Chapter 87
Just as Fang Qing was sacrificing and refining the bone bowl.
In the Esoteric Hidden-Treasury Domain.
At the foot of the Great Snow Mountain stood an ancient temple.
This temple had floors paved with golden bricks and walls built from cow's milk. Its surrounding pillars were supported by white bones, exuding an inexplicable aura. The temple gate looked eerie, resembling a gateway to the realm of the dead.
Throughout the temple burned candles made from some unknown fat, releasing a faint sandalwood fragrance.
In the rear courtyard of the temple stood a lotus bone platform. An old monk wearing a cockscomb hat and draped in a corpse-forest thangka kasaya had deeply sunken eye sockets. He held a bone knife and was carving flesh from a corpse before him, offering the meat and bones for various terrifying manifestations to devour.
This was the sky burial ritual, imitating the deeds of the temple's enshrined self-realized Buddha—the Charnel Grounds Lord.
The Charnel Grounds Lord, also known as the Protector of the Corpse Grove, the Master of the Corpse Grove, or the Lord of the Graveyards, had attained Buddhahood in the body during ancient times and was venerated by the Temple of All Beings Formless.
In the Esoteric Hidden-Treasury Domain, temples that enshrined such self-realized Buddhas were known as Temples of the Origin of All Dharmas. Their status ranked only below the Supreme Origin Temple at the peak of the Great Snow Mountain—the Great Sun Wheel Turning Temple.