Chapter 757
Buddha is hollowed out, Lin Zhu actually tells the monkey that the headband is a massage
The ceilings spanning dozens of miles combined would amount to an astronomical figure that would make even the Buddha's scalp tingle.
A more terrifying thought suddenly flashed through the Buddha's mind. He remembered the time when the Heavenly Court was building the Hall of Law Enforcement—at that time, the Heavenly Court had just experienced a great war, and everything was in ruins and its finances were tight.
To save money, the Jade Emperor, that old fox, made a deal with the Western Paradise. Most of the materials used to build the Hall of Law Enforcement were transported from the Western Paradise. Not only the materials, but even the craftsmen who built the hall were transferred from the Western Paradise to work for free.
In other words, although the Hall of Law Enforcement is nominally under the jurisdiction of the Heavenly Court, almost everything it uses and builds comes from the Western Paradise.
Lin Zhu's demand for the ceiling of the Law Enforcement Hall is tantamount to demanding what belongs to the Western Paradise.
The Buddha was stunned by this thought. He sat on the stone platform, his expression shifting from shock to bewilderment, and then from bewilderment to a desperate despair on the verge of collapse.
He moved his lips several times before finally squeezing out a hoarse voice from his throat: "Amitabha... whatever you need, I'll give you. So the God of Hell came to the Western Paradise to buy building materials, and he doesn't even pay me."
Not only do they refuse to pay, but they also expect the Western Paradise to personally deliver the money to their doorstep and even build it for them.
He grew angrier as he spoke, his voice trembling: "Is the Western Paradise really this despicable? The Western Paradise was very involved in this Enforcement Hall—providing materials, craftsmen, money, and manpower. Now they even had to tear down their own ceiling and send it over. So the entire Enforcement Hall is made up of Western Paradise stuff, and it's just hanging up a sign from the Heavenly Court?"
When the Buddha uttered the words "I felt very involved in the Western Paradise," the expression on his face went beyond mere groaning. It was a state beyond groaning; it was an emptiness and numbness born from the complete stripping away of all dignity.
He leaned against the stone platform, his eyes vacant, and the Buddhist aura around him dimmed slightly.
Guanyin Bodhisattva stood below the hall, looking at the Buddha in this state, her heart filled with mixed emotions. She waited cautiously for a while, making sure the Buddha hadn't fainted from anger, before tentatively asking, "So... shall we see him off or not?"
The Buddha took a deep breath.
The breath was drawn in very long, as if it were to suck in all the air in the entire main hall, but when it was exhaled, it was like a deflated balloon, limp and without much strength left.
He slumped onto the stone platform, and his enormous golden body now looked like a pile of golden fat, devoid of any majesty or solemnity.
"Go ahead and give it to them."
The Buddha's voice was filled with despair; he closed his eyes, as if taking time to say a final goodbye to himself and his heart.
"Give him everything, give him whatever he wants. This time I miscalculated. I shouldn't have let the Medicine Buddha go to Five Elements Mountain in the first place. That wicked beast is more trouble than he's worth, he can't do anything but cause trouble."
As he said this, he suddenly opened his eyes, looked at Guanyin Bodhisattva, and a solemn look flashed in his eyes.
"Guanyin, you saw clearly what treasure Lin Zhu used when he drew the Medicine Buddha's sword. What was the origin of that aura on his body that even the Medicine Buddha feared?"
Guanyin Bodhisattva thought about it carefully, but ultimately shook her head.
She didn't see it clearly. When Lin Zhu pulled out that jet-black spear, she was standing at a distance and only felt an aura of annihilation that made her soul tremble. She couldn't say exactly what kind of treasure it was.
As for when Lin Zhu slapped the Medicine Buddha, she couldn't figure out what was going on—the slap looked ordinary, yet it could penetrate the Medicine Buddha's radiant light. She couldn't understand it no matter how hard she tried.
The Buddha sighed as he saw Guanyin Bodhisattva shake her head. This answer was exactly what he had expected.
"I knew it. He's meticulous yet arrogant; it's no wonder you get taken advantage of when you're up against him."
The Buddha's voice carried a weary resignation. He waved his hand and said to Guanyin Bodhisattva, "Go and do it. Remove the ceiling and send someone over. I don't want to see Lin Zhu's face again, nor do I want to hear any more news from Five Elements Mountain."
Let them get going, get going quickly, and go as far as possible.
Guanyin Bodhisattva bowed and accepted the order, then turned and walked out of the hall. She paused slightly at the threshold of the hall, as if hesitating whether to turn back and offer another word of advice, but in the end, she said nothing and vanished outside the hall in a beam of white light.
The Buddha remained alone in the main hall.
He sat on the stone platform, his gaze slowly sweeping over the sacred mountain that had been painstakingly rebuilt.
The traces of the dragon's siege have not been completely erased. Many side halls still bear the scorch marks of dragon breath on their walls, and scaffolding has just been erected over several collapsed corners, which the craftsmen have not yet had time to repair.
Now, he is going to dismantle the ceiling of the law enforcement hall, pry off the Buddhist intricate patterns and precious materials that have accumulated over countless years, and pack them up to send to Five Elements Mountain.
To do something for someone else's benefit.
This sacred mountain, a symbol of Buddhist glory, has now become a material warehouse for Lin Zhu's renovation of the Enforcement Hall.
The Buddha, witnessing all of this, felt deeply distressed.
The pain was worse than being struck by the illusory light of glass, worse than having a dozen magical treasures shattered. It was the pain of having one's dignity repeatedly trampled into the ground, the pain of knowing one has been tricked yet being powerless to resist. He closed his eyes, silently chanting Amitabha Buddha countless times in his heart, trying to calm himself down, but only one sentence kept replaying in his mind—
Lin Zhu, what kind of monster are you?
Lin Zhu had nothing to do, but he didn't waste any time.
The wind at the foot of Wuxing Mountain carried a dry heat, blowing up gusts of yellow sand in the distance, which then fell back down, as if they would never end.
Lin Zhu leaned against a half-dead, crooked tree, holding a blade of grass in his hand, listlessly dangling it from the corner of his mouth, while his eyes would occasionally glance in the direction of Ling Mountain.
He thought to himself that once Guanyin Bodhisattva returned home, the ceiling in his house would definitely be fixed.
Speaking of the ceiling of this Law Enforcement Hall, Lin Zhu actually had a pretty good idea of what it was like. He had already found out that when the Heavenly Court built the Law Enforcement Hall, it was during a time of turmoil in the Three Realms and a time when the Heavenly Court's finances were strained.
The Jade Emperor, that old fox, had been calculating his entire life. How could he possibly spend lavishly on his own money at a time like this? So he set his sights on the Western Paradise. At that time, the Western Paradise wanted to strengthen its relationship with the Heavenly Court, and the Buddha also wanted to take this opportunity to plant some Buddhist spies in the Heavenly Court. The two sides hit it off immediately—the Western Paradise provided the materials, craftsmen, and manpower, while the Heavenly Court provided the land and the prestige. A grand hall for law enforcement, covering dozens of miles, was thus built in a great deal of activity.
Inside and outside the main hall, from the foundation to the beams and pillars, from the walls to the ceiling, every brick and tile is from the Western Paradise. Even the intricate patterns of laws carved on the ceiling were carved by Buddhist craftsmen from the Western Paradise, one hammer and one chisel at a time, and the divine materials incorporated into them must have piled up to several mountains.
That's why Lin Zhu dared to ask for it. He knew that the relationship between the Law Enforcement Hall and the Western Paradise was like a father building a house for his son, but the property certificate was in the son's name. The father couldn't move in; he had to stand at the door and watch.
Now that Lin Zhu has taken the ceiling, it's like asking his father to tear down the house he built and give it away to someone else. Just thinking about this makes Buddha want to vomit blood.
However, Lin Zhu didn't care whether Buddha vomited blood or not; he only cared about the progress of the renovation of his law enforcement hall.
Before Guanyin Bodhisattva returned, Lin Zhu spat out the grass stem in his mouth, straightened up, and casually took out a talisman from his pocket.
The talisman was a translucent dark gold color, densely covered with runes, each of which emitted a faint spatial fluctuation.
This is a sky-covering talisman of considerable quality. Once activated, it can create a closed space within a radius of ten feet, isolating all external detection methods.
Lin Zhu doesn't usually use this thing, but at this critical juncture, some things still need to be done discreetly.
Throughout the entire Journey to the West, there were Heavenly Court sentries such as the Six Ding and Six Jia, the Five Directions Jiedi, and the Four Duty Officers secretly watching over the place. Although they did not pose a real threat, they had many eyes and ears, and the slightest disturbance would reach the Jade Emperor's ears.
Lin Zhu wasn't afraid that the Jade Emperor would find out anything, but some things were better known to as few people as possible, to avoid any unforeseen complications.
He slammed the talisman on the ground, and a golden light silently spread out, creating a transparent barrier around them.
Inside the barrier, all sounds and auras were firmly locked. From the outside, all that could be seen was Lin Zhu and Sun Wukong standing there in a daze, and nothing could be heard.
Sun Wukong was squatting to the side, playing with the stones on the ground with his claws, when he suddenly felt that the space around him was sealed off. He looked up at Lin Zhu and a puzzled expression appeared on his monkey face: "Prison God, what are you doing?"
Lin Zhu didn't rush to answer. Instead, he sat down cross-legged opposite Sun Wukong, his expression unusually serious. He lowered his voice and said, "Monkey, I have something to tell you. Listen carefully."
Sun Wukong's curiosity was piqued by his mysterious demeanor. He threw down the stone in his hand, moved closer, and asked in a low voice, "What's up? Are you going to trick someone again?"
Lin Zhu's lips twitched. She wondered if her image in Sun Wukong's mind had gone a bit astray, but then she thought about it again and realized it wasn't really that far off. So she simply stopped worrying about it and said directly, "About the headband."
Upon hearing the words "tightening headband," Sun Wukong's curiosity instantly turned into disgust and wariness. His ears twitched, his tail flicked behind him, and his tone was clearly resistant: "Tightening headband? Isn't that the dog collar that Buddha used to tie up me, old Sun? Why are you bringing that up, Prison God?"
It's no wonder Sun Wukong reacted so strongly. He vividly remembered the five hundred years of suffering he endured when he wreaked havoc in the Heavenly Palace and was slapped under the Five Elements Mountain by the Buddha.
Although Lin Zhu had rescued him, Sun Wukong remained extremely wary of Tathagata's methods. He had heard of the golden headband; once worn, it could not be removed, and with a single incantation, even someone with a head of copper and arms of iron would writhe in pain.
In Sun Wukong's mind, this thing was the last resort that the Buddha used to restrain him, and it was no different from a dog collar.
Seeing his reaction, Lin Zhu wasn't in a hurry and slowly said, "Let me tell you. This headband is actually a good thing."
Sun Wukong's expression instantly became extremely subtle, his eyes looking at a blatant liar. He grinned, revealing two sharp fangs, his tone full of suspicion: "Good stuff? Prison God, do you think I, Old Sun, am not thinking straight?"
Lin Zhu ignored his questioning, held up a finger, and continued, "First, this headband has a built-in massage function."
Once you wear it, it will automatically massage your head, relaxing the meridians and acupoints, promoting blood circulation, and long-term wear can also prevent migraines and relieve mental fatigue.
Sun Wukong's monkey face scrunched up as he listened to his serious-sounding nonsense. But before he could refute him, Lin Zhu held up a second finger: "Secondly, this headband can increase cultivation level."
"To increase one's cultivation level?"
Sun Wukong's ears perked up instantly, his fangs retracted, and the doubt in his eyes turned into skepticism. For a cultivator, cultivation level is more important than life itself.
Especially for someone like Sun Wukong, who was imprisoned under the Five Elements Mountain for five hundred years and whose desire for cultivation was stronger than anyone else's.
"Yes."
Lin Zhu nodded, lowering his voice even further, "This headband has a hidden effect. As long as you recite the headband incantation, it can help you increase your cultivation level. Reciting it once increases it by a thousand years. Just imagine, if you recite it ten times a day, that's ten thousand years."
Ten days is a hundred thousand years, one hundred days is a million years. If you keep reciting this throughout the journey, how much will your cultivation level have increased by the time you reach the Western Paradise?
Sun Wukong's eyes were already shining.
What is the concept of 10,000 years of cultivation? For mortals, 10,000 years is an unimaginably long period of time, but for cultivators, 10,000 years of cultivation is enough for a minor immortal to rise from a terrestrial immortal to a celestial immortal, or for a celestial immortal to touch the threshold of a great Luo golden immortal.
Although Sun Wukong had a solid foundation, it was far from enough for him to break through to a higher level in a short period of time through his own hard work; he needed the support of external forces.
If this golden headband can truly provide him with a continuous source of cultivation, then his desire to restore the prestige of the Great Sage Equaling Heaven and to seek revenge on Buddha in the Western Paradise will no longer be an unattainable dream.
But Sun Wukong was a clever monkey after all. He quickly calmed down from his excitement and asked with a frown, "But... since this headband is what Buddha used to restrain me, the incantation must be in Buddha's hands."
Even if I, Old Sun, put it on, I have no incantation to recite."
Upon hearing this question, Lin Zhu's lips curled into a meaningful smile. He reached into his robes and, as if by magic, pulled out something that vanished in a flash before Sun Wukong's eyes.
It was a golden hoop, covered with dense Buddhist patterns, exactly the same as the tight hoop prepared by the Buddha.
But upon closer inspection, the texture of this headband is more delicate, the Buddhist light is purer, and most importantly, the aura it exudes carries a warm and gentle feeling, completely different from the cold and rigid headband worn by the Buddha. (End of Chapter)