Life and Death Are Toys for Me to Play With

"Pop~!"

Brother Dao's eyeball burst, and a white silkworm emerged and crawled onto his face.

Immediately afterward, white silkworms emerged one after another from his body, tangled together, and crawled toward the fresh grave.

The grave split open on its own, revealing a corpse lying inside.

It was an old monk with withered flesh. Only the golden kasaya and Five-Buddha Vairocana crown placed beside his naked body testified to his esteemed status.

The white silkworms tangled together and transformed into men, women, and beasts with Buddha faces. They entwined themselves with one another and engaged in the acts between men and women forbidden by one of Buddhism's five precepts...

As they writhed frantically, they gradually coalesced into a round, blood-red cocoon, enveloping the old monk in the grave...

The earthen grave closed on its own, returning to its original appearance as though nothing had happened.

Xu Chunliang and Li Baiyi rushed into the small forest, racing ahead without daring to stop.

After running for who knew how long, the two finally emerged from the forest and saw a gently sloping hillside.

Seeing that no insects had pursued them, they sat down on the slope and gasped for breath.

Xu Chunliang glanced at Li Baiyi and asked, "Brother Li, you're more knowledgeable than I am. Tell me, are all Buddhist establishments in this world this bizarre?"

Li Baiyi frowned and slowly shook his head. "I don't know whether the Buddhist temples I haven't seen are like that, but the few famous great temples I've visited certainly weren't. Those monks were greedy and lustful, but they at least maintained a sufficiently respectable appearance. And to tell you the truth, I'm from the Demon-Slaying Bureau. We have eminent Buddhist monks serving as guest elders there too."

Xu Chunliang was taken aback. He hadn't expected Li Baiyi to be in the same line of work.

The Demon-Slaying Bureau has monks serving as guest elders? How come I didn't know? Xu Chunliang was startled at first, but then he understood. His predecessor had entered the Demon-Slaying Bureau thanks to his father's influence. His martial arts were weak and his rank was low, so it was only natural that he didn't know the bureau's secrets.

And although Xu Chunliang himself had experienced a great deal since transmigrating, he actually knew very little about this world. So it was only natural that he didn't know these things either.

"What a coincidence. I'm with the Demon-Slaying Bureau too, though I'm only a minor flag officer at the Fan City branch." Xu Chunliang made no attempt to conceal his identity and told Li Baiyi openly.

"Hey! That makes us even closer! I've decided my sister must marry you, big brother! We know our own people in the Demon-Slaying Bureau, and we're all good people, so I can trust you, big brother!" Li Baiyi seized the opportunity and once again offered his sister to Xu Chunliang as a wife.

Xu Chunliang rolled his eyes and didn't respond. He turned to examine the hillside behind them.

The slope was gentle, and it seemed someone had planted plenty of soft grass on it. Xu Chunliang reached down and stroked the soft grass beneath him. It felt very comfortable.

Looking farther up, he saw black objects growing from the hillside in the dim moonlight.

They looked a little like enormous bamboo shoots, but also like huge tombstones planted in the ground.

Curious, Xu Chunliang stood up.

"Let's go take a look." He led the way forward.

With the ability to die and roll back an unlimited number of times, the curiosity in his nature had been fully awakened. Bizarre sights that others couldn't avoid quickly enough were like an open-world horror-themed exploration game to him.

They were truly fascinating.

"We finally get a moment's peace, and you still dare go over there? Aren't you afraid of dying?" Li Baiyi's eyes widened. He truly couldn't understand.

Xu Chunliang was even more curious than the person blessed with great fortune whom he had met. It was as if Xu Chunliang really wasn't afraid of death.

Xu Chunliang chuckled and said unconcernedly, "Death? It's just part of the play."

"I regard life and death as toys to play with. These terrifying beings are the flower stamens indispensable to my play. Their appearance delights me, and their deaths bring me joy. To me, the joy that blooms for an instant like an epiphyllum flower is the eternal meaning of my existence. If I die pursuing that joy, then death will be the most wonderful beginning."

With that, Xu Chunliang deliberately put on a deeply unsettling smile and looked at Li Baiyi. "Well? Do I look like a madman? Do you still want your sister to marry me now?"

Li Baiyi stared at Xu Chunliang in shock, his eyes blank and unfocused. Then they quickly lit up. "Damn! That was awesome!"

"Brother-in-law, you're badass! Life and death are toys to play with, and the appearance of terror delights me. How come I couldn't think of something that cool to say?"

"Brother-in-law, it's a deal. I'll introduce my sister to you, and you let me use those words from now on. When I get back to the capital and show off in the brothel with those scions of noble families, I'll use those lines!"

"I refuse to believe those pretty boys who pay for poems and prose can sound more badass than me, a fifth-rank chiliarch of the Demon-Slaying Bureau who plays with life and death!"

"Hahaha! I'm definitely going to show off in front of everyone!"

Xu Chunliang shook his head and ignored the madman who was even crazier than he was, stepping onto the hillside.

There wasn't a single tree on the hillside, but Xu Chunliang walked with extreme caution. Li Baiyi did the same, walking five paces to Xu Chunliang's left with his sword in hand. Fully on guard, he quietly watched everything around him.

To the rustle of wind blowing through the grass, the two finally reached the black objects and got a clear look at them.

They were towers of various sizes, built from bricks and stones that looked like black mud.

The larger ones had bases about five meters wide and stood over thirty meters tall. The smaller ones weren't even as long as Xu Chunliang's leg. They stood silently on the hillside, arranged in a pleasingly varied pattern.

Xu Chunliang could just make out writing on one of the towers, so he went closer to examine it.

At the tower's base was a black stone carved in the shape of a many-petaled lotus, standing over two meters high. Above it was a stele cut from a single stone.

The characters on the stele were tangled like snakes, and Xu Chunliang couldn't make any sense of them. He called softly, "Old Li, come take a look. Do you recognize these characters?"

Li Baiyi stepped forward, guarding his back with his sword as he looked up at the inscription on the black stele.

"Hiss..."

He sucked in a breath. "I know what these characters are. It's just..."

"What?" Xu Chunliang frowned.

"This is Buddha Script. According to legend, only beings who have truly attained Buddhahood can read it." Li Baiyi's voice trembled slightly...

"I once heard the Buddhist guest elder at the Demon-Slaying Bureau say that those who attain Buddhahood naturally come to understand a script that coils like snakes. That script is Buddha Script. Ten thousand years ago, our world belonged to the Buddhas, and everyone was like a Buddha, so people used Buddha Script to record knowledge.

"But now, the notion of a world ruled by Buddhas has long been dismissed as nonsense. Even the Demon-Slaying Bureau only has a palm-sized fragment of a stone stele bearing Buddha Script."

"And yet there are so many here. What kind of place is this, and what exactly is the Ruin Realm? Could the Ruin Realm actually come from ten thousand years ago?

"Were these Buddhas always so bizarre, or did something happen ten thousand years ago?"

As Li Baiyi posed these profound questions, Xu Chunliang's voice drifted over...

"I don't know what happened ten thousand years ago, but I do know we're in trouble..."