Chapter 359: Hellish Agony, the Buddha Appears

Facing such hellish torture, naturally not everyone could hold on; therefore, at this very moment, right under Du En's gaze, there were those who had passed away from the pain.

However, without exception, these people all wore strange, eerie expressions at the moment of their death.

A smile!

A smile of liberation, as if they had escaped a sea of suffering! It was as if they had been freed from the agony of the execution; no, that's not right...

Chang Lingfeng felt a chill run down his spine, a coldness rising from his heart; unable to restrain himself any longer, he rushed directly in the direction Du En had previously led.

"Mother! Sister Mei! Brother Shu!"

His heart was filled with unbearable urgency, and he could not stop calling out.

Moving with hurried, non-stop steps, he soon ran into the second level.

There were monks holding ink markers, casually drawing black lines on the bodies of those who had converted to Buddhism and endured the first level of torture to arrive here; other monks, cackling with strange laughter, used saws and axes to cut along the lines.

Flesh and blood splattered, internal organs spilled out, and the victims died and were reborn amidst wails and screams, suffering endless torment!

"Ah! Damn it! Brother Shu, I've come to save you!"

Rushing all the way, Chang Lingfeng finally saw from afar his good friend who was being tortured; he shouted immediately, pounced forward, tackled the executioner, and struck with fierce fists.

Under an explosive burst of strength, his Dharma power erupted, his fists flashing with light as he struck repeatedly; in no time at all, he killed that monk.

Strangely, the other executioner monks were surprised at first, but after realizing what happened, they did not stop him, merely pausing their actions to cackle on the sidelines.

Just as Chang Lingfeng was about to press his advantage, he was shaken to his core once more, because the fellow he had just killed walked out again from the fires nearby.

"Hahaha! We are the punishment! We are the torture! We are the suffering born from the persistence of obsession!"

He laughed and said this, but Chang Lingfeng didn't want to listen at all; after the shock, he was about to continue his attack.

"Ah Feng, what are you doing?!"

At this moment, Brother Shu suddenly spoke up.

"What am I doing? Saving you, of course!"

Chang Lingfeng answered as if it were a matter of course.

Then.

"Saving me? You call this saving me?"

"Huh?"

"Only by undergoing bitter cultivation can one ascend to the Pure Land; I am doing this voluntarily, I am doing this of my own accord. This is my bitter cultivation, this is my karmic obstacle..."

"What kind of bullshit..."

"Silence!"

Brother Shu struggled to get down from the execution platform, now in a towering rage; disregarding their brotherhood, he came up and delivered a flurry of old-fashioned punches, leaving Chang Lingfeng stunned.

"You, you!"

"I have converted with a sincere heart, why do you always obstruct me? It was in vain that we were brothers; do you really not want me to see the bliss of the afterlife?"

"No, no, I..."

"Ah Feng, if you listen to me, you should convert with me too! All the bitter cultivation in this life will eventually earn the blessings of the next; when that time comes, we can escape this endless, generation-after-generation trap of suffering beneath the earth!"

He was mad!

Truly mad! Chang Lingfeng was dumbfounded, feeling that his brother, Brother Shu, whom he had grown up with, was now incredibly strange, as if he had been possessed by inner demons; he trembled, but facing those eyes—filled with regret and pity, yet faintly reflecting the past—he was momentarily speechless!

"I see it now."

Du En spoke at this moment.

He had been following and watching the whole time, and now he understood the general situation here.

The people who converted to Buddhism did not come here to find hope and light, but for a test, or rather, a pre-set "bitter cultivation"! The doctrine of the Pure Light Sect was that one must suffer in this life to enjoy happiness in the next.

These sincere converts were here, manifesting various tortures and pains because of their own obsessions, using them to spur themselves on—this was what they called bitter cultivation; that was why the monks did not die, and why they themselves did not die.

In essence, this was like an empty dream of pain, yet it required the support of this Buddha-land, where the boundaries had been broken and the nature of reality was ambiguous, to truly manifest!

Upon hearing Du En's voice, Chang Lingfeng felt as if he had found a savior.

"Benefactor! Benefactor! Please, I beg you to intervene and break the bewitchment he is under!"

"I fear I cannot do that."

"Wh, what?"

"If it were merely some sort of spell or evil art, I could easily resolve it, but they are not under any spell; they simply firmly believe that by doing this, they can escape the sea of suffering. Therefore, even if I save him and throw him elsewhere, this mindset cannot be changed; he will continue to choose self-mutilation or even suicide later on."

Even if I used great Dharma power to erase the relevant memories, since I am not skilled in this area, the poison would eventually leak out; moreover, this abnormality was fueled by someone else's push, which is a method of the Spirit Severing stage, so even if I did that, I estimate that within a few days, cracks would form, and in the end, nothing would have changed! "Impossible, this is impossible! How could this be..."

Facing Du En's blunt explanation, Chang Lingfeng was incredulous, trembling and covered in cold sweat; he looked at his Brother Shu, and the other man merely nodded in affirmation.

"Ah Feng, I only had to look at you—clearly so talented and outstanding, yet trapped in a desolate, remote camp—to understand everything. That's right, in this life, it is impossible for us to turn our fortunes around; therefore, as long as we exhaust all our bitter karma in this life and repay the bad causes of our past lives, we can obtain the good fruits of the next."

Brother Shu's confession left Chang Lingfeng stunned.

Then, he returned to the execution platform of his own accord to undergo the ink-marking and sawing torture.

"Ahhhhh..."

His brother's screams woke Chang Lingfeng, and the cackling laughter of the monks only made him want to go mad.

Thus, watching his brother voluntarily suffer, he finally knelt before Du En, tears streaming down his face.

"Benefactor, you, you... help me, kill him..."

He truly could not bear to watch his brother's agony, and unable to persuade the devoutly converted man, he finally realized there was only one way to grant him release.

Kill him!

"No! You cannot do this! I haven't suffered enough, I haven't endured enough pain!"

Brother Shu shouted upon hearing this, sensing that his bitter cultivation was about to be destroyed; he clung to his obsession, and the group of people shifted, arriving at the third level of suffering.

The converts on this level were either crushed by two ram-headed hammers, smashed to pieces by iron mallets on a giant anvil, or ground into paste in an iron mortar; their bones and flesh were pulverized into a river, only to crawl out again later and be dragged back to the execution site by a scorching wind.

The level of pain was ten times greater than before! "Ah!"

Brother Shu let out a miserable, mournful cry, and then, with a satisfied smile at the corners of his mouth, he completely became a member of the river of minced flesh, no longer crawling out to be resurrected. He died; he died satisfied.

Chang Lingfeng was stunned, his eyes beginning to grow dim, and he walked forward unsteadily, clearly not intending to give up the search.

Seeing this, Du En lowered his gaze slightly; he did not stop him, but instead quietly adjusted his direction so that he could follow the traces and walk on a path that was generally correct.

Following along, they arrived at the fourth level.

Those who had converted to worship the Buddha were burned here by fierce, raging flames; due to pain and terror, they wailed loudly—this could be called the Hell of Screaming. After a person was burned to a charred corpse, it took a moment to be resurrected. Their consciousness had already become crazed and scattered, yet their obsessive seeking only grew more intense, with not a single moment of respite.

Suffer more, gain more blessings! Those who could reach this place were all people with excessive delusions! Somewhere here, Chang Lingfeng found his childhood sweetheart, his fiancée.

"No, don't, Sister Mei, why, why on earth? Everything was clearly fine, why did you all become like this? I really don't understand!"

He stumbled over, hugged her as she emerged from her charred shell, and wailed, his emotions completely collapsed; he simply could not understand this way of thinking of theirs.

"Feng... brother?"

"It's me, it's me!"

"Don't stop me, I... I just, was thinking, for the child, to gain some good karma..."

"What kind of good karma is this! Why listen to that kind of nonsense!"

"Because, I really, cannot see, hope... it is too dark, all around, we, are still trapped there, I do not wish, for the child to be like this too..."

Intermittently, a look of happiness could not help but appear on her face.

It was as if she were indicating that she had already seen that scene of happiness.

Chang Lingfeng only turned his head blankly to look at Du En's side.

He closed his eyes slightly and waved his hand.

A person dies like a lamp going out, heart full and satisfied.

Only the living remained, muddled and confused, like walking corpses, walking toward the deeper depths.

He began to mutter, talking to himself about some of his past events.

Sharing hardships and overcoming difficulties with brothers, and the laughter and play with his sweetheart.

Clearly, not long ago, things were as they always had been; although life was hard, there could still be smiles.

Finally, he mentioned his mother.

"My father died early because of hunting, leaving only my widowed mother to raise me. We depended on each other for survival. Since I was small, she taught me to be strong, to learn to be self-reliant, and to be a man no less capable than my father..."

Chang Lingfeng spoke, Du En listened, and there was a little tail following behind them.

They walked past the Hell of Screaming, then past the Hell of Great Screaming, then the Hell of Scorching Heat, and finally, arrived at the Hell of Great Scorching Heat.

Here, there stood rows of iron houses, inside which fierce fires burned unceasingly until they were red-hot, and huge copper pots were set up, filled with boiling molten iron and liquid copper.

The number of converts who could hold out until here was very few. They were thrown into them, roasted and boiled, tossed and stirred; from inside to out, their flesh, bones, and blood were everywhere fused with the molten magma and scorching fire, the intense suffering never ceasing for an instant!

Seeing this scene, Chang Lingfeng could not help but shed tears.

"Crying? What are you crying for!"

The sudden reprimand made him feel as if he had returned to the past, to when he was small and his mother was lecturing him.

Instead of being startled, he was happy; he suddenly raised his head, and sure enough, he saw that familiar figure, connected by blood.

"Mom..."

"Don't call me that!"

That figure spat out vicious, strange words, directly leaving Chang Lingfeng's mind blank, yet she did not stop in the slightest, "I am going to pursue the happiness of the next life; you damned unfilial son, why do you always stop me? Ah! I truly regret and hate it; I wish I had never given birth to you!"

*Deng deng deng! * Chang Lingfeng widened his eyes, retreating again and again, and then, he saw his old mother, after saying such evil words, throw herself into the copper pot with a look of joyful yearning, and in the blink of an eye, she was swallowed by the molten magma.

The bitter cultivation is already complete! In a trance, he seemed to hear this whisper.

"Ahhh!!!"

Chang Lingfeng finally collapsed and shouted. Du En seemed to have just noticed and was about to move to steady him, but he dodged him directly, shouting crazily: "Ha! Hahaha! You, you are all in this together! Whether it is the Pure Light Sect or the Rejecting Light Sect, it is all the same, all the same, hahahahaha!"

He pointed at Du En while saying this, and then ran away in a frenzy.

Du En silently withdrew his hand, his calm gaze turning away, lifting his eyes to look at the distance of this Hell of Bitter Cultivation, at that spirit mountain, or rather, the Buddha statue that had quietly appeared on the spirit mountain.

It was secretly looking over with contempt; it had already noticed from halfway through, and the recent act was also its secret doing; now it had already set its sights on Du En, this uninvited guest.

A battle was imminent! Therefore, Du En had no leisure to care about anything else.

To this day, the person who calls himself the Reincarnated Pure Light Buddha has forgotten his former name, but he remembers his past experiences clearly.

He was once a person living in the central camp, doing thievery and fraud under the radiance of the Spirit Mother; he was a rascal who had a thousand threads of connection with the wealthy families living outside the headquarters of the Rejecting Light Sect.

Therefore, no matter how he did evil in his daily life, as long as he did not cross the line, it was not a problem at all.

Because of this, acts of bullying men and oppressing women were committed from time to time.

Just like this, he lived to be seventy years old, only to be swept out the door by the wealthy families because a new rascal had squeezed him out of his position, and he was thrown into the mass grave outside the central camp.

Good and evil have no retribution at the end; here, he actually obtained a volume of Buddhist scriptures, received guidance from it, set off on foot to the west, and after walking for who knows how long, he encountered a dilapidated Buddha statue and learned the true transmission of the Dharma from it.

"Hahaha! Heaven helps me! The Buddha favors me!"

Then, he first barely repaired the Buddha statue, and then, using the Dharma he had comprehended, began to spread the theory of good karma from past lives to the outside world, while simultaneously founding the Pure Light Sect, calling himself the Reincarnated Pure Light Buddha, and began the business of harvesting the power of vows from worship.

It was unexpectedly effective, truly immediate; his cultivation rose step by step, and so he gradually became unsatisfied, beginning to build a Buddha Land and establishing the foundation of the Hell of Bitter Cultivation.

This behavior had actually been going on for many years. People attracted by the theory of good karma from past lives constantly practiced bitter cultivation with sincerity, producing a larger and purer amount of vow power, and their obsessions constantly perfected the scale of this Hell of Bitter Cultivation.

The Buddha Land Hell was thus perfected, and he also completed that Golden Body of the Buddha, truly attaining the Transformation of Divinity realm.

And then, time arrived at the present.

The moment just now was indeed due to a misunderstanding, as he had focused his attention on the Rejecting Light Sect in the east, that feared rival sect, but very quickly, he was suddenly startled and realized the existence of Du En here.

The effect of the Wicked Dragon Robe was actually steadily fading!

After confirming Du En's existence, he made a tentative move, relying on the collective obsessions of the Buddha Land Hell, which did indeed deceive Du En for a moment.

(End of chapter)