Suzhou, Guobei County.
The once-prosperous county town had already been shrouded in a layer of deep, heavy fog.
Heaven and earth, Yin and Yang, above and below, in every direction—within this dense fog, all things had lost their original forms. Only a few points of golden fire rose and fell within it.
That lotus-like radiance offered faint comfort amid the fog, as though hope had not truly vanished.
The fog itself had formed a world.
Pavilions and terraces, mountains and rivers, the cosmos and stars, the myriad scenes of mortal life.
From the grandest of all things to the tiniest.
Everything, all of it, was part of the fog's ceaseless transformations.
Ever since the Hungry Ghost Path had entered the Central Land, this had played out here every day.
This was a wall.
Within the wall lay a portion of the Six Paths of Reincarnation—the most fundamental divine power of the Western Heaven's Buddha Realm, its truest attainment.
Beyond the wall was the Central Land, the land of people ordained by the Mysterious Capital Palace, the mortal world where countless people struggled through sorrow, joy, anger, and delight.
A young novice monk walked through the fog. A lone bronze lamp shone upon his fingertip, its violet flame illuminating the three feet before him.
Within the range of that three-foot lamplight were thick wild grasses, broken bricks and rubble, devastation as far as the eye could see.
It was the Guobei County of old.
The young novice monk faithfully observed the World-Honored One's teachings.
He knew the true nature of that layer of fog: it was the Hungry Ghost Path.
Countless worlds filled with Hungry Ghosts and evil gods.
Sin flowed within them, giving birth to ghostly gods of wicked deeds and evil visages, while those ghostly gods in turn nourished