Chapter 1061: 515 Jiaojiao (Two Updates)_2 Chapter 1061: 515 Jiaojiao (Two Updates)_2 “How can you treat the Living Buddha like this! The Living Buddha is a good person! He is sent by the Buddha to save us! If you disrespect the Living Buddha, you will suffer retribution!” an old lady said indignantly.

Zhang Can’s toothache got worse!

Old lady, open your eyes and look! This bald donkey is a fake!

Which master would collude with the rebels and plunge the people of the borderlands into war?

And he still, he still…

Zhang Can almost blurted out what he had just found out, but Gu Changqing’s timely words stopped him. Looking down at the sitting Living Buddha, Gu Changqing asked, unruffled, “You say you are the Living Buddha, well then, let me ask you, how many chapters are there in the ‘Diamond Sutra’?”

“Thirty-two chapters!” the Living Buddha answered without hesitation.

“What is the thirty-second chapter about, do you remember?”

The impostor monk sneered inside, thinking that anyone who pretends to be the Living Buddha must at least know the ‘Diamond Sutra’.

He performed a Buddhist salute and slowly said, “Xi Puti! If a person should give away treasures as many as the sands of the Ganges to practice charity, and if a good man or woman develops the mind of enlightenment and adheres to this sutra, even just four lines of gatha, accepts, reads, and recites it, and explains it for others, his blessings will surpass the former. How should it be explained for others? Without clinging to form, unmoved and steadfast. Why? For all conditioned phenomena are like dreams, illusions, bubbles, shadows, like dew and like lightning; thus should they be contemplated. Once Buddha had spoken this sutra, the elderly Xi Puti along with monks and nuns, laymen and laywomen, and all beings in the world including gods, humans, and asuras heard what the Buddha had said, and received it with joy and practiced it.”

“You see! He is the Living Buddha!” another villager said.

Zhang Can’s temper flared up, unable to resist retorting, “Just knowing a bit of the Buddhist Scriptures makes one the Living Buddha? Then if I can recite a few passages from the Four Books and the Five Classics, does that make me the new top scholar?”

“Do you know that Shajiamouni once wrote a scroll called ‘The Minor Sirangama Sutra’, which he wrote before enlightenment when he was still a prince? Can you cite some phrases from it?”

The impostor monk’s expression briefly froze.

Generally, those minor sutras are not widely known Buddhist Scriptures, and being not a real monk, how could he possibly memorize all of the Buddhist Scriptures?

It’s also odd, clearly just a brawny soldier, how does he know Buddhist Scriptures?

Does someone in your family happen to be a monk?

Or the kind that can recite the Buddhist Scriptures by heart, reading them out to you every day?

“I am of course aware of ‘The Minor Sirangama Sutra’, but I seldom discuss this particular scripture when I preach the Buddha’s teachings. Even if I were to speak of it, there would be few who have heard of it. Should this donor slander me by saying I spout nonsense, who could testify to my innocence?”

Heh, trivial tricks, not enough to fool him!

Gu Changqing then said, “As the Living Buddha, you should have this scroll with you.”

The impostor monk calmly responded, “The scripture… has already been burned by your people!”

Zhang Can angrily said, “You’re lying! When did I burn your things!”

Gu Changqing looked toward the impostor monk, his expression calm and composed, “So the master admits there is such a Buddhist scripture in the world.”

With that statement, the impostor monk’s expression stiffened again.

Gu Changqing continued evenly, “Does the master know that there is in fact no such Buddhist scripture in the world?”

The ‘Sirangama Sutra’ exists.

But ‘The Minor Sirangama Sutra’ was purely made up by Gu Changqing to deceive him.

Gu Changqing looked at him lightly, “Before enlightenment, Shajiamouni was a common man. How could he have written Buddhist Scriptures? Being revered as the Living Buddha, do you not even understand such simple logic?”

…

The impostor monk was left speechless, unable to retort.

Who says generals lack brains? This youngster was too cunning, setting a trap for him!

Not everyone among the crowd was a devotee of the Living Buddha, and many who still had their wits about them began to speak out loudly after seeing such a blatant mistake from the Living Buddha, “He can’t possibly be a fake monk, can he?”

The impostor monk, more bluster than substance, declared, “I am the Living Buddha! Not a fake monk!”

“But you don’t even know the Buddhist Scriptures!” the young man who had previously challenged him continued.

“I, that was…”

Before the impostor monk could finish, Gu Changqing raised his hand, and several soldiers from the Gu Family approached, escorting a few women.

The woman at the front, about the same age as the impostor monk, was draped in pearls and wore dazzling jewelry, contrasting sharply with the impoverished and war-stricken villagers.

The women following her were dressed just as opulently, albeit younger.

Upon seeing this group enter, the impostor monk’s face already began to show signs of strain; he wanted them to keep quiet, but it was already too late.