The Buddha

"The one who sees this rejoices with leaping heart, and beholds himself riding upon a diamond throne, following close behind the Buddha, and in the snap of a finger is reborn in that land. Once reborn there, he beholds the Buddha's physical form, endowed with every mark of excellence; and beholds the Bodhisattvas, also endowed with every mark of excellence."

The sutra chanted from Li Huowang's mouth grew steadily louder, and carried by the sound of recitation, his face at that moment seemed bathed in a sacred Buddha-light.

At first, only his voice filled the space, but before long the solitary chanting began to resonate with harmonies.

Voices high and low joined Li Huowang's recitation of the praise-hymns.

These voices came from the fat nuns and the abbess around him, their faces wearing the same devotion that flickered across Li Huowang's.

From the temple halls and surrounding buildings, the sounds of ritual instruments—the zhaomian cymbal, the hand-qing, the wooden fish—rose in synchronized accompaniment.

Guided by these instruments, Li Huowang's sutra-chanting grew ever more majestic, ever more Buddha-natured.

This particular sound began to alter what sound should not be able to alter. The colors around them started to desaturate, as if coated in a thick, dark-yellow filter.

As time passed, the chanting grew louder. Bai Lingmiao, Gouwa, Gao Zhijian—even the infant in Abbess Jingxin's arms—all joined in.

The sound swelled further, and the Bodhisattva of Flies within the pit began to move with earth-shaking force.

Accompanied by the sutra-chanting, it drifted slowly toward the crown of Li Huowang's head. At this moment, even the buzzing of the flies' wings began to match the melody of the scripture.

When the chanting reached its zenith, the Flesh Bodhisattva snapped open its pitch-black eyes and descended sharply. The droning green-bottle flies engulfed Li Huowang in an instant.

The flies' wings began to vibrate madly, their hum endlessly overlapping with the surrounding sutra-chanting.

In that moment, every person and the millions of flies were spiritually linked as one, indivisible.

People knew the flies' thoughts, and the flies knew the people's thoughts.

With a shift in Abbess Jingxin's mind, the flies covering Li Huowang coalesced into a black Bodhisattva seated on a lotus throne, a pure-vase held in its hand. Its voice overpowered Li Huowang's, taking the lead in the chanting.

But this solemn scene did not last long before it was shattered by a crack of thunder. Everyone looked up in unison: the sky was broken.

There, suspended on a cloud, his form covered in three heads and every manner of repulsive organ, Danyangzi floated, celestial wisps trailing around him. He stared down at Anci Nunnery with three sets of sardonic eyes.

"Heh... lad, you've lost yourself in appearances."

Without a word of preamble, every bloated old nun—Abbess Jingxin included—swiftly retrieved a string of pure-gold prayer beads from the folds of their greasy, fatty flesh.

They wound the beads around the tiger's-mouth of each hand, then curled their index fingers and thumbs toward their palms. Forming the Mudra of Amitabha, they radiated solemn dignity as they thrust their hands upward.

"Recite the Buddha! Recite the Dharma! Recite the Sangha! Recite the Precepts! Recite Generosity! Recite the Heavens! A bhikshu who cultivates the Six Recollections attains hundreds of thousands of dharanis!"

A furious buzzing exploded into life. The black flies that had formed the Buddha surged skyward like a tidal wave, wrapping the Buddha-voice around them as they flew toward Danyangzi.

Watching the black tsunami rush toward him, Danyangzi's three great faces twisted into a profoundly mocking grin. He trod on his white cloud, immortal fluff drifting at his sides, and charged headlong into the swarm.

His writhing tentacle-hand lashed out violently, and from his palm a sword of copper coins—pieced together from eyeballs, tentacles, and bloody flesh—sprouted forth.

The flesh-and-blood coin sword snapped out, flinging flecks of meat. Every fly splashed by the spray twisted violently.

One by one, screaming miniature Danyangzi heads—each no larger than a fly's—sprouted from the insects, replacing their original heads. They quickly turned on their fellow flies and began to fight back.

Down below, Li Huowang sat cross-legged, his expression grave. He remained unmoved, continuing his sutra-chanting, his voice growing louder with each repetition.

Driven by the recitation, all the white maggots writhing on the rotting food within Anci Nunnery swiftly transformed into flies. They beat their wet, dripping wings and rushed toward the churning sky.

For a time, the heavens became a scene of utter chaos. Under the fierce battle, a black rain of dead flies began to fall.

Watching the escalating stalemate in the sky, Jingxin remained unhurried. Since she had agreed to help Li Huowang, she naturally had full confidence.

Li Huowang slowly pressed his palms together. With a compassionate expression, he chanted softly: "Embrace the true Dharma, abandon the three kinds of clinging, just as all forms enter the realm of emptiness. Thus, the Bodhisattva's countless vows all enter this single vow. Sadhu, sadhu."

As the ethereal Buddha-hymn sounded, a beam of light pierced the torn sky. It descended from above, plating him entirely in the golden body of a Tathagata—neither sorrow nor joy.

The instant Li Huowang's body was gilded, the hideous organs on Danyangzi's body in the sky were also stained with gold. They began to move with agonizing slowness.

Seizing this golden opportunity, the surrounding fly swarm pressed their advantage. They surged forward en masse, wrapping him completely.

"Buzz—" The fly mass continued to expand, then finally re-coalesced into a massive Pure-Vase Bodhisattva seated on a lotus. Slowly, it began to descend toward the ground.

With every inch it dropped toward the earth, the Bodhisattva shrank inward. The celestial anomaly of the torn sky above them also weakened.

The sound of sutra-chanting, of wooden fish, of bells—all sounds gradually grew softer.

On the ground, two fat nuns held brushes as large as mops. The tips of the brushes were coated with incense ash from the censer. They stared at the fly-nun Bodhisattva, their eyes filled with anticipation.

Seeing this, a flicker of greed passed through Abbess Jingxin's heart as she chanted. According to the normal procedure, the next step was just to finish up, and then whatever was inside those flies would belong to her.

"This thing is very rare too... I wonder what it tastes like."

Just as she thought everything was proceeding smoothly, an accident occurred.

Li Huowang, swathed entirely in golden light, suddenly began to cough. And he coughed harder and harder.

"What's happening?! I can't sense his thoughts anymore! The brat severed our Pure Mind!" one of the old nuns shouted in alarm.

The moment the words left her mouth, Li Huowang, clutching his throat, opened his mouth as wide as it would go. A wretched, throat-tearing retching sound rang out.

Then, everyone present witnessed a sight too bizarre to believe. From the throat of the Daoist in the red robe, several wriggling black tentacles, dripping with viscous fluid, crawled out from the depths of his throat.

It was Black Tai Sui, but not entirely. At the root of one tentacle hung half a face—Danyangzi's face!

"Ah! That Buddha didn't die! He didn't fully become a Buddha! The Buddha was actually hiding in Li Huowang's stomach, mixed in with the Black Tai Sui the whole time! We got it wrong! That's the real master!"