Dongzhen, Dongxuan, and Dongshen, the three great sect founders.
Those were alternate titles for the three Heavenly Venerables.
Even now, although the Daoist Order knew that everyone had gone their separate ways, it still enshrined the ancestral masters of its three Divine Lords as its founding patriarchs.
But compared with Amitabha, who was real and omnipresent, dwelling on the lips, in the hearts, and within the spirits of Buddhist cultivators everywhere...
And with the figure that every Arhat at the Golden Immortal realm would encounter-any cultivator who became an Arhat at that realm...
They would invariably see him amid that hazy sense of the Buddha's spirit, in a state profound beyond all profundity.
The Mother of Ten Thousand Buddhas!
The Mother of Buddhas!
Compared with those two Sages of the Buddhist Order, who took such intimate contact with their followers to that extent...
The Three Pure Ones were clearly rather more distant from their believers.
If not for the fact that Taoist cultivators produced a steady stream of outstanding talents...
With generation after generation bringing forth countless Divine Lords...
Followed by generation after generation of Heavenly Venerables...
The Buddhist Order would probably have knocked the Daoist Order flat long ago.
Still, the Daoist Order was pretty formidable too.
It clearly had an ancestor at the top, the first patriarch everyone knew held a post in the Heavenly Court: Taishang Laojun.
That venerable fellow clearly served in the Heavenly Court.
And he was even an honored guest of the Jade Emperor.
Who in the Heavenly Court would not show him some respect?
The Buddhist Order next door, meanwhile, had practically licked boots like a devoted lapdog, shamelessly putting itself through hell before finally coaxing a position among the Five Elders out of the Jade Emperor.
And the result?
The Buddhist followers