Heavenly Buddha Shadow Grotto

He Ping carefully delved into the great rift to investigate. Before long, he discovered a heap of rubble.

The rubble sprawled across a vast area. With his keen eyesight, he could tell that these were shattered walls, with broken stone steps scattered and piled together. Faintly, he could make out that this had once been the solid foundation of an enormous temple. As for those fractured walls, they must have belonged to the temple's main hall—the Great Hero Hall.

"Besides that, this stretch of broken stone was originally a pagoda. The ruined stones on the right should have been an elephant platform, and this pile of building wreckage over here seems to have once been a collapsed hall..."

He Ping spread out his consciousness, sensing the surroundings. Outside the foundations of one patch of ruins, remnants of outer walls still glimmered with a faint golden light. Lotus-shaped Sanskrit inscriptions remained on the ancient, damaged stones, along with weathered carvings and barely discernible divine figures: asuras and Wisdom Kings. Even after the passage of endless years, they still possessed a weighty beauty.

This was the sediment of time, the accumulation of years. He could feel that sense of weight; it was like a hefty volume of history in itself, bearing far too much.

"I understand now. This should have been a cultivation sanctuary," He Ping suddenly murmured.

"To build this ancient temple in the beginning must have consumed countless resources. Spirit materials such as azure jade and goldstone were even mixed into the pagoda, the stone walls, and the masonry itself..."

He slowly closed his eyes. A grand and magnificent ancient temple emerged hazily in his mind. It seemed to be a sacred domain where ancient Buddhas and bodhisattvas preached the Dharma. The holy grounds covered an immense expanse, filled with