His reason told him to keep traveling. But the words Lankavatara Sutra and Sanskrit original text hooked the scholar's deepest nerve like two barbed hooks.
"Then... we cannot stay long. We'll leave after one look."
"Of course, of course." Chu Yang agreed at once. "Master, please go read the scriptures. We absolutely won't delay the journey."
When Zhu Bajie heard that there was a temple where they could stay, his ears, which had drooped for days, shot upright.
He said nothing—at a time like this, the lower the profile, the better, lest Tang Monk change his mind—but his steps became noticeably lighter.
Baolin Temple sat halfway up the low hill behind the town. It was even smaller than Sun Wukong had described.
It was not that Sun Wukong had lied. It was just that his "several courtyards" amounted to two and a half: a front hall, a rear hall, and a side courtyard that had half collapsed. The great bell by the mountain gate was not especially large either, about the same size as the ones in City God temples. Still, it had been polished until it gleamed, reflecting an orange-red glow beneath the setting sun.
The temple's abbot was a short, plump monk in his sixties named Huiyuan. He had a round face, curved brows, and tiny eyes that narrowed into two slits whenever he smiled. His entire person radiated cheerful warmth and approachability.
He was genuinely delighted to see Tang Monk.
But his joy was not because of the Lankavatara Sutra. That scripture did indeed exist in the temple's scripture repository, but it was not a unique copy. It was a duplicate that the previous abbot had copied from a large temple in a neighboring county. Rather, it was because this remote little temple had not received