Lanruo Temple

Lanruo Temple is hidden at the end of a dense forest north of Jinhua City.

Liu Jin and Zhao Fengnian walked along a path half-covered by weeds for more than half an hour. Moonlight filtered through the gaps in the tree canopy, illuminating the ground with spots of light like scattered silver.

As Zhao Fengnian walked, he pushed aside the branches blocking his path, muttering, "How long has it been since anyone walked this path? The grass is waist-high." Liu Jin walked behind, his gaze piercing through the layers of shadows and landing at the end of the path.

The temple gate was crooked, and the plaque above the gate was covered with cobwebs. The paint on the characters had peeled off, leaving only the stroke of the character "若" and the dot of the character "寺".

The door to the main hall was ajar, and it was pitch black inside. Occasionally, the low chirping of a night bird could be heard, mixed with a draft that seemed to be blowing in from some unknown corner, whistling as it slipped in and out through the broken window.

Zhao Fengnian stopped at the temple gate, straightened his collar, took a deep breath, suddenly put on a mournful face, and began to shout at the top of his lungs. His voice was neither too loud nor too soft, just enough to carry on the night breeze, but not too loud to seem deliberate.

"Oh dear, what are we going to do? It's so late, and there's no village or shop in sight. We two brothers will just have to make do in this dilapidated temple for the night!"

As he shouted, he secretly winked at Liu Jin, his chubby face scrunched up, looking just like a traveling merchant who was genuinely worried about not being able to find an inn in the middle of the night.

He walked to the entrance of the main hall and deliberately knocked on the door, then called out twice, "Is anyone home?" Of course, no one answered. He turned around and gave Liu Jin a thumbs up, meaning, "You've put on a good show, now the fish will take the bait."

Liu Jin leaned against the door frame, watching him perform this "spending the night in a dilapidated temple" scene so vividly, and the corner of his mouth twitched slightly, which could be considered as supporting him.

The two cleared a space in a corner of the main hall, just big enough for one person to sit on. Zhao Fengnian picked up a few dry branches to start a fire, but Liu Jin stopped him with a look.

This place is the lair of monsters; lighting a fire is tantamount to telling monsters within a ten-mile radius that someone is here. Zhao Fengnian awkwardly put down the dry branch, sat down against a pillar, and darted around, surveying the surroundings of the main hall.

The gold paint on the Buddha statue has peeled off completely, revealing the gray clay underneath. Half of the Buddha's head is missing, and the remaining half still has a faint smile on its lips, which looks somewhat eerie in the moonlight.

Before long, the wind suddenly stopped.

It wasn't a natural pause; it was as if all sound suddenly vanished. The night birds stopped singing, the insects stopped chirping, and even the draft seemed to be choked by an invisible hand.

Two extremely soft and delicate laughs came from outside the palace gate, one gentle and melodious, the other cool and languid, blending together like a feather gently tickling one's eardrum.

The palace doors opened by themselves without any wind. Two women walked in gracefully from the moonlight. The one in front wore a light red gauze dress, her black hair half-up, with a silver hairpin inserted at an angle, from which a string of delicate silver chains dangled, swaying gently with her steps.

She had an oval face, almond-shaped eyes that seemed to hold spring, and a smile playing on her lips. Her arms, wrapped in a thin veil, gleamed delicately in the moonlight.

The woman following behind wore a moon-white long dress with a few pale blue orchids embroidered on the neckline. Her gait was even lighter than the former's, and she didn't make a sound as she stepped on the dusty blue bricks.

She lowered her eyes slightly, her long, thick eyelashes casting two faint shadows on her face.

Zhao Fengnian stared, completely mesmerized. His mouth hung open, a single, unintelligible syllable escaping his throat, and he froze, as if under a spell. It wasn't that he hadn't seen beautiful people before; it was that he had never seen anything like this.

This beauty possesses an otherworldly refinement, like a porcelain figure meticulously sculpted by an artisan, every curve perfectly proportioned, so perfect that it takes your breath away.

The woman in the light red gauze dress stopped three steps away from the two of them, bowed slightly, revealing a section of her fair neck, and spoke in a soft voice as if whispering in their ear.

"Gentlemen, you must be tired from your journey so late at night. My sister and I are staying here for the night when we unexpectedly encountered you. May we ask where you two come from and where you are headed?"

The woman in the moon-white dress didn't speak, but simply raised her eyes to look at Liu Jin, and smiled slightly.

Then the two of them took a step forward at the same time.

Before they could even take that step, their smiles froze. Not because something was blocking their view, but because of the heat. The heat emanating from Liu Jin wasn't flame, not just temperature; it was something more fundamental.

He sat there, doing nothing, breathing just like an ordinary person, but the Samadhi True Fire was his true body forged from the Qi, and his Qi-transformed body was itself a walking furnace.

Even if it was concealed to the extreme, to the point that even Zuo Ruotong might not be able to detect it, for the two female ghosts who maintained their forms with yin energy, this naturally emanating fiery nature was like putting an ice cube next to a stove.

What they felt was not heat, but instinct, the fear etched deep into the soul of prey when facing its natural enemy.

The two women retreated simultaneously. The woman in the light red gauze dress lost all her coquettishness, replaced by horror.

Before she could turn around, a flash of blue light appeared. The Samadhi True Fire did not ignite on Liu Jin's body, but instead appeared out of thin air in front of the two female ghosts. Two extremely thin blue flames, so thin that they were almost invisible, landed on their gauze dresses and then instantly spread throughout their bodies.

There were no screams, no struggles; the two female ghosts were burned to nothingness in less than a breath. Their gauze robes, silver hairpins, black hair, delicate skin, and almond-shaped eyes brimming with spring—everything was as thin as paper before the Samadhi Fire, burning everything away, returning to its original state. Not even ashes remained.

Zhao Fengnian remained in the same dazed, open-mouthed position, only now his mouth was even wider open.

He glanced at the spot where the female ghost had disappeared, then at Liu Jin, then back at the spot where the female ghost had disappeared again, and swallowed hard. "Brother, doesn't this expose us?"

Liu Jin looked down at his hands. He hadn't even made a move; he had only entertained a thought, and the Samadhi True Fire had automatically protected its master.

This body was no longer mortal; after being forged from real fragments, he himself was fire, and fire itself was him.

"It wasn't me who did it. They got too close. My body is deadly to them." He withdrew his hand. "This is the limit of my restraint. A fiery body and a human body are ultimately different."

It took Zhao Fengnian a while to process this information before he finally asked a thought-provoking question: "Brother, when you sleep at night, does your bed ever get set on fire?"

......

"I can only say that you truly live up to your reputation as Little Fatty Zhao."

"Without this mindset, I probably would have collapsed in the previous world. I've heard that quite a few people have died while traveling between worlds."

"That's inevitable. After all, opportunities are sought amidst chaos, so how could there be no fighting?"

"Speaking of which, Liu Jin is considered one of the lucky ones."

"Three parts are determined by fate, seven parts by hard work, and the remaining ninety parts are unknown."

......