Chapter 1234 — The Holder of the Heavenly Emperor's Throne
The Herdsman of the Wasteland · Page 2 of 3
Emperor Shitian Li Youran, holding a great armful of blueprints, was inspecting with the assembled monks the joining of every component and the imprinting of every rune. He took the field himself as well, forging and imprinting, exceedingly busy.
Shen Mu came up to him and was somewhat startled: every monk wore the face of Emperor Shitian Li Youran, differing only in dress and in the work they were charged with.
"Li Youran, too, studied the Old Buddha's Sutra of Immeasurable Kalpas. These monks are the incarnations of his dreams!
" Enlightenment dawned upon Shen Mu. In that year, in the Great Brahma Heaven of the Buddhist Realm, those who entered the Old Buddha's little temple, apart from the Demon Ape Zhankong and Monk Chenghuai, were the King Buddha Emperor Shitian. The Old Buddha had passed down his own arts to them, but what each received was not the same.
After the Demon Ape Zhankong received the transmission, he straightaway fell asleep, snoring like thunder; Monk Chenghuai sat in quiet contemplation, seeking to fathom the profound and unfathomable Buddha Dharma within, and so save all living beings.
The King Buddha Emperor Shitian, by contrast, set his cleverness and talent to work, striving to interpret the Sutra of Immeasurable Kalpas from every angle.
At the time, Shen Mu had not been granted the transmission; only his elder brother Shen Fengqing had seized the Old Buddha in one hand and eaten him.
The four of them held four different attitudes toward the Sutra of Immeasurable Kalpas, and so the fruits of their cultivation of it were each different. Shen Mu had grasped no Buddha Dharma from the Sutra of Immeasurable Kalpas at all, for he had never set himself to grasp it; his harvest was the smallest of all, and so the Old Buddha simply poured the Sutra of Immeasurable Kalpas into him; he took it and used it, never pondering what principles lay hidden within it. Monk Chenghuai, single-minded in his wish to save all beings and rid the world of suffering, gained much from the Sutra of Immeasurable Kalpas and learned much; his Buddha Dharma was perfected, his attainment exceedingly high.
Yet because his heart was engaged, he drew ever further from the true meaning of the Sutra of Immeasurable Kalpas; though he grasped all manner of supreme and wondrous methods from the sutra, he could never learn the true Sutra of Immeasurable Kalpas. Only the Demon Ape Zhankong received the Old Buddha's true transmission.
His Buddha-nature was too high; having gotten the sutra, he paid it no heed at all, lay down his head and slept, bearing much of the Old Buddha's own spirit. The King Buddha Emperor Shitian, by contrast, put in the most effort of all, wishing with all his heart to become another Great Brahma Heaven King Buddha and then, one step further, to avenge his grievances.
His scheming was manifold: he used Shen Mu to purge the power of the Heavenly Court from the Buddhist Realm and root out the Heavenly Court's eyes and ears; and he could not forget his old love for the Red Emperor Qi Xiayu, could not forget his friendship with Kaihuang, could not forget the years that were gone, could not forget that he was the leader of the Heavenly Artisan Godclan, could not forget his hatred, could not forget his station as the War-Heaven King.
Therefore, though his gifts were exceedingly high, what he gained from the Sutra of Immeasurable Kalpas was the shallowest of all.
He too was a man of Buddha-nature, or he could never have become the King Buddha Emperor Shitian of the nineteenth heaven of the Buddhist Realm; but there were too many distracting thoughts in his heart, and even so, in his grasp of the Sutra of Immeasurable Kalpas he had come to insights of his own.