I don't understand why Lu Ya wanted to take me to see the monk turning into a Buddha.

He told me that it was to imitate something.

"Imitate?" I didn't understand, "Such a thing has never happened in the Western Heaven!"

"The Tathagata is the Tathagata, Guanyin is Guanyin," Lu Ya said, "They didn't ascend to the Western Heaven from the human world."

"I don't get it."

"Then let me ask you, before Fengshen, didn't people want to cultivate immortality? Didn't they want to become gods? Where did they all go?"

"I don't know."

Lu Ya laughed.

Before Lu Ya, he had a master.

His master had become an immortal through cultivation a long time ago.

The master told Lu Ya that if he wanted to cultivate immortality, he had to slay the Three Corpse Demons.

The Three Corpse Demons would sneak up to heaven while people were sleeping and speak ill of them. When heaven found out, they would blame the person, making it difficult for them to ascend to immortality. So, cultivators would stay awake at night, wanting to kill the Three Corpse Demons. His master became an immortal by slaying the Three Corpse Demons and transforming into a divine being.

However, the process of his master becoming immortal was not pretty.

The years of battling the Three Corpse Demons made him look withered. He was already old, and he often didn't dare to rest. So, it was only he who claimed he had become an immortal because his emaciated body was clearly still sleeping in the Taoist temple.

Occasionally, he would wake up from his slumber and tell Lu Ya and the others about what he had seen in heaven.

"The clothes worn by the fairies are like rainbows, and the horses ridden by the immortals are like gusts of wind. They only have the form of horses, but their fur, body, and hooves are all made of wind. They ride on clouds, they drive through mist," the master said, "I drank too much at the banquet and wanted to sleep, but they said my body was still in the mortal realm, so I should return to my body first and meet you all."

After finishing, the master fell back into slumber.

He woke up for the second time in the autumn wind blowing from the west. He instructed Lu Ya and the others on how to handle his body.

"Leave Nanko Town, head south towards Zhongnan Mountain, walk one thousand six hundred and thirty-four steps, and you will come across a large tree that looks dead. But it doesn't matter, just place my body under that tree."

Following the master's instructions, Lu Ya carried the master's body and walked south. He really did see a tree, completely blackened as if struck by lightning, and it appeared to have gone through a fire, a dead tree.

Lu Ya placed the master's body under the tree, and at that moment, the bark of the dead tree suddenly fell off, and the dead tree turned into a living tree. That tree rapidly rejuvenated before the naked eye, and in no time, the dead tree had completely revived.

With slender branches and tender green leaves, amidst the western wind, the surrounding trees were shedding endless autumn leaves, but only this tree was radiating the scenery of spring.

Then, the branches gently caressed the master's body, and Lu Ya witnessed a strange scene.

The master's body suddenly turned into a pile of fallen leaves, and in an instant, the tree, with its hazy greenery, turned back into a dead tree, and the master disappeared.