Chapter 18: Courtesy demands Reciprocity
West of the city, Taian Temple.
Master Guanghong stood before the Hall of Ten Thousand Buddhas, gazing calmly into the distance as he turned the prayer beads in his hand bead by bead.
Building Daoist and Buddhist temples in the city center might not be conducive to peaceful cultivation, but it certainly attracted the most incense and offerings. Though it wasn't yet noon, Taian Temple was already teeming with an endless stream of worshippers. The blue smoke from the incense burners could be seen from several streets away. No temple outside the city could match this.
“Master Guanghong.”
“Amitabha[1].”
Whenever a familiar worshiper passed by and greeted him, he would lower his head and respond with a smile, but his inner thoughts were far from peaceful.
He had sent paper Yakshas the night before to cause trouble for that meddlesome cultivator in the city, but they never returned and had silently lost contact with him. The technique of creating paper Yakshas was not as simple as just drawing Yaksha and symbols on a piece of paper. It required long-term accumulation to make them come alive and imbue them with spirituality. Continuous sacrifices and refinement were necessary to give the Yakshas strong bodies that were impervious to weapons.
Those two sheets of paper were expendable. Their loss was not significant. However, losing the spirituality within them meant he had to start over from scratch.
Years of accumulation, and two-thirds were gone.