Looking at this bodhisattva's true form filled one with terror and dread.
It came from the sculpting of the bodhisattva's face: the enormous eyes, the round pupils staring and bulging outward, the excessive whites, the gaze nailed straight ahead at anyone approaching.
There was none of the gentleness of a statue with compassionately lowered eyes. It stared fixedly, like a living person.
The lines of its pupils were rigid and straight, utterly lifeless, with a sense of hollow scrutiny. Whether you stood to the left, to the right,
or directly in front, you felt its gaze lock onto your figure.
The bodhisattva statue's cheeks were full and swollen, its lips deliberately traced with a vivid, dark-red curve of a smile, stiff, false, and unnatural.
There was no warmth to it. Instead, it seemed like feigned gentleness, as though something else hid beneath the golden skin.
When Qu Zan looked at this true form of Nagarjuna Bodhisattva, he felt a sense of the uncanny valley.
He took only one look before refusing to look again. The sinister strangeness of this eerie statue was no less than that of a Vengeful Ghost.
Before that enormous statue, everyone felt their spirits constrict-
The Water and Land Universal Salvation Assembly's main observance lasted seven days, continuing day and night without interruption. On the first day, the altar was opened and boundaries established, delineating a pure ritual ground, guarded by Dharma protectors to keep harmful influences out.
The Dharma Assembly's prayer banners hung high above the square, and ten thousand lamps were lit-
Qu Zan's Eye of the Ghost God slowly opened, for he had noticed smoke slowly rising from the tops of everyone's heads.
Dimly, the smoke seemed to be gathering toward Nagarjuna Bodhisattva's true form.
He did not know whether shifting light had