Chapter 187

I squatted down and saw a line engraved on the piece of bronze that read: “Eastern Mahayana Golden Banner Ancestral Tower” (1). It seemed to be related to Buddhism, but I hadn’t studied it all that deeply.

I was waiting to hear what Black Glasses had to say, but Fatty spoke up before he could say anything, “Is this an ancestral tower of Eastern Mahayana?”

“Do you know something about it?” I asked him.

“What’s it say?” Fatty got excited and turned to Black Glasses, “Do you think this Eastern Mahayana is that Eastern Mahayana?”

Black Glasses nodded, “It should be. Who would create such a fake?”

Seeing my confused look, Fatty explained to me, “This was a huge cult during the Ming Dynasty. At that time, it was called the Eastern Mahayana Sect throughout the whole country. In Fujian, it was called the Jin Chuang Sect or Jin Tong Sect (2). In the very beginning, this cult was focused on alchemy and set up elixir towers deep in the mountains all over the country. During the Qing Dynasty and Republic period, it began to collect money and participate in politics. Later, most of them were wiped out, but the sect still exists in many places.”

“In its heyday, the Jin Tong Sect conducted a lot of activities across the country and would set up headquarters that they called immortal mountains. Since “Ancestral Tower” is written here, it must’ve been a very large venue for their activities. It looks like there are some towers and immortal palace halls buried underground here,” Black Glasses added.

“But what does that have to do with listening to thunder?” I asked. “Why do people come here after hearing thunder?”

Everyone was silent, which made it obvious that they didn’t know. Black Glasses suddenly laughed, “You’re quite studious.”

“The Jin Tong Sect focused on alchemy and spells, with their ultimate goal being immortality,” Fatty said. “But the modern Jin Tong Sect seems to be doing cash loans.” He seemed to realize that he had said something he shouldn’t, so he immediately changed the subject, “If you want to be immortal, you have to be struck by lightning and overcome the catastrophe. Look at the top of this bronze tower.  It’s probably meant to attract thunder.”

I sighed in my heart. Fatty must’ve borrowed from a loan shark recently. Fortunately, I didn’t have to worry about someone forcing him to pay back the money. As for the Jin Tong Sect, I also remembered some things at this time. I still had some common sense, so I knew that the Jin Tong Sect was around during the Wanli period (3) of the Ming Dynasty when the smelting technology was very developed. The bronze on top of this tower was obviously not the bronze used at that time, but should’ve been from an earlier period.

If Uncle Three and Yang Daguang had also been here, then it was very likely that the Song Dynasty murals in Yang Daguang’s ancestral tomb had come from here. Were these bronze towers from the Song Dynasty? If I remembered correctly, the Jin Tong Sect had been inextricably linked with the Luo and Mahayana Sects during the Northern Wei Dynasty. In particular, the Mahayana Sect in the Northern Wei Dynasty continued on until the Northern Song Dynasty (4), where it reached its peak. This sect had a few sayings about the Barren Ghost Mother that basically became the model for later cults.

At this time, I had a flash of inspiration, but I didn’t say it aloud. During the Ming Dynasty, there was a Taoist priest named Dai Mingshuo (5) who wrote a strange book that seemed to be a mix between a novel and a record. In that book, he wrote about a place called Wusheng Temple, which was said to be the ancestral home of the Barren Ghost Mother (6). It could only be seen when there was thunder in the sky. In other words, it only appeared when there was a clap of thunder.

The cult’s ancestral halls were always ratified, since it was impossible to build one directly. They would find some clues from legends that matched with some of the ancient temples, and if they could make reasonable stories out of them, they would repair the temples before publicizing them. The bronze here was very old, so were they ancient towers from the Song Dynasty that were discovered by the Jin Tong Sect later and renovated into ancestral towers where alchemy was performed?

If so, then why did they choose this place to renovate the ancestral towers? Did these ancient towers correlate with the natural phenomenon that occurred when the poisonous fog dispersed after the thunderstorms here? Or did they have something to do with the legends of the Barren Ghost Mother?

We would only know once we went in.

Our group started looking around for any grave robbers’ tunnels. Fatty warned us that if there really were bronze towers underneath, then the structure under our feet was actually very fragile and we couldn’t just blow it up randomly. I told him that he was the only one who would randomly throw explosives here, so he should just worry about himself.

We were all experts, so it didn’t take long to find the grave robbers’ tunnel. It was covered in woven cattail mats and hidden under some weeds. Fatty wanted to shove the mats aside, but Black Glasses suddenly said, “Wait, let’s discuss it first.”

<Chapter 186><Table of Contents><Chapter 188>

****

TN Notes:

(1) Mahāyāna is a term for a broad group of Buddhist traditions, texts, philosophies, and practices. It’s considered one of the two main existing branches of Buddhism and was developed in India. Info here.

(2) The pinyin stands for “Golden Banner” and “Golden Child”, respectively. I was only finding info on the Chinese Wikipedia page here. According to this, it’s a sect that departed from the eastern “Great Vehicle” proliferation of Luoism in the 16th century and adopted features of the White Lotus tradition.

(3) Wanli is the reign name of Ming emperor (1573-1619)   

(4) Northern Wei Dynasty was from 386-534 and the Northern Song Dynasty was from 960-1127

(5) Idk about a Taoist priest, but I found this painter guy here that seems to fit the Ming Dynasty timeline. One of his paintings is on the “related objects” tab if you want to check it out.

(6) “Wusheng” (无生) can mean barren or unborn.

****

Tiffany’s starting on the “Mystic Nine 2” for us (all 14 chapters of it lol). The page is here if you’re interested and I went ahead and added it to the chart on the homepage.