“Alright, Master!”
Orchid quickly followed, and the old abbot trailed behind at a distance.
After leaving Jingguang Temple’s gates, Xu Fei didn’t storm down the mountain in a huff as the two had assumed, instead, he headed straight to the back of the temple.
About a few hundred metres behind Jingguang Temple stood a massive banyan tree, so thick that five or six people couldn’t encircle it together, Xu Fei soon arrived in front of it.
“Based on the faint traces of true qi I sensed earlier, it’s very likely that the legendary golden Arhat statues are hidden here, so why can’t I find them?”
Xu Fei searched around in the tree hollow below but couldn’t locate the golden Arhats no matter how hard he looked.
“Senior, what are you looking for? There’s nothing in this tree hollow, I used to play here as a kid.”
Orchid caught up, and her casual remark served as a reminder to Xu Fei.
Xu Fei then channelled his true qi, forcibly illuminating the hollow below, and what he saw was astonishing!
“This… I see now, no wonder I couldn’t find the legendary golden Arhats…”
Seeing Xu Fei muttering to himself, Orchid grew somewhat worried.
“Senior, what’s wrong with you? Why did you suddenly come here?”
By now, the old abbot had also arrived, and seeing Xu Fei staring at the old banyan tree with a silly grin, he too became anxious.
“Here, let me open your eyes!”
Xu Fei noticed his own lapse and the concern of the two, so he leapt high into the air and gently struck the banyan tree’s trunk with a single palm.
“This… is this real?”
When Xu Fei landed, the old abbot and Orchid saw that where he had struck, a slit opened in the banyan tree, revealing a glimmer of golden light from within.
The old abbot was beside himself with excitement, for that golden gleam came from none other than the long-lost golden Arhat statues!
“I understand now, this must be the effort made by the old abbot of Jingguang Temple back in those turbulent times to protect the golden Arhats.”
The old abbot murmured to himself, finally grasping the painstaking intentions of his predecessors.
Back then, to safeguard the golden Arhats, the old abbot had deliberately omitted their hiding place in the banyan tree, even in the story passed down by word of mouth.
For the best way to protect a secret is to ensure no one knows it exists.
“Senior, take those four jade Arhats, if it weren’t for your arrival today, I might have gone to my grave never knowing the golden Arhats were here.”
The old abbot seemed to have an epiphany, smiling as he looked at Xu Fei.
“Should I dig out the golden Arhats then? Don’t worry, with me here today, even if I extract them, this banyan tree won’t die!”
Xu Fei appeared very confident, but the old abbot shook his head.
“No need to trouble yourself, Senior, where are there any golden Arhats? The Buddha resides in the heart, besides, this place is called Jingguang Temple, not Arhat Temple, so there’s no need for that.”
The old abbot’s words made his choice clear, and Xu Fei respected it.
“The old abbot’s right, there are no golden Arhats here at all, don’t you agree?”
With that, Xu Fei gathered a ball of pure true qi in his hand and drove it into the ground.
The area around the banyan tree was filled with more banyan trees, it must have been a banyan grove back in the day.
