“What’s wrong with you?” Pang Bo’s voice reached Ye Fan’s ears as he shook his shoulder vigorously.

Ye Fan came back to himself as though from a dream. There was no Buddhist sound — no Zen chant. The ancient temple remained as it was, thick with accumulated dust, and none of the others had seemed to hear anything at all.

“Is this truly the Great Thunder Sound Temple?” he murmured quietly to himself. What he had just heard and seen, though brief, had felt so utterly real. It left him in a daze as he turned it over carefully in his mind.

Ye Fan studied the bronze oil lamp in his hand intently, but there was nothing more unusual about it — just some carved patterns on its surface, simple and unadorned, plain and ordinary, with no trace of anything out of the ordinary.

“A meditation cushion!” One of the male students had retrieved an old, worn prayer mat from a pile of ash — the passage of time had not managed to destroy it.

Before long, a female student unearthed a string of sandalwood prayer beads from beneath the thick dust — not a single bead had been worn away by the years, and when the dust was blown off, a faint luster still glowed from them.

At the same moment, Kai De found half of a broken wooden fish drum in the dust before the stone Buddha, carved with three Bodhisattvas — one solemn, one compassionate — each rendered with lifelike artistry.

In that moment, Ye Fan’s thoughts ranged far. If this was truly the legendary Great Thunder Sound Temple, then it was a place abandoned by a divine being, and every object unearthed from it should be extraordinary.

Clang!

Wang Ziwen’s foot appeared to have struck something, producing a metallic resonance. He brushed aside the ash in that corner to reveal a small, cracked bronze bell, barely palm-sized, missing a section of its wall — old in style and form.

“Clang…” He shook the bronze bell, and a clear, lingering tone rang out at once — like the voice of the Buddha drifting and enveloping the space, stilling the heart and mind.

Ye Fan’s train of thought was interrupted. He turned to look at the small bronze bell — its surface was engraved with flowing cloud patterns, unadorned yet carrying a Zen quality, condensing within it a certain Buddhist resonance.

Pang Bo muttered something quietly. He had been first to enter the ancient temple, yet had found nothing — a matter of poor luck.

Almost simultaneously, Li Xiaoman found half a jade ruyi scepter at the foot of the stone Buddha. When she wiped away the dust, the translucent fragment of jade began to shimmer with points of radiance.

The ancient temple had appeared all but empty, yet several people had already uncovered objects from beneath the accumulated dust. The others immediately quickened their movements, searching everywhere.

Ye Fan paid little attention to those other objects. The bronze oil lamp in his hand was the only thing in the ancient temple that was free of all dust, completely intact, and perpetually lit — none of the other objects could compare with it.

“I refuse to believe there’s nothing left for me to find…” Pang Bo muttered.

“Look around carefully. Whatever objects you find, set them aside.” Ye Fan handed the ancient lamp to Pang Bo so he could use its light to search. Though he could not yet tell what was extraordinary about these broken Buddhist implements, he understood clearly: if there were truly divine beings in this world, these things would certainly be far from ordinary.

Ye Fan entrusted the bronze lamp temporarily to Pang Bo, then stepped out of the ancient hall and made his way toward the Bodhi tree standing before the temple. By now, he had shed his habitual way of thinking, allowing himself for the moment to believe that divine beings truly existed.

If the ancient temple was indeed the Great Thunder Sound Temple, then the Bodhi tree standing beside it could not be overlooked. If there was a Buddha in this world, that withered ancient tree would certainly be anything but ordinary.

The Bodhi tree is the sacred tree of Buddhism. According to the records of The Great Tang Records on the Western Regions, the Buddha once told Ananda that there were three things in this world that deserved to be venerated — the sacred bone relics of the Buddha, images of the Buddha, and the Bodhi tree.

For the Buddha attained enlightenment beneath the Bodhi tree — to see the Bodhi tree was to see the Buddha.

The withered ancient tree before him was vigorous and gnarled as a coiling serpent, so broad around that six or seven people with linked arms could not encompass it. Its trunk was hollow at the core. Only a single dried branch drooping down two to three meters from the ground bore six green leaves, each crystalline and translucent, glittering like transparent green agate.

Setting aside entirely whether this ancient tree had any connection to the Buddha, those six jade-like leaves alone were enough to reveal its extraordinary nature.

Ye Fan stood beneath the tree and studied the ancient Bodhi tree carefully. The enormous branches nearly entirely overshadowed the ancient temple. If it were in full leaf, one could easily imagine the sight of it blotting out the sky.

At that moment, something stirred in Ye Fan’s heart. He noticed that the six crystalline green leaves were emitting an almost imperceptible mist of green luminescence — a small portion drifting toward the distant Five-Colored Altar, while the greater part was being absorbed into the tree’s roots.

The faint green mist flowed in thread-like tendrils, continuously spilling out from the six green leaves, carrying with it a sense of life — an endless, vigorous vitality in circulation.

Ye Fan crouched down and brushed aside the soil at the base of the tree roots, wanting to see what lay beneath — what could possibly be gathering the green mist that spilled from the Bodhi leaves.

Beneath the soil, he saw nothing miraculous — only a single Bodhi seed, its surface without gleam, without gathered radiance, without drifting mist, its color dim and ordinary. If one weren’t paying attention, it could easily be mistaken for a clod of earth.

The one distinctive thing about it was its size. Ordinary Bodhi seeds were no bigger than a fingernail, but this dull, dim Bodhi seed was as large as a walnut.

A wave of astonishment passed through Ye Fan. Could it truly be that the green mist spilling from the Bodhi leaves was being absorbed by this seed? He observed it for a moment and watched as the thread-like green mist flowed downward, then vanished at a point three inches away from the Bodhi seed.

Though he couldn’t see it directly absorbing the life essence from the Bodhi leaves, he was nearly certain it was the cause.

Ye Fan held the Bodhi seed in his palm and examined it carefully. His expression shifted to one of astonishment — the natural grain patterns on this dull and ordinary Bodhi seed, when traced where they joined together, formed a compassionate image of the Buddha.

A Buddha-image formed of its own accord — born entirely from natural grain patterns converging by chance — yet it looked as though it had been painstakingly carved there by skilled hands.

Dim and understated as the Buddha image was, there was an ancient simplicity about it that radiated a faint, unmistakable Zen essence.

“A naturally formed Buddha image — can it truly be that two thousand five hundred years ago, Shakyamuni attained enlightenment because of the Bodhi tree?”

The Bodhi tree goes by other names as well: the Tree of Wisdom, the Tree of Awakening, the Tree of Contemplation — said in legend to be capable of unlocking the divine nature within a person, awakening the self to its true essence.

Ye Fan raised the Bodhi seed high above his head toward the six leaves above, and the rate at which the green mist spilled out immediately accelerated greatly. The dense, vigorous sense of vitality grew even more concentrated — all of it converging toward the Bodhi seed. And yet, of course, the radiance still vanished three inches before it reached the seed.

Pop!

A soft sound came — one of the crystalline Bodhi leaves released its final tendril of green mist, then crumbled, turning to ash and drifting down.

At this point, Ye Fan was finally certain: the Bodhi seed, for all its unremarkable appearance, was truly far from ordinary. He tucked it away carefully and with reverence.

Now he noticed that the ground was covered in a great deal of fine powder — exactly the same as the ash into which that Bodhi leaf had just turned. Could it be that all the Bodhi leaves on the tree had disappeared this same way? The thought filled Ye Fan with considerable shock.

The Bodhi seed bearing the naturally formed image of the Buddha — he sensed it was something of no small significance. Somewhere in the back of his mind, he had a feeling it might be even more important than the bronze oil lamp that had stood perpetually beside the stone Buddha.

The ancient Bodhi tree still bore five green leaves, though they no longer shimmered as brilliantly as before — their luster had faded considerably. Ye Fan made no move to pluck them. One Bodhi seed was enough of a harvest. He did not wish to draw attention.

By now, no one had yet come out from the Great Thunder Sound Temple. Ye Fan left the Bodhi tree and returned to the ancient temple.

At this point, another seven or eight people had found Buddhist implements, each one different from the others. Liu Yinzhi had actually found half of a golden vajra scepter from behind the stone Buddha. Even though it had been buried in the dust for who knew how many years, upon being unearthed it still gleamed with a brilliant golden light, conveying a sense of heaviness and concentrated power. Were it not for the damage at one end, it would have been a perfect and forceful work of craftsmanship.

This type of scepter-like implement has a name in Buddhism that carries considerable power and dignity: the vajra — holding the implied meaning of “destroyer of enemies,” symbolizing an invincible, indestructible wisdom and the true Buddha-nature, and serving as the implement held by all supreme and noble beings.

If divine beings truly existed in this world, this vajra scepter was beyond doubt a sacred object. It would certainly be capable of manifesting extraordinary and astonishing qualities — even a mysterious, mighty power to split mountains and sever rivers would not be at all surprising. For the moment, however, none of that could be seen.

Liu Yinzhi swung it forcefully — the half vajra scepter swept through the air like a golden bolt of lightning, blazing with radiance, the sacred scepter carrying an overwhelming presence.

“Think about it — if all these implements were things once held by a divine being, and we discovered how to use them, what kind of earth-shaking, heaven-moving scene would that be…”

Hearing these words from Liu Yinzhi, every person who had found a Buddhist implement couldn’t help but feel a surge of longing.