The poor kid was probably about to go mad from being cooped up.
Chu Tiange thought, It's not that I want to keep talking instead of letting you out. Otherwise, I'd have done it right away. Whether we can pull this off mainly depends on the big shot beside me.
If Kṣitigarbha didn't want to cause a major incident, he would even stop Chu Tiange from releasing White Tiger. Even if Chu Tiange managed it after untold hardships, he would be doomed, trapped deep in the Buddha Kingdom. White Tiger wouldn't be able to escape either. It would all be for nothing.
Our protagonist was bold, but he didn't charge in blindly. The readers would call him brainless.
That was why Chu Tiange had been trying to "win Kṣitigarbha over" all along.
Kṣitigarbha certainly wasn't of one mind with the Buddha Ancestor, but how much effort he was willing to put in was another matter.
If Kṣitigarbha was willing to give his full support, they could not only release White Tiger but even resolve more than half the subsequent problems. After all, Kṣitigarbha surely didn't represent only himself. He represented an entire faction-the Original Buddhist School's forces, different from the distorted Buddha Ancestor, lying low and enduring.
Only an all-out clash between the two factions would let Chu Tiange rescue White Tiger amid the chaos.
But Kṣitigarbha wasn't an idiot. He had to answer to himself and his entire faction. Secretly helping Chu Tiange meet White Tiger was one thing, but asking him to enter a bloody conflict? Who did Chu Tiange think he was?
Talk and appeals to righteousness clearly wouldn't work. For righteousness to have any effect, you had to let people see hope, however faint.
White Tiger frantically charged back and forth inside the coffin, yet not