Ronan walked slowly out of the half-illusory doorway and met the Justice Chief Priest's puzzled gaze.
"It didn't work?"
"I wanted to try, but I wasn't qualified."
Ronan did not hide what had happened. He gave her a rough account of the information he had deciphered, merely recasting terms like "Divine Kingdom" and "Inner Universe" in local terms. The more he did so, the harder it was to escape the Martial Emperor's influence. He found himself saying things like "the local ground where divinity has long dwelt and taken root."
The Justice Chief Priest listened carefully, then pondered for a moment before sighing. "So it really is a Local Manifestation Trace."
That term again.
This was the second time Ronan had heard the Justice Chief Priest say "Local Manifestation Trace."
He had not had time to look it up before. This time, he searched discreetly and soon found the relevant entry.
A "Local Manifestation Trace" was a Buddhist term, also associated with the "Origin and Trace Two Gates." It began as the teaching of a well-known monk in ancient times and gradually developed into a field of study. The teaching held that the Buddha had attained enlightenment in the distant past: the dharma body of the origin gate had neither beginning nor end and dwelt in its enduring original ground. The Buddha who had appeared more recently was a manifestation from that ground, descending to teach sentient beings.
The idea seemed to anticipate the distinction between the dharma body, reward body, and manifestation body. Some also used it to explain the Lotus Sutra...
Wait.
Inevitably, Ronan thought of the Martial Emperor.
She had an incurable case of Secretism, yet she kept dropping hints everywhere. What kind of perverse amusement was that?
And the first time the Justice Chief Priest had