Chapter 752
Who are you with?
The Medicine Buddha's entire body shook violently from the slap, and a new red swelling appeared on his already swollen face. He took two or three steps back before he could finally regain his balance!
His eyes widened, filled with bewilderment and disbelief.
"I...I already said all that! I invoked my status, my cultivation level, my seniority! How dare he still attack?! How dare he?! Doesn't he fear the retribution of the entire Western Paradise?! Does he truly have no scruples whatsoever?!"
The Medicine Buddha roared inwardly, the burning pain on his face like the sharpest mockery, utterly trampling his dignity as a Buddha.
He took a deep breath, forcing himself to calm down, and comforted himself: "That's enough, that's enough. He probably acted impulsively, young and hot-blooded. He'll probably calm down after that slap. Forgive him, forgive him..."
However, this thought had barely arisen—
"Snapped!!!"
Another backhand strike!
This slap landed on the other half of the Medicine Buddha's face!
The Medicine Buddha's entire face was trembling violently, and the swelling had completely distorted his originally solemn Buddha appearance. From a distance, it looked like a cooked pig's head that had been forcibly stuffed into a monk's robe.
He covered his face, and finally, undisguised terror appeared in his eyes!
"He's still not stopping?! One slap wasn't enough, he's retaliating?! This young man... this young man has absolutely no sense of rules! What is he trying to do?! Isn't he afraid?!"
"Forest……"
The Medicine Buddha opened his mouth, as if to say something threatening, to save face, and to make a last-ditch effort.
However, Lin Zhu didn't give him a chance to speak at all.
Lin Zhu tilted his head slightly, looking at the Medicine Buddha's swollen, pig-like face with an expression as if he were looking at an idiot, and uttered four words indifferently.
"Who are you with?"
Before the words were even finished, palm shadows flew through the air, and a series of crackling sounds, like popping beans, rang out!
"Snapped!"
"Snapped!"
"Snapped!"
"Snapped!"
"Snapped!"
"Snapped!"
The Medicine Buddha's cheeks swelled up visibly, his radiant Buddha light scattered in all directions, and his head swayed from side to side like a rattle drum! He tried to block, but Lin Zhu's hand seemed to have eyes, penetrating through every gap in his defenses with a precision that was utterly despairing! He tried to dodge, but Lin Zhu was relentless, pressing forward step by step, his palm like a net that sealed off all his escape routes!
"Lin Zhu! If you hit me again! I will fight back!"
The Medicine Buddha roared amidst the dense palm strikes, but his voice was already trembling slightly.
Lin Zhu continued working, but asked casually, "What are you looking at?"
The Medicine Buddha, seeing stars after being struck, instinctively replied, "I didn't look!"
"Snapped!"
An even louder slap!
"Didn't you look? How do you know you didn't look?"
Lin Zhu spoke calmly, but the force in his hands grew heavier with each stroke.
"I! I really didn't look!"
Medicine Buddha was on the verge of collapse. He had indeed been staring intently at Lin Zhu, trying to find his weakness, but now he could only stubbornly stick to his guns.
"Clap! Clap! Clap!"
Three more powerful slaps across the face, one with a forehand and one with a backhand!
Have you looked at it yet?
Lin Zhu asked.
"This one...this one..."
The Medicine Buddha was so badly beaten that he saw stars and his words were incoherent.
"Snapped!"
"Did you even look at it?"
"without……"
"Snapped!"
"look……"
"Snapped!"
"This seat..."
"Crack! Crack!"
"I saw it! I saw it! Isn't that enough?!"
Medicine Buddha finally couldn't hold on any longer and almost cried out.
However, Lin Zhu's slaps didn't stop; instead, they became even harder!
"Slap!!" "Looking at me deserves a beating! I'm going to beat someone like you who has no sense of propriety!"
A barrage of slaps left Medicine Buddha completely stunned. He felt as if his face no longer belonged to him, his head buzzing as if thousands of bees were flying around inside his skull.
The Buddha's once majestic and dignified face was now so swollen that his eyes were almost invisible, leaving only two thin slits through which a faint, glassy light could be seen.
The anger in his heart was extinguished with each slap, replaced by a deep sense of powerlessness and...resignation.
'Fine... go ahead and slap me... one slap is the same as two slaps... just hit me then... just hit me then...'
He stood there blankly, letting Lin Zhu's slaps keep hitting his face, his swaying motion like a candied hawthorn stick helplessly spinning in mid-air.
'So be it, a spinning top... I'm used to it... I'm already used to it...'
Guanyin Bodhisattva stood at a distance, covering her eyes with her hands, but her slender fingers parted slightly to reveal two round eyes, which were watching intently, with a hint of schadenfreude, as the Medicine Buddha was whipped into a spinning top in public.
Every time Lin Zhu's crisp, loud slap landed on the Medicine Buddha's swollen face, Guanyin Bodhisattva's body would tremble slightly, as if the slap had also struck her heart from afar.
'Amitabha... Thank goodness, thank goodness, thank goodness I reacted quickly and ran far enough. If I had been even half a step slower, I'd be standing there getting whipped now.'
She thought to herself, feeling a mix of lingering fear and relief. Last time at Five Elements Mountain, she had been ripped off and extorted by Lin Zhu the whole time, and she had nightmares for three days and three nights straight, her dreams filled with Lin Zhu's smiling face as he reached out for money.
Looking at the miserable state of the Medicine Buddha, she felt an indescribable sense of relief—as long as it wasn't her who was being beaten, that was a great blessing.
'The survival rules of the Western Paradise...it seems this humble monk is becoming more and more proficient.' Guanyin Bodhisattva sighed inwardly. 'Better to die for your fellow Daoists than for yourselves—this isn't something this humble monk invented; it's how it was done back in the Investiture of the Gods.'
Anyway, he's the Buddha of the Eastern Pure Land of Lapis Lazuli, while I'm Guanyin of Mount Putuo in the South China Sea. We're in the same system but not the same department; we're completely unrelated. He won't even have an excuse to seek revenge later. Besides, he caused this trouble himself; why should I take the beating?
The more she thought about it, the more justified she became. She widened the gaps between her fingers covering her eyes, allowing her to see more clearly. She even secretly assessed Lin Zhu's slapping technique in her mind—the way the palm force penetrated the Buddha's light was so exquisite that it was unfathomable. Even she, a quasi-saint, could not see through the trick.
'This bamboo forest...it's truly a mystery.'
Sun Wukong stood on the other side, his golden cudgel still resting against Tang Sanzang's neck, completely stunned.
His fiery eyes were wide open to the extreme, and his monkey face was filled with two words—shock.
Strictly speaking, Sun Wukong wasn't stupid. When he wreaked havoc in the Heavenly Palace, he was able to fight on equal terms with 100,000 heavenly soldiers and generals, demonstrating his extraordinary combat wisdom and insight.
But at this moment, the chaotic thoughts in his mind that had been swirling since the Buddha's avatar dissipated were amplified by the scenes before him, and finally gradually pieced together an explanation that he considered "reasonable".
'I, Old Sun, understand now… Although Brother Pigsy is simple-minded, what he said back then was probably true. Old Lin—no, Immortal Lord Lin—no, Immortal Lord, it seems he truly possesses a terrifying trump card that makes the entire Western Paradise extremely wary!'
Sun Wukong's eyes grew brighter and brighter, as if he had solved a long-standing mystery.
"That old bald monk, Buddha, was so desperately protecting the Immortal Lord just now. I, Old Sun, initially thought it was just to threaten Tang Sanzang. Now it seems that wasn't the case at all! He was genuinely afraid! I, Old Sun, saw clearly the look in Buddha's eyes before his avatar dissipated—not anger, not compassion, but fear! That kind of... fear that the Immortal Lord's death here would bring great calamity to the Western Paradise! Just like the way those gods looked at Bodhi Patriarch behind me when I was causing trouble in Heaven!"
The more he thought about it, the more plausible his hypothesis seemed.
In fact, the reason why Tathagata was so afraid of Lin Zhu getting into trouble was because he had vaguely guessed the existence of the Thirty-Sixth Grade Creation Lotus on Lin Zhu's body through the previous encounters.
The Creation Lotus is a supreme treasure of chaos, impervious to all magic and immune to all illusions and purification attacks. The Buddha himself cultivates supernatural powers primarily based on the Glazed Illusionary Light, with the Medicine Buddha's Glazed Illusionary Light being its core technique. When the Medicine Buddha unleashed that Glazed Illusionary Light, powerful enough to annihilate a Great Luo Golden Immortal, the Buddha's avatar was in his throat—he knew that if the Medicine Buddha's Glazed Illusionary Light struck Lin Zhu, protected by the Creation Lotus, it would not only fail to harm him in the slightest, but would also thoroughly enrage Lin Zhu, leading to uncontrollable consequences!
As for the consequences, even the Buddha didn't have a clear idea. But he knew all too well the legend of the Creation Lotus—a priceless treasure of cause and effect that even saints dared not easily touch! Those who possessed it were not deluded by any illusions, nor bound by any cause and effect; their historical achievements… were enough to terrify all those scheming in the game of the Three Realms!
When the Buddha's clone was about to be torn apart by the Medicine Buddha's illusory light, he roared with his last strength, "Don't do it!" What he really wanted to tell the Medicine Buddha was: If you use this move, not only will you not be able to kill Lin Zhu, but it will also trigger the Creation Lotus's protection mechanism. At that time... the consequences will be unimaginable!
Unfortunately, there wasn't enough time for Tathagata to explain himself clearly. The avatar dissipated too quickly, and Bhaisajyaguru Buddha acted too impulsively. By the time he wanted to ask for clarification, Tathagata had already vanished without a trace.
The only one who might know the truth, Guanyin Bodhisattva, chose to play dumb and protect herself for various reasons.
What's worse, the Medicine Buddha has a rather unpleasant nickname in the Buddhist circles of the Western Paradise—"the Buddha of Shifting Blame."
During the great calamity of the Investiture of the Gods, the Chan and Jie sects fought each other. Taking advantage of this opportunity, the Western Paradise planned to advance eastward and sent the Medicine Buddha and the Fearless Buddha to test the waters.
As a result, the Medicine Buddha was defeated by the Fairy of Clouds, who had not yet been deified, who used the Hunyuan Golden Cauldron to cut off the three flowers on his head and forced him to flee in defeat. After returning, he pushed all the responsibility onto the Buddha Julusun who stayed behind to guard the rear, saying that the Buddha Julusun had exposed his whereabouts without authorization and alerted the enemy, which led to the failure of the mission.
Frutus Buddha had no way to defend himself at the time and was punished to be reincarnated for ten thousand years, and has not returned to this day. However, Bhaisajyaguru Buddha was promoted to the master of the Eastern Lapis Lazuli World not long afterward.
From then on, everyone in the Western Paradise knew the true nature of the Medicine Buddha—this Buddha was indeed highly accomplished, but when faced with an inescapable blame, he was truly willing to pin it on his colleagues.
At this moment, the Medicine Buddha was slapped in public by Lin Zhu, his face turned into a pig's head, yet he dared not fight back or run away. While he was certainly intimidated by Lin Zhu's strange methods, there was a deeper psychological reason that was constantly gnawing at his Buddhist heart—he was someone who loved to flatter the Buddha.
The Medicine Buddha was able to rise to the position of Buddha in the Eastern Pure Land of Lapis Lazuli because, in addition to his profound cultivation, he also had a great talent: understanding the will of his superiors and serving them well.
The reason he was able to rise to power by stepping over the head of the Buddha Julusun was largely because he behaved well enough in front of the Buddha and understood the Buddha's thoughts very well.
Just now, to protect Lin Zhu, Tathagata's avatar sacrificed over a dozen acquired magical treasures and one innate spiritual treasure, ultimately even sacrificing himself. This is an unprecedented event in the entire history of the Western Paradise! Afterwards, the Medicine Buddha reflected on the matter and felt increasingly convinced that there must be a tremendous hidden reason behind it—Tathagata is the supreme ruler of the Western Paradise, the ancestor of all Buddhas. What kind of being is he? He is someone who can mobilize three thousand Buddha kingdoms with a single word, and command all the Buddhas of the heavens to accompany him with a single decree! Would such a being unjustly sacrifice his avatar and a multitude of treasures to protect a mere prison god of the Heavenly Court?
It's impossible, even to a fool!
Therefore, there is only one conclusion—Lin Zhu must have some terrifying background unknown to Medicine Buddha, or possess some terrifying means capable of threatening the safety of the entire Western Paradise! Buddha doesn't want to speak of it, Guanyin dares not speak of it, and once this secret is ignited by Medicine Buddha's impulsiveness…
The Medicine Buddha thought of the Dragon Clan's annihilation of the Western Paradise—the most devastating loss the Western Paradise had suffered in recent years, with countless Buddhist disciples shedding their blood on Mount Ling and countless ancient Buddhas falling on the spot.
Although Buddha publicly stated that the cause of the accident was still under investigation, there were rumors that it was caused by a prisoner being detained for a few days.
Because of improper imprisonment, a prisoner's powerful patron became enraged and plowed up the Western Paradise.
Now, it seems the same thing is happening again.
Lin Zhu's countdown, his extremely confident attitude, his ambiguous smile as if waiting for him to fall into a trap, coupled with the hysterical obstruction of the Tathagata's avatar and the hesitant attitude of Guanyin Bodhisattva—all these clues, when strung together, outlined a terrifying conjecture in the Medicine Buddha's already dazed mind.
'Could it be...could it be that this guy is the one who caused the disaster in the Western Paradise last time? Or...is he his fellow disciple, his backer?'
Once this thought appeared, it was like a poisonous weed that took root and grew wildly, impossible to uproot.
The more the Medicine Buddha thought about it, the more sense it made. Last time, when the Western Paradise was besieged by the Dragon Clan, their explanation was that they had captured the wrong people. But why would the Dragon Clan stand up for a mere prisoner? How could a lowly prisoner possibly provoke the entire Dragon Clan to come out in force? There must be a key figure pulling the strings!
And now, this key figure might be standing right in front of him, smiling and leisurely slapping him across the face!
'If that's the case, then everything makes sense! No wonder Buddha was so afraid of him! No wonder Guanyin hesitated! No wonder he slapped me so confidently! He's fearless! He's ready to detonate those top-tier experts who are unaware of the truth at any time, causing the tragedy of the last Western Paradise to repeat itself or even double!' (End of Chapter)