Chapter 132: Shaolin Secret Manuals

At dusk, a melodious bell toll echoed from the ancient temple.

The solemn and indifferent Shaolin monks walked into the majestic Buddha hall one by one, heads bowed, chanting sutras and reciting the Buddha's name.

Their footsteps seemed heavier than usual, simply because for these past few days, the mood of everyone in Shaolin Temple had been exceptionally heavy.

In the Abbot Chamber, the atmosphere was somewhat stifling.

Of the seven high monks of the "Xin" generation in Shaolin, excluding Xinjian who had already been pierced through the throat by Yu Liancheng's sword, the other six were all present.

Abbot Xinhu stood up, paced a few steps in the Abbot Chamber, and suddenly stopped to ask: "Who is on duty at the Cangjingge today?"

Xinmeiheshang said: "It is Yiyin and Yichen from my seat."

Master Xinhu said: "Summon them inside."

He walked to the corner of the wall with his hands behind his back, and without turning around when he heard the footsteps of Yiyin and Yichen entering, he simply asked: "Have you delivered that person's dinner yet?"

Yiyin and Yichen looked at each other, remained silent for a long while, and hesitated to speak.

Xinmeiheshang said: "The Abbot is asking you a question."

Finally, Yiyin stammered: "Delivered... but... but..."

Master Xinhu frowned and said: "But what?"

Yichen, who was beside him, said: "We delivered the dinner to him, but he threw all the food out."

Xinhu's expression darkened slightly, and he asked: "Why?"

Yiyin said timidly: "He complained that the dishes were not good, there was no wine, and no meat, so he refused to eat."

Even though Abbot Xinhu's cultivation of Buddhist Dharma was profound, at this moment his face was full of rage, and he said in a deep voice: "What does he think this place is? A restaurant? If he feels too lonely, does our Shaolin Temple need to find a beautiful woman to send to him as well?"

Yiyin and Yichen trembled all over; they had been ordained for over ten years and had never seen the sect leader so angry. Both lowered their heads, not daring to look up.

The other high monks of the "Xin" generation urged him repeatedly, and only then did Abbot Xinhu's anger gradually subside. He stared at the incense burner for a long time and said slowly: "What did he say he wanted to eat?"

Yiyin said: "He actually wrote a menu and told the disciples to find a way to get it for him. If one item is missing, he will... he will burn a book from the library; if two are missing, he will burn ten."

As soon as he finished speaking, he hurriedly lowered his head again.

Surprisingly, Master Xinhu did not get angry this time, though his breathing seemed a bit heavier. He said in a low voice: "Bring his menu here and let me see."

A moment later, a short note was delivered into the Abbot's hands, which read: Braised Pork Trotters, Jade Vegetable Hearts, Braised Oxtail, Fish with Bean Paste, Winter Mushroom Tofu.

Besides four dishes and one soup, he actually also wanted three pounds of fine yellow rice wine. This grand Shaolin Temple seemed to have truly been treated by him as a restaurant in the Capital.

The corners of Abbot Xinhu's mouth twitched incessantly, and his body seemed to be trembling slightly from anger. After a long while, he finally suppressed his rage: "Fine, find a way to get these dishes from the foot of the mountain and send them to him."

"Yes, Abbot."

But as long as Yiyin and Yichen were not fools, they could hear the fury contained in the Abbot's tone, and they hurriedly withdrew.

After the two disciples left, Xinzhu could not help but say: "Are we just going to let this person read all the Shaolin secret manuals and treat him to good wine and food every day?"

Xinshu smiled bitterly: "That person's martial arts are truly brilliant; even if the five of us joined forces, we might not be his match. Furthermore, he is currently in the Cangjingge; if we were to fight, I fear countless books would be destroyed in an instant. No one can bear such a sin."

Xinzhu gritted his teeth and said: "Junior brother, you are proficient in medicine and poison; could you..."

"No!" Xinmei interrupted decisively from the side: "Yi Ku of the Green Demon Hand and Wudu Tongzi were both great experts in the use of poison, especially Wudu Tongzi, whose use of poison had reached a state of perfection, killing without a trace, yet they both died at his hands. If the attempt fails, I fear our entire Shaolin... will not escape his poisonous hand."

The monks fell into another silence. After a long while, Xinzhu spoke: "Do you think... is the seventh junior brother really the one who stole the books? Could it be a trap set by that person?"

"I traveled with him the whole way and did not see him perform any suspicious actions. Moreover... he has no need to do this." Xinmei spoke again: "And I had long suspected it was the seventh junior brother, but after all, we were fellow disciples, and without concrete evidence, I did not dare to accuse him."

"Although the stolen sutras are precious, given his status in Shaolin, why would he do such a thing?" Abbot Xinhu frowned.

"Perhaps... perhaps someone bewitched him, and that person is most likely Baixiaosheng." Xinmei pondered for a moment and said: "After Xinjian... was ordained, he could not contact many outsiders. And the only one who could persuade him and has deep ties with Shaolin Temple is Baixiaosheng."

Xinshu smiled bitterly: "In that case, not only can we not blame that person, but we should instead thank him for eliminating a traitor for us."

The monks sighed in their hearts again. They truly had no way to deal with that person and could only comfort themselves in this way.

At this moment, Yu Liancheng was standing in the Cangjingge.

As far as the eye could see, rows of bookshelves were neatly filled with all kinds of classics.

Shaolin has been passed down for thousands of years with a complete martial arts system; the Seventy-Two Unique Skills, tempered by generations of high monks, were already unbreakable techniques.

Yu Liancheng casually took down a sutra, but it was not a martial arts skill, merely an ordinary Buddhist sutra.

His memory was very good; as soon as he arrived at the Cangjingge, he recalled a remark made by the Sweeper Monk in *Demi-Gods and Semi-Devils*.

The gist was that the Shaolin Seventy-Two Unique Skills were all fierce and ruthless arts that harmed lives and greatly damaged the harmony of heaven, so the deeper one practiced them, the heavier the baleful energy became, thus requiring compassionate Buddhist Dharma to neutralize them. Otherwise, like Xiao Yuanshan and Murong Bo, one would sooner or later suffer from internal energy deviation and be consumed by the baleful energy.

But in Yu Liancheng's view, this was not the case.

Both Buddhist and Daoist arts require a certain cultural foundation.

For example, the couple Mei Chaofeng and her husband forcibly practiced the superior Daoist "Nine Yin Divine Claw" into the "Nine Yin Bone Claw".

Simply put, they suffered from a lack of culture.

In Buddhist and Daoist martial arts, every word and sentence may contain allusions and cannot be taken at face value. If one practices blindly, it would be strange not to suffer from *qigong* deviation.

Of course, what the Sweeper Monk said was not necessarily false, but as long as one clears the mind and remains unstained by dust, the so-called baleful energy will naturally dissipate.

Yu Liancheng had plenty of leisure time, and with his eyesight, reading ten lines at a glance, it did not take up much time.

A Buddhist sutra that could be passed down to this day naturally contained wisdom and mysteries, and with the annotations of generations of high monks, it was worth a look.

Moreover, in the previous world, Yu Liancheng had briefly obtained the Wuming Island Ultimate Arts, the collection of Old Knife Handle, and the secret treasures of the imperial palace... it was time to settle his foundation.

From this day on, Yu Liancheng hid in the Cangjingge, reading through Buddhist classics and the Seventy-Two Unique Skills, ignoring the disputes of the outside world.

Time passed leisurely, and in the blink of an eye, more than half a year had gone by.

And in these more than six months, many extremely brilliant and interesting things happened.

But Yu Liancheng could not expect peace; he was, after all, a person of the *Edo*.

A person of the *Edo*, of course, cannot avoid the affairs of the *Edo*.