The Buddha

1,194 words

Chapter 45: The Buddha

“Master, you don’t have to explain so much to a mere lodger,” Li Huowang said. “I can’t control what you do anyway. Please leave. I need to sleep.”

Jian Dun pressed his palms together, bowed to Li Huowang, and walked toward the door. As he passed Li Huowang, a faint sentence drifted over.

“Don’t look down on the Buddhist gate. I was a Daoist before I left home. The Mysterious Gate is the same. You just don’t know it yet.”

Jian Dun left. The room fell empty. Li Huowang turned his head and looked at the distant temple, swallowed by shadow. It no longer carried any majesty or solemnity.

He exhaled slowly into the darkness. “This place is filthy. Is there nowhere clean around here?”

After what had happened that night, Li Huowang tried his best not to go out after dark anymore. He had no wish to stumble upon more of the monks’ business and earn their resentment.

Day by day, Li Huowang’s mental state improved. The nightmares largely stopped.

Just as he was about to ask the abbot when things would begin, the abbot sent someone to him first.

“Benefactor Xuan Yang,” the novice monk said. “The Great Deliverance Feast is about to be prepared. The ritual is costly, so please do not wander off in the coming days.”

“Fine. Go tell the old abbot I’ve heard.” Li Huowang watched the novice leave.

The moment the novice was gone, a familiar figure slipped in, his face bright with surprise. “Little Daoist! So this is where you’ve been staying. Why didn’t you tell me?”

It was the old beggar. But he looked very different from the ragged man Li Huowang remembered.

He wore a clean new yellow monk’s robe. There was no dirt on his face or body. He seemed much more spirited than before.

Though Li Huowang had only met the old monk by chance, it was oddly comforting to run into a familiar face in such a strange place.

“Monk, how are you settling in?”

“Not bad. I eat well and stay warm. The only thing is, there’s no good deeds to do in the temple. Feels a bit off.”

At the mention of good deeds, Li Huowang’s mind flashed to that night. He looked at the old monk and sighed softly. “Don’t worry about that. Just stay put. This temple may be dirty, but at least you won’t starve.”

“Come on, little Daoist. Let me show you where I work. It’s huge in there.” The old monk grabbed Li Huowang’s arm enthusiastically and tugged him toward the door.

“The sun’s too hot. Another time.” Li Huowang wasn’t interested in sightseeing around the temple.

“You have to come! You won’t regret it, I promise! There are so many interesting things to see!” The old monk dragged him out of the room.

Navigating the winding paths, Li Huowang followed the old monk into a large open courtyard in Zhengde Temple.

Standing there, he realized just how enormous Zhengde Temple really was.

Clang! Clang! Clang!

Dust filled the yard. Monks with gauze wrapped around their wrists raised stone chisels and hammers, carving statues of Buddha.

The statues stood in two rows, stretching left and right across the courtyard.

Under the midday sun, the monks’ shaved heads glistened with sweat. They worked with total focus, carving their art.

“This is where you work? The conditions aren’t great.” Li Huowang furrowed his brow and covered his nose to keep out the dust.

“That’s right. I haul away the useless stone chips. I’ve put my own effort into these statues too.” The old monk seemed proud of his role.

The two of them walked down the path between the unfinished statues, observing the varied shapes of the works.

Monks passed by them occasionally, paying them no mind, as if they were invisible.

“Zhengde Temple isn’t carving these for its own use,” Li Huowang thought with silent mockery. “Clearly they’re selling them to pilgrims. These monks sure know how to generate income.”

But after everything he had already seen, none of this surprised him anymore.

“And there’s more up ahead!” The old monk gestured excitedly and marched toward a gate hall.

Li Huowang lifted his foot to follow—then suddenly his mind went hazy, and his body swayed.

“Hey, hey, hey. Little Daoist, what’s wrong?” Seeing something was off, the old monk rushed back to support him.

“What happened?” Li Huowang steadied himself and shook his head hard. The strange feeling gradually faded.

“Are you all right? Caught a chill? Maybe you should go back and rest?”

Li Huowang declined the old monk’s kindness. “I’m fine. Let’s keep going.”

“All right. If you really are coming down with something, a bit of sun won’t hurt. Let’s move on.”

Li Huowang looked up at the blazing sun overhead. “Could it be heatstroke? But we barely passed New Year’s. I don’t even feel hot.”

Sensing nothing wrong with his body, he stepped forward again.

But just as his foot touched the ground, the sound around him changed. The clang of chisels on stone became a wet smack of flesh colliding with flesh.

“Hm?” Li Huowang turned his head in confusion toward the stone carving on his right. His body froze instantly.

The stone carving was gone. In its place was a mound of white flesh—made of monks.

Those very monks who had been carving Buddha statues were now piled together with their eyes closed in reverence, squirming like white maggots.

“This is… this is…?” Li Huowang took a step back, his eyes wide.

He slowly raised his head, squinting at the blinding sun. His eyes weren’t wrong.

He turned around slowly, looking back at the statues behind him. As expected, they had all changed. Under the bright winter sunlight, dozens of fleshy mountains now stood where the statues had been.

“Daoist! Hurry up!” The old monk called out cheerfully ahead, like a child eager to show off his treasures.

Li Huowang took a trembling, deep breath and forced himself forward. He passed through a large gate and entered another wide courtyard.

Again, there were mountains of flesh—but this time, the flesh wasn’t just human. Other things were mixed in. Pigs.

They screamed in agony, but the mound of pious monks, like quicksand, slowly swallowed them up.

“Look! That carved qilin and that stone lion look so real. I wish I had this skill.”

Li Huowang mechanically followed the old monk, continuing to observe the “works” of Zhengde Temple’s monks. He saw dogs. Horses. Cows. Donkeys.

Looking closer, he noticed something else deeply wrong. Every single one of these monks was a hermaphrodite.

His mind buzzed like a tangled knot of wires.

Suddenly, the old monk’s hand grabbed his arm and pulled him briskly into an empty main hall.

But the slapping sound didn’t disappear. It grew louder, echoing inside the vast chamber.

Li Huowang’s neck stiffened as he looked up inside the hall. The higher he raised his head, the more his pupils contracted.

“Look!” The old monk pointed upward, his face lit with a childlike smile, his voice tinged with awe. “What a magnificent Buddha!”

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Reading Guide Decoding

When the Stone Gods Are Flesh: Zhengde Temple’s True Face

Cultural / Xianxia Notes

Zhengde Temple (正德寺): This is a Buddhist temple in Xijing renowned for its efficacious bodhisattva and charity porridge. But as we now see, its true nature is a site of systematic corruption where sacred rituals are perverted into grotesque forms of worship. The “Flesh Buddha” is a core symbol of corrupted religion in this world—a pulsating, parasitic mass of flesh.

Flesh Buddha (肉佛): The true form of the temple’s deity. It is not a statue or a painting. It is a living mountain of pink flesh, covered in organs and pus, fed by monks who merge their own bodies with it. Buddhist concepts here are twisted: “becoming a Buddha” refers to a monstrous, shapeless transformation driven by karma and belief, not enlightenment.

Hermaphrodites (阴阳人): In the Dao-Twisted World, monks may be half-male, half-female. This blurring of traditional gender boundaries is another form of the temple’s corruption—nothing sacred remains intact.

Perceptual Horror: This chapter illustrates the novel’s signature technique of showing the reader something “normal” (a statue yard) and then flipping a switch to reveal the underlying truth (a flesh yard). The horror is not just in the image, but in the delay of perception—Li Huowang’s brain takes a moment to catch up.

Hermaphrodites (阴阳人)

In this context, monks who are half-male, half-female, blurring traditional gender boundaries as another form of institutional corruption.

Chapter Overview

“The Buddha” is the chapter where the mask finally comes off Zhengde Temple. What looked like a bustling, pious Buddhist institution reveals its true face—or rather, its true mountain of flesh. Li Huowang, guided by the well-meaning old beggar-monk, takes a casual tour of the temple’s statuary yard, only to have his perception violently rewired. The stone Buddhas were never stone. They were living monks, pressed and writhing into grotesque mounds. And the tour ends with a view of something so massive it breaks the scale of horror entirely. Get ready, fellow Daoists. This is one of those chapters where you have to put the book down and stare at a wall for a few minutes.

Key Plot Points

Jian Dun delivers a final, cryptic warning to Li Huowang: don’t look down on Buddhism, because Daoism is the same. He leaves behind an uncomfortable truth about institutional corruption.
Li Huowang’s health improves; the nightmares stop. He waits for the abbot to summon him for the Great Deliverance Feast.
The old beggar-monk, now a cleaner and happier resident, drags Li Huowang on a tour of the temple’s sculpture yard.
Li Huowang initially sees monks carving stone Buddha statues in two orderly rows under the sun. He cynically notes that the temple is probably selling these to pilgrims for profit.
A sudden perceptual glitch—the sound of chisels changes to wet smacking—and Li Huowang’s vision snaps into horror: the “stone” statues are actually living monks, piled into quivering white masses.
The second courtyard escalates: flesh-mountains now contain not just humans but animals—pigs, dogs, horses—being slowly swallowed by the writhing mass.
The old monk, oblivious, pulls Li Huowang into an empty hall to show him the main attraction: an enormous Buddha statue overhead. Judging by the tone, this is not a statue made of bronze or wood.
The chapter ends on the old monk’s awed exclamation. Li Huowang cannot speak.

Reading Guide

This is a perception-check chapter. If you’re reading for plot, the key takeaway is: the monks of Zhengde Temple are not just corrupt—they are biologically part of their god. The Flesh Buddha is not a metaphor. If you’re reading for atmosphere, pay attention to how the horror builds: the casual tour, the cheerful guide, the innocent pride of the old monk. That contrast—between mundane comfort and absolute body horror—is what makes this chapter stick.

Also, note Jian Dun’s parting words. He says he was a Daoist before becoming a monk, and that “the Mysterious Gate is the same.” This is a deliberate echo of Danyangzi’s temple. The horror is not sect-specific. It is systemic.

For future chapters, keep an eye on Li Huowang’s mental state. His earlier visual glitch (the dizziness before the switch) hints that his “recovery” may not be as clean as he thinks. The Dao-Twisted World does not let people off easily.

Finally, the old monk. He sees none of this. He lives in the temple, eats well, wears clean robes, and is proud of his work. That is the most terrifying part of all.