Chapter 780
Chapter 780
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>Translator: Ryuma
>Chapter: 780
>Chapter Title: Dharma Assembly
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“Benefactor Li, since you’re not a disciple of the Buddha, this poor monk will explain the process to you now. In a moment, you’ll join this poor monk and the assembly of disciples to hold the Kalavinka Dharma Assembly inside the Hall of a Thousand Buddhas, while Senior Brother Xin Hui leads the other Arhat disciples to hold the Great Unobstructed Assembly in the other four halls.”
Abbot Zendu, draped in his kasaya robes, led Li Huowang forward. Unlike yesterday, he cradled a purple-gold alms bowl in his hands, which didn’t look like an ordinary object.
“Great Unobstructed Assembly?” Li Huowang recalled something, a trace of disgust crossing his face. “Birds of a feather flock together. They’re even holding a Great Unobstructed Assembly to draw the Buddha’s attention.”
“Benefactor Li, the Great Unobstructed Assembly means without obstruction or hindrance, treating all equally regardless of nobility or baseness, monk or layperson, wise or foolish, good or evil—a grand communal feast.”
“So that’s what it is? I overthought it then. You don’t need to explain too much—just help me meet the Buddha.” Li Huowang suddenly felt he’d misjudged these monks, thinking it was that kind of unobstructed assembly.
However, when he reached the hall’s exterior and saw the dense crowd of monks pressed against the walls, hands clasped in prayer, their bodies naked save for the Buddhist beads around their necks as they sat knocking wooden fish, Li Huowang realized the old monk’s earlier words weren’t exactly a denial.
As he drew nearer, their overlapping chants reached his ears. “When one abides in the practice of profound prajna paramita, for a long time one clearly perceives that the five skandhas are all empty. Bodhisattva, because of relying on prajna paramita, ‘Gone, gone, gone beyond, gone completely beyond, enlightenment, hail!’”
Led by Abbot Zendu and his monks, Li Huowang—who had specially changed into clean robes—entered the Hall of a Thousand Buddhas, surrounded by the throng of monks.
Incense smoke filled the hall so thickly that Li Huowang could only make out the bodies of the Buddha statues on the main altar, not their heads.
Besides the central Buddha, the surrounding pedestal seats were densely packed with other Buddhas in various seated or reclining poses.
Whether this Hall of a Thousand Buddhas truly held a thousand statues, Li Huowang didn’t know, but he could clearly sense that the Buddhas here were more revered than elsewhere—for every statue in the hall was gilded with a layer of gold.
Li Huowang sat cross-legged on the cushion and slowly closed his eyes.
The moment he took a deep breath and snapped his eyes open, gazing at the thoroughly transformed Buddhas around him, the solemn Buddhist music from drums, bells, chimes, and cymbals outside the hall rang out all at once.
These “Buddhas,” large and small, were still the same nauseating “Buddha” he had once seen.
Even gilded, they hadn’t improved in the slightest—instead, they gained an extra layer of grotesqueness.
The enormous, twisted, malformed mountain of flesh sprawled like a puddle of sludge on the lotus throne, its toad-back-like skin covered in viscous blood plasma.
All sorts of bizarre, malformed reproductive organs, wrapped in the blood plasma, protruded in and out from that revolting skin, twisting ceaselessly with the undulations of its body.
Such a monstrous, repulsive thing was now crawling all over with equally writhing naked monks, with one-meter-long giant incense sticks jammed into the gaps between the monks and the organs.
The monks fervently inhaled the white smoke drifting from the incense, their expressions ecstatic and breaths ragged as they filled every crevice on the “Buddha” with their own flesh, their bodies twisting in rhythm with its pulsations.
Li Huowang slowly exhaled and closed his eyes again. “Leaving Li Sui outside was the right call.”
When the distant, resounding toll of the massive bell echoed throughout Zhengde Temple, Abbot Zendu led all his disciples to sit encircling Li Huowang.
“Benefactor Li, to see the Buddha, you must be sincere and dispel all doubts. Only then will the Buddha give rise to bodhicitta. Faith in the Buddha requires sincerity—if your heart isn’t true, you cannot behold the Buddha.”
“Got it. Let’s begin.”
Abbot Zendu picked up a long incense stick and gently tapped the side of his purple-gold alms bowl. “Dong~”
All the monks around Li Huowang stood up, while the “Buddhas” on the surrounding pedestals watched the scene before them with pitying eyes from the slits in their forms.
As the monks began chanting sutras with utmost devotion, the surrounding Buddhist beads spewed forth indistinct, obscenely depraved words, ceaselessly defiling the solemn scriptures.
The sounds of wooden fish, sutra chanting, and flesh slapping mingled in a cacophony that burrowed into Li Huowang’s ears, causing his body to tremble involuntarily as certain sensations began assimilating toward him.
Li Huowang struggled to steady his mind and body, casting aside all stray thoughts as he devoutly prayed to the Buddha in his heart, prostrating himself inwardly.
To worship the Buddha requires sincerity, without a trace of distraction—perhaps a challenge for others, but for Li Huowang, cultivation demanded the same. Any stray thoughts during cultivation would infuse the result with those very distractions.
Li Huowang didn’t know how long he prayed with utter sincerity when suddenly, everything around him fell deathly silent, so quiet that even a needle dropping to the ground would be audible.
His eyelids quivered slightly as he opened his eyes, and in the next instant, suspended upside down and right-side up alike, he beheld an utterly bizarre and shocking sight. He saw the Tathagata! He saw the Tathagata! He saw the Five Wisdom Tathagatas, their forms overlapping across five superimposed worlds.
The five androgynous Tathagatas had their organs interlocked and layered upon one another, self-assaulting, self-satisfying, self-recompensing.
But the vision flashed by in an instant. Before he could discern more details, Li Huowang cried out in pain as both his eyes exploded open—mortal flesh could not directly behold the Five Wisdom Tathagatas.
Though eyeless now, Li Huowang could still sense them through his skin’s touch, his nose’s smell, his ears’ hearing.
The existence of this Si Ming was extraordinarily unique—even without eyes, his other senses could perceive Its presence.
Yet this state didn’t last long. Not only were Li Huowang’s other senses rapidly collapsing, but his mind began swelling uncontrollably.
“I!!” Li Huowang shouted with all his might toward that presence: “I’ve come to help you! No matter what you’re fighting! Whatever Xuan Pin can do—I can do too!”
“Tell me! What do I need to do to help you!!” Li Huowang’s voice carried over, but received no response.
Enduring the breakdown of his sensory organs across his entire body, Li Huowang kept shouting as he edged closer.
But as he drew slightly nearer, he sensed something wrong—his body was being assimilated! Assimilated by the Heavenly Dao emanating from the Five Wisdom Tathagatas.
His body warped and twisted like pliable clay. Faced with this, Li Huowang could do little else; gritting his teeth, he forcibly repaired his form.
(End of chapter)