Chapter 66: The Demon God's Sarira

Just as Roy had allowed himself to be nailed to a cross, and Othinus had gouged out her right eye and offered it to the Fountain of Wisdom, so too had the monk.

After completing the astronomical preparations, he locked himself in a tiny basement without eating or drinking until he starved himself to death, becoming the dried corpse he was now.

This was the Demon God Monk's self-mummification ritual. It could be said that every Demon God's ascension to godhood involved a form of self-harm and self-abuse.

The symbolic meaning was to cast off his mortal body and allow his flesh to be sublimated.

The Demon God Monk had originally believed he would become a true Buddha, rise above all living beings, use his doctrine of great compassion to save all people, and rescue this distorted world.

But in the end, the Demon God Monk had both succeeded and failed.

He had not become a Buddha. Instead, he had become a Demon God.

Outwardly, the reason was that humanity's jealousy, politics, and other factors had caused the world to refuse to acknowledge him as a Buddha.

Thus, he had no Buddhist name or duties, and became a wandering self-mummified Buddha upon the earth.

But the Demon God Monk himself knew that even if the world had acknowledged him, he would still only have been an 8=3 Demon God.

This world had never given birth to a 9=2 existence. There was no true "Buddha" in this world at all.

His body had been sublimated through the ritual, and his soul had been sublimated through the ritual. The Demon God Monk had thereby obtained Demon God Power, but the failure of his spiritual sublimation had left him even more lost.

After becoming a Demon God, the Demon God Monk had also