Chapter 153 - Ghostly Man Zhuge and “Like Dissolves Like” Principle (1/2)

“The belief trustee in the secular world?” Hao Ning felt amazed, “Don’t you have any temple in the real world? How can you get a belief trustee in the secular world?”

“Did you forget?” Liu Shuai got the point and pushed Hao Ning, “Xiao Hong has another identity, Sudhana.”

“Oh, yes. That’s it!” Hao Ning saw it instantly, “Avalokitesvara possesses temples in reality. Not only temples but also Bodhimanda. In turn, Sudhana who stayed by his side, although not mentioned very often, was more or less concerned somehow. He literally counts one of your belief trustees in the secular world.” At that thought, Hao Ning felt even weirder, “Then why did you go back to Three Kingdoms times?”

“One day in the cave, a thousand years on the earth.” Xiao Hong didn’t speak, and Liu Shuai picked up the words, “The sentence is to depict the gods’ power. While it actually indicates the relation between incense and time. I understand now. Did some accident happen to the power of incense when your parents sacrificed themselves, and that took you back to the Three Kingdom Times?”

“Yes.” Xiao Hong nodded and continued, “Meanwhile, the sacrifice should have influenced the belief in other books, which engendered that Kong Ming in Romance of Three Kingdoms also fled from the book and came to the same times as I was in ‒ Precisely, I doubted that he had brought me to the times there at the order of Zhuge Liang in real history.”

“Wait! Let me get it clear!” Hao Ning got messed up while listening. He waved his hand in the air and pondered, “Your parents, to keep you safe from the disaster of May 4th Seal God event, had sacrificed themselves so that you could escape from the book. Owing to the overstrong power of sacrifice, not only the timeline but also another book Romance of Three Kingdoms was affected, which made the Kong Ming in the book return to the real Three Kingdoms times in history ‒ I get it. The Kong Ming in the book surely knew about the Shang Fang Valley Event, so it’s not unnatural that he reconducted in the past history to set Shang Fang Valley on fire!”

“Meanwhile the Kong Ming in the book should be more than clear that the Shang Fang Valley Event would end up with heavy rain, and in the case, Sima Yi fled. He certainly couldn’t hold back the rain with his own ability.” Liu Shuai continued, “But he ran into you by coincidence and came to realize that your Samadhi True Fire was immune from water. With your aid, Sima Yi would be doomed to death!”

“Yes, that was exactly his plan.” Xiao Hong nodded, “The Ghostly Man ‒”

“The Ghostly Man?” Liu Shuai hadn’t made sense of that yet, “Why do you call Premier Zhuge the Ghostly Man?”

“Not he. It’s supposed to be Lu Xun who firstly called Zhuge the Ghostly Man, right?” Hao Ning came to learn the vein of these stories. Though seeming grotesque, a vague underlying line was linking all the incidents, “Lu Xun commented Romance of Three Kingdoms that Zhuge Liang’s resourcefulness made him nearly a ghost. That’s why you call him like that, yes?”

“Em, it should be.” Xiao Hong’s eyes brightened, and he nodded, “I was wondering why Brother Zhang Chi Hang had always called him “Ghostly Man”. It proved to originate from that. ‒ The Ghostly Man promised to build a temple and accumulate incense for me after the triumph of Shu Han so that I could collect faith. At least my spirit wouldn’t go out.”

“Aye…” Hao Ning sighed. It turned out to be like that. He recalled that he had stabbed Xiao Hong with so many strokes of the sword and he felt compassionate. He patted Xiao Hong’s shoulder in guilt, “Sorry. I shouldn’t have thrust you so many times.”

“No no no, Brother Hao Ning, you thought it wrongly.” Xiao Hong waved his hand eagerly, “I owe you a “thank you”. Brother Zhang Chi Hang told me later that the power of time was more than metaphysical. If you had not intervened then, even if I could stay alive at that time, after Journey to the West came out, I would be absorbed back to the book because of the faith in it. In such circles, I would never be able to jump out of it to the real world.”

“…” Though Xiao Hong was making sense in that way, Hao Ning got a headache reordering the timeline. He scratched his head, “But that’s still illogical. If Zhuge Liang killed Sima Yi with the help of you, maybe there wouldn’t be a book called Journey to the West owing to complicated causality?”

“No.” Xiao Hong smiled and explained, “Brother Zhang Chi Hang said that the Ghostly Man Zhuge couldn’t succeed. All roads lead to Rome. The changes there had no impact on the eventual historical outcome ‒ Don’t ask me. I don’t understand either ‒ To say the least, Brother Hao Ning, you’ve already killed the Ghostly Man Zhuge that day when you exerted your power, haven’t you?”

“Me?” Hao Ning was bewildered, pointing at himself. While the other good boys listening to the story were peering at him in surprise as well. “When did I ‒ Oh yes, I had claimed to stab you with 36 strokes of Celestial Dippers, while I made a bloody mistake and went for 37 actually. The last blow covered with Qi got diverted and injured Zhuge Liang directly. Was that?”

“The “divert” was literally…” Liu Shuai gazed at Hao Ning in blankness and patted his shoulder, “perilous.”

Xiao Hong nodded in agreement, “Brother Hao Ning you don’t have to be modest. I thank you for more than that reason. My suffering of 36 hits was inevitable. But it was because you, who were from the real world, executed me that I got released from my causality in the books. I evolved from Great Saint Infant King to Sudhana at that moment, not being revealed in books but in the real world. Only in that way would I be able to cultivate with Avalokitesvara in the real world.”

Hao Ning didn’t find his words for a response. He didn’t expect such sequential causalities there. Then Hao Ning turned to Liu Shuai, “Liu Shuai, don’t you find it odd?”

“For what?” Liu Shuai was still in meditation on all the inner relations.

“If it had not been for Zhou Yuan’s affair, we wouldn’t have turned to Zhang Quan. If we had not turned to Zhang Quan, we would have not met Zhang Chi Hang either.” Hao Ning moved on step by step, “If we hadn’t met Zhang Chi Hang, we couldn’t have saved Zhou Yuan. To save him, we had no choice but to help such a miserly Buddha as Zhang Chi Hang and suppress Xiao Hong. Moreover, it was exactly when we were at his place that Zhang Chi Hang “happened” to receive a wish from Sima Yi. Then, though we seemingly were saving Sima Yi, actually we helped Xiao Hong out of the causalities in the book and settled the catastrophe caused by the May 4th Seal God event.”

“It seems true based on your words.” Liu Shuai got some nuance on his face while listening, “You mean that…”

“I’ve been figuring everything that we underwent before fortuitous.” Hao Ning glanced at Zhou Yuan, then peered at Liu Shuai, “But now it seems that all above were arranged on purpose. While in all these incidents ‒” Hao Ning turned to Xiao Hong, “Zhang Chi Hang wasn’t involved in any causal relations.”