The old fox was named Tu, and he led Qin Sheng into a stone cave on the south side of the valley.
This cave was vast, fully five to six hundred paces wide for an adult man, and about three zhang high, bright and fresh.
Racks were arranged on all sides of the stone cave, displaying all kinds of ancient books. There were paper books, parchment books, wood and stone carvings, and even imperial iron certificates awarded by the previous dynasty, extremely rich in variety.
At a rough estimate, the collection here numbered at least one hundred thousand volumes. Knowledge was priceless yet had its price, and in such an ancient environment, so many books could be described as of immeasurable value.
It was impossible for the households of dukes and princes to collect so many books, let alone some that had long been lost unique editions.
Were all these brought out from the Great Zen Temple by Elder Tu? Those monks really were rolling in wealth. Qin Sheng's gaze roved around as he praised.
As one of the sacred martial arts sites in the world and the ancestral court of Zen, the foundation of the Great Zen Temple was indeed unfathomable, Tu sighed.
With over ten thousand monks, the fertile fields, mountain lakes, and shop properties under its name were countless, and every autumn they sent over a thousand monks to the countryside to collect rent.
The grand halls in the temple rose one after another, like a Buddhist kingdom, where candle flames never went out day or night, and the precious temples shone perpetually, while the novice monks who burned incense for the Buddha and Bodhisattvas every day had to ride horses to light them.
Descriptions like the Buddhist sect having no taxes and tens of thousands of