Longevity by Grinding Skills-Chapter 61: Thousand Buddha Temple

He turned to the crowd of blacksmiths, who were all staring at him with wide eyes. "What are you looking at?" he snapped. "Get back to forging. If you delay the orders, I’ll have your hides!"

Despite the scolding, Xu Yunfan couldn’t help but let a faint smile grace his lips.

Elder Lv had a sharp tongue but a soft heart. He was highly respected in the smithy; he had even personally arranged the marriages for several of the blacksmiths.

"I’m off."

"Go on, then."

Watching Xu Yunfan’s retreating figure, Lv Yi smiled and shook his head. Xu Yunfan’s talent was extraordinary. At just twenty-one, he had reached the Second Level Great Mastery of Muscle and Skin Training. This would be a good bond forged for Divine Weapon Ridge.

He lowered his head and went back to swinging his iron hammer.

Instantly, the smithy was filled with the ceaseless CLANG! of hammers. The sound, mixed with Lv Yi’s gravelly singing, melded in the spring breeze to become a blacksmith’s farewell ballad.

’Forge a bridge of iron to cross the seas, craft a boat of steel to brave the Mortal World...’

The wave of sound shook the newly budded branches on the trees outside the smithy. Xu Yunfan’s pace was steady, each step deliberate, as he headed toward Jiyun Mountain outside the city.

...

Just as Xu Yunfan was leaving the city, Wan Miaoyin, wearing a bamboo hat with a light gauze veil, followed the crowd and slowly entered.

The plain gauze hanging from her dark green bamboo hat rippled in the heat rising from the market street. Wan Miaoyin steadied the trembling veil with her fingertips, the cuff of her sleeve—embroidered with a silver-threaded epiphyllum—just managing to cover the tip of her nose.

The cries of street vendors, thick with the toasted aroma of scallion pancakes, assaulted her ears. The white steam rising from freshly opened steamers carried the stench of fish and sweat, which mixed with the scent of jasmine hair oil wafting from a cosmetics shop. The combination of smells made her temples throb.

Her fair hand, hidden in her sleeve, formed the seal for the Clear Heart Technique. A wisp of Innate Essence Qi that she had cultivated within her body slowly circulated through her, suppressing her overly sensitive senses and forcing down the wave of nausea that had been rising in her throat.

After thirty years of secluded cultivation on Celestial Pivot Mountain, she was not at all accustomed to the Dirt Qi of the mortal world.

She watched a live chicken flapping in a vendor’s bamboo basket, its tail feathers brushing against muddy water littered with vegetable leaves. Her feet instinctively moved to the side, seeking refuge on a bluestone slab, but she quickly froze.

If she moved any farther, she was afraid she’d step in chicken droppings.

A rare frown creased Wan Miaoyin’s otherwise cool and detached face.

’This feeling of having nowhere to place my feet is a first.’

Suddenly, a light breeze brushed across her face, caressing her temples.

Wan Miaoyin stopped dead in her tracks. Beneath her veil, her eyelashes trembled, and she couldn’t help but sniff the air.

’It’s the aura of that person Li Miaoyun marked for me. Aside from Li Haomiao, the King of Yan, who went to the Taoist Sect, the scent is strongest here.’

’But...’

Wan Miaoyin raised a hand. Wisps of a peculiar aura rose from her fingertips, rapidly weaving themselves into a vast net that spread out over all of Beiye City.

"It’s everywhere..."

’The aura Xu Yunfan left behind is all over the city. It’ll take a meticulous search to get a clear lock on him.’

’This is going to be incredibly time-consuming.’

A headache began to throb in Wan Miaoyin’s temples. ’If I’d known, I would’ve refused Li Miaoyun’s Innate Essence Qi. This is far too much trouble.’

’Maybe I should just go back and report to the sect. Let Master decide, and Master can be the one to explain it to Her Majesty.’

’The Celestial Pivot Start Sect’s Ten Thousand Miles Tracking Skill is hardly useful in this day and age, especially when I don’t know the target’s qi-blood signature or even what he looks like.’

’Trying to find him is like looking for a needle in a haystack.’

’But if I return empty-handed without even trying, I’m sure the sect elders will have something to say about it.’

’I should send a message to Master first, then start searching on my own.’

Having made her decision, Wan Miaoyin began to walk cautiously through the city, her aura covering her feet, not daring to let her guard down for a moment.

-----------------

Once outside the city walls, Xu Yunfan’s feet crushed the yellow earth of the outskirts. The muscles all over his body, once taut as a drawn bowstring, suddenly relaxed and unleashed their power.

Power flowed through his spine like a great dragon, vertebra by vertebra. As he pushed off from the soles of his feet, the great tendons in his legs snapped taut as if pulled, and his entire body shot forward like an iron arrow loosed from a bow, streaking toward Jiyun Mountain and the Thousand Buddha Temple.

In the past, on The Eight-Hundred-Mile Desolate River Ice-Plains, he had to navigate through Ice Rift Valleys and make difficult climbs. The paths were treacherous, with cliffs and precipices at every turn.

But now, on a flat, open road, the power erupting from his shins became pure forward thrust.

The scenery on either side blurred into colorful streaks. The wind shrieked past his ears like a blade, yet he could clearly hear the thunderous booming of his own heart. His qi and blood surged like boiling water. With every beat of his heart, blood rushed through his veins and his adrenaline skyrocketed.

With every beat of his heart, he took a step that covered fifteen meters in an instant, moving with the force of a giant elephant charging through an army.

At full tilt, his speed was far greater than it had ever been on The Eight-Hundred-Mile Desolate River Ice-Plains.

And now that his Flying Leg technique had reached Great Success, his speed was even more astounding.

Strengthened by the Flying Leg’s qi and blood circulation method, his legs were incredibly powerful. With the slightest exertion, his muscles pulled taut like steel cables and his great tendons snapped, creating a feeling as if a force was rising from the ground to ’push’ him forward.

After eight hundred heartbeats, the bronze gates of Thousand Buddha Temple at the foot of Jiyun Mountain burst into view.

’Before I leave for good, I should check out Thousand Buddha Temple. A place with a wooden statue like the Powerful Awakening Bodhisattva can’t be simple.’

’Maybe I’ll find an opportunity there to finally achieve a breakthrough with the Linn Character Technique.’

As the temple’s morning bell pierced the mountain mist, Xu Yunfan found himself standing before the Nine Bends Lotus Steps.

The full text of the Diamond Sutra was carved into the extravagantly luxurious Han White Jade Steps. The passage of countless worshipers in their cloth shoes had polished the engraved scriptures until they shone with a gentle luster.

Ascending the steps, he saw eight hundred statues of Arhats arranged along the mountainside. Some formed a Dharma Seal, their eyes downcast in a gentle smile. Others brandished a Vajra Pestle, their eyes wide with fury. Their pupils, inlaid with lapis lazuli, seemed to shimmer with a divine light as the sun’s angle changed, as if they were truly gazing down upon the mortal masses.

Down below, the temple was thronged with worshipers, the crowd rivaling that of Beiye City itself.

What surprised him most was the number of people with Martial Arts skills among the crowd. Many of them reeked of Evil Qi and the thick stench of blood.

’Something isn’t right,’ he thought.

"I’ve long heard that the Thousand Buddha Temple is incredibly popular. The abbot, Master Huichan, is a master of the Buddhist Dharma, renowned throughout the Great Zhou. Seeing it today, it certainly lives up to its reputation..."

A tourist dressed as a scholar standing nearby suddenly lowered his voice. "I heard that before the Empress came to power, the previous emperor often invited this very master into the palace to lecture on the Buddhist Dharma."

"But after the Empress took the throne, she came to despise Buddhism and favor the Taoist Sect, so she naturally ignored him."

’No wonder,’ Xu Yunfan thought. ’No wonder this Thousand Buddha Temple, located next to a small city in Northern Qingzhou, is still so prosperous. The scent of sandalwood incense coils all the way from the bluestone steps at the foot of the mountain into the temple itself. You can just imagine how much incense they must burn every day.’

Xu Yunfan’s eyes glinted, and he slowly continued his ascent.

As he neared the Great Hero Hall, he saw Guest Monks welcoming and seeing off visitors. Every one of them was handsome and charming, with rosy lips and white teeth. 𝗳𝐫𝚎𝗲𝚠𝚎𝗯𝕟𝐨𝘃𝚎𝗹.𝗰𝗼𝗺

Looking up, he saw twelve gilded prayer flags hanging from the eaves of the Great Hero Hall. As the wind blew, the title of the Heart Sutra, embroidered on the flags, became faintly visible.

Inside the Great Hero Hall, three towering, gilded statues of the Buddha sat in the lotus position, each holding a lotus platform in its palm.

After a full tour of the Thousand Buddha Temple, Xu Yunfan couldn’t help but marvel at its sheer luxury and splendor. While the gilded Buddha statues weren’t solid gold, the amount of gold plating alone was staggering.

The place with the thickest incense was, by far, the Thousand-Handed Guanyin Pavilion.

Amidst the swirling sandalwood smoke, an eleven-faced statue of Guanyin held an Everlasting Butter Lamp in each of its many palms.

Unfortunately, Xu Yunfan didn’t sense any sinister aura. Not a single notification even flickered on his Attribute Panel.

He didn’t see a single one of the Powerful Awakening Bodhisattva statues that Qin Bo had mentioned.