Reaching the mountain peak, Chen Xuan gazed into the distance. Across the mountain ranges—whether on the plains, the mountainsides, or at the foot of the hills—Buddhist temples of every conceivable shape rose abruptly from the ground. Thousands of temples stood in a dense, magnificent array.
At that moment, a verse involuntarily came to Chen Xuan's mind: "Four hundred and eighty temples of the Southern Dynasties, how many pavilions and towers in the misty rain."
The grand spectacle before his eyes was far more staggering than those lines suggested. Tens of thousands of Buddhist temples sat closely packed together, with a shrine every ten paces and a hall every hundred. And this was merely a tiny fraction of the Three Thousand Buddhist Realms.
Chapter 5659