"Knock, knock, knock."
Melina knocked on the temple wall.
"How interesting," Melina said. "They're very good at building with wood here. An excellent wooden temple."
Temples all had much the same layout, without anything particularly distinctive. There would be no streets lined with barbecue stalls, kabuki, or anything of that sort.
The main gate, front courtyard, rear courtyard, Main Hall, Inner Sanctum, meditation rooms, and so on were much the same everywhere.
There might be additional buildings depending on the principal deity or Buddha worshipped, or on some other historical anecdote.
Pagodas or pagoda groves, for instance.
That was roughly how it worked.
Melina took another good look at the Buddhist statues in the Main Hall.
"Oh, a rather ugly statue," Melina said, somewhat puzzled. "I don't sense any deity residing within it."
Those words amounted to a denial of the offerings made by the monks and worshippers.
Their incense had merely blackened the clay statues.
It had achieved nothing else.
The temple housed the Four Heavenly Kings, the Nio, and others, with Fudo Myoo occupying the central place of honor as the principal object of worship.
The other Buddhas and bodhisattvas were nowhere to be seen.
It was worth mentioning that the so-called Nio referred to the Heng and Ha Generals.
Their forms were powerful, with exaggerated muscles emphasizing their strength and fierce faces.
They were the main force for subduing demons. The Four Heavenly Kings needed no detailed introduction.
Everyone knew about them.
One could say that this temple worshipped nothing but specialists in vanquishing demons and defending the righteous path.
Ranni also said, "It looks sacred, but I can't actually sense any real power. This temple is empty."
"So it's just a building, then." Zhao Si understood what they meant.
There was a difference.
The simplest example