Chapter Three: The Arhat Martial Array

A few monks came into view at a glance, each carrying a scripture as they passed along the cloister.

Along with the birdsong in the mountains, the faint cadence of their chanting drifted to his ears.

The sound held a strange rhythm, unlike the chanting Flowerborn had heard before in temples among mortals. Beside the wooden fish and the ring of metal instruments, there was even a clear, stringlike resonance, as though woven with the tone of zithers.

Its exquisite cadence was like celestial music, enough to make one forget the passage of time.

It sounded as though the monks were reciting the Heart Sutra:

The Bodhisattva of Compassion, when deeply practicing the Perfection of Wisdom, perceived that the five aggregates were all empty, and thus was delivered from all suffering and distress.

Sariputra, form is no different from emptiness; emptiness is no different from form. Form itself is emptiness; emptiness itself is form. So too are sensation, perception, formation, and consciousness.

Sariputra, all phenomena bear the mark of emptiness: they do not arise, nor cease; are not stained, nor pure; do not increase, nor diminish.

Therefore, in emptiness there is no form, no sensation, perception, formation, or consciousness; no eyes, ears, nose, tongue, body, or mind; no sights, sounds, smells, tastes, touch, or dharmas; no realm of sight, and so on until no realm of consciousness. There is no ignorance, and no end of ignorance, and so on until no old age and death, and no end of old age and death. There is no suffering, no accumulation, no extinction, and no path; no wisdom, and no attainment. Because there is nothing to attain.

By relying on the Perfection of Wisdom, the Bodhisattvas’ minds are without hindrance. Without hindrance, there is no fear. Far from inverted dreams and delusions, they reach ultimate nirvana. All Buddhas of the three times, by relying on the Perfection of Wisdom, attain unsurpassed, complete, and perfect enlightenment.

Therefore know that the Perfection of Wisdom is the great miraculous mantra, the great bright mantra, the supreme mantra, the unequaled mantra, able to remove all suffering and truly not false. Thus the Perfection of Wisdom mantra is spoken. The mantra said is:

Gone, gone, gone beyond, gone altogether beyond. Enlightenment, hail!

Flowerborn pressed his palms together and bowed three times toward the direction of the sound, murmuring, “Many thanks to Great Thousand Zen Temple for taking me in! This disciple has urgent business and must take his leave!”

Just as he was about to go, a voice sounded behind him.

“Young benefactor, wait a moment!”

Hearing someone call after him, Flowerborn turned around. It was the old reception monk from before. He pressed his palms together as well and said,

“Master, so you were still here...”

The old monk replied, “This humble monk has already asked Buxu to prepare a meal for the young benefactor. Since you are not resting in your room, where are you intending to go?”

His intent to slip away was caught red-handed, and Flowerborn felt a little embarrassed. He could only bow deeply and say, “Master, I truly have urgent matters. So I can only take my leave first. Another day, I shall certainly return in person to thank the temple for saving me.”

The reception monk said, “Benefactor, it is not that this old monk refuses to let you go. The temple gate is currently closed. It is truly not easy for you to leave.”

Flowerborn felt a knot of irritation in his heart. “Master, your temple is a little too hospitable, isn’t it? You won’t even open the gate when a guest wants to leave?”

The monk said, “Young benefactor, this temple has a Buddhist ward. Unless the barrier is opened, no one can leave.”

“I understand. I’ve seen Buddhist wards more than once. There’s always a way to break them.”

“You may be mistaken, young benefactor. This Buddhist ward is not an ordinary scriptural seal. It is the Bodhisattva of Compassion...”

“Honored monk, don’t try to fool me. I’ll go settle my urgent matter and come back to thank everyone later!” Flowerborn was too lazy to waste any more time with the old monk. Out of courtesy to his elders, he pressed his palms together once more, bowed, and immediately waved a hand as if to depart.

Seeing the temple gate just ahead, Flowerborn cried his cloud-summoning spell, “Swiftly, as the decree commands!”

In less than half a second, he had reached the mountain gate.

The two gate leaves were deep red and stood three times taller than Flowerborn himself.

“Thanks for the hospitality!”

Flowerborn waved to the reception monk in the distance, then reached out and shoved hard against the gate. But it did not move at all.

He looked up and saw that the crossbeam on the gate had not been removed. The beam was about two hand-widths thick, but that weight was as light as a feather to him now.

“Rise!”

Using only one index finger, Flowerborn lifted the beam, turned, and set it down behind him on the ground.

He heard the reception monk, though still far away, bellow with the force of a bell, as if sending his voice over a thousand miles: “Benefactor, stop right there! Do not ignore this old monk’s advice!”

By the time he heard that, Flowerborn already had one hand braced against the gate. He pushed with all his strength. The gate still did not move.

“So there really is some kind of spell here.”

Flowerborn formed a hand seal and pushed again. “Swiftly, as the decree commands! Open!”

A halo of light spread from where his palm touched the gate. Flowerborn was thrown back by a soft but irresistible force, stumbling two steps away.

“This lock really is pretty hard to open. Could my skills have slipped because I haven’t used immortal arts for so long?”

He refused to believe it and stepped forward again. Then it suddenly occurred to him: no, what if it wasn’t a push, but a pull? Surely he hadn’t made such a basic mistake.

He grabbed the upper handle and pulled. The gate remained as steady as a mountain.

“As expected, that’s impossible,” Flowerborn muttered to himself. Then another thought struck him. “Could it be a sliding door that moves left and right?”

He seized the left seam and tried sliding it left. No good. Then he gripped the right seam and tried sliding it right, straining until his teeth nearly bared from the effort. Still he could not open it.

His injuries had not fully recovered, and after all this exertion he broke out in a cold sweat. But he still refused to give up.

“Could it be a door that lifts up and down?” Flowerborn said, peering into the crack at the threshold and trying to hook the seam with his finger. “If it isn’t a lifting door, then maybe it’s a rolling shutter? Or perhaps one of those lying-down doors that opens by falling forward, like the stone box I ran into during the Heavenly Eye Trial in the treasure-box contest?”

“Bold brat!”

A collective shout came from behind him. “What lifting doors? What rolling shutters? Is a pure Buddhist land a place for a child like you to play around in?”

The force of the voice numbed Flowerborn’s body. He instinctively turned and looked. Between him and the reception monk, over a dozen martial monks had somehow appeared in the open space. Their skin gleamed with a dark golden sheen, and not only were they imposing in stature, they were packed with powerful muscle.

Flowerborn cried out, astonished, “Are you guys bodybuilders... no, the Eighteen Arhats?”

He counted them once, and there were indeed exactly eighteen.

“You arrogant rogue! Kneel and submit at once!” one of the martial monks shouted.

Flowerborn shot back, “So this is an attempted kidnapping by force?”

“You little brat! In this temple, you must obey the temple rules!”

“Isn’t that exactly why I’m trying to leave?”

“How dare you show disrespect to the Dharma, you petty outlaw!”

Flowerborn pressed a hand to his forehead. “Honored monk, that’s a very heavy accusation to pin on me. I just want to go...”

“Set the Eighteen Arhats Formation on him!”

“I wasn’t finished talking, hey! Do you monks have no manners at all?” Flowerborn, cut off by the martial monks’ shouts, also began to lose his patience.

He had barely taken two steps forward when he saw the martial monks extend their palms, and each conjured a monk’s staff into hand. Their movements were perfectly synchronized, as if they were one man, and they immediately surrounded Flowerborn in a tight ring.

Flowerborn laughed. “Honored monks, are you putting on a Shaolin staff performance?”

Like serpents coiling into a serpent formation, the eighteen martial monks linked head to tail without the slightest flaw, sealing Flowerborn in with impenetrable density.

Flowerborn lifted a hand and assumed the opening stance of his immortal arts. The martial monks planted one end of their staffs on the ground and, chanting scriptures, began to circle him.

The chanting shook the stone paving beneath their feet. The ring of staffs tightened and tightened, and the open space around Flowerborn shrank smaller and smaller. He only felt the air grow thick, his chest constricted, each breath more difficult than the last, until breathing itself required all his strength.

As the eighteen martial monks drew ever closer, the air inside the formation seemed to congeal. An overwhelming sensation of suffocation closed in on him.

Flowerborn panted desperately, yet his mind was still a little dazed. The injury in his foot began to ache again. It had been a wound from the hallucination of “reality,” and for some reason it was only now flaring with pain.

The monks’ staffs struck the ground, now less than a yard from him.

Tap, tap, tap—tap, tap, tap! In an instant, the eighteen staffs interlaced and joined together into a wooden cage, trapping him in the center.

Flowerborn raised a hand, only to find the wooden staffs as heavy as a mountain, or else fused together so firmly that they would not budge. Only then did he notice that the staffs were actually formed from scriptures, each covered in Sanskrit.

“Honored Arhat uncles, if we are talking about staffs...”

Flowerborn pressed a hand against the steel-and-iron circlet chain at his chest, lifted his chin, and looked at the angry-faced martial monks.

“You’re trying to swing a broadsword before Guan Yu’s gate and not even checking whose hands hold the strongest staff in history!”

His palm grew searing hot. A blaze burst from the iron circlet chain, and the golden needle flew to hover three feet above his head, transforming into a golden staff radiating seven-colored light!

That was the legendary Sea-Calming Divine Needle, a divine weapon for the ages, the Wish-Fulfilling Gold-Banded Staff!

This was the compass that shattered confusion and guided him back to Sacred Peace Ningen, the Wish-Fulfilling Gold-Banded Staff!

Flowerborn thrust his right hand through the gaps between the monk staffs and seized the radiant gold-banded staff before him. Instantly, power surged through his whole body. The scripture markings on the robe of the Dao-Studies Academy, embroidered with the Nine Heavens Mystic Lady, flared into bright red, burning like fire patterns.

A vast force burst outward from Flowerborn’s body. The scripture cage of the monk staffs seemed to be detonated from the center by a bomb, and the blast of air hurled the martial monks outward in all directions.

Crack, clatter—a storm of falling wooden staffs echoed through the once-quiet Zen temple.

Standing at the center, Flowerborn slung the Gold-Banded Staff over his back and strode to the middle of the temple courtyard, shouting, “Flowerborn of the Dao-Studies Academy is here! No one will stop me!”

“Barbaric Daoist!”

One martial monk struggled up and shouted at Flowerborn, “Daoist disciples are all such savage brutes!”

Several other monks also got to their feet and, with a sweep of their hands, had their staffs fly back into their grips.

Flowerborn spun the Gold-Banded Staff into a flourish and roared, “Swiftly, as the decree commands!”

He swept the staff toward the rushing monks. A violent gust sent the ones still standing flying several yards away.

The rest came one after another, wave upon wave. Flowerborn’s Wish-Fulfilling Gold-Banded Staff flew from his hand and whirled at high speed in midair. With a series of crackling pops like firecrackers going off, every martial monk who still held a staff was swept clean off his feet.

“Return!”

At his shout, the Gold-Banded Staff flew back into his hand. He hoisted it onto his shoulder, cast a sidelong glance at the martial monks strewn across the ground, and walked straight toward the mountain gate.

From behind him came the monks’ curses.

“You barbaric Daoist!”

“A personal attack, is it?” Flowerborn flared with anger, turned his head, and shot back, “Bald donkeys!”

Another monk cursed, “If not for the Buddha’s mercy, how could a barbaric Daoist place like this exist in Sacred Peace Ningen?”