Two monks, one old and one young, walked to the foot of Spirit Mountain. The elder monk threw himself to the ground, prostrating without rising, his body trembling with intense emotion.
Near the foot of Spirit Mountain, a statue of an Arhat suddenly opened its eyes. Turning slowly, it looked down at the old monk and said placidly, "Weishan, you have returned."
Still prostrate on the ground, the old monk replied, "This disciple has wandered for seven hundred years and attained some enlightenment. I have returned."
The Arhat stirred slightly, seemingly looking toward him, yet its eyes lacked divine radiance, appearing somewhat hollow. Its turn of head seemed merely directed toward the source of the sound, without truly seeing the old monk.
"Do you have your answer?" the Arhat asked.
"I have only realized half of it. I now know how to deliver myself, but the other half still eludes me. Over the past seven hundred years, this disciple has witnessed every ugliness in the mortal realm and gained some understanding, yet it remains incomplete. Sensing that I should not abandon all the people of the world, I shifted to delivering only those with whom I share karmic affinity, and only then did realization dawn. Coinciding with the advent of the Buddha Child in this age, this disciple chanced upon a young disciple of profound karmic destiny who is fit to be the Buddha Child. I have brought him back specifically for Master's appraisal."
The Arhat did not look toward the young monk. Instead, it said, "Since he is the Buddha Child, he will be guided by the Buddhas. As for you, having wandered for seven hundred years, you have attained enlightenment. My affairs in this realm are concluded; I harbor no lingering attachments. Very good, very good!"
The Arhat returned to its original posture. Beneath its lotus seat, a rectangular slab of stone suddenly glowed with a gilded light, revealing several Sanskrit characters: Namo Arhat Guanyuanchu.
The old monk bowed once more. In nine hundred years, this was the very first time he had learned the dharma name of his master.
The light vanished in a flash, and the Sanskrit text faded from the stone slab. Deep fissures appeared across the stone, looking as though fragments might fall away at any moment, yet an unknown force bound them firmly in place.
Just then, high above Spirit Mountain, an ethereal yet magnificent voice drifted down: "Since you are the Buddha Child, why do you not step forward?"
The young monk stood bewildered. The old monk hurriedly gave him a push, and after stumbling forward a couple of steps, the boy found himself directly at the foot of Spirit Mountain.
Looking up from here, a sheer cliff rose straight to the ends of the celestial vault. Across the stone cliff face, countless Buddhas, Bodhisattvas, and Arhats leaned forward and bowed their heads simultaneously, gazing down at the tiny monk below.
An indescribable dread welled up within the young monk, though he could not fathom what he feared. In this moment, countless gazes pierced right through him, not only laying bare the past, but illuminating the future as well.
High upon Spirit Mountain, a Buddha suddenly moved. An alms bowl and a kasaya appeared in his hands, which he tossed down; they landed squarely in the young monk's grasp.
Then the magnificent voice spoke again: "Possessing already the Golden Body, and now receiving the dharma instruments, your means are complete. You may now subdue demons and defend the Dao.
"The Dharma Ending Age draws near, and all demons shall emerge together. As the Buddha Child, you must banish the fiends and monsters; thus shall your fruition naturally be attained."
The young monk was bewildered. In a daze, the scenery before him shifted—the magnificent, radiant Spirit Mountain had vanished, and he was back inside a side hall of the Baohua Pure Land. Fortunately, the alms bowl and kasaya remained in his hands, bringing some solace to his heart.
Just then, an unfamiliar elder monk walked over. Looking at the Buddhist instruments in the boy's hands, an unusual expression flickered across his face. "Having received the sacred instruments, you are indeed the Buddha Child. Follow me to the Dharma Transmission Altar in the back mountain to receive the Golden Body Dharma Idol inheritance."
"Where is my master?" the young monk asked.
"Senior Brother Weishan's mortal bonds are severed. He has departed for the Merit Pure Land, liberated from now on, attaining pure and ultimate bliss," the unfamiliar monk said placidly.
A faint unease stirred in the young monk's heart, but his cultivation was still too shallow to grasp what was amiss. He could only follow the elder monk toward the back mountain.
***
In Yizhou, Wei Yuan had finally cleared away a mountain of official duties. Just as he was preparing to enter seclusion for a few days to write several more passages of the Three Realms Ruyi Sutra in the Desolate Realm, a new proposal suddenly popped up in the Splendor of All Realms, requiring his personal review and approval.
At present, Qingming's affairs were growing increasingly intricate, but the vast majority were routine, repetitive tasks that Wei Yuan had delegated. Meanwhile, original, trailblazing matters requiring strategic guidance had decreased. Anything concerning the overall trajectory was forwarded directly to Wei Yuan for final determination.
This particular plan was jointly submitted by the Qingming Academy of Sciences and the Hundred Professions Engineering Academy, entitled Policy on the Reform and Flourishing of Golden Pellet Dharma Idols. Its sponsors included Xiaoyu, Feng Tingyu, Chuhe, Xu Henshui, Sun Yu—Lay Buddhist Yuemugui, and others.
With such a lineup, Wei Yuan naturally attached great importance to it. Setting aside his writing of the sutra, he began reading with keen attention.
The cultivators posited that with Qingming's immense number of template dao foundations, the most pressing imperative was to extend the cultivation path for hundreds of thousands of Dao Foundation cultivators.
Back when Qingming was first established, Wei Yuan had created the immortal sword pseudo-sun, pioneering template dao foundations. Over the decades that followed, template dao foundations became wildly popular, multiplying the number of those achieving a Dao Foundation by well over a hundredfold.
Valuing quantity over quality was the very essence of Qingming. Prior to Qingming, the Palace of Grand Beginning had fewer than ten thousand Dao Foundation cultivators in total; now, Qingming boasted more than two hundred thousand template dao foundations—dozens of times greater than the ancestral sect itself.
The widespread adoption of template dao boards had likewise ignited unprecedented enthusiasm for Body Casting among mortals. Most ordinary people felt they had a realistic hope of attaining a Dao Foundation, so as long as the means were available, everyone strove to forge their bodies.
Currently, out of every hundred Qingming residents, fifteen were Body Casting cultivators. Moreover, among newborns reaching six years of age, the proportion possessing the aptitude for Body Casting was as high as forty percent!
This ratio was not only far higher than that of any of the Nine Kingdoms, but even cultivation aristocracies like the Seven Clans and Thirteen Prominent Families could not boast such an astonishing proportion.
While template dao foundations had clearly propelled the collective cultivation of mortals, the subsequent path remained blocked. Once many template dao foundation cultivators successfully stabilized their foundations and advanced to the mid-stage Dao Foundation realm, their path reached its end. Having lost the drive to cultivate, many grew indolent, turning to pleasure-seeking and cheap thrills, which spawned a multitude of social problems.
In recent years, according to statistics compiled by the Smoke and Fire of the Mortal World, crimes committed by template dao foundation cultivators had surged more than tenfold. Extending their path of cultivation had become an urgent priority on the agenda.
The proposal's authors believed that the two great dharma idols, "All Life Burgeons" and "Ten Thousand Splendors Golden Pellet," offered groundbreaking insights. Just as with the Dao Foundation—where template dao foundations emerged once powerful divine abilities were no longer demanded and having any foundation was deemed sufficient—by the same logic, if a dharma idol did not demand complete, vibrant spirituality and merely required a trace of it, the difficulty of attaining a dharma idol would plummet drastically.
In this regard, the dharma idols formed through All Life Burgeons and Ten Thousand Splendors Golden Pellet placed no stock in spirituality and discarded innate physical forms entirely; they were nothing more than simple round pellets containing spiritual nature, yet they were dharma idols nonetheless. The cultivators thus referred to such idols collectively as Golden Pellet dharma idols and proposed a systematic development roadmap for their future progression.
Broadly speaking, these designs called for the golden pellets to become progressively smaller, looser, and imbued with ever-diminishing spirituality. Yet no matter how small or crude, they were still dharma idols, vastly superior to ordinary Dao Foundations.
The natural lifespan granted by a Golden Pellet dharma idol was also far below that of a standard dharma idol, lasting roughly three hundred years—yet this was still considerably longer than the hundred and fifty years of a Dao Foundation.
As a supplement to the proposal, a heterodox path was also introduced: the Pill-Ingestion Ascension Method.
This heterodox path was tailored specifically for those clinging to a sliver of hope to advance to the Dharma Idol realm. Its foundation lay in the Immortal Ascension Foundation Pill that Wei Yuan had concocted by chance years ago. Modified numerous times by Xu Henshui and Zhidan Sanren, the pill's nature had grown considerably gentler and its potency had decreased somewhat, but the toll it took on lifespan was nowhere near as severe as Wei Yuan's original recipe.
Now, taking a single Immortal Ascension Foundation Pill allowed a cultivator to achieve the prerequisite Dao Foundation for Ten Thousand Splendors Golden Pellet or All Life Burgeons in a short span of time. The trade-off was that only forty years of lifespan remained. By then relying on various supplementary pills to accelerate their progress and attaining a Golden Pellet dharma idol before those forty years were up, they would immediately gain an additional two hundred years of lifespan.
Relying primarily on medicinal pills and sacrificing lifespan in exchange for a shortcut to advancement, it was thus christened the Pill-Ingestion Ascension Method.
Wei Yuan immediately recognized the potential of this method. Many scions of aristocratic clans possessed talent but lacked endurance; lengthy cultivation was pure torment to them, and they were unwilling to spend most of their lives in tedious training for a slim hope of attaining a dharma idol.
The Pill-Ingestion Ascension Method offered an optimal solution: by surrendering a hundred years of lifespan, they stood a greater than fifty percent chance of advancing to the Dharma Idol realm. Many would gladly take that gamble.
Furthermore, Wei Yuan possessed an abundance of supporting measures capable of boosting the odds of forming a Golden Pellet dharma idol, making the method exceedingly viable.
After deliberate consideration, Wei Yuan reached out and tapped the option to approve. With that single tap, Qingming's Age of the Golden Pellet Dharma Idol was officially inaugurated.
Chapter 1085