The sun sank in the west. The entire mountain ridge was utterly silent, save for the "jingle, jingle" of a bell, which sounded especially ethereal and lonely.
The wind stirred the bell, sending out peals of crisp ringing.
Apart from that, there was not a living soul.
As the Song of Righteousness put it:
Heaven and earth possessed righteous qi, which took on manifold forms.
Below, it became rivers and mountains; above, the sun and stars.
In people, it was called the boundless spirit, surging forth to fill the heavens.
Wen Tianxiang regarded righteous qi as something tangible, something that could condense into substance.
From Lin Feng's perspective as a Qi-Observing Historian:
Those words were no exaggeration.
The lineage of Qi-Observing Historians upheld one fundamental belief—qi was the core of everything. Their understanding of qi differed from that of others; it came close to what some understood as the Dao or Heaven, the supreme above all supremes, the ruler above all rulers.
The qi of the common people and their hopes were utterly incompatible with sinister qi. Thus, wherever the bell's ringing reached, no evil could intrude.
The sound of this bell set the righteous qi of heaven and earth in order and struck down crooked paths and evil ways.
That was also why the "Taoists" had risked their lives to steal it.
Today, however, they had suffered a crushing loss.
Leaving aside whether those people lived or died:
There was only the bell to speak of.
Amid its ringing, someone walked toward the mountaintop in a daze.
A large, rotting hand reached over from the side and took away this Buddhist treasure, consecrated by the heartfelt devotion of countless people.
The bluish-black hand, still crawling with maggots, defiled the Buddhist treasure.
The Buddhist treasure was sullied.
It gave no