"What a bold claim. Too bad it's a pack of lies. You've picked the wrong person to feed that to."
Chen Cuo gazed at the empty night sky, making no effort to suppress his anger.
"Ideals like an Earthly Buddha Land on earth are countless among Myriad Manifestation Thoughts. In my Previous Life, there were even loftier ideals—ones that, if revealed, might have forced the rulers of entire worlds to intervene in person! And that talk of a Buddha Land is arrogance itself!"
He knew little of history's finer details, but he knew its broad course.
"In the future, there will indeed be no people of Qi, Zhou, or Chen. But they won't become subjects of some Buddha Land. They'll be people of Sui and the Tang Dynasty! Dynasties change every three hundred years. Even the Chen Kingdom is only one stretch of the River of History. But the people living on this land share an unbroken heritage. They aren't anyone's playthings..."
The monk's tone had sounded even, but he had spoken from on high, his contempt undisguised. He had appeared to be negotiating with Chen Cuo, but in truth he had issued an order—a warning!
It left Chen Cuo seething.
"Outside Dingxin Abbey, those Han people could barely count on seeing the next morning, yet they still discussed and explored their origins. They made mistakes, but that effort was precious. Monk Tan Duan comes from a Han Aristocratic Clan. Those clans monopolize knowledge and its transmission. For him to have mastered Divine Abilities, he must understand what led to all this. Yet he willingly champions a Barbarian Deity, personally holds this territory, and guards the Gold Figure Suppressing Han. From the sound of it, he not only scorns the past but has cast aside his ancestors. And now he