The Beginning of Panlong: In the Name of the Father

Chapter 1697 Today's Mani Temple

Mani Temple is located in the deep mountains at the junction of Liangzhou and Rongzhou. It is built against the mountain, with layers of halls and pavilions arranged in an orderly manner. Every brick and tile reveals its simplicity and solemnity.

In the early morning, when the first ray of sunlight penetrates the mist and shines on the magnificent Buddha statue, the whole temple is bathed in peace and tranquility. The monks are dressed in robes, holding scriptures, meditating or chanting in a low voice. Their figures are integrated with this ancient building, exuding a strong "Zen".

If an expert in the Void Realm came here, he would definitely be horrified.

Because the entire interior of the Mani Temple is filled with an extremely strong and orderly "god"!
God runs through the entire Manichae Temple.

This makes the Manichae Temple, from the 'living Buddha' and 'Bodhisattva' in the virtual world, the innate 'Arhat', to the ordinary novice monks, and even every blade of grass and tree in the temple, seem like a whole.

It looks the same as before, but the Manichae Temple has never been so terrifying in the long years past.

It all started three years ago.

Three years ago, a monk who called himself "Lin Zong" suddenly appeared in the Mani Temple.

Only half a month later, the Manichae Temple closed its doors to visitors for more than a month, and then began internal reforms from the bottom up.

The reform has made the overall strength of Manichae Temple much more terrifying than it was three years ago.

However, all the people in the virtual realm, including 'Liao Yuan', the only living Buddha in the temple who has truly cultivated into the 'Golden Body Buddha', worked diligently and did not relax for a moment.

Because now all the top leaders of Manichae Temple understand that Manichae Temple now has a great enemy, a real mortal enemy.

Lord Pei of the Heavenly God Palace, Young Master Pei Sansan of the Myriad Things Sect—and his most important identity, the former evil monk Xiang Fanchen of the Manichaeism Temple!

This is a powerful being who, under the normal historical trajectory, would destroy the Manichaeism Temple, preserve the Zen tradition, become the strongest, and then shatter the void and leave.

Three years ago, the heroic monk 'Rin Zong' descended.

He first convinced Liao Yuan with his Buddhist martial arts, and then debated with a group of Buddhist masters.

After winning the debate and forcing all the great Buddhist masters to admit his Buddha's heart, he reversed the use of the "telepathy" among the six supernatural powers of Buddhism and informed the top leaders of the Manichae Temple of what he knew about the "future".

The ability to read other people’s minds is the imprint of their minds and cannot be faked.

Therefore, the top leaders of Manichae Temple knew and understood the future direction of history.

The Buddhist path is bumpy.

Pei San of the Heavenly Palace swept across half of Jiuzhou and gathered a million troops to destroy the Mani Temple.

After Liao Yuan died, none of the monks in the Void Realm escaped.

However, after the destruction of the Manichaeus Temple, Pei San continued to pass on the Sakyamuni tradition, attributing the Sakyamuni tradition to the "Zen Buddhism", and listed it as a branch within the Tianshen Palace along with the "Tantric Buddhism" of the Tianshen Mountain lineage he developed.

Although Zen and Tantric Buddhism are listed on the same level, one was snatched from the enemy and the other is the direct descendant - naturally, Tantric Buddhism is much more prosperous than Zen.

What’s more, Zen Buddhism has many precepts that deprive people of their freedom.

There are far fewer taboos in Tantric Buddhism. This lineage even emphasizes indulging one's own desires and controlling them.

As the two most powerful men broke through the void one after another, the style of the Tantric Buddhism, as the strongest force in the Heavenly Palace, gradually became brutal and ferocious.

But everything has its limits. While the Tantric school was becoming increasingly brutal, the Zen disciples were making progress.

During their long struggle, they gradually realized that precepts are not only a constraint, but also the cornerstone of spiritual practice.

They began to dig deep into the deep meaning of the precepts, trying to find freedom in bondage and sharpen their minds in suffering. In this process, Zen gradually differentiated into an independent force - Vinaya School.

The Vinaya School used precepts as form and concentration as intention, bringing the power of precepts to the extreme. They not only strictly abided by the precepts, but also transformed the precepts into a powerful spiritual force through practice and enlightenment to resist the intrusion of the outside world and the desires of the heart. One grew while the other declined, until 1,600 years after Pei San broke the void, the Tianshen Palace was in turmoil, the Vinaya School became independent, and the Tantric School was destroyed.

The power of Tianshen Palace had "fallen" from a holy land-level power that was strong enough to compete with Xingyi Sect to an ordinary Jiuzhou Eight Sect-level power on the same level as Qinghu Island and Xiaoyao Palace.

This is the powerful master Dongxu of the Lu Sect in the future timeline. He came to the world in the form of a heroic spirit to tell the top leaders of the Manichae Temple the news.

When this news came out, it naturally brought fear to the upper echelons of the Manichae Temple.

Although all the Buddhist sects in the Void Realm understood that even if the Mani Temple was destroyed by Pei San, it would rise again in the future and last longer than the Tianshen Palace left by Pei San, but that was all in the future.

Moreover, in the words of the Vinaya School, his appearance means future changes.

The past is fixed, but the future has infinite possibilities.

The virtual realm masters of the Manichae Temple could not hope for the resurgence of the Manichae Temple in the future. Even if they practiced Buddhism, it did not mean that they were not afraid of death.

Therefore, they have to fight against Pei San and fight for their lives.

Fortunately, Lu Zong brought not only news and intelligence from the future, but also various skills from the future.

Therefore, from the outside world's perspective, the Manichae Temple was completely closed off from the outside world, mysterious, and even did not send anyone to investigate the battle that destroyed the Ying family.

The 'Vinaya School' brought various methods to the Vinaya School era of later Buddhism, but they were of little help to the 'Buddha' and 'Bodhisattva' in the virtual realm.

The power system on the land of Kyushu has its limit before the strongest, and it is difficult to break through. From the perspective of the height of cultivation, "The Golden Body of Buddha" is already a god-level secret book, and there is no higher level.

However, the Vinaya school has its own special features.

First, it absorbed the methods of the internal boxing lineage and formed the Buddhist internal boxing. It uses boxing to hone the mind and practice the precepts into one's instinct.

The second is to condense the invisible precepts into tangible power through the "spirit". Through the "precepts", the internal strength of the monks' practice will not conflict with each other, and then under the command of the military formation, the power will be integrated.

This is a combined force technique that is ten or a hundred times more powerful than ordinary military formations. It is also the biggest reason why the Vinaya school was able to defeat the Tantric school in later generations.

A normal powerful person who has reached the great perfection of the Void Realm controls the power of heaven and earth at a force of about eight million kilograms. Even if he practices the supreme secret book, he can exert 120% of the power of heaven and earth out of 100%, which is 9.6 million kilograms.

But if the internal energy of acquired warriors and innate warriors can be perfectly superimposed, a person who has reached the great stage of the Void Realm is only equivalent to the power of twelve innate golden elixir masters, or the power of a thousand first-rate acquired warriors combined.

In a sect like the Mani Temple, there are millions of monks, and many of them are first-rate and second-rate warriors.

Even if only one percent of the monks could reach the peak of the acquired realm, it would be equivalent to ten powerful monks in the virtual realm.

Of course, this 'power of the crowd' approach has various flaws.

Even if a large number of monks gather strength through "discipline", their strength is only comparable to that of the Void Realm, and they cannot compete with the real Void Realm masters.

Not to mention that the combat power of innate warriors and acquired warriors is not as endless as those in the virtual realm, and they cannot fight for a long time.

At the same time, this law of discipline commands the power of all monks, and has a strength advantage in frontal combat, but it is limited by distance. The acquired monks cannot catch up with the combat power of the virtual realm, so it is difficult to use them to chase and kill the enemy. This is also why after its own strength was greatly improved, the Mani Temple did not chase and kill the Tianshen Palace, but instead completely retreated to the two northern states.

But at least, this gave Manichaeism the confidence to fight against Pei San.

If Pei San dared to attack the Mani Temple, he might be killed on the spot by relying on the method of borrowing power from the precepts.

A dead person cannot become the strongest.

(End of this chapter)