I stole divine power in Daxia

Chapter 689 Greed

Time stands still in the Great Luo Palace, while twenty more years pass in the human world.

After the battle of the Heavenly Palace Fusion, the Journey to the West continued.

However, the four of them changed their route. For the first twenty years or so, they stayed within the territory of the Great Xia Dynasty, with the aim of eliminating the gods who had hidden themselves during the Battle of the Thirty-Three Heavens.

But now that Zhou Tieyi is in charge of the Great Luo Palace as the Heavenly Venerable, the struggle between humans and gods has temporarily come to an end. These gods who were hidden within the territory of the Great Xia have either been sent back to their original places or have been incorporated into the Taiyi Dao lineage as guardian gods. They have all found their own places.

With the fall of Tengri, the Heavenly Khan, the Yuanmeng faith has lost its core and is now in the best stage of rebuilding.

Therefore, the group of travelers on their journey to the West left the territory of the Great Xia Dynasty, passed through many tribes of Yuanmeng, and headed towards Miaoshan City.

Along the way, they built city god temples and expanded towns around them, spreading farming and mechanical arts, fundamentally changing the production habits of the Yuanmeng tribe who lived by following water and grass.

Changes in production habits will eventually translate into cultural changes, making the ancient and the Central Plains indistinguishable.

Tager tribe.

The four members of the pilgrimage group dealt with another 'demon' in this place. This 'demon' was originally a deity from the Yuanmeng Sect, and it was one of the most steadfast ones. Even when the Taiyi Divine Path came to recruit it, it was unwilling to submit to their teachings.

Therefore, the four members of the pilgrimage team naturally came to deal with him and banish him to the demon realm.

To celebrate the victory over the demons, the tribal chief, on the advice of his master and apprentice, built a City God Temple to worship the Taihang Underworld and the Netherworld Buddhism.

The Netherworld corresponding to the Tager tribe is a vast divine kingdom that has been completely destroyed and reduced to ruins. The enormous golden statue of Shengshan Bodhisattva sits amidst the ruins, chanting Buddhist scriptures.

As the City God Temple in the mortal world was completed, He used Himself as a medium to guide the faith of the mortal world into the netherworld. A phantom City God Temple fell from the mortal world and merged with the ruins of the divine kingdom here.

In just a dozen breaths, the ruins were rebuilt, with white walls and golden tiles. Faith, like the light of heaven, gathered into a majestic and solemn statue of the City God, while next to the City God statue was a slightly smaller statue of the King of the Underworld.

Shengshan's own golden Bodhisattva body also rapidly completed its own karmic reward in this process of creation.

When Shengshan opened his eyes, his Bodhisattva golden body had changed from blue-gold to pure gold, and was seventeen feet tall.

The plump and easygoing second senior brother hurriedly stepped forward to congratulate him, saying, "Junior Brother Sha, you've taken another step forward! When we get to Miaoshan City, I reckon you, Master, and Senior Brother will all be Buddhas. You can't forget about me and Xiao Jin in the future!"

More than forty years of westward travel have indeed brought about many changes.

Especially in the last twenty years, Sheng Shan himself represents the 'foolishness' of the world. His disbelief in Zhou Tieyi's lineage back then also represented the views of many people in the world at that time.

But when Zhou Tieyi shattered the good and evil of the underworld through the battle of the Heavenly Palace, and allowed Sheng Shan to rebuild the underworld kingdom step by step, he realized that the Bodhisattva who condemned him had not made a mistake.

Easier said than done.

To borrow a term from the Lotus World, the entire world is a system built on a bug. The difficulty isn't how to fix the bug, but how to make the system function properly on top of it. Along his journey of reshaping the Netherworld, even knowing that many of the ancient gods weren't purely evil, but merely stubborn, he still had to personally seal them away or cast them into reincarnation. This was because they were preventing the great integration within humanity and simultaneously hindering the Netherworld from reshaping its order.

This kind of 'evil' even surpasses the inherent good and evil of human beings, because it goes against the laws of the times and the general trend of the world.

The Netherworld Pure Land that Shengshan himself began to create with the help of the City God Temple was not as wonderful as he imagined. At first, he even tried to create a perfect Buddhist kingdom, but it could not be run for more than a few months before he had to go back to clean up the mess, keeping the entire pilgrimage team unable to move.

It was only after he diligently consulted his second senior brother, a seasoned official, and introduced the bureaucratic system of the mortal world that he gradually steered the Netherworld Buddhist Kingdom onto the right track.

Therefore, through his spiritual practice along the way, Shengshan not only resolved the ignorance of the world, but also resolved his own ignorance.

"Second Senior Brother, when we arrive in Miaoshan City, you will naturally have your own position."

Sheng Shan said gratefully that even with his profound Buddhist teachings, he could not truly reshape the City God system on his own. His eldest brother could make him fight, and his master could make him chant scriptures, but it was his second brother, that lazy and gluttonous fellow, who truly shaped the City God system.

The second senior brother smirked and bowed to the statue of the City God, saying, "Lord City God, I'm helping you rebuild your golden body. You must put in a good word for me with the Heavenly Venerable."

In the faith passed down in the Lotus World, the City God oversees all the affairs of the people under heaven and records them all, which must be reported to the Heavenly Palace. Now, in the Great Xia World, everyone knows that the City God is the elder brother of the Heavenly Venerable, so he can indeed say a few good words in front of the Heavenly Venerable. Therefore, a custom has emerged that newly built statues of the City God will have their mouths sealed with honey so that He cannot say anything bad.

After paying respects to the City God, the second senior brother picked up a fruit formed from the faith on the offering table, took a bite, and said, "I would also like to have a good rank, but..."

The second senior brother lowered his voice considerably as he looked towards the sky.

Sheng Shan knew that his second senior brother was probably going to complain about the Heavenly Venerable again, as his second senior brother had said quite a few strange things along the way.

"Senior brother, speak your mind. If the Heavenly Venerable hears you, he will understand your predicament."

The second senior brother sighed.

"Didn't our senior brother say a few years ago that the three of us brothers represent the three poisons of greed, anger, and ignorance in the human world? If these three poisons are not resolved, we will not be able to reach Miaoshan City even if we travel for ten thousand years?"

In fact, it has been proven that what Thor said to Yuan Tong was not wrong. Even if the four of them came out of the Great Xia territory and arrived in Yuanmeng, it was normal for it to take hundreds of years to rebuild the City God faith with the power of the four of them.

"You and your senior brother, one of you holds the reins of the Kunyuan Palace and has become the standard-bearer of the world, thus resolving anger, and the other has rebuilt the Netherworld Buddhist Kingdom, thus resolving delusion. As for my greed and poison, it is truly invisible and intangible. I have been working diligently for so many years, yet my cultivation has not improved at all."

The second senior brother complained.

Yuantong and Shengshan are about to attain the first rank. Even if the Western Paradise does not grant them the position of Buddha, they can still become Buddhas and ancestors. As for myself, although I have relied on the resources given to me by Yuantong and attained the third rank more than 30 years ago, I have not made any progress since then.

The second senior brother whispered, "I actually suspect that the Heavenly Venerable knew that my greed was hard to cure, so he kept making us do hard work for him. To cure greed, you need a 'good boss' like the Heavenly Venerable to cure you. Give you 40 years of 007 blessings and see if you will still be greedy in the future. This is not me sharing the benefits, but treating me like a beast of burden!"

At first, Sheng Shan listened attentively to his second senior brother's words, but when he heard the last sentence, his expression became somewhat embarrassed.

(End of this chapter)