The First Venerable of the Prosperous Age

It was already night, and a man and a woman were sitting blankly by the East Lake.

The bright moon hung in the sky, and the evening breeze rippled across the still lake, but nothing could stir Lu Xiaosan's cold heart...

"Are you sure... you want to go down tonight?" Wen Ying asked, tilting her head and blinking beside him.

"This is the last clue the old woodcutter gave us."

Lu Xiaosan rolled her eyes at her again and said sternly, "I can go down by myself!"

His encounter with the chivalrous man strengthened his resolve to pursue freedom, so he suppressed his feelings for Wen Ying once again and deliberately spoke coldly to her.

But Wen Ying was not like she had been at the beginning; she seemed to have seen through his heart.

She dangled her small feet in the lake, rested her chin on her hand, and looked at him lazily, saying, "Alright, then you go find the lotus grass yourself. I'll wait for you here."

Lu Xiaosan gritted his teeth, closed his eyes, and leaned his body into the lake. He froze halfway in, his face filled with pain.

He struggled like this for a long time before finally leaning back and sitting back on the lakeside, panting heavily, his face full of frustration.

Wen Ying nodded and smiled, "Compared to last time, you got even closer to the lake this time. Not bad, you've improved."

This was Lu Xiaosan's thirty-second request to go into the lake alone, but each time she only managed to explore halfway before gritting her teeth and turning back.

Therefore, Wen Ying's attitude has long since changed from a firm refusal to a playful one.

"What is it in this lake that scares you so much?" Wen Ying asked with a smile.

Lu Xiaosan turned her head away, both angry and embarrassed. Wen Ying could only shrug and lazily said, "Never mind what I said."

No sooner had the words left his mouth than a gurgling sound came from the lake.

The two stared intently and saw that under the bright moon, the lake surface was like boiling water, with bubbles constantly rising to the surface...

The bubbles grew denser and denser, gradually converging in the center of the lake. Slowly, they rolled inward into a huge whirlpool, as if trying to stir up the bright moon in the sky.

Both of them were startled by the sudden appearance of this strange place, and exclaimed in astonishment, "Then...it seems that the old woodcutter was right, there really is something strange under East Lake."

Lu Xiaosan slowly stood up, his expression gradually changing from shock to seriousness. He reached out and called back the glittering Buddhist beads, which immediately emitted a foul odor.

With a determined look in his eyes, he said, "Since there's a demon, I'm not going to pretend anymore, I'm coming clean!"

Seeing that he had suddenly acted strangely, Wen Ying covered her nose and hurriedly asked, "What...what are you going to do?"

With a "plop," water splashed up as Lu Xiaosan finally jumped into the water.

The icy lake water sent shivers down his spine, and he held the prayer beads above his head with trembling hands.

"Om Chilimu, Om Chilimu..." He made up the Manjushri protective mantra, and then golden light enveloped his whole body.

"Hoo! Hoo..." With the golden light shield, he could breathe underwater.

These prayer beads are the most filthy and foul-smelling things in the world, but once they recognize their owner...

Exorcising demons, suppressing souls, and braving mountains of knives and seas of fire are all as easy as taking candy from a baby, let alone the bottom of a small lake.

The chosen one for the Buddhist prayer beads is the lord of all demons.

Even the Ox-Head and Horse-Face demons, and the Black and White Impermanence, must show proper respect to this Yama of the Great Age.

But though these prayer beads are ruthless, to ordinary people they are nothing more than a string of yellow beads that have been soaking in a latrine for too long, and no one would want them even if they were given away for free.

Those chosen by the Buddhist prayer beads are even worse off; from the moment they are chosen, the filth on their bodies is difficult to remove.

In this way, one would inevitably be disliked by everyone, and it's highly likely that one might have just eliminated a scourge of evil spirits during the day, only to die that very night at the hands of some nameless thug, leaving their body exposed in the wilderness, and ultimately being disposed of like excrement.

That's how Lu Xiaosan got to where he is today, or rather, it was destined to be his fate.

For example, right now, he sees a school of fish swimming by in the dark water.

They all stared with round, bloodshot eyes, covered in dense scales, their mouths constantly wriggling and expanding, and large patches of white belly. Every part of them made Lu Xiaosan's scalp tingle and his skin crawl.

He was watching the school of fish with extreme vigilance when suddenly a fish turned its tail, stared with its dead-looking eyes, and opened its mouth which writhed like a maggot, and swam toward him without warning.

"Oh my god!" Lu Xiaosan was so frightened that he turned around and ran away in a panic, afraid that the cute little fish would touch him.

As he suddenly turned around, he stumbled into something soft.

"Ouch." The girl let out a soft cry, as she had fallen into Wen Ying's arms again.

Seeing him go into the water, Wen Ying didn't hesitate and immediately followed him.

But as soon as he entered the water, Lu Xiaosan turned into a frightened baby and immediately threw himself into her arms.

Wen Ying hesitated for a moment, then couldn't help but pat Lu Xiaosan's trembling body as if comforting a child, saying, "Alright, alright, don't be afraid anymore, hee hee hee."

Immediately afterward, Wen Ying was suddenly stunned. "Huh, why can I still talk underwater?" Then she saw the Buddha's light enveloping the two of them, and then she understood.

That familiar, damned gentleness quickly brought Lu Xiaosan back to her senses.

As soon as he broke free and turned around, all he saw was that huge, eerie fish face, as pale as a dead man's.

"Mommy!!! Help me!!" Lu Xiaosan was so scared that he wet himself. He immediately used his hands and feet to tightly grab Wen Ying's neck with his arms and his legs to tightly clamp Wen Ying's slender waist.

His head shrank directly into Wen Ying's chest, and his whole body began to tremble violently. This time, he would never let go, no matter what!

When Wen Ying saw Lu Xiaosan in such a disheveled state for the first time, she was both amused and exasperated. She gently patted Lu Xiaosan's back and said softly, "Alright, alright, Mommy's right here, haha."

The gentle caresses on his back and the soft comfort he felt all over his body made Lu Xiaosan's heart, which had been pounding in his throat, sink a little.

Lu Xiaosan's fear of fish stems from an incident in his childhood:

He caught the fish in the morning, but it wasn't steamed and served until evening.

He had always been rough and unruly since childhood. He found removing fish bones troublesome and was also extremely hungry. So he put the whole fish in his mouth, chewed it a few times, and swallowed it whole.

Everyone has seen fish wriggling in the pot, but that night, he experienced the feeling of a fish leaping over the dragon gate in his stomach.

In the first half of the night, Lu Xiaosan's stomach churned violently, as if tens of thousands of needles were pricking it, and the pain traveled from his stomach all the way to his intestines.

It wasn't just the excruciating pain, but also the sensation of a foreign object extending from my teeth into my intestines.

It felt like someone shoved a stick into your mouth and then pulled it out of your mouth without touching any of your organs.

If asked what he felt during the first half of the night, Lu Xiaosan only regretted not having a knife in his hand, otherwise he would have personally cut open the fish's belly and taken it out.

Then, biting it down into tiny pieces, thorns and all, he swallowed it. He then used his dissected stomach to digest it completely before excreting it, purely to vent his anger.

But fantasy is still fantasy. All he could do was writhe around with his stomach, roll on the ground, vomit and have diarrhea.

I was tormented by this agonizing ordeal for several hours before it finally calmed down a little.

As the night drew to a close, his face turned deathly pale, and even breathing became a luxury.

He was afraid the fish would come back to life, so he tossed and turned in bed for a long time before finally falling into a drowsy sleep as dawn broke...

I woke up suddenly after sleeping for a while, and the first thing I saw when I opened my eyes was a live fish with eyes as round as a dead person's!

The fish was right next to my pillow. Because there was no water, its wriggling mouth opened and closed, struggling desperately to survive.

Lu Xiaosan was stunned. Suddenly, he saw the fish's mouth split open along its face, blood spurting out, and it opened to its widest extent with a whoosh.

"Slap slap slap," a sticky fish face suddenly appeared on my face.

He hurriedly brushed the fish off his face, sat up, and found that his body, the bed, and the floor were covered with white dead fish, each with bloody dead fish eyes, and their bodies were covered with wounds inflicted by Lu Xiaosan.

Startled by the bizarre scene, Lu Xiaosan was immediately filled with rage.

He tried to stand up, but couldn't move at all.

Just when everyone thought the fish had all died there, suddenly the dead fish turned their eyes and all stared at Lu Xiaosan with eyes full of vengeance.

Immediately afterwards, they rolled over belly to belly and began to tumble around in place.

The only thing they had in common and that remained unchanged was their pair of cold, dead fish eyes, determined to tear Lu Xiaosan to shreds!

With each leap of these fish, Lu Xiaosan's heart skipped a beat, wondering which one would stop jumping first...

Now I am the fish on the chopping block, and the fish is the butcher!

Even someone as arrogant as Lu Xiaosan broke out in a cold sweat at the sight of this terrifying scene, swallowing hard in fear.

Slowly, these dead fish began to leap higher and farther. Their white bellies, covered in blood and gore, glared with resentful, lifeless eyes as they hopped towards Lu Xiaosan's face, leaving conspicuous trails of blood on the ground.

Lu Xiaosan was completely paralyzed, and could only watch as one after another, terrifying fish faces slowly approached him…

The fish's eyes, filled with resentment, its constantly writhing mouth, and its bloody scales became increasingly clear.

These chilling scenes were thus deeply etched into Lu Xiaosan's mind.

He finally screamed, jolted back to reality from his nightmare…

After that incident, I didn't eat anything for three days.

After that, he could no longer even eat fish, let alone just look at it; the scene of those dead fish faces jumping onto his face would replay in his mind.

Because of the fish, he almost never went swimming in the river again...