Thousand Miles of Bright Moonlight

Chapter 130: Eat Meat

Before it was bright out, Yaoying was awakened by Xie Qing.

She remembered that today was the day Tumoroga would lead the sutra lecture, so she got up, freshened up, and put on a plain cloth robe. She read a sutra by the flickering candlelight while eating a sesame hubing, reciting it silently.

The sound of bells came from beyond the flower trellis, through the layers of branches and vines, sounding deep and distant.

At the first glimmers of dawn, Yuanjue came over to lead Yaoying to the main hall and nodded in satisfaction when he saw that she was simply dressed. Her long black hair was pinned up with a simple jasper hairpin and she wore no other gold or jade jewelry.

The courtyard where Yaoying lived was in the northeast of the temple, far from the main hall. They passed through several long, airy corridors on the way. She pointed to a far courtyard below and asked curiously, "What is that place?"

These days, she found that the outermost part of the Buddhist temple was filled with many high and low halls and residences. Some were official offices, some were post houses, some were residences, and some were places of retreat for princes and nobles. The courtyard she was staying in belonged to the latter, so technically she did not live in the Buddhist temple and could therefore come and go freely.

The Buddhist temple was a place where the monarchs of the Royal Court practiced, covering a wide area, with monks gathering, soldiers on guard as far as the eye could see, and many people coming to pay homage every day, making it very lively. However, the Buddhist temple had one courtyard that had been continuously vacant. Secluded and desolate, rarely did anyone enter in and out of it.

It was the courtyard at her feet.

Yuanjue followed Yaoying's line of sight and whispered, "That's the Hall of Punishment."

Yaoying did not continue to probe.

She vaguely remembered that Tumoroga had been imprisoned in the Buddhist temple since birth. The princes and nobles wanted to scare him and wear down his spirit, so they deliberately locked him up in the Hall of Punishment until he was thirteen.

The Hall of Punishment was dug out to be one floor lower. The morning light poured down into the gloomy courtyard. It was like falling into a bottomless well, without a single gleam of light, dark and cold.

How uncomfortable would it have been to live in such a place for ten years?

When she approached the main hall, the noise of people entered Yaoying's ears.

Tumoroga allowed ordinary people to enter the temple to listen to the sermon, regardless of their status and gender. Early in the morning, the pious people gathered under the hall, and there were a lot of people in front of the steps. Even though everyone deliberately lowered their voices, there was still a murmur of talking.

The sermon was about to begin.

The hall was built on top of a platform. It was unlike the Buddhist temples with lingering incense and smoke and liveliness of the Central Plains. Clearly, Buddhism in the Royal Court and Buddhism in the Central Plains each had the inclusion of a lot of local traditions since their original circulation from Tianzhu. The hall's four walls were painted with exquisite frescoes; it was a large dome of elegant blue flowers. The magnificent hall was empty and clean, surrounded by many narrow passages that two people could walk side by side through.

There was a high platform in the hall, with monks gathered right under the platform. The frontmost left seats shone with gold from the group of noble princes and nobles dressed in luxurious clothes. The hallways were guarded by monk soldiers, and the common people at the bottom of the steps were looking up on tiptoe from time to time.