Zanxing knew she wasn’t a clever person. She was dull and stubborn and had no spiritual insight whatsoever when it came to the Buddhist path. So in each lifetime of cultivation, she was very earnest.

She earnestly experienced the love and hate, separations and reunions of the mortal world. She had suffered pain and tasted happiness. She couldn’t control birth, old age, sickness, and death—love, hate, separation, and reunion were all normal states of human existence. All happiness and suffering, she earnestly experienced one by one.

She knew she was an outsider, and she also knew that each lifetime’s version of herself was merely a delusion, but everything experienced within couldn’t be simply fulfilled with the two words “let go.”

“It seems I truly have no affinity with Buddha and lack spiritual insight, so after thinking it over, I still can’t let go.” She looked at Zifeng before her: “You harmed my entire family, including my wife, children, and the elderly. With just one sentence of sincere repentance, you want to cancel out this blood debt? There’s no such convenient thing in this world.”

“Buddha said, put down the butcher’s knife and immediately become Buddha…”

“Buddha also spoke of karmic retribution,” Zanxing interrupted him: “Where is your retribution?”

Yang Zifeng was stunned for a moment, but the people around began to speak. They knelt pleading, “Master, please spare him. He already knows he was wrong.”

“Yes, you are a good person. Please save us.”

Zanxing looked at them and spoke calmly: “I am a good person, but I’m not a fool. I can’t sacrifice myself to feed tigers—I’m just an ordinary person with a narrow mind who must repay every slight.”

Bujiang had once said that as long as one was shameless, nothing could constrain them.

“Please, Master…”

“Moreover, whether I kill him or not makes no difference to you all.” Zanxing looked toward those people who were pleading pitifully: “If I kill him today, I’ll settle a grudge. All the grain in his mansion will belong to me and can be taken out to provide relief for you. Believe me, what I can give you is much more than what he can give you.” Zanxing smiled slightly, her tone gentle: “After all, he’s a high and mighty official, while I am a kindhearted good person.”

Never expecting her to say such a thing, all the people in the city were stunned.

Yang Zifeng was also dumbfounded.

Zanxing shook her head, her expression very serious: “Being a good person and seeking revenge are not contradictory things. If the price of being a good person is having grievances you can’t voice and having to endure even such injustices, then who in this world would still be willing to be a good person?”

Sunlight congealed slowly in the air like golden frost.

Zanxing gripped the staff in her hand tightly.

She knew the correct answer; she knew the Five-Wheel Pagoda’s intention. The so-called relatives and loved ones were merely specks of dust in the mortal world. As long as she put down the butcher’s knife, let go of grudges, and saved ten thousand people, this lifetime’s cultivation could end. All love, hate, and obsession were passing clouds—she wouldn’t remember this moment’s grievance, nor would she remember past resentments.

Easy and carefree, without attachments or obstacles.

But she simply wasn’t willing.

In this world, there are emotions and righteousness, causes and effects. If evil people escaped justice while good people had to compromise and accommodate, wouldn’t that be the world’s greatest joke? Since she couldn’t understand it, she simply wouldn’t think about it anymore.

She only wanted to follow her heart in her actions.

“You shouldn’t ask me for forgiveness.” She looked at Zifeng before her. “The one who can forgive you isn’t me—you’ve found the wrong person.”

Zifeng’s gaze showed terror, and his body began to tremble. The large patches of winter honeysuckle blooming behind him were dazzling, almost capturing everyone’s attention.

The air seemed to twist for an instant, and the Sanskrit scriptures from the clouds suddenly amplified beside her ears, densely and pervasively flying from all directions.

“…Having heard this, one should seek a great, compassionate mind. Observe sentient beings without abandoning them. Contemplate all dharmas without rest. Practice supreme karma without seeking reward. Understand that all realms are like illusions, like dreams, like shadows, like echoes, and like transformations…”

“…Adorned with loving-kindness, one harbors no harmful thoughts toward sentient beings; adorned with compassion, one pities all sentient beings and never grows weary of them; adorned with joy, when seeing those who practice good, the mind has no jealousy; adorned with equanimity, toward favorable and adverse circumstances, there is no love or hatred…”

“…In all places, abide without attachment to characteristics. In those characteristics, generate neither hatred nor love, and have neither grasping nor rejection…”

The golden Buddha-light seemed ready to devour people, and amid this endless Buddhist chanting, someone shook their head: “Stop chanting—I have no intention of becoming Buddha at all.”

The man before her showed terror, his features twisted into something sinister. Zanxing raised the golden staff in her hand and struck down fiercely toward him—

The piercing Sanskrit sounds suddenly disappeared.

The city, people, and Yang Zifeng before her seemed like patterns on a painting scroll, gradually fading color by color. Dense darkness surged up from all directions. This darkness seemed endless, capable of devouring all living things. Zanxing walked a few steps, seemed to sense something, and raised her head to see above her a pair of open eyes coldly watching her.

This was a huge golden Buddha statue sitting in the darkness. The Buddha statue was extremely tall, as broad as a palace hall. Standing before the Buddha statue, she was like an ant before an elephant. Grandeur and insignificance—like gods, Buddhas, and mortals.

“This is…” Zanxing’s heart stirred.

The golden Buddha had a kind-browed, benevolent face. The corners of its mouth curved up gently, eyes slightly narrowed, but its gaze was calm and indifferent. It silently looked down at her from its lofty position.

The golden staff in Zanxing’s hand had somehow transformed back into the Wuyou Stick. She understood—the reincarnation had ended.

“Ending here…” She thoughtfully raised her eyes: “The final reincarnation was Master Jingshan’s experience?”

Ming Jing had once said that Master Jingshan, who built the Five-Wheel Pagoda, was most widely known not for his cultivation but for his virtue. Years ago, there had been a drought in Duzhou with countless starving people and tens of thousands of refugees. It was Master Jingshan who broadly bestowed kindness and saved countless people. His immeasurable merit was sung in every household.

She hadn’t known that the truth behind “broadly bestowing kindness” was like this.

When she fell into the eight sufferings of reincarnation, though she remembered she was Zanxing, she also truly had to experience everything that the “Zanxing” in each reincarnation experienced. Now, withdrawn from it all and looking back at everything she had experienced, the taste was different.

It seemed this was the Five-Wheel Pagoda’s true trial. Making people cycle through life and death to experience mortal sufferings, then in the final lifetime, experience Master Jingshan’s entire life—letting go, achieving enlightenment, and breaking through.

And the current situation… Zanxing looked toward the huge, imposing golden Buddha and laughed inwardly. It seemed she hadn’t passed the Five-Wheel Pagoda’s trial.

Well, that made sense. Master Jingshan was a Buddhist cultivator, and Buddhist cultivators spent their lives pursuing goodness. Just as Master Jingshan had let go of grudges and saved ten thousand people, naturally, he would expect trial-takers in the Buddha pagoda to make the same choice as him. And any cultivator with spiritual insight would naturally glimpse the pagoda master’s intention from the previous reincarnations and make the correct choice.

People like her, who insisted on being willful even at the crucial moment, probably didn’t exist at all.

Never mind. People without spiritual insight probably wouldn’t gain any enlightenment even if they reluctantly chose the correct answer. Zanxing looked around. Since she hadn’t passed the Five-Wheel Pagoda’s trial, she needn’t linger here—she should think about how to get out.

Just then, an aged voice suddenly came from the void.

“Why not let go?”