This Damned Thirst for Survival

Jiang Luo smashed the car delivered by Chi You with a baseball bat, and when he was satisfied, he contacted the second-hand car market and sold the million-dollar car for 100,000 yuan.

He took the money to buy a new mobile phone and a second-hand car, and the next day he took Ge Zhu straight to Jokhang Temple.

Jokhang Temple does not turn away visitors during the New Year period, as many people take advantage of the holiday to burn incense and worship Buddha. Ge Zhu took Jiang Luo to see Master Cheng De, who was chatting with the abbot about watering the flowers.

One of them is the Abbot of Jokhang Temple and the other is a highly respected elder of Jokhang Temple. When they saw Ge Zhu, both faces looked surprised, and Master Cheng De recited "Amitabha Buddha" and said, "Ge Zhu, I didn't expect to see you on New Year's Day.

Ge Zhu, who had been in a trance since entering Jokhang Temple, forced a smile at his words, " How has Master Cheng De and the abbot been this year?"

"It's been a good year," the two old men laughed together, "and the snow has been a good year."

Jiang Luo listened to them talk for a few moments before Master Cheng De looked over at him, "Brother, look, this is the Master Jiang Luo I told you about."

The aged abbot sniffed and also gleamed, "Hahahahaha, a good boy."

Jiang Luo said humbly, "I wanted to visit Jokhang Temple before, but I'm sorry for coming so late."

"What's so rude about that?" The abbot, cheerfully, his eyes darkly shrewd, turned back to Master Cheng De and bade him, "You show Master Jiang Luo around our Jokhang Temple, Ge Zhu, you stay with me, Master has not seen you for a long time, you talk to Master."

Ge Zhu's eyes instantly reddened, "Yes."

The Jokhang Temple occupies an entire hill, and is so tall and imposing that Jiang Luo and Master Cheng De had a look at some of the temples and chatted casually. Master Cheng De was very patient and said everything Jiang Luo asked him, so he knew what to say. Jiang Luo was guided by him to pay homage to the Buddha and walked to some of the closed temples that only Buddhist disciples can enter.

Jiang Luo exclaimed, "Jokhang Temple is magnificent and I feel much better after walking around it, as it is a holy place in Buddhism."

Master Cheng De smiled, "Jokhang Temple didn't look like this in the old days, it took years and years to build it brick by brick. Even now, there are still areas in Jokhang Temple that have not been restored, let me show you."

He led Jiang Luo to a ruin and pointed to it, saying, "This place has never been repaired."

The ruins were burned to the ground with houses collapsing and wooden beams blackened and full of devastation. But from some of the remnants it is easy to see how beautiful the building was before it burned down.

Jiang Luo's heart fluttered, "This?"

"This is Jokhang Temple, once a Tibetan Buddhist Temple," Master Cheng De sighed, "and it's no secret, you can find out if you ask around. I hear the name of the bad Buddha Wuchen every time I am angry. When Ge Wuchen defected from the Buddhist order, he set fire to the Tibetan Buddhist Temple, a truly evil thing. As a result, he killed the three elders with one fire!"

Master Cheng De said, his chest heaving with anger, "He burned down the Tibetan Buddhist Temple and killed some of his brothers and sisters, and after that he ran away to who knows where. He had done something wrong, but his brother was the one who suffered! Ge Zhu, a sensitive and delicate boy, didn't say anything after the incident, but he felt guilty and soon left Jokhang Temple with his younger siblings who were following him."

"If I ever see that sinful disciple again, I will definitely press him to kowtow in front of my brother's grave and confess his mistakes." As he spoke, Master Cheng De was already slightly choked up.

Jiang Luo listened quietly, having heard this story once before from Ge Zhu, and when he heard it again, he had only one feeling: something was definitely going on here.

Master Cheng De wiped the tears from his eyes and asked, "How did Master Jiang think of me, Jokhang Temple?"

Jiang Luo said in a curious tone, "I've heard Ge Zhu talk a lot about Jokhang Temple before, I heard that Jokhang Temple used to be called White Heron Temple?"

"Yes," said Master Cheng De, "but that was also two hundred years ago."

Master Cheng De Yu Guang glanced at a tall pine tree to the side, suddenly his eyes flashed and his expression became painful, "Master Jiang, people have three emergencies, the old monk has to go to the toilet first, you wait here for me ah."

Without waiting for Jiang Luo to say anything, he ran away as fast as he could, covering his stomach.

Jiang Luo: "...... Master take care."

In the absence of Master Cheng De, Jiang Luo was happy to be left alone. He walked over to the ruins and knelt down, picking up a piece of wood and looking at it. The snow covering the wood had turned to water and was dripping from the cracks to the ground.

" The Tibetan Buddhist Temple has been burnt down for a few years now. Jiang Luo said to himself.

"Five years."

Jiang Luo got up abruptly and turned his head to see Ge Wuchen coming out from behind a pine tree.

Ge Wuchen, dressed as a simple monk, stood with his hands folded in the snow and bowed towards Jiang Luo, saying with a smile, "Amitabha Buddha, Master Jiang, we meet again."

Jiang Luo patted the dirty dust from his hands and squinted at the bald monk, "I didn't expect to see the Buddha's son here."

Ge Wuchen smiled faintly, his pretty face looking like an immortal under the white snow, and he raised his steps to Jiang Luo's side, "Master Jiang, I have come to see you."

"I can see," Jiang Luo said calmly, "that you came to see me because of Ge Zhu?"

Ge Wuchen said, "No, it's for my master."

Jiang Luo did not hold back, his face twisted for a moment.

Ge Wuchen acted as if he didn't see it, he had Buddha beads coiled in his hands, his eyes sincere and his tone sincere, "Master Jiang, please do stay with my master."

Jiang Luo laughed coldly, almost wanting to turn the other cheek, "What if I don't."

Ge Wuchen sighed, "I have come to set you and your master up with all my heart, and believe it or not, there is no one in the world who wants you to be together more than I do."

"True heart?" Jiang Luo deliberately went off-topic, " Ge Zhu was also your true brother, and you almost beat him to death. Your master and uncle are also your true elders, and you haven't seen your heart go soft when you set fire to them."

"Amitabha Buddha," Ge Wuchen's smile remained unchanged, "Do you know, Master Jiang, the place you hold in your master's heart?"

The words popped out of Jiang Luo's teeth, "I don't want to know anything about it."

Ge Wuchen was full of sincerity, "You are very important to the master, I have never seen the master look at another person so special. He has changed a lot because of you, and if it were you, you would be able to stop him and be able to bolt the master successfully into your hands."

Jiang Luo didn't take his words and turned to him, "It was your idea to pull my friend into the dream, wasn't it?"

With that, he swung his fist straight at him. Ge Wuchen was a viper and would not stand still for a fight. After a while of fighting back and forth with him, the two men knew that they would not be able to resist each other if they did not use other means and neatly stopped together.

The two men were standing next to the ruins when Ge Wuchen took out a cigarette and handed it to Jiang Luo. Jiang Luo thought it was magical that he was smoking with a monk in a monk's den in the middle of winter.

Ge Wuchen shakes the ashes on the ruins, "This Tibetan Buddhist Temple, do you know how much money it cost to build it?"

Jiang Luo: "Not interested."

"Three thousand," Ge Wuchen only felt that Jiang Luo was like a slippery loach that would not be exploited in any way. It was expanded again more than a hundred years ago, and that time it cost more than half a million. Think about it, what is the concept of more than half a million more than a hundred years ago."

Jiang Luo followed, shaking the ashes from his cigarette and looking up at the blue sky and white clouds.

"......" Ge Wuchen, "But the most valuable thing is not the house, it's the books inside. The Tibetan Buddhist Temple is full of books that can't be bought for money. There are countless Buddhist books that have been handed down from ancient times, and any one of them is worth so much that Ge Zhu smacks his lips, but I burned the place down."

Jiang Luo finally threw him a miserly look, "Why did you burn?"

"For it was my master and my uncle who told me to set this fire."

Ge Wuchen is an absolute bone-setter if he wants to act. His eyes are obscure, and he stands with his cigarette backhanded before the ruins, as if he were offering incense.

"My master was the last abbot of Jokhang Temple and the adoptive father of Ge Zhu and me. I know why you are asking about White Heron Temple, because it was from White Heron Temple that the Destined One came. He was just a small monk at White Heron Temple before he became a destiny man."

"A monk who was born with a connection to the Buddha and who easily comprehended the Buddha's will."

Seemingly knowing what Jiang Luo wanted to hear, Ge Wuchen didn't beat around the bush, "The Fatal Man was an orphan, and no one knew who his parents were. Two hundred years ago, he was taken back from outside by the abbot of the then White Heron Temple. He was so enlightened that he spent many years in the Tibetan Buddhist Temple. The Tibetan Buddhist Temple would have had so many books, 70 or 80 per cent of which he got."

"But somehow, one year, he left White Heron Temple. By the time White Heron Temple became Jokhang Temple, he too had become a host on Chang Baishan, even with a face that hadn't changed from two hundred years ago."

Jiang Luo listened, taking these words to heart, not knowing whether they were true or not, and pondering why Ge Wuchen would say these things to him.

Ge Wuchen finally got to the point and said with a light expression, "Master Jiang, you should also know that the Predestined One once gave a prophecy that divined the future of the entire occult community. When the culprit of the calamity was pinpointed on Chi You, several senior members of the occult community discussed whether Chi You should be killed outright. My master was among them, and his old man was kind-hearted and did not want to create sins, so he supported raising Chi You and guiding Chi You towards good."

Jiang Luo snickered, thinking, "You guys are channeling it pretty well, destroying the world in your dreams and jerking off in the middle of the night to be a hooligan.

"But five years ago, my master noticed something was wrong. He and my two uncles prepared for five days and spent one night at the Tibetan Buddhist Temple to divine the future of the occult world," Ge Wuchen said without a ripple, "and when they had finished, they realised that the Predestined One had told a big lie. In his prophecy, Chi You would kill him in the future, not destroy the occult world. He didn't want to kill, so he changed the prophecy and wanted others to kill Chi You. In my master's and uncles' divination, Chi You was tortured to the point of destroying his humanity because of a lie he told, and instead would actually destroy the occult world."

Jiang Luo stubbed out his cigarette violently and looked at him in disbelief.

Ge Wuchen said, "After my master and uncle had divined the result, they were so wounded and their life expectancy was so short that they would not live for a few days. That day, before dawn after the divination, my master took me by the hand and asked me to go and find Chi You and do my best to make amends with him and try to persuade Chi You to avoid the final bad result."

"But they were equally afraid that the Buddha's defection to Chi You would draw the wrath of the Fates, and that the Fates would bring about their death if they knew that they had spied on the true future. So to prevent the Fates from finding out that something was wrong, they asked me to set fire to the Tibetan Buddhist Temple and, by the way, to the three old men who knew the truth. Let the world think that I had rebelled against the Buddhists, so that even if I went to help Chi You, I would not implicate the Buddhists in the hatred of the predestinarians, let alone let the predestinarians find out the end of my master and uncle's death."

The monk with the face of a good woman looks at the upside-down cigarette, the light of the cigarette fire reflected in her eyes. The fire wavered as if it had become the extinguishing blaze of that day.

He seemed to be a little too caught up in the drama and even recalled the memories of that day.

His master, Master Cheng Wen, also his adoptive father, holds Ge Wuchen's hand tightly in his aged hand, which is dry and warm, calloused and wrinkled. The master uses a lot of strength, so much so that his fingers tremble and the back of his hand is tense with veins.

" Ge Wuchen ," Master Cheng Wen scolded him with hot tears in his eyes and a stern voice, "you set this place on fire, burn it and run out the door and don't look back!"

At first Ge Wuchen was wrapped in fear and panic, he was like a lonely boat in the waves, his whole body was cold and he shivered, "Master ......"

Two of his senior uncles behind him had already gone blind in one eye from divination, and his always gruff second uncle clutched his other hand, "Not enough, this is not enough! Every single person here is not to be left behind, you have to kill them in front of the others, kill them for the others, kill them for the predestined ones, do you know?!"

"Uncle Sifu, I'm afraid ......"

The Tibetan Buddhist Temple is also home to three other students who came with him to deliver the fasting food.

They were about the same age as Ge Zhu, several years younger than Ge Wuchen, the youngest one just thirteen. They wiped their eyes after hearing this, handed the dagger into Ge Wuchen's hand, turned their heads and ran outside, "Brother, you do it! Let's run towards a place where there are people!"

The fire was hot and dazzling. A fire went down in Ge Wuchen, who still did not listen to his master and turned back at the last moment.

With this glance, he saw his master and uncles watching him firmly in the flames, a sight Ge Wuchen will never forget.

"Three of my brothers were going to run to the rest of the Jokhang Temple so that others could see for themselves that I had killed the people of the Jokhang Temple and defected from the Buddha," Ge Wuchen laughed instead, "and these three brothers of mine, who had inadvertently run to Ge Zhu before them."

Ge Wuchen When Ge Wuchen killed a man in front of his brother, the youngest master planted himself in his ear and said, "Brother, I'm sorry ......"

Their tone is relieved and guilty as they are killed by Ge Wuchen.

I'm sorry for making you do this.

Sorry to let Ge Zhu see it.

......

I'm sorry brother, you'll have to go on alone from now on.

Ge Wuchen pushed these memories down and said dryly, "Do you know why Master told me to burn down the Tibetan Buddhist Temple?"

Jiang Luo looked at him with a complicated look, "Why."

Ge Wuchen's eyes smiled grimly, "For the method by which a predestined person becomes a god is derived from a certain book of the Tibetan Buddhist Temple."