Chapter 9

Nine, A Blessing Worth Ten Thousand Merit Points

Unless one is in this era where carriages are very slow, it is hard to understand this pain of "going from surplus to scarcity."

The few days since Magistrate Ouyang Rong woke up had been spent living an extremely "self-disciplined" life:

After eating dinner in the evening, he would sit in the room and stare blankly, pondering the Merit Tower; inside the room, apart from a few Buddhist scriptures borrowed from Xiufa, there was nothing.

Pushing open the west window, outside was the pitch-black wind, with only a few grains of Buddha lamps on the distant pagoda.

There was only one clear thing to do: sleep.

He had almost been unable to resist calling Banxi over to challenge his weak spot again.

And at this hour, if it were in his previous life, the exciting nightlife would have just begun, and the postgraduate exam group members in the Gentlemen's Group wouldn't even have started racing yet.

Of course, if one were in Shenjing Luoyang or Chang'an, the heart of the Great Zhou Empire, life might be a bit richer.

If one could empathize with this, then one could understand one percent of the reason for Magistrate Ouyang Rong's homesickness.

So right now, in the dead of night, Magistrate Ouyang Rong couldn't sleep no matter how he turned, so he went out...

Magistrate Ouyang Rong first went to the right wing room, dug out a rope and a fire starter to take with him, and even brought some pastries and fruit, wrapping them in a cloth bag.

But when he arrived at the Beitian Tian Jiyang Yuan again following his memory, and fumbled his way to the side of that well, he found the rope was somewhat redundant.

Because a pile of soft rope ladders had been placed by the wellhead.

Magistrate Ouyang Rong put down the rope ladder and entered the underground palace again.

It was the same familiar location, the same familiar time, and the same familiar moonlight.

Only, the figures of the slender mute girl and the crane-cape old Daoist were no longer in the underground palace. But that was not surprising; those two were likely patients of the Beitian Yuan who had been rescued, and he wasn't here to reminisce anyway.

The moonlight tonight was a bit dim.

*Sss~*

A spark suddenly rose out of thin air, illuminating Magistrate Ouyang Rong's thin face.

"Good evening, unknown Master."

The gaunt monk, who had been nodding off in the darkness, woke up with a start, chanted a Buddhist phrase, and said sincerely: "Benefactor, this place is the Lotus Pure Land, and above is the Avici Hell!"

The monk assumed his familiar compassionate posture, one finger pointing to the ground, one finger pointing to the sky.

Magistrate Ouyang Rong thought for a moment and nodded, "Master is the one who has been telling the truth all along; it was I who misunderstood before."

He walked over, placed the pastries and fruit in front of Monk Master Xiuzhen, then held up the fire starter and walked around the underground palace, beginning to carefully examine the place.

This underground palace was a space similar to a square, about the size of half a football field; he wondered if the circular lotus throne in the center of the underground palace and the well hole directly above represented the builder's concept of a round heaven and square earth.

Magistrate Ouyang Rong walked around the wall of the underground palace, and only then did he see the murals he had previously ignored.

The four walls were painted with rich and heavy pigments, but due to years of neglect and being in the dark underground palace, much of the murals had peeled off, but Magistrate Ouyang Rong still managed to recognize the general idea.

The four murals corresponded to four Jataka stories, which were "Prince Sattva Sacrificing His Body to Feed a Tiger," "King Sibi Cutting His Flesh to Trade for a Dove," "King Fast-Eye Giving Up His Eyes," and "King Moonlight Giving Up His Head."

The so-called Jataka stories actually tell of the good deeds and merits performed by Shakyamuni in his previous lives before he became a Buddha; the most familiar one should be the first, "Sacrificing His Body to Feed a Tiger," and the inner meaning that the other three fables want to express is consistent, all emphasizing the Buddha's compassion, and how he endured humiliation and sacrifice over many lifetimes in his previous lives to save the world and people, only then finally becoming a Buddha.

Magistrate Ouyang Rong was thoughtful and turned to walk toward the waist-cinched, upward-and-downward lotus throne in the center of the underground palace.

If Master Venerable Shan Dao hadn't lied to him, then Master Master Zhong Ma, who attained Buddhahood in the flesh back then, was sitting in this position... ascending to the Pure Land.

"After accumulating merit, can one really ascend to the Pure Land from here? If I cure the flood, or do other great deeds of merit, can I also ascend to the Pure Land?"

"Also, where exactly is the Pure Land? Is it really going to the Western Heaven, or is it that everyone goes to a different place, and if I wish for it, can I return to my hometown?"

Magistrate Ouyang Rong murmured, lowering his head in contemplation.

"Besides, since he attained Buddhahood in the flesh and his soul ascended, what about that lifelike body he left behind? I'd actually like to take a look... Uh." Halfway through, someone seemed to remember something and glanced guiltily at the half-broken lotus gold lamp not far away, and the strange oval beads scattered all over the ground.

Back then, this lotus gold lamp was originally taken by Magistrate Ouyang Rong from an eight-fold treasure box, which was originally placed on the lotus throne; he was right next to it when he woke up.

And that eight-fold treasure box was very large, like a Russian nesting doll, with eight layers of boxes, and inside the innermost layer was this lotus gold lamp.

It was just that when he threw it as a handy object at the time, he didn't expect that even this lotus gold lamp was just a storage container, and inside it were even more valuable Buddhist treasures; later, he was in a hurry to get out, so he didn't pay attention to these beads on the ground.

*Cough cough*, could these be the sarira of Master Master Zhong Ma or other high monks? That would be equivalent to ashes; in that case, the lotus gold lamp is their urn... *Eh*, that's really a bit of a sin; I see that's how your merit points were deducted.

Magistrate Ouyang Rong sighed, lowered his eyes, and looked at the sarira on the ground again:

About seventeen of them, the smallest no bigger than a marble, the largest no bigger than a pigeon's egg, in all sorts of colors; there was even one that was perfectly round and translucent, like a white diamond... aren't sarira actually kidney stones? You call this a kidney stone?

As expected of high monks, once they lie in the furnace, they can really burn anything out, just like opening a blind box... No, stop, can't laugh.

Magistrate Ouyang Rong assumed the level of a high-level expression management master, bent down as if nothing had happened, and picked up the sarira on the ground one by one, but doing this did not increase his merit points.

However, Magistrate Ouyang Rong had now figured out a bit of the Merit Tower's rules: it's fine to be a troll, but you can only "think" it, not "do" it.

Listening to hell jokes and laughing out loud is a type of "doing," and the Buddha will deduct all your points.

But when he picked up that perfectly round and translucent sarira, he found that it could slowly glow in the moonlight, like a night-luminescent pearl; he suddenly felt it was quite rare, thought for a moment, sighed, and tucked it into his sleeve; it couldn't be left here in the underground palace to gather dust, so he would keep it safe for the high monks.

Perhaps it was because someone's heart was sincere, or perhaps these sarira were truly ownerless objects forgotten by everyone for the time being, but his merit points were not deducted...

Then Magistrate Ouyang Rong caught sight of a line of text.

It was discovered when the fire starter illuminated the sarira.

It was located at the foot of this stone waist-cinched, upward-and-downward lotus throne, on the southeast side hidden by the shadow of the throne. It was incised into the floor tiles, so it was no wonder it hadn't been discovered before—it was forever located in the blind spot of the well's sunlight and moonlight.

"Return, O return?"

Magistrate Ouyang Rong squatted down to take a look and immediately remembered something.

Isn't this the text left behind by Master Venerable Shan Dao's grand-uncle before he "ascended to the Pure Land"? So it was still left here... He had thought it was ink or a blood letter or something that had been cleaned away long ago.

As for the meaning of this four-character idiom, it was also very simple: Go back!

Magistrate Ouyang Rong's eyes sharpened slightly; the marble tiles under his feet were already cold and solid, but the four regular-script characters "Return, O return" were deeply incised, as if carved with a sharp awl that could cut through iron like mud.

He subconsciously reached out to touch the incision, and in an instant, his whole body trembled; it wasn't that his fingertips were electrocuted, but that he faintly heard a shocking bell tolling in his ears.

This momentary change happened so fast that Magistrate Ouyang Rong's brain didn't have time to react before his consciousness was violently pulled into the Merit Tower located ten thousand miles above the clouds.

"This is..."

Magistrate Ouyang Rong stumbled and sat on the ground, seeing the Blessing Bell above, which had been silent since time immemorial, now trembling slightly, with purple energy surging on the bell's body.

It was like an old man in a straw hat fishing alone on a cold river standing up and shaking off the snow from his body.

It was as if a car had been ignited and started.

At the same time, the line of cyan-gold text recording the merit value on the small wooden fish shone brightly, finally turning into a cluster of light, like a living creature, shaped like a "swimming carp" in a pond.

It suddenly rushed toward the Blessing Bell!

And then... it was bounced back by the impact, returning to the wooden fish, turning into a line of cyan-gold text: 【Merit: One Hundred】

And the Blessing Bell continued to tremble slightly, "shaking off snow," safe and sound, without any change, as if that "swimming carp" was too weak to shake it at all, let alone toll it.

Witnessing this scene, Magistrate Ouyang Rong was stunned, slowly digesting the shock, "Not enough merit..."

The "swimming carp" formed by the merit value Magistrate Ouyang Rong had just accumulated seemed to have some kind of connection with him in the dark, and after being bounced back to its original state, a mysterious piece of information surfaced in his mind, which was a joke.

"It actually takes ten thousand merit points to toll the bronze bell and obtain the blessing fruit... and I only have one hundred points now, still nine thousand nine hundred points short, damn."

Magistrate Ouyang Rong fell into deep thought.

And in reality, because his hand had been taken off the four-character incision, the Blessing Bell had long since returned to silence, and the Merit Tower had hidden itself back into the clouds.

There was no doubt that this four-character incision and the lotus throne hid a secret blessing.

And this blessing was clearly not small, actually requiring such a huge amount of merit points; this probably... would be enough for him to watch hell jokes for a lifetime.

Magistrate Ouyang Rong lowered his head and stared at the four-character incision in the shadows.

"Pure Land Underground Palace... Jataka stories... the monk who attained the Dao and ascended... Return, O return blessing... Are these coincidences, or are they really... the road home."

The light and shadow on his face flickered.