The Secret Way of Immortality

The colossal thousand-meter corpse Buddha sat cross-legged on the edge of the Maitreya's territory, its pores emitting Buddhist aura that swirled like a tornado, as if breathing.

Its immense size made ordinary people look like ants in comparison.

When Ren Qing was swallowed into the giant corpse Buddha's belly, he wondered what the scene inside would be like, doubting it could be a world of its own.

He couldn't sense anything beyond his clone, unaware that his guess was accurate.

As the sect most adept at utilizing souls, the Buddhist school believed in 'one leaf, one Bodhi; one flower, one world.' The countless souls within the Buddhist aura could construct a unique ecosystem in the blink of an eye.

Inside the giant corpse Buddha's stomach.

The environment was abnormally dim, with only faint light enveloping the streets, revealing gaunt and emaciated mortals moving about.

These mortals wore tattered robes sewn together, and unlike the harmony and tranquility of the Heaven Above, their expressions were incredibly numb.

Their eyes were filled with an unsuppressed fear, their gazes frequently darting towards the enormous shadows in the distant darkness.

The entire town appeared to contain tens of thousands of monks, but the atmosphere was eerily apathetic, a sense of helpless despair pervading the city.

In the Heaven Above, the Buddhist aura would dispel negative emotions from the people's hearts and satisfy their desires for food, sustaining their physical needs.

But this was not the Heaven Above; this was the 'Buddha within Buddha,' which enshrined the Buddhist aura of the Great Compassionate Maitreya Bodhisattva. The Buddhist aura was bound within the Imperishable Golden Body, offering no solace.

The Buddha within Buddha felt as if it were buried deep underground, shaking from time to time, inspiring fear.

Wunian lay numbly in a street corner.

His eye sockets were sunken, his gums tinged with purplish-red blood, and his skin-covered bones barely showed the rise and fall of his chest and abdomen.

Wunian didn't know why he had come to the Buddha within Buddha, but he understood the meaning of his existence: to maintain the imperishable Buddha statues.

Outside the Buddha within Buddha, thousands upon thousands of Buddha statues stood.

Bang!!!

A loud noise came from outside the city, indicating that another Buddha statue had appeared.

A voice in Wunian's heart repeated, urging him to go to the Buddha statue, but his body had no strength left.

The Buddha within Buddha, with tens of thousands of monks, didn't even have a grain of food.

Under the encroachment of hunger, the strength in Wunian's body was gradually drawn away, and soon he closed his eyes, his vitality extinguished.

Not long after his death.

His corpse twitched violently, and a crack split open from his chest and abdomen.

The newborn Wunian shed the remains of his original body, but felt no emotion, walking quickly towards the outside of the city like a zombie.

This was what constantly happened in the Buddha within Buddha.

Unable to live, unable to die.

To prevent the giant corpse Buddha from collapsing, the Buddhist aura revived a large number of mortal souls, treating them entirely as worker ants in an ant colony.

The worker ants were responsible for all the arduous labor in the ant nest and hardly needed to eat.

Wunian stiffly followed the crowd towards the open space outside the city. Although his newborn body would no longer suffer the pain of hunger, he knew it was only temporary and could not avoid starvation.

All the monks repeated the cycle of starving to death, being reborn, and starving to death…

Wunian had tried to commit suicide in advance, but reincarnation was indeed endless. No matter how hard he struggled, it was all in vain.

A simple altar was set up in the open space outside the city, and a thick smell of blood permeated the air. Thousands of monks had already gathered around it.

Wunian could see that the surface of the altar was covered with a thick layer of bloodstains, indicating how many monks had died on it.

The structure of the altar resembled a stone mill, with grooves left at the edges. The blood would flow along the grooves into wooden buckets.

An old monk stood on the altar, chanting scriptures. The people around him were not listening, silently waiting for the ceremony to end.

After the old monk finished speaking, he casually pointed to a few people.

They walked to the center of the altar without hesitation, then closed their eyes and knelt on it, until young and strong monks came with butcher knives.

"Rebirth in bliss, rebirth in bliss…"

The monks said words they didn't even believe themselves, raised their butcher knives, and chopped down with force.

Blood splattered.

Instantly, a dozen heads with expressions of relief rolled off, blood spurting out and flowing from the grooves into the wooden buckets, quickly filling them to overflowing.

In the blink of an eye, the monks were reborn again, their corpses turning into withered bones.

"Great Compassionate Maitreya Bodhisattva above…"

Wunian recited the Buddha's name, the despair in his heart growing stronger.

"Wunian!"

He heard the old monk's call and couldn't help but open his hazy eyes. The latter signaled Wunian to go to the "Buddha Forest" filled with Buddha statues.

Wunian nodded, picked up the wooden bucket, and went to the Buddha Forest with the other monks.

The foundation of their existence in the Buddha within Buddha was to enshrine the Buddha statues, so the Buddhist aura naturally wouldn't allow the monks to refuse.

Wunian and the others didn't walk fast, afraid that the blood in the wooden bucket would spill out. If that happened, they would have to replenish it with their own blood.

In front of the Great Compassionate Maitreya Bodhisattva statue, they were only the size of toes, unable to even see the statue's appearance when they looked up.

The beheadings on the altar behind them continued, after all, there were countless Buddha statues in the Buddha Forest, all of which needed blood to be irrigated to maintain their vitality.

Wunian sighed deeply, then came to the range of the Buddha Forest, directly feeling the faint Buddhist aura.

The statue's skin was covered with spider web-like cracks, with faint golden light revealing within.

If the statue was not irrigated with blood, the cracks on the surface would become larger and larger, eventually leading to the collapse of the Buddha statue.

Taking the opportunity to pour blood, the monks couldn't help but approach the Buddha statue.

They constantly breathed in the Buddhist aura with their mouths and noses, and a piety towards the Great Compassionate Maitreya Bodhisattva arose in their hearts. Hunger and disease were immediately dispelled.

The Buddhist aura allowed them to temporarily forget their pain and troubles. They relied entirely on the Buddha Forest to prevent the monks' souls from completely collapsing.

Wunian didn't choose to absorb the Buddhist aura.

He poured the blood at the foot of the Buddha statue, watching the Buddha statue devour the blood in the blink of an eye, as if it were a sponge meeting water.

Wunian walked towards the depths of the Buddha Forest, and soon disappeared from sight in the cover of the Buddhist aura.

Each Buddha statue was the same, with almost no discernible difference.

Perhaps the monks in the Buddha within Buddha were deceiving themselves. There was a strange rumor that many people deeply believed in.

It was said that in the Buddha Forest, there was a statue among the countless Buddha statues that was transformed by the Great Compassionate Maitreya Bodhisattva. Only by finding the true body could one escape the sea of suffering and go to the Western Paradise.

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Therefore, every day monks searched for the existence of the true body in the Buddha Forest, but all failed.

Wunian came to the depths of the Buddha Forest as if possessed, muttering to himself "Great Compassionate Maitreya Bodhisattva", wandering aimlessly.

He unconsciously lost his way, and as a result, crossed the entire Buddha Forest.

"Great Compassionate Maitreya Bodhisattva above…"

At this moment, Wunian suddenly noticed that a Buddha statue was unusual and couldn't help but stare at it.

His face was filled with excitement, and he stumbled to the bottom of the Buddha statue.

He saw that although the exterior of the Buddha statue was no different, its chest was rising and falling, and he could vaguely hear the sound of a heartbeat.

Wunian thought it was the true body of the Great Compassionate Maitreya Bodhisattva and quickly knelt in front of it.

He constantly recited scriptures, his heart full of expectations for escaping the sea of suffering, and heavily kowtowed his head to the ground.

Wunian continued for several days, and the feeling of hunger surged into his heart again.

He went from hope at the beginning to confusion later. The movement from the Buddha statue became lighter and lighter, and finally disappeared.

During this time, several monks came to irrigate the blood and persuaded Wunian to leave the Buddha Forest, but the latter stared at the Buddha statue as if he were crazy.

Just as Wunian was on the verge of death, a clear sound suddenly rang in his ear.

Crack, crack, crack, crack…

Cracks spread on the surface of the Buddha statue, and soon even the Buddhist aura scattered, but it was absorbed by the other Buddha statues.

The movement in the Buddha Forest was so great that tens of thousands of monks looked towards the source.

A similar thing had happened some time ago. The earth shook and the mountains swayed at that time, and they thought the Great Compassionate Maitreya Bodhisattva was born.

The result was just a Buddha statue collapsing in the Buddha Forest.

Only Wunian directly faced the drastic changes in the Buddha statue, watching a huge man emerge from the statue's body.

"Great Compassionate Maitreya Bodhisattva above!!!"

He finally knew that the rumors were true. Among the countless Buddha statues, there was indeed one transformed by the true body of the Great Compassionate Maitreya Bodhisattva.

Dust flew, covering the Buddha Forest.

Ren Qing moved his joints. Although after using the Storyteller's ability, his body and soul became an invisible and intangible parasite in the host.

But after parasitizing for a few days, he felt unparalleled pressure.

Now that Ren Qing had come to the stomach of the giant corpse Buddha, his mood inevitably became relaxed, and he didn't want to use the Storyteller again in a short time.

He couldn't help but look around.

Ren Qing then noticed the monks who were only the size of ants, and the town that was reduced by a hundred times, and immediately understood the Buddhist aura's layout for this.

As the Imperishable Golden Body's Buddha statues, they were the containers for storing the Buddhist aura.

But the Imperishable Golden Body was, after all, transformed from mortals, and its firmness was far from reaching the level of magic weapons. To prevent the containers from being accidentally damaged, they simply shrunk the bodies of the monks they nurtured.

Moreover, Ren Qing could see that the Buddhist aura didn't adopt a similar form to the Heaven Above.

It was likely that they didn't want to waste the Buddhist aura on the monks, only maintaining that they could be constantly reborn, completely treating them as tools.

Even if the monks' souls were scattered as a result, it didn't matter. Anyway, the Buddhist aura collected probably tens of thousands of souls, which couldn't be exhausted at all.

Ren Qing's figure gradually appeared, and soon he was noticed by the tens of thousands of monks in the Buddha within Buddha, who exclaimed in surprise.

"Great Compassionate Maitreya Bodhisattva above!"

However, apart from Wunian seeing Ren Qing born from the Buddha statue, the other monks didn't regard him as the true body of the Great Compassionate Maitreya Bodhisattva.

Ren Qing was about to take action when his expression changed drastically.

The Buddhist aura clearly noticed the abnormality in the stomach. The Buddha statues emitted Buddhist aura, and a massive amount of Buddhist aura surged towards Ren Qing.

The sound of wooden fish beating and loud chanting of scriptures rang out in the air.

This anomaly, in Wunian's eyes, confirmed that Ren Qing was the Great Compassionate Maitreya Bodhisattva, and also made the expressions of tens of thousands of monks surprised and uncertain.

There is another chapter, wait a moment