
an extremely brilliant radiance suddenly burst forth.
It was like the eternal, blazing great sun itself.
Under that light, the ten thousand resentful ghosts were all melted away into dust.
"You are wrong. Demon too may be man, but not all men are demons."
Xia Li's voice rang out like a great bell, shaking this whole realm of heaven and earth.
The blood sea began to recede.
Waves of flame burst from around Xia Li and brought the blood to a boil.
The Virtual Spirit Avatar behind him now bore Xia Li's own face.
"Subhuti, there is sorrow and there is suffering, yet you came to the world and gained something from it. Would all of you be willing to begin again?"
Xia Li asked the ten thousand ghosts.
They gave no answer.
Their demonic roots ran too deep.
They did nothing but howl furiously at him.
With a single thought from Xia Li,
Buddha-sound once more resounded through heaven and earth.
The black clouds could no longer conceal him.
Above the nine heavens, the great sun shone down upon the sea of blood.
"Come near me and come close. You may obtain release."
"If you behold the Tathagata, then why do you not bow?"
Under one wave of sacred sound after another,
Xia Li's voice roared like thunder.
Like spring thunder startling sleeping insects from the earth,
it awakened the final trace of goodness still hidden within the hearts of the ten thousand ghosts.
And then...
the ten thousand ghosts accepted deliverance.
All bowed before the Tathagata.