Tathagata Choked with Frustration Until He Vomited Blood

Yet Guanyin's next words caused cracks to appear in the composure Tathagata had barely managed to maintain.

"It is said," Guanyin began, her voice carrying an unmistakable trace of absurdity,

"that Lin Zhu claimed the materials for the new hall had to be of the highest quality. Spirit Source Agate was needed as the primary material for the walls, Star Purple Gold and Ten-Thousand-Year Warm Jade for the beams and pillars, Seven-Colored Glazed Crystal Bricks for the flooring, while Agarwood Jade Buddhas and fragments of Cold Ice Marrow Bodhisattva Statues were needed as decorations... He even mobilized... mobilized the One Hundred Million Buddha Soldiers our Western Heaven had 'given away' as the main construction workers, laboring day and night..."

When Tathagata heard familiar names like "Spirit Source Agate," "Star Purple Gold," "Seven-Colored Glazed Crystal Bricks," and "Agarwood Jade Buddha," his pupils suddenly contracted! Weren't those... weren't those the finest materials from Spirit Mountain's Eight Treasures Merit Pool and Eight Thousand Zhang Wish-Fulfilling Corridor?

And those One Hundred Million Buddha Soldiers... they were prisoners! Spoils of war! How had they become "given away" in Lin Zhu's mouth? And turned into laborers building houses for the Heavenly Court?!

An indescribable bitterness, fury, and intense sense of absurdity bit viciously into his heart like icy venomous snakes. His own treasures, stolen and seized, were being flaunted so openly as capital for constructing an enemy's hall; his own men were being driven to lay bricks and raise beams for their foe...

The feeling was far more complicated—and a thousand times more agonizing—than simply having one's wife run away with someone else! It was the ultimate humiliation: being trampled, plundered, and then put to use in every possible way, from material possessions to spiritual dignity, from substance to face!

Tathagata felt sweetness rise in his