After Li Dai disappeared, the Buddha Son appeared very silent. While everyone watched him with worry, he acted as if nothing had happened. With a single wave of his hand, the mountain where Li Dai had vanished was sealed off, and outsiders were barred from coming within a thousand meters. The devastation inside, along with everything destroyed by the lightning, was shielded from view.
Seeing the Buddha Son behave this way, the elder monks grew even more worried. Walking on thin ice day and night, they watched him cautiously, terrified that he might give up and take his own life or something similar. However, such worries faded when they saw him reciting scriptures unfailingly every day, appearing in public even less frequently than before. Well, perhaps the Buddha Son simply hadn't recovered his senses yet after Li Dai's death; the consequences wouldn't be that severe. The Buddha Son's truest devotion was still to the Buddha, even if some of their clever minds vaguely sensed that his feelings for Li Dai were different. But so what? With the person gone, what else was there to talk about?
Yet, they felt reassured far too early. On this particular day, the Buddha Son looked at the characters for "greed, hatred, and delusion" in the scriptures and fell into silence. In the past, he had felt that these three words merely represented the delusions and three sufferings of all living beings. Now, having the fortune to experience it firsthand, he suddenly realized that he, too, was…
Chapter 638