After the vast South Lake dried up, it left behind a huge, hard, cracked pit. The Three Lives Stone stood firmly at the bottom of the pit in the west, its eerie, frigid divine radiance illuminating a large stretch of the night.
The entire South Lake was utterly silent and empty.
Only beneath the Three Lives Stone did a handsome young man dressed in rags like a beggar stand with his head bowed in silence. The extraordinary thing about him was the glittering golden phantom of a monk behind his back!
A woman in white stood beside him, while An Yang faced them in gray-white cloth robes, his expression grave.
"Have you ever heard of Golden Cicada?" An Yang asked.
"Huh? No," Duan Xiaoxiao replied.
But Xuanzang beside her suddenly paled and hurriedly raised his head. "Are you referring to Elder Golden Cicada, the Buddha's second disciple?"
"That's right!"
"Huh?" Duan Xiaoxiao was instantly startled!
She had never heard of Elder Golden Cicada, but she knew of Mahavairocana Buddha.
Xuanzang then asked timidly, "May I ask, Mr. An, what does Elder Golden Cicada have to do with me?"
"Can't you tell?" An Yang glanced at him indifferently. "He is your past life—or, more precisely, a life many incarnations ago. You are Elder Golden Cicada reincarnated, and your purpose is to spread Mahayana Buddhism in this world, where Theravada Buddhism is prevalent."
"..." Xuanzang swallowed hard.
Tathagata Buddha of Western Heaven had been his master in a previous life?
Duan Xiaoxiao beside him was equally shocked, her jaw nearly dropping. Soon, however, her expression grew complicated.
Someone whose past life had been a disciple of the Buddha, yet who could not see his future life beneath the Three Lives Stone—wouldn't he be reborn in Western Paradise even if he did not