Nightfall

Chapter 577: Thoughts on the Stone Statues at Night  Translator: Transn Editor: Transn

“Since the sun and the moon correspond, there should be a moon if there is a sun.”

“As the sun and the moon rise and set, their light blends. The moon should appear at night.”

“But innumerable ages have seen the long night without the moon.”

“That violates the endless natural process.”

“As night falls, the moon rises. The word ‘night’ refers to the Everlasting night, but not the common one.”

“It is not until the Dharma Ending Period of the Everlasting night that the moon will reappear and nature comes back to life.”

“The world still has a way out if there is no extinction.”

“In this case, the only thing required is to quietly wait for the long night. Why bother acting against the current?”

“Is Heaven also waiting for the arrival of the night?”

“Or is it dreading its arrival?”

“Does it fear the night itself, or the moon that arrives at night?”

Buddha’s handwriting had nothing special, when compared with that of rural school teachers from the Gushan Commandery. The words on the note were very common, clear and easy to understand.

Ning Que was reading the note carefully. The twilight fell on his face, dyeing his eyebrows with golden light, just like the golden statues of the venerable people in the temple.

The “Ming” Handscroll of the Tomes of the Arcane was in the Academy all the time. It was in the waist of the Eldest Brother. Ning Que had seen it twice before, but failed to understand it. When he saw the notes left by the Buddha today, he was finally sure of something.

The Buddha believed that this everlasting night had nothing in common with the innumerable ones the world had experienced before. Then he recalled that although his teacher did not believe the Underworld Invasion, he had never denied the coming of the everlasting night, and even mentioned that a butcher and a drunkard had once lived in the last everlasting night.

The biggest difference between this everlasting night and others perhaps laid in the “moon” character in the word “Ming”, which was something the world had never seen, not even the Headmaster.

But why was there a record about the moon in the “Ming” Handscroll? Did it mean that innumerable years ago the world used to have a moon before it suddenly disappeared? Would it reappear in this everlasting night as the Buddha predicted?

As the light faded and the night approached, Ning Que left the meditation abode and went to a cottage outside the pagoda forest, in the backyard of the Lanke Temple. Listening to the gurgling of the stream behind the cottage, he opened the door and went in.

Master Qishan was not surprised at his visit. “Any gains?” He asked smilingly.

Instead of answering his question, Ning Que asked, “Weren’t the Buddha’s notes lost?”

“Notes that nobody can understand is the same as being lost,” Master Qishan said. “I failed to understand even after reading them for almost a hundred years. I hope you can understand the notes.”

Ning Que fell silent for a moment before asking seriously, “Master, why do you think I can?”

Staring at him with a profound look, Master Qishan said,”Because the Headmaster said in the letter that if anyone could read Buddha’s notes, that person would be you.”

Ning Que felt conflicting emotions, half shocked, half confused.

Whether it was the Buddha who had left his impressions after reading the “Ming” Handscroll years ago, the Great Divine Priest of Light who had taken it away from the Zhishou Abbey, or the venerable Headmaster, no one was truly able to understand the “Ming” Handscroll.

Because no matter how intelligent they were, they would not be able to analyze and could only guess when faced with events that had never appeared in their world. Ning Que, however, was an exception.

Ning Que knew that the Headmaster wrote a letter to Master Qishan, as did his Eldest Brother. He had thought that they had just mentioned Sangsang’s illness and asked the Master to take care of her, but never expected that there was another intention.

Did the teacher guess where he came from?

Master Qishan left the cottage with Ning Que and went into the wood.

The mountain stream flowed slowly among the pine trees. After the continuous autumn rain, the night sky cleared up and the starlight was beautiful, making the water surface glitter like myriads of silver fragments.

Looking at the night scene, Ning Que subconsciously recalled a poem from ancient China.

“Clear and bright moon cast its light on the pine woods, while creeks flow above the stones.”

He turned to the master and asked, “Master, why do you preach Buddha’s dharma to me?”

Master Qishan looked at him and sighed, “Because you have killed too many people and there is too much hostility in you. It is not good for yourself and others. So I want to neutralize your hostility through Buddha’s dharma.”

“When I returned to Chang’an from the City of Wei,” Ning Que said with a slightly lower voice. “I laughed, joked and played rogue. I thought that no one could see through this, to realize how horrible and heartless I truly am. But you still weren’t fooled.”

Master Qishan looked at him with some sympathy, “As I said in the mountain last night, I know that the first half of your life was miserable, so I don’t think you are to blame. However, since you have entered the human realm on behalf of the Academy, I have to take the world in consideration. To prevent you from bringing disaster to the world in the future, I have to preach Buddha dharma to you. Please do not blame me.”

Ning Que felt calm and said, “No one but a lunatic loves killing. I’m not a lunatic, so I don’t like it either. I killed people to save my own life. It would be perfect if I could still be alive without killing others. I would love that. How can I blame you?”

Ning Que did not tell Sangsang about Buddha’s notes since he did not want her to be distracted from the Buddhist sutras, let alone worry about him. He went into the back hall of the Lanke Temple, lit a bronze lamp and continued reading carefully.

More than a dozen pages of Buddha’s notes, in addition to his predictions of the future, contained some of his knowledge of the world. More importantly, it included his methods of understanding the world, such as his vision of darkness and light.

There was a rich wisdom in these words. It was a pity that Buddha had not meant to write an essay when he wrote his notes, so the content was short and casual, without a system. Otherwise, Ning Que would benefit a lot from it.

In addition, there were also some occasional words left by the Buddha on a whim, from which Ning Que came to know that the Buddhism Sect was not created by the Buddha.

Before the Buddha, there were more ancient Buddhas who even went through the Everlasting night. It was the Buddha that succeeded in realizing the fundamental ideas of the Buddhism Sect. Therefore, he was now regarded as the earliest Buddha by Buddhist disciples.

Ning Que could not help laughing when he recalled that the Headmaster referred to the way of the Buddha as “shut up”.

Both the Headmaster and the Second Brother sneered at the Buddhism Sect. But they only represented the views of the Academy and did not mean that the Buddhism Sect should be ignored.

It was really a lucky chance for him to read the Buddha’s notes. Ning Que was unwilling to give up when he felt grateful for the chance. Perhaps due to the deep memory of his reading in the old library, he subconsciously used his knowledge about the Eight Strokes Calligraphy of Yong when he was reading the common notes made by the Buddha.

In the beginning, out of the desire to read the words left by the predecessors of the Academy when he was still unable to do the cultivation, he forced himself to understand the words by separating them, causing him to spit blood and faint. It turned out that the method had not much use although it was not entirely useless.

After he was able to cultivate, especially after entering the Seethrough Realm, the Eight Strokes Calligraphy of Yong could not help him in cultivation at all. So the method had disappeared for quite a long time in his life.

At the moment, he used the method as an attempt to understand the Buddha’s notes, not expecting anything fruitful. It was just a vain attempt when he was unwilling to give up, to leave empty-handed before a mountain of treasures.

However, in the next moment, Ning Que came to realize that the method seemed to work.

With a light buzzing sound, his sense of perception suddenly opened.

The ink words on the Buddha’s notes gradually floated before his eyes and scattered to myriads of strokes, among which some were vertical like a Buddhist pestle, some were darker like a Buddhist bell, some were like the copper bowls held by a sadhu, and others were like the Buddhist bell in the pavilion.

These strokes floated from the pages to his eyes and then entered into his sense of perception, flying into his spiritual world to reconstruct the scenes hardly understood by him.

Ning Que laid down the note and looked at one side of the hall.

Some stone statues were consecrated in the Lanke Temple, a dozen of which were in the side chamber of the front hall, and four in the deep back hall. What Ning Que was looking at were these four stone statues.

Similar stone statues could also be found in the Wanyan Tower Temple in Chang’an and the White Tower Temple in the Yuelun Kingdom. It was said that only a man of wisdom could understand the true meaning behind the Emblematic Gestures of Buddhism.

A few days ago, the powerhouse from the Sword Garret of South Jin Kingdom, Mr. Cheng, who was already at the middle stage of the Knowing Destiny State, had sighed before the stone statues in the side chamber of the front temple. He lamented the fact that he had failed to understand, though he realized there was a rich wisdom in them.

On the far right side of the back hall, there was a hideous stone statue with glaring eyes. His hands were exposed and they were so close, they almost touched, forming a complicated gesture. A majestic and chilling aura spurted forth from his fingers.

Staring at the statue quietly for a long while, Ning Que raised his hands to imitate its hand gestures.

The statue’s hands remained still while Ning Que, seemingly imitating the motionless gesture, kept his hands moving slowly in front of him.

At the moment, a piece of consciousness in the depths of his sense of perception seemed to perceive something. It shimmered and released a faint psyche before it finally went out.

Ning Que came to understand the true meaning of the statue’s gesture before he gradually stopped moving his hands.

With one hand erect and the other horizontal behind it, his right index finger bent slightly in the air and left index finger touched the dorsal part of the right hand, which looked rather strange and awkward.

His gesture was different and even had nothing in common with that of the statue. However, at the moment his left index finger touched the back of his right hand, a sense of chill, almost as same as that from the statue, suddenly emerged.

The drop of dew condensed by the Great Spirit in his abdomen began to rotate, releasing streams of pure Great Spirit and delivered them to different parts of the body through the illusory passages.

He was very familiar with the rotation of the Great Spirit since he cultivated it day and night diligently, but now he found that it greatly differed from his previous practice.

The biggest difference was that it was not violent any more, but became so submissive that even the most subtle airstream could be controlled by his psyche.

After rotating the Great Spirit in his body for three times, Ning Que felt so refreshed and happy that he could not help uttering a sigh of satisfaction, drifting in the quiet hall.

Then he turned to the next stone statue.