Chapter 1: One: This Place Is Pure Land

One: This Place Is Pure Land

Pay attention—this man’s name is Xiao Shuai!

He was tightening a rope around a solid gold lotus lantern, swinging it overhead to aim, then hurling it with all his strength toward the hole above…

Ouyang Rong figured that if this were really someone’s prank—using hidden cameras to film ordinary people—then soon everyone would meet him accompanied by this absurd opening line.

“I’m telling you, whether this is a lame prank, a nightmare, or the real Pure Land… no one’s stopping me from going back to study for my postgraduate exam!”

Ouyang Rong crouched on the edge of a lotus stone pedestal, head bowed, dry lips muttering, his eyes fixed intently on the golden lotus lantern in his hand as he meticulously tied the knot.

This was a sealed underground palace; the four walls bore faint traces of faded murals, and at its center lay a half-meter-tall lotus pedestal, inverted and upright.

Everything else was empty.

The only source of light was a circular hole in the ceiling ten meters above, about the size of a manhole cover.

It also appeared to be the palace’s sole exit, through which a slanted beam of grayish moonlight fell, landing precisely on the youth crouching ungracefully atop the lotus pedestal.

“I’ve been preparing for four hours in the morning and ten at night for a full year—this weekend’s the exam. You think falling down a well can trap me? Even Buddha’s well won’t stop me! I’m telling you—it’s impossible!”

Ouyang Rong gave the rope knot one final check, licked his chapped lips, and sprang up with a *thump* from the lotus pedestal.

One hand gripped the rope tightly, the other cradled the heavy golden lotus lantern, he stared upward at the “well opening” he’d been longing to reach.

There’s no well you can’t climb out of—only postgraduate candidates who refuse to give up!

But after his adrenaline rush, Ouyang Rong didn’t act immediately.

He suddenly turned back and called into the darkness behind him: “Hey, you guys come over and lend a hand—I’ll pull you up after I get out.”

This sealed underground palace wasn’t just him alone.

In the unlit shadows, three dark shapes were faintly scattered:

A seated monk, towering and massive, like a small mountain piled there.

His gray robe was tattered, his face gaunt, age indeterminable.

A leaning old Daoist sat cross-legged against the wall like a basket, legs splayed wide.

He was hunched inside a vast black crane-feather cloak, arms wrapped tightly around himself as if freezing.

Only a pointed head emerged, youthful face with silver hair, a Daoist mixed-hybrid headband pressing down on his snowy locks.

There was also a girl, hugging her knees and burying her face—already slender-boned, yet dressed in ancient Han-style robes, making her look even more frail.

She was also the quietest in the palace.

When he first woke, Ouyang Rong tried talking to her; she uttered not a single word, only a pair of eyes like autumn streams flickered through the gap between her arms and knees.

Now, as Ouyang Rong labored under the moonlight, those slender eyes slipped again from between her arms, silently watching him.

Ouyang Rong scanned the three oddly dressed figures again; no matter how he looked, they didn’t seem like postgraduate candidates—but he couldn’t help muttering: “You really won’t come out?”

But he received three looks, as if he were an idiot.

“We can’t leave!”

At the word “leave,” the gaunt monk shuddered violently, as if just pulled from frozen northern seas.

“Why?”

The gaunt monk pointed one finger to the ground, one to the sky: “This place is the Lotus Pure Land; above lies the Avīci Hell!”

“If I don’t pass, then yes—that’s Avīci Hell.” Ouyang Rong nodded, turned away.

The monk couldn’t bear it, chanting softly: “Namo Amitabha Buddha, layperson, if you go up, you’ll be devoured by evil things immediately.”

“Don’t go out and get yourself killed,” the crane-caped old Daoist sneered, then paused, “And if you’re gonna die, don’t drag us with you.”

“… ” Ouyang Rong.

Are you guys on drugs?

He held back, swallowed the words, shook his head.

Apparently, people who still believe in religion these days are all a bit nuts—better off than those Hanfu girls in the cosplay circles.

Glancing at the silent slender girl, Ouyang Rong decisively turned back and began hurling the golden lotus lantern toward the circular hole above.

Not long ago, he’d tried shouting for help; whether the palace was too deep or the night too silent, no response came from outside.

“I can’t delay any longer—I haven’t finished memorizing my vocabulary.”

Ouyang Rong remembered watching a survival video before, where a man trapped in a deep pit tied a heavy object to one end of a long rope, threw it outside, and wrapped it around a tree trunk to escape.

“I remember before I fell, there were two incense burners nearby meant to trick coins.” The postgraduate candidate analyzed calmly.

The lotus lantern he now held—whether real gold or just gold-painted—he’d weighed it, and it felt valuable.

But… who cares? Even if it’s cultural heritage, it’s useless—people’s lives and the postgraduate exam matter more; the “people” have requisitioned it!

Watch:

First try—missed, hit the ground.

Second try—hit, thrown out!

But when he pulled, it slid back from outside.

Third try—changed direction—missed again…

At this moment, the gaunt monk clasped his hands together, face filled with sorrow:

“Layperson, why persist in your stubbornness? You’ve barely ascended to this Pure Land—don’t fall again into that Avīci Hell.”

“Above, evil things abound, evil karma grows wild: waves drown the wilderness, fierce flames fill all directions, poisonous vapors choke heaven and earth, evil winds destroy all things…”

“Stop blabbering,” the crane-caped old Daoist shifted to a cross-legged sitting posture, pulling farther away from Ouyang Rong, impatiently: “Good advice won’t save those determined to die; great compassion won’t rescue those who choose self-destruction.”

The postgraduate candidate froze mid-motion, lowering his eyes to glance silently at the unfamiliar Confucian robe he’d deliberately ignored.

This wasn’t the clothing he’d been wearing before he fell.

Boom—

Distant thunder rumbled outside the palace; before he could react, rain began to fall.

Ouyang Rong looked up, raindrops striking his bluish eyelids.

No matter how he looked, that round hole resembled a manhole cover—the very one he’d fallen into.

The story’s a bit convoluted.

Ouyang Rong was a second-time postgraduate candidate; nearing the exam, while lurking in a small group called “Righteous Postgraduate Group (Girls Not Allowed),” he heard from a member that a temple called Donglin Temple excelled at both postgraduate success and blessing for romance, drawing many pilgrims from all over the country to give thanks…

After further inquiry, he learned the temple housed a century-old Wish Tower, containing a Blessing Bell: once enough merit was accumulated, ringing it once granted wishes fulfilled.

Ouyang Rong was skeptical, a materialist at heart—but maybe modern youth’s anxiety had become so intense even Buddha noticed? And maybe Buddha actually took this service…

Besides, he genuinely needed both—direct hits to his sore spots.

He’d just pretend sincerity worked.

So that morning, Ouyang Rong took a taxi to Donglin Temple with a critical gaze—only to find, upon arrival, that he wasn’t early enough: the queue stretched all the way down the mountain, filled with peers like him, heads bowed, scrolling phones in the cold wind.

Getting up this early? Clearly veteran postgrads—even waiting in line, they didn’t stop studying… Ouyang Rong sighed, reaching for his phone, when a young monk pinched a QR code between two fingers and shoved it under his nose: “Scan it.”

Ouyang Rong glanced—it was to download an app called “Merit Tower.”

Donglin Temple was surprisingly considerate: allowing busy devotees to ring the bell online without queuing—truly leading all temples nationwide in devotee care, right up to their prostates.

Ouyang Rong didn’t waste time; after downloading, he turned and left immediately—postgraduate candidates’ time was precious.

On the way back, he studied the app briefly and quickly understood it.

Inside the Merit Tower, there was mainly an electronic wooden fish and a Blessing Bell.

The electronic wooden fish could be manually tapped—each tap added +1 merit, with a cheerful counter above.

The most important feature—the Blessing Bell that granted wishes—required accumulating ten thousand merit points to ring once.

The devilish part? The app came with the “Great Compassion Sutra” as background music—unmuteable…

“Tap the electronic wooden fish, accumulate cyber merit, gain mechanical blessings, ascend to Pure Land, meet robotic Buddha—right? I know this.” Ouyang Rong was confident.

Oh, there was also a “Limited-Time Donation for Merit” option in the bottom-right corner, but Ouyang Rong ignored it—next time… maybe never.

Non-paying devotees had to grind hard. Though Ouyang Rong was still stuck on “abandon” for vocabulary, his hands-on tinkering skills had been maxed out since childhood.

As a kid, if he found a slightly straight stick, no plant within ten li would grow taller than his waist; every dog he passed got two whacks; if given a string, not a single tadpole would survive in the pond.

That night, Ouyang Rong rigged a mechanical auto-tapper using a motor, gears, chopsticks, and rubber bands, placed it on his bedside table to spam merit, while he leisurely memorized vocabulary, falling asleep to the Great Compassion Sutra.

Result? The next day, his account was banned.

“… ” Are you guys not sportsmanlike?

Ouyang Rong never imagined such a tiny third-party app had an anti-cheat system.

The next morning, furious, he returned to Donglin Temple to argue… well, really, to feign innocence and see if he could get unbanned.

But again, the familiar long queue—he bypassed it, climbing the mountain to see if another entrance existed.

Halfway up, the same righteous-sounding postgraduate group he’d lurked in posted another morally upright image.

Posting this in broad daylight? Ouyang Rong instinctively double-tapped to zoom in—and that one greedy glance caused him to misstep as he turned a corner, his foot slipped, and darkness swallowed him…

…

Ouyang Rong stood atop the lotus pedestal, wiping rain from his face.

From his last few memories, he deduced he’d fallen into a well in the temple missing its cover.

But strangely, when he slowly woke, he found himself lying on this cold, hard lotus pedestal beneath him.

His phone and down jacket were gone; he searched the entire palace but found nothing—replaced instead by an unfamiliar white Confucian robe.

A white cloth bandage wrapped around his forehead like a headband, covering a sizable wound from the impact, still throbbing faintly.

Fortunately, he’d only hit his forehead, not his face.

And he knew his own face well; though the palace was pitch-black with no mirror, after feeling around, he was almost certain—unless he’d been reborn as Hu Ge or Edison Chen.

Had it not been for this ironclad proof, he might’ve almost believed the gaunt monk and crane-caped Daoist’s nonsense.

No longer dwelling on his clothes, after a brief hesitation in the rain, Ouyang Rong resumed hurling the lantern.

He changed direction twice more along the way.

Finally!

On the tenth throw, the lotus golden lamp thrown from the opening no longer retracted—he felt a steady resistance travel up the taut rope to his raw, blistered palm.

His face lit up; he wiped his face hard, spat twice, ejecting mud and water from his mouth, then grabbed the rope and began climbing upward without regard for dignity.

Behind him, the gaunt monk, the crane-cape old Daoist, and the slender girl all stared fixedly at him.

At a height of roughly ten meters, the man crawled upward like a tiny earthworm scaling a wall, heaving himself up in jerky motions.

His posture was undignified, and under so many eyes, it made him blush—especially before that Hanfu girl.

But his life came first; he’d worry about looking cool once he reached dry land.

Soon, Ouyang Rong climbed through most of the rain, his hand now able to reach the rocky rim of the well opening, and suddenly he caught the familiar scent of sandalwood.

So it was still inside the temple! Ouyang Rong exhaled in relief.

At that moment, he suddenly noticed the moon, half-obscured by clouds, began to tremble.

Can the moon shiver? That was his first thought in those initial three seconds.

But soon, he realized it wasn’t.

What was trembling… was the entire underground palace—and himself.

Ouyang Rong startled violently, clutching the rope tightly to his chest.

The sound of rain above him suddenly intensified; the wind grew fiercer, and the rain falling from above now slanted sharply from left to right.

Then came the sound from outside—not the rhythmic crash of tides, but a roar like a train hurtling toward him from afar, as if emerging from the horizon’s edge, sweeping everything in its path—birds, beasts, mountains, forests—before it, as if all heaven and earth trembled in its wake.

Ouyang Rong finally understood the true meaning of “earthquake and mountain collapse” and “heaven and earth turned dark.”

Too bad he learned it by crashing hard onto his buttocks.

The lotus golden lamp he had thrown out slipped loose and fell back, dragging Ouyang Rong down with it, plunging him once more into reality…

He didn’t know how long it lasted, but the sudden uproar faded into silence.

The rain, which had slanted left to right, returned to falling straight down.

Ouyang Rong sat on the cold, hard floor of the underground palace, soaked through.

Beside him lay a broken half of the lotus lamp; the other half had flown to the corner, scattering colored beads and stones across the ground.

Ouyang Rong’s upper body still clung to the rope, his head tilted upward, staring blankly at the circular hole—about the size of a well cover.

Just moments ago, near the opening, he hadn’t only heard the roar of flash floods and howling winds—he’d also faintly heard… countless cries of anguish.

Outside was a great flood—at least a mountain torrent raging over a hundred li, perhaps even something like the flood of Yahweh in the Old Testament.

A frail individual meant nothing before such power… nor did the postgraduate entrance exam.

Long silence.

“Uh… what did you just say?”

Ouyang Rong suddenly spoke, still not turning around.

Not far behind him, the gaunt monk, whose expression had remained calm all along, raised one finger to the ground and one to the sky.

“Venerable sir, this place is the Lotus Pure Land; above lies the Avīci Hell!”

Ouyang Rong opened his mouth, then closed it again.

He’d meant to ask about the line: “Were there waves that drowned the fields… and winds that shattered all things?” But… never mind.

The materialist postgraduate candidate turned seriously, earnestly asking: “Venerable monk, what is your surname?”

“… ” The gaunt monk.

“… ” The crane-cape old Daoist.

“… ” The slender girl.