Chapter 145: Reaping Frames and the Heavenly Eye

Starting from Cangzhou, Chen Jue embarked on a leisurely walk toward the southwest.

His pace was not fast, but it possessed great endurance. With his current physical condition, Chen Jue could walk for an entire day without feeling any soreness in his legs. This was countless times stronger than when he had first returned from Hangzhou to his hometown in Chen Village.

Guided by the walking route on his phone's navigation, he traversed several counties and cities, purposely seeking out crowded streets and old urban districts.

Unlike those ancient Taoist adepts who retreated into mountain forests to build hermitages and escape the world, Chen Jue was practicing amidst the mortal realm. His approach focused on finding emotional resonance and his own path of cultivation from within the bustling and ordinary world.

Therefore, the more crowded the place, the more peaceful and grounded Chen Jue felt in his heart.

Moreover, Chen Jue was not walking aimlessly. Whenever he had a cellular signal along the way, he would search his phone for local delicacies and hidden-gem food guide blogs in the next city.

Upon arriving in a city, he would taste the traditional flavors favored by the locals, explore the unique charm of old streets and historic shops, and experience the local customs and culture.

When night fell, he would find a nearby clean hotel to stay in, take a hot shower to wash away the dust of the journey, and hand his change of clothes to the hotel front desk to be sent to a nearby dry cleaner for overnight washing and drying. Finally, he would tumble into bed and sleep soundly to restore his physical strength and accumulate energy for the next day.

To others, his actions made him look like a seasoned, budget-traveling backpacker.

However, when it came to food and accommodation, Chen Jue was much more open-handed than those budget backpackers. He did not covet petty gains; he acted entirely as he pleased, prioritizing whatever felt most comfortable.

He could spend just a few yuan on breakfast, or splurge over a thousand yuan on a lavish lunch or dinner. After all, with the hundred-thousand-yuan prize money from the martial arts tournament, he didn't feel any heartache spending it.

Having reached Chen Jue's level of cultivation, money was something easily attainable to him, so he no longer cared about the thickness of his wallet.

Much like ordinary people: in the past, when we spent money, we used cash. Counting out physical banknotes of various denominations gave a tangible, satisfying feeling when making a purchase.

Nowadays, people go out using electronic wallets, scanning QR codes to pay. Confronted with those strings of numbers, after using them for a long time, the sense of real money vanishes; instead, it feels just like topping up game currency in a video game.

After stumbling through a month of living like this, people often have no idea where their money actually went. Then, looking at their meager monthly salary followed by last month's overdrawn credit card bills, they are left speechless with grief.

……

After strolling for over 600 kilometers at a daily rate of a little over a hundred kilometers, spending nearly a week walking all the way from Cangzhou to Guanzhou, Chen Jue found a hotel in downtown Guanzhou to stay in for the night.

Waking up the next day, he had breakfast and set off once more, not leisurely arriving at his first major destination until noon—the Shaolin Temple.

Among the martial arts Chen Jue practiced, several had originated from the Shaolin Temple. Furthermore, having crossed paths with that monk named Yantong—though they hadn't exchanged contact information—Chen Jue still wished to visit and tour the place first.

Once he finished exploring the Shaolin Temple, it wouldn't be too late to visit the nearby Wudang Mountain. After all, they were on the same route; it was simply a matter of sequence.

However, today's Shaolin Temple was heavily commercialized. After commercial operations, it had transformed into a scenic tourist spot, much like Putuo Island near his college roommate's hometown—dominated by tourists, with very few coming to sincerely worship the Buddha.

As a side note, right before graduation, Chen Jue had traveled to Putuo Island in the company of Wang Biao and Cheng Wei as their graduation trip.

It was also during that trip that Chen Jue witnessed the power of religious faith.

An elderly grandmother, burning incense and paying homage to the Buddha, could pull a gold necklace right out of her handbag and toss it directly onto the altar table, leaving Chen Jue and his roommates utterly astonished.

Thinking about it now, Chen Jue understood that this was the faith residing in the hearts of every pious believer, an emotional resonance belonging to them alone.

Just like those towering figures in history—such as Shakyamuni, Bodhidharma, Patriarch Zhang Sanfeng of Wudang, and Patriarch Wang Chongyang of the Quanzhen Sect—their most formidable aspect was not actually their physical cultivation or martial arts, but the Buddhist and Taoist classics, cultures, and philosophies they passed down, which subtly and profoundly influenced later generations.

Conversely, those "martial saints" and "invincible" figures hyped to hyperbolic proportions within the martial arts circles ultimately sank into the dust of history, rarely mentioned by anyone today.

……

With his backpack on, Chen Jue bought an admission ticket for eighty yuan and followed the throngs of tourists into the temple for a tour. He walked through the Shiban Mountain, the Bodhidharma Cave, the Pagoda Forest, the Scripture Repository, and more.

Of course, the temple also arranged for monks to perform martial arts, but these were mostly superficial skills. With Chen Jue's current discernment, he could tell at a glance which of the Seventy-Two Arts they were roughly practicing.

To ordinary people, these performances were indeed extremely spectacular—much like ancient street performers swallowing swords or smashing boulders on their chests, drawing waves of applause and tossing a few copper coins into the gong.

Yet, in Chen Jue's eyes, the flavor had changed. Only a few young monks practicing the One-Finger Chan skill and the Body-Purifying juvenile art managed to spark his interest.

For in these young monks, Chen Jue could still sense a trace of innocence and genuine sincerity.

"Clothes make the man, and gold makes the Buddha. To live, one must always earn a meal!" After walking a circle, Chen Jue felt a wave of emotion arise in his heart.

After eating a vegetarian meal inside the temple and resting his legs for a while, he recalled a kung fu documentary he had seen online earlier and a secret Shaolin boxing style mentioned in pugilistic classics.

He left the temple, turned toward the back mountain of Shaolin, and climbed steadily along an untrodden path. It took him nearly half an hour to wind his way up to a towering cliff that overlooked the entire Shaolin area.

Here stood a stone-built temple. In front of the temple lay a flat plot of muddy ground, its edge supported by piled stones, resembling a courtyard playground perched right against the edge of the cliff.

On one side of the temple were a few plots of wheat planted by the monks. Autumn had arrived, and the wheat ears in the fields were ripening into a golden hue. Several robust young monks wearing coarse gray cloth monastic robes were holding sickles and bending over to harvest the wheat. Yet their movements in cutting the wheat were far from ordinary; instead, they carried a subtle quality of martial practice and cultivation.

Noticing the appearance of this tourist-dressed young man, the robust monks sharply glanced up at him before continuing to bend down and harvest the wheat.

However, the middle-aged monk standing on the elevated platform, watching his disciples cut wheat, let out a soft exclamation of surprise upon seeing Chen Jue's extraordinary bearing. He slowly walked forward, pressed his palms together, and said, "Amitabha! I perceive that the benefactor has doubts in his heart. I wonder where the benefactor comes from, and where he is headed?"

Chen Jue cupped his fists in a return salute. "Greetings, Master! May I ask your Buddhist name? I was just watching these masters practice the wheat-harvesting posture of Xinyi Ba with such consummate mastery that I paused to watch a bit longer. Please forgive me if my intrusion has caused any offense!"

Pugilistic classics once contained this phrase: "Taiji is crafty, Bagua is slippery, but the fiercest and most venomous is Xinyi Ba."

The Taiji and Bagua mentioned in this line need no further explanation, but this final Xinyi Ba was the true ultimate art of the Shaolin Temple, second only to the Seventy-Two Arts.

One must know that throughout history, the Shaolin Temple had suffered devastating catastrophes resulting in the destruction of the temple, causing many martial arts techniques to be lost. For instance, the skimming-water lightness skill Chen Jue had previously witnessed from the monk Yantong was one of those Seventy-Two Arts rumored to have been lost to the outside world.

Had it not been for the vast number of Shaolin secular disciples and the widespread dissemination among believers—allowing secular disciples to bring their skills back into the fold after every rebuilding following the temple's destruction—the very notion of the Seventy-Two Arts would likely have vanished long ago.

Of course, the wuxia trope that "all martial arts under heaven originate from Shaolin" also stems from this narrative of secular disciples spreading their skills outward, carrying a slight element of flattering exaggeration toward the Shaolin Temple.

And this so-called ultimate temple skill, Xinyi Ba, was likewise a superior boxing style that had nearly bordered on extinction due to the reliance on returning secular disciples.

"Amitabha! The benefactor has a discerning eye! These disciples are indeed practicing the wheat-harvesting posture of Xinyi Ba."

"This poor monk's Buddhist name is Jiande. Greetings to the benefactor! Benefactor, you must be a practitioner of the Dao, are you not? I perceive that your bearing is extraordinary and your vital energy and spirit are restrained within. You must surely be an enlightened master who has forged the Golden Elixir and cultivated the Sarira." Master Jiande pressed his palms together and bowed once more, clearly somewhat astonished by Chen Jue's foundation in cultivation.

One must understand that a Taoist adept who had formed the Golden Elixir was on the same level as a Buddhist Arhat, Bodhisattva, or Buddha who had cultivated Sarira. In the eyes of this Master Jiande, Chen Jue was naturally extraordinary.

"Master's eyes are like torches!"

"My name is Chen Jue, practicing the boat-boxing lineage of An County in Wenzhou. Greetings, Master Jiande."

Chen Jue returned the salute once more. He had never expected that within this unassuming stone temple on the back mountain of the Shaolin Temple, there would reside such an enlightened, high-ranking monk capable of seeing through his cultivation realm at a glance.

Presumably, this person was a high monk who had attained the Buddhist power of the "Heavenly Eye."

Buddhism speaks of six supernatural powers: the Heavenly Eye, the Heavenly Ear, Knowledge of Others' Minds, Knowledge of Past Lives, the Power of Spiritual Freedom, and the Extinction of Defilements.

In Chen Jue's view, the "Heavenly Eye" among these was somewhat similar to the abilities of heaven-man communion, aura-reading, physiognomy, and divination mastered by Taoist adepts. Both were metaphysical methods belonging to the realm of spirit and mind.

Originally, Chen Jue had been somewhat skeptical of such abstruse supernatural claims. However, ever since he came to comprehend the heaven-man communion abilities of Taoist adepts for himself, he deduced that the six supernatural powers mentioned by Buddhism likely existed as well.

After all, even martial grandmasters like Li Xiang and Li Wei, without Chen Jue personally revealing it to them, would find it extremely difficult to perceive the physical anomalies within his body.

Yet Master Jiande had pierced straight through Chen Jue's current state with a single glance. Presumably, this was because his own cultivation of the Buddhist Dharma had reached an extremely profound level, granting him the capability of the "Heavenly Eye."

Thank you all for waiting so long~ I'm going to sleep now. It's getting a bit too late, and I hope I'll still have the energy to bring you more chapters tomorrow.