"All living beings possess Buddha Nature!"
Buddhist chants thundered across Hedong. The sky had been clear for a thousand miles, but clouds and mist spread everywhere in the blink of an eye!
Between the clouds, the rattle of chains rang out on every side. Link after link connected, converging on the golden Bronze Man inside the Universal Deliverance Temple!
Clang! Clang! Clang!
The Bronze Man shook!
The faces of several monks in the temple changed, and they hurried over—
Times had changed. Once Chen Cuo and the others left and no longer occupied the temple, quite a few of the monks scattered outside chose to return.
The Universal Deliverance Temple gradually returned to normal.
Tan Duan had vanished, leaving the monks without a leader. They were inevitably somewhat lax, but they knew the temple's most crucial part was the hall housing the Fortune-Suppressing Copper Figures, so they assigned monks to guard it every day.
Now that something strange had happened to the Bronze Man, the monks grew uneasy.
But soon, a monk in his prime said, "A Dharma master must be casting a spell, borrowing the Bronze Man to contact people in the Northern Lands!"
"So that's it!"
"This is good news!" the monk went on. "No one knows where Dharma Master Tan Duan has gone, and the Universal Deliverance Temple has no leader. Since a Dharma master is directing the Bronze Man from afar, the Buddhist School must have discovered what happened here. I expect they'll send someone to take charge soon!"
"Exactly! When that happens, we must make those unwelcome guests from before repay their Cause and Effect and show them that our Buddhist School has wrathful vajras to subdue demons!"
The surging incense offerings suddenly changed!
The Fortune-Suppressing Bronze Men Array stretched across the Northern Lands. Now