The thousand-meter giant corpse Buddha sat cross-legged at the edge of Cishi. The Buddhist qi emitted from her pores was like breathing, forming the momentum of a tornado.
With such an enormous body, mortals were like ants before it.
When Ren Qing was swallowed into the giant corpse Buddha's abdomen, he was still thinking about what kind of scene would be inside. It could not possibly form a world of its own, right?
He could not perceive any situation other than the clone, yet the reality was exactly as he had guessed.
As the force most skilled at utilizing souls, the Buddhist sect held the concept that one leaf is one Bodhi, one flower is one world. The countless souls contained within the Buddhist qi could construct a unique ecological system in the blink of an eye.
Inside the stomach of the giant corpse Buddha.
The environment appeared extremely dim. Only faint light shrouded the streets, and one could see emaciated mortals walking through them.
The mortals all wore monk robes sewn from rags. Compared with the harmony and calm of Heaven Above Heaven, their expressions were extremely numb.
Their eyes were filled with uncontrollable fear, and from time to time they looked toward the enormous shadow in the darkness in the distance.
At first glance the entire town had more than one hundred thousand monks, but the atmosphere was extremely numb. A sense of helpless despair shrouded the entire city.
In Heaven Above Heaven, the Buddhist qi would drive away the negative emotions in the hearts of the people and satisfy their desire for food, maintaining the needs of the body.
But this place was not Heaven Above Heaven. This was the "Buddha Within Buddha" that enshrined the Buddhist qi of Great Compassion Maitreya Bodhisattva. The Buddhist qi was all bound within the Indestructible Golden Body. There was not the slightest Buddhist qi available to relieve suffering.
The Buddha Within Buddha was like something deeply buried underground. From time to time it trembled, causing fear to arise in people's hearts.
No-Thought lay numbly at the corner of the street.
His eye sockets were sunken, his gums showing purple-red blood streaks. His skin-and-bones body could only barely show the slight rise and fall of his chest and abdomen.
No-Thought did not know why he had come to the Buddha Within Buddha, but he understood the meaning of his existence: to maintain the Buddha statues from being extinguished.
And just outside the city of the Buddha Within Buddha, thousands upon thousands of Buddha statues stood.
A loud noise came from outside the city, indicating that another Buddha statue had appeared.
A voice in No-Thought's heart kept repeating, urging him to go to the Buddha statue, but his body no longer had the slightest strength.
In the Buddha Within Buddha there were tens of thousands of monks, yet not a single grain of food existed.
Under the erosion of hunger, the strength in No-Thought's body was gradually extracted. Soon he closed his eyes tightly, and his vitality completely vanished.
Not long after he died.
The corpse suddenly convulsed, and a crack split open from the chest and abdomen.
The newly born No-Thought removed the remains of the original body, yet there was no ripple in his heart. Like a walking corpse he quickly walked toward the outside of the city.
This was what the Buddha Within Buddha continuously experienced.
Unable to live, unable to die.
To maintain the giant corpse Buddha from collapsing again, the Buddhist qi resurrected large numbers of mortal souls and completely treated them as worker ants in an ant nest.
The worker ants were responsible for all the heavy labor in the ant nest and almost did not need to eat.
No-Thought stiffly followed the crowd toward the open ground outside the city. Although the newly born body would no longer suffer from hunger, he knew it was only temporary and hunger could not be avoided.
All the monks repeated starving to death, rebirth, starving to death...
No-Thought had also tried committing suicide in advance, but the cycle was indeed endless. No matter how he struggled, it was useless effort.
A simply constructed altar stood on the open ground outside the city. A dense smell of blood filled the air, and thousands of monks had already gathered nearby.
No-Thought could see that the surface of the altar was covered with a thick layer of blood scabs, indicating that an unknown number of monks had died upon it.
The structure of the altar resembled a stone mill. Grooves were left at the edges, and blood would flow through the grooves into wooden barrels.
An old monk stood on the altar reciting scriptures. The surrounding people had no mind to listen and silently waited for the Dharma assembly to end.
After the old monk finished speaking, he casually selected several people.
They walked to the center of the altar without hesitation, then knelt upon it with closed eyes until strong young monks arrived carrying butcher knives.
"Rebirth in the Pure Land, rebirth in the Pure Land..."
The monks spoke words they themselves did not believe and raised the butcher knives to chop down with force.
Blood splattered everywhere.
More than a dozen heads with expressions of relief immediately rolled down. Blood spurted out and flowed through the grooves into the wooden barrels, quickly filling them.
In the blink of an eye, the monks were reborn again, while the corpses turned into dry bones.
"Great Compassion Maitreya Bodhisattva above..."
No-Thought recited the Buddha's name, yet the despair in his heart intensified.
"No-Thought!"
He heard the old monk calling him and involuntarily opened his muddled eyes. The latter gestured for No-Thought to go to the "Buddha Forest" filled with Buddha statues.
No-Thought nodded and carried a wooden barrel together with the other monks toward the Buddha Forest.
The foundation of their existence in the Buddha Within Buddha was to enshrine Buddha statues. Naturally the Buddhist qi would not allow the monks to develop thoughts of refusal.
No-Thought and the others walked slowly, afraid that the blood in the barrels would spill. If that happened, they would only be able to replenish it with their own blood.
Before the statue of Great Compassion Maitreya Bodhisattva, they were only the size of toes. They could not even see the appearance of the statue when looking up.
Behind them the altar continued repeating decapitations. After all, countless Buddha statues in the Buddha Forest all needed blood irrigation to maintain vitality.
No-Thought sighed deeply, then entered the range of the Buddha Forest and directly felt the faint Buddhist qi.
The skin of the statues was covered with spiderweb-like cracks, within which faint golden light could be seen.
If blood was not poured upon the statues, the cracks would grow larger and larger and eventually might cause the Buddha statues to collapse.
Taking advantage of pouring blood, the monks could not help approaching the Buddha statues.
They continuously breathed the Buddhist qi with their mouths and noses. Devotion toward Great Compassion Maitreya Bodhisattva arose in their hearts, and hunger and disease were immediately dispelled.
The Buddhist qi allowed them to temporarily forget pain and trouble. It was precisely because of the Buddha Forest that the souls of the monks had not completely collapsed.
No-Thought did not choose to absorb the Buddhist qi.
He poured the blood at the foot of the Buddha statue and watched as the statue, like a sponge meeting water, swallowed the blood completely in the blink of an eye.
No-Thought walked toward the depths of the Buddha Forest, and soon under the cover of Buddhist qi his figure disappeared.
The Buddha statues were identical, almost without the slightest detectable difference.
It was unknown whether the monks of the Buddha Within Buddha were deceiving themselves, but there had long been a strange rumor that many people firmly believed.
It was said that within the Buddha Forest, among the countless Buddha statues there was one transformed from Great Compassion Maitreya Bodhisattva. Only by finding the true body could one escape the sea of suffering and go to the Western Heaven's Blissful World.
Therefore every day monks searched for the true body within the Buddha Forest, but unfortunately none returned with success.
No-Thought, as if guided by a Ghost Envoy, arrived in the depths of the Buddha Forest, muttering "Great Compassion Maitreya Bodhisattva" while wandering aimlessly.
Without realizing it he lost his sense of direction and actually crossed the entire Buddha Forest.
"Great Compassion Maitreya Bodhisattva above..."
At that moment, No-Thought suddenly noticed that one Buddha statue was unusual and could not help staring at it intensely.
His face filled with excitement as he stumbled to the base of the Buddha statue.
Although the statue appeared no different from the others, its chest was rising and falling, and the sound of a heartbeat could faintly be heard.
No-Thought believed it was the true body of Great Compassion Maitreya Bodhisattva and hurriedly knelt before it.
He continuously recited scriptures, his heart full of hope for escaping the sea of suffering, while repeatedly knocking his head heavily against the ground.
No-Thought continued for several days, and hunger again surged into his heart.
From the hope at the beginning to later confusion, the movements from the Buddha statue became increasingly faint until they disappeared completely.
During this time several monks also came to pour blood and tried persuading No-Thought to leave the Buddha Forest, but the latter stared at the Buddha statue like a madman.
Just as No-Thought was about to die, a crisp sound suddenly rang beside his ear.
Crack crack crack crack...
Cracks spread across the surface of the Buddha statue. Soon even the Buddhist qi scattered outward, though it was absorbed again by the surrounding Buddha statues.
The disturbance produced in the Buddha Forest was enormous, causing tens of thousands of monks to look toward the source.
Something similar had happened some time earlier. At that time the earth shook and the mountains trembled, and they thought Great Compassion Maitreya Bodhisattva had appeared.
But it turned out only that a Buddha statue in the Buddha Forest had collapsed.
Only No-Thought faced the drastic change of the Buddha statue directly, watching as a huge man crawled out from inside the statue.
"Great Compassion Maitreya Bodhisattva above!"
He finally knew the rumor was true. Among the countless Buddha statues there truly was one transformed from the true body of Great Compassion Maitreya Bodhisattva.
Dust filled the air, covering the Buddha Forest.
Ren Qing moved his joints. Although after using the ability of Storyteller his body and soul actually became formless and parasitized the host.
After parasitizing for several days he felt incomparable pressure.
Now that Ren Qing had arrived in the stomach of the giant corpse Buddha, his mental state inevitably relaxed, and for a short time he did not wish to use Storyteller again.
He could not help looking around.
Ren Qing soon noticed monks the size of ants and a town reduced a hundredfold in scale, immediately understanding the arrangement of the Buddhist qi.
Each Buddha statue, as an Indestructible Golden Body, was a container storing Buddhist qi.
But the Indestructible Golden Body was after all mutated from mortals, and its sturdiness was far inferior to magical artifacts. To prevent the containers from being accidentally destroyed, the monks produced were simply shrunk in size.
Moreover Ren Qing could see that the Buddhist qi had not adopted a structure similar to Heaven Above Heaven.
It likely did not want to waste Buddhist qi on the monks and only maintained their continuous rebirth, completely treating them as tools.
Even if the monks' souls were destroyed because of this, it did not matter. After all the souls collected by the Buddhist qi likely numbered in the tens of thousands and could not be exhausted.
Ren Qing's figure gradually appeared and soon attracted the attention of the tens of thousands of monks in the Buddha Within Buddha. Exclamations sounded from their mouths.
"Great Compassion Maitreya Bodhisattva above!"
However, apart from No-Thought seeing Ren Qing born from the Buddha statue, the other monks did not treat him as the true body of Great Compassion Maitreya Bodhisattva.
Just as Ren Qing was about to act, his face suddenly changed drastically.
The Buddhist qi clearly sensed the abnormality in the stomach. Each Buddha statue emitted Buddhist qi, and massive amounts of Buddhist qi surged toward Ren Qing.
The sound of wooden fish being struck appeared out of nowhere, along with loud chanting of scriptures.
This phenomenon instead confirmed in No-Thought's eyes that Ren Qing was Great Compassion Maitreya Bodhisattva, causing the tens of thousands of monks to show uncertain expressions.