The river flowed quietly, silver light shimmering like a jade ribbon floating beneath the gentle sunlight.
When the sun was warm and the wind still, the river's surface became as demure as an inexperienced young maiden. But maidens would eventually grow up, and river water would eventually drift far away. No one knew whether it would ever return.
Wasn't life sometimes the same?
He drifted silently with the river, not knowing where it would carry him.
But he knew that even if he had only his last breath left, he had to keep drifting toward somewhere farther away and safer.
Because in his hand, he held Shaolin's greatest secret, passed down from Patriarch Bodhidharma to this day—Bodhidharma's Heart.
This treasure concealed the enormous secret of an invincible weapon. Rumor had it that this weapon could bring about a terrifying catastrophe across the land, a disaster even more dangerous than the Leifeng Pagoda calamity, one that could endanger even the Sacred Dynasty.
Before Bodhidharma passed away, he had used the Heavenly Eye to glimpse this shocking secret. He hoped that one of his later disciples would find a way to destroy that weapon, so he ordered Huike, a disciple skilled in mechanism design, to create Bodhidharma's Heart and seal the weapon's location within it, hoping that future disciples would put their plan into action once they discovered how to destroy the weapon.
Originally, this matter had always been a secret. Outsiders could never have known what Bodhidharma's Heart was, much less what it concerned.
Because this matter, including the method of opening Bodhidharma's Heart, was passed down through a single line even within Shaolin, entrusted only to the disciple of each generation with the finest character and greatest trustworthiness.
But unfortunately, Shaolin was also an ancient temple that had endured the