Just as Fang Qing was refining the bone bowl.
Secret Treasury Domain.
Beneath Great Snow Mountain stood an Ancient Temple.
The temple's floor was paved with gold bricks and its walls built from milk mortar, while white bones supported the pillars throughout. It exuded an indescribable aura, and its gate was strange, like a portal to the afterlife.
Unknown tallow candles burned throughout the temple, giving off a faint scent of sandalwood.
A Lotus Bone Altar had been built in the rear courtyard. An old monk wearing a Cockscomb Hat and the Kasaya of the Lord of the Charnel Forest, his eye sockets deeply sunken, held a Bone Knife as he pared flesh and picked bones clean from a corpse before him, offering them to the Great Terrifying Aspects.
This was the Sky Burial ritual, modeled after the deeds of the Embodied Buddha enshrined in this temple—the Lord of the Charnel Forest.
The Lord of the Charnel Forest was the Protector of the Charnel Forest, the Lord of the Charnel Forest, also known as the Tomb-Treasure Lord. In High Antiquity, he had become a Buddha in his very body and was enshrined by the Temple of All Living Beings Without Form.
Within the Secret Treasury Domain, temples that enshrined an Embodied Buddha as their principal deity were Temples of the Source of All Dharmas. Their status stood only below the Temple of the Supreme Source of All Dharmas atop Great Snow Mountain—the Temple of the Great Sun Wheel.
After completing the secret Sky Burial rite, the old monk pressed his palms together and silently recited sutras.
When he opened his eyes, a fierce-looking Esoteric Sect disciple in a tiger-skin dharma robe was already prostrating himself beneath the Lotus Bone Altar. Who knew how long he had been waiting?
"Ah—our sect