Sixteen monks, all sixteen known to Lu Feng. These sixteen Sutra Student Monks were the finest in their respective classes. Which temples they came from, what their names were, how many years they had studied—Lu Feng remembered it all. From his perspective, every one of these sixteen was capable of standing out from his class.
There was nothing wrong with their standing out.
The question was why six of them bore him ill will.
Lu Feng also knew those six. None of them had any quarrel with him. They did not spend time together, but neither had they formed a clique to target him-Lu Feng hardly ever saw these people. He simply buried himself in his studies, and because he was poor, he did not fit in.
So they should have had no reason to bear Lu Feng ill will, unless it was jealousy. But the malice of jealousy and pure malice were not the same kind of ill will.
So, for the situation before him...
There was only one possibility.
Lu Feng lowered his head and eyes.
Unless someone behind them had offered a price they could not refuse.
That price might have been a promise, or merely a threat of death, or a threat against their parents.
The lives of Sutra Student Monks like them were beneath mention in the eyes of the great monks before them.
As for those outside the temples, apart from the chieftains and Dzongben nobles, everyone below the headmen was the same to the great monks. Herders and slaves were no different, all things they could casually crush to death.
Like a wisp of dust on a rocky mountain.
One breath from an open mouth could blow them all away.
Lu Feng closed his eyes. Sixteen people should have been divided into eight groups, or someone should have stepped forward to question the other fifteen. But from the look of things, that was not the case.
They had chosen to "fight in pairs."
The attendant monk representing the Abbot Venerable had already taken his seat on the lotus Dharma throne, Dharma Gong in hand. The three Lamas seated on their Dharma thrones all saluted him and asked whether the final round of scripture debate could begin. The attendant monk was not permitted to speak. He merely struck the Dharma Gong once to signal his permission, and Master Zhiyun announced in his booming voice, "Let the scripture debate begin."
Lu Feng had a bye in the first round. That was determined by where he sat.
His seat was a special one to begin with.
No written rule stipulated that this seat received a bye, but whenever there was a bye, it invariably went to the monk sitting there.
It had always been so.
The sixteen were divided into eight groups and debated there, choosing to sit facing one another. The atmosphere was friendly.
Their voices were quiet, too.
Elder Mingfa watched it all impassively. He had now stopped his gestures of blessing and merely watched in silence. Although Lu Feng had not looked behind him, his ears caught all the sounds of the debates back there.
He listened carefully to what they said.
Their opening topics were all very basic and normal. There was even a Great Debate Topic such as "What is emptiness?" Based on what Lu Feng had learned about them over ten years, all their moves fit their knowledge and personalities perfectly. Many monks even used the same old opening counters.
At this level, even before he had "awakened," he could have debated alongside these people, let alone now that he had.
But things could not possibly be that simple, because Lu Feng noticed that none of the six Sutra Student Monks who bore him ill will had sat together.
One against one, eight pairs. Without consulting one another, they had all chosen to debate Sutra Student Monks who bore them no ill will, as though they wanted to avoid infighting before dealing with him.
If someone said this was a coincidence...
Lu Feng could not believe it.
But he understood well the principle of meeting soldiers with generals and stopping floods with earth, so he waited. He waited for things to begin, and by the time they did, the debate was nearly halfway through.
Some Sutra Student Monks had already been rebutted into speechlessness by their opponents. Helpless, they could only shut their mouths and let the others mock them. None of the four monks in the seats of honor stopped them, because this was commonplace, just as Sutra Student Monks were regularly strung up outside the Debate Hall every day.
Punishment for fools.
Yet amid this "harmonious" scene of debate, Lu Feng suddenly sensed an extraordinarily eerie presence emerge. As it appeared, one of the defeated monks suddenly cried out in the midst of the debate, sprang up from the ground, and slammed himself hard into a nearby tree.
Blood sprayed.
He had killed himself with that single collision.
At the sight of the spraying blood...
For a moment, several great monks who had been chanting mantras stopped. Not only the great monks-even the person debating beside him failed to react until red and white matter splashed onto his face and into his mouth.
By the time he reacted...
A Great Terror seized his heart like a demonic claw and crushed it!
He could not help letting out a scream.
Then his heart really did burst.
The innocent Sutra Student Monk fell to the ground, his face turning deathly pale. He was plainly dead beyond all doubt.
"The might of a Dharma protector."
Seeing this, how could Zhiyun not know what had happened?
But even knowing, he could not stop it, because he understood that if Elder Mingfa dared to do this, he must have something to rely on.
The highest judicial monk here, Elder Mingzhi, was right there. Had the matter not been thought through meticulously, no one else would have needed to act; Elder Mingzhi would have intervened to stop it all. Zhiyun plucked up his courage and glanced at Elder Mingzhi. Finding that the elder had not said a word, he too remained silent.
Nor did the Abbot Venerable's attendant monk strike the Dharma Gong to halt the debate. Instead, he allowed such things to happen in the courtyard.
Lu Feng raised his head slightly. With these deaths, a hazy darkness seemed to settle over the rear courtyard, shrouding the place like an impenetrable curtain. Looking up, Lu Feng discovered that, for certain special reasons, death here had given rise to tangible terror.
That terror was like a sheet of skin.
It lingered here.
It became an immense pressure bearing down on Lu Feng.
It descended over Lu Feng's head and face.
Lu Feng suddenly gained some understanding. He knew what sort of danger he was about to face.
The remaining Sutra Student Monks who bore him no ill will were almost frightened enough to wet themselves. Held hostage by fear, they immediately hovered on the brink of death.
If they died, their deaths would become sustenance for the terror here, strengthening it and turning it into even greater pressure.
So he could not let this terror continue to breed unchecked.
Lu Feng's mind was perfectly clear. He rose to his feet. He stood, chanted, and turned, and the Six-Syllable Great Brightness Mantra rolled out from his Dantian.
For some inexplicable reason, perhaps because he was chanting, a force of compassion welled up in his heart-a feeling of being "unable to bear the sight." At that moment, he understood a little of what compassion meant.
Because he understood, his voice was especially resonant.
He felt the Bindu within his Navel Chakra suddenly erupt.
With a boom, it blossomed with boundless radiance.
He felt that this time, his mantra was not being shouted from his throat, but rolling out from his Dantian, from his Dharma Lineage.
It rolled smoothly all the way into his throat. Lu Feng even had the illusion that this mantra had not issued from his throat at all.
It had rolled straight out of his Dharma Lineage!
And so, this time he uttered the Six-Syllable Great Brightness Mantra in a single breath, without the slightest pause.
"Om mani padme hum."
The moment those words rang out...
The oppressive atmosphere throughout the rear courtyard suddenly cleared!
There was no great wind, no light, no supernatural phenomenon at all. Yet a presence emerged here and swept away the death.
The Sutra Student Monks in the midst of debating all suddenly stopped.
The dying Sutra Student Monks also gained an exceedingly rare moment to breathe. Lu Feng ignored them and walked forward, palms pressed together, reverently holding his Kapala rosary between his hands. He extended them before him to indicate a Mind Offering to the assembled monks, then said, "Zhasa, Sutra Student Monk of Ganye Temple, respectfully invites instruction from all my fellow students."
Having spoken, he strode up to the nearest monk who bore him ill will and said, "Fellow student, please sit. I will do the questioning!"
He stared at the man and asked, "What does it mean to see one's nature through emptiness and reality?"
Before you continue