Chapter 1715
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Chapter 1715 Monk of Destiny
[Distance until the Eastern Emperor’s Bell rings: 620 years]
Ming Dynasty, fourth year of Yongle reign, winter.
Heavy snow.
Among the Kunlun mountain range, a gray figure slowly walked through the endless white snow. The fierce wind swept up fragments of snow, completely burying the two clear footprints.
The figure passed through the mountains and finally stopped in front of an ancient, dilapidated temple.
This temple seemed to be a product from a thousand years ago. The outer walls had almost completely collapsed, with snow covering the temple ruins, making it impossible to see the outline of the building. Half of a broken door stood lonely in front of the ruins, making a grating creaking sound as it swayed in the howling wind.
“It’s been almost fourteen hundred years…”
The gray figure gazed at the temple ruins, murmuring, “Longer than I imagined.”
He reached out to push open the half-broken door, but with a crisp snap, the door broke off and fell onto the snow. The grating creaking sound completely disappeared, leaving only the endless howling of wind and snow.
He sighed and stepped into the ruins of the broken temple.
Following his memory, he came to a snow mound. With a light tap of his foot, the snow before him automatically shattered, pouring down to the ground with a rustling sound, revealing a clay Buddha statue underneath.
After more than fourteen hundred years, even the surrounding walls had collapsed and decayed, yet this clay Buddha statue somehow maintained its original appearance!
At the abdomen of this clay statue, a crack had spread, almost splitting the front of the Buddha in two. As the accumulated snow collapsed, the crack expanded further, as if something was about to burst out from inside!
The gray-robed figure just stood quietly in the ruins, watching this scene, showing no intention to intervene.
Crack—!!
With a muffled sound, the clay Buddha statue split in half from the central crack, and a figure maintaining the same posture as the original Buddha statue sat quietly cross-legged on the stone platform.
It was a young monk in his early twenties, with handsome, refined features, wearing a muddy kasaya, yet his skin was fair and translucent, like a sacred Buddha born from the mire.
His face was identical to that of the gray-robed figure!
“You’re late coming out,” said Lin Qiye in the gray robe, calmly addressing the face that was completely identical to his own.
The monk slowly opened his eyes, which were like deep, calm autumn waters. Although his face was identical to Lin Qiye’s, his temperament was completely different. Every movement contained Zen meaning.
“Creating this physical body wasn’t easy, especially while avoiding detection by the [Key of the Door].”
He stood up from the ruins, patted the mud off his kasaya, and stood facing Lin Qiye in the wind and snow.
“What should I call you? Predetermined Outcome? Destiny Buddha? Or… Lin Qiye?” Lin Qiye asked.
The monk put his palms together and slightly bowed to Lin Qiye:
“Call me… [Destiny].”
“Destiny?” Lin Qiye examined the monk before him. “Is that your dharma name?”
“Names, dharma names, posthumous titles… they’re all illusions. Neither Buddha nor Taoist, neither god nor human, I am simply myself.”
Lin Qiye’s eyebrows slightly raised. “You see things quite clearly.”
“Humans always like to complicate simple matters through so-called ‘personality,’ ’emotions,’ ‘love and hate.’ I’m simply doing the opposite.”
Monk Destiny spoke with his palms together, his tone never fluctuating, sounding not like a living person but more like a cold machine.
This didn’t surprise Lin Qiye. A consciousness born from pure cause and effect wouldn’t possess human emotions but would have extremely terrifying computational power. This was exactly what he wanted.
“How are you solving this chess game?” Lin Qiye asked the question he cared about most.
“Within one thousand five hundred and twenty-five years, I performed six thousand four hundred and twenty trillion calculations. Based on our current pieces, the win rate is less than two-thousandths,” Monk Destiny said calmly.
“Two-thousandths…”
Lin Qiye had expected humanity’s odds to be low, but he hadn’t imagined that even after he went back to the Western Han Dynasty to set up this secret chess game, the odds would still be so small… It seemed that what the [Key of the Door] had said before—that throughout the river of history, humans had no chance of winning—wasn’t a joke.
The K-system was far more terrifying than they knew.
Lin Qiye frowned. “So, how many more chess pieces do we need?”
“Whether the win rate improves doesn’t depend on the quantity of pieces, but on their quality and the role they can play in cause and effect,” Monk Destiny paused. “Even three more Jade Emperors might not be as useful in this chess game as one Li Yifei.”
“I understand.” Lin Qiye nodded. “I’ll handle the issue of chess pieces… Now that you have a physical body, what are your plans?”
“For me, having a physical body or not doesn’t make much difference… I condensed this body only to complete a strand of cause and effect for you.”
“…Zhou Ping?”
“We need Zhou Ping, and Zhou Ping needs a [Fate-Turning Pearl] refined from this physical body of mine. Only in this way can we complete this causal paradox and completely hide Zhou Ping’s existence.”
“Since you’ve already figured it out, then go… If anything comes up, contact me directly through the causal threads.”
Lin Qiye came here only to meet this [Predetermined Outcome] and see if he was as expected, qualified to be a chess player… and Monk Destiny’s performance was even better than he had anticipated.
“Don’t forget, there’s still one person whose cause and effect you haven’t hidden,” Monk Destiny reminded.
“That era is too close to the past era where I was. To avoid the entanglement of two ‘me’s’ causal threads, I will seal my own causality fifty years in advance and fall into slumber… He will be left to you.”
“Very well.” Monk Destiny nodded slightly. “After I leave this body to Zhou Ping, I’ll condense another one.”
Seeing Lin Qiye turn to leave, Monk Destiny remained silent for a moment before slowly speaking:
“Cause.”
Lin Qiye stopped and looked back.
“Humanity cannot lose this chess game, correct?” Monk Destiny asked with palms together in the wind and snow.
“Naturally,” Lin Qiye replied matter-of-factly. “If humanity no longer exists, what would be the point of continuing this game?”
Monk Destiny stared at Lin Qiye for a long time, then nodded slightly:
“That is good.”
With these words, he turned and walked toward the other side of the mountain, his mud-covered kasaya disappearing into the wind and snow.
Seeing Monk Destiny suddenly ask such a question, Lin Qiye was puzzled, but he shook his head and walked down the mountain from the other side…
