Chapter 1 (1/2)

Translator: Atlas Studios

Editor: Atlas Studios

“Sage Monk, you were originally my second disciple named Golden Cicada in your previous incarnation. Because you failed to listen to and slighted my teachings, your spirit was banished to the mortal realm and reborn in the Eastern Lands. Today, I am joyous that you have converted to Buddhism and practiced religious discipline, and also retrieved the scriptures while remaining faithful to the teachings. In this process, you have rendered great service in purifying demons and subduing fiends. For these meritorious deeds, I hereby confer upon you a grand promotion and appoint you as the Victorious Fighting Buddha.”

Tang Luo was speechless.

Sun Wukong1 was also speechless.

Something seemed off. Yet, at the same time, it also seemed like nothing was.

‘A dream?’

Tang Luo’s sluggish mind started to function again. His eyelids felt incredibly heavy, so much so that he couldn’t open his eyes.

In the instant where he woke up, there wasn’t a single part of his body that didn’t hurt terribly.

Tang Luo felt as though he had been thrown into a blender and churned a thousand times.

Like rain clouds gathering, his dispersed consciousness gradually came back to him amid the pain.

Tang Luo—male, typical transmigrant from Earth.

The person he transmigrated into—Xuanzang.

Not the historical Xuanzang1 but the Tang Seng2 from Journey To The West3 and the Tang Xuanzang of the saying, ‘This poor monk hails from the Great Tang in the Eastern Lands’.

Tang Luo had been scared out of his wits in the beginning when he had first transmigrated.

Who was Tang Seng? He was the Golden Cicada in his previous incarnation and the disciple of Gautama1.

Surely he, a transmigrant, wouldn’t be mistaken by the other party as an extraterrestrial demon or something similar and smacked to death in a single blow?

If it were possible, Tang Luo wanted to return to the secular world.

Unfortunately, things didn’t develop around a person’s—or at least, not Tang Luo’s—will.

In the end, he had still ended up embarking on a journey to retrieve scriptures from the west.

And then… and then, he had succeeded!

In the Great Thunder Temple, Gautama had very kindly expressed that Tang Luo was undoubtedly the reincarnation of Golden Cicada, no problems whatsoever.

Fine, since Gautama had already put it like that, Tang Luo went along with it too and accepted his fate. After all, they weren’t in the same league at all.

Speaking from a certain perspective, the other party could even openly take his life if he wanted. Was there even any need to feign civility with him?

Of course, he mustn’t give up mid-way the diligent studying and hard training that he had persevered in all this time.

Tang Luo had never been one to leech off others in his entire life!

During the journey to the west, he hadn’t even exceeded 80 times of shouting, “Wukong, save me.”

And then, there wasn’t anything more.

Tang Luo’s memory stopped at one of his seclusion sessions.

Without any warning, everything in front of his eyes had turned black. The blow had come out of the blue.

He had only been in time to do one thing before falling into a coma.

At that point, of him regaining consciousness, Tang Luo hadn’t the slightest idea as to what exactly was going on right now.

There were only two things he could be sure of.

Firstly, he was heavily injured, terribly so. It was much more serious than any other time he had gotten injured during his journey to the west.

Secondly, he had been buried alive!

There was no way he now could shout, “Wukong, save me!” The only thing he could do was to save himself. Digging it was, then!

Tang Luo had certainly been buried alive. However, the earth around him wasn’t very firm. In fact, it was even mildly loose.

Tang Luo was at least a man who had undergone training before, after all. No matter how serious his injuries were, there was still some fight left in him.

It was right before dawn, the darkest moment of the day. In the sky, lightning flashed, and thunder boomed. Fierce winds and thunderstorms raged.

A hand suddenly reached out from beneath the muddy surface of the ground. All five fingers were spread out while facing the sky. A bolt of lightning flashed and lit up the pale hand. It was as if some kind of terrifying demon was about to emerge into the world.

Right on the heels of it, a bald head burrowed out of the ground!

“Feh!”

Tang Luo, who had successfully ‘dug himself out’, spat with great effort, expelling all the mud and earth in his nose and mouth.

Torrential rain pounded against his body. It did surprisingly mildly feel like he was being washed clean—even if the rain wasn’t that clean either.

The robes on him were tattered and torn and were no longer able to shield his body. Drenched by the rain, they stuck to his body. Tang Luo tugged them right off him.

However, there was still a pair of trousers on him.

Tang Luo lifted his head, opened his mouth, and filled it with rainwater. He rinsed his mouth twice and managed to remove the earthy aftertaste in his mouth slightly.

After wiping his face, Tang Luo wholly disregarded the common warning to avoid taking shelter under a tree when it was raining and walked over to a tree nearby.

It was pitch-black all around. Tang Luo could roughly discern that he was in an unknown area of wilderness.

Apart from a pair of tattered and torn trousers, the only other foreign object on him was a tiny piece of jade shaped like a lotus that hung on his neck.

It wasn’t shaped like one in full bloom. Rather, it was closed up and in a state between a bud and blossom. It was strung on a red string.

Tang Luo tugged off the jade lotus and placed it in his palm. Before long, the jade lotus began to give off an incredibly weak but warm glow. Except it didn’t even sustain for half a second before it dissipated completely. It was considerably short-lasting.

“Has it all been expended?” muttered Tang Luo.

This object was known as the Jade Lotus of Virtuous Merit, a magic weapon that the Goddess of Mercy had given Tang Luo. It was capable of gathering the power of virtuous merits, and there were numerous amazing uses for it.

What exactly the so-called ‘power of virtuous merits’ was had always been a rather abstract and intangible concept.

It was somewhat similar to the burning of joss sticks and incense1, and the power of humans’ wishes and willpower in doing good and whatnot, yet not exactly the same.

To put it in simpler and more straightforward terms, being kind and doing good deeds would lead to the power of virtuous merits gathering. This power could be used to treat injuries, save people, and so on.