Becoming A Monk In Tokyo - Chapter 45

Chapter 45: I Have Been Hinting To You For So Long

It was a new beginning on Monday.

It was 4 a.m. in the morning. The sky had not brightened yet, but Baishi Shū was already up and had begun his morning service.

Compared to his usual scripture chanting, recently he had added one more new subject to the morning service: exercising. However, different from the orthodox exercises, he did not have to move around. All he had to do was circulate his spiritual power throughout his body while adjusting the frequency to strengthen his cells. Since no extra time was needed, he figured that he should practice the Baishi Universal Deliverance while chanting the Diamond Sutra.

Each recitation of a few scripture verses could strengthen a type of cell in his body. Every time he finished one bout of the Diamond Sutra, he would be practicing the Baishi Universal Deliverance once. Put it differently, if he chanted the Diamond Sutra 10 times per day, he would be practicing the Baishi Universal Deliverance 10 times. It was like killing two birds with one stone.

He knew that this was totally not enough compared to other monks who practiced silent meditation retreat. However, considering that he still needed to go to school and carry out an exorcism request every day, a total of 5 hours of practice was more than enough.

“I’m going out!” Baishi Shū prepared to go to school after he finished the morning service.

He bade the old abbot goodbye and exited the temple. Just when he was going down the staircase, he lost control of his body and fell forward …

Humans would subconsciously try to balance themselves when they fell down, and that was what Baishi Shū did. His feet moved so fast they left a couple of afterimages behind. Within a fraction of a second, he had balanced himself and stood up. Just when he let out a sigh, he caught something from the corner of his eyes and was stunned. There were holes in the shape of his foot here and there on the steps.

Turning his head, he found that the old abbot was looking at him silently. Both of them stared at each other in an abysmal awkwardness, and nobody spoke for a long time.

“Erm, Abbot, I think I should take another two days of leave…” Baishi Shū said, breaking the silence first.

This was his first time taking leave from his school ever since he arrived in this world. This was because he still could not control the power brought forth by the Baishi Universal Deliverance. Although he knew that he would experience rapid growth during the initial stage of practicing a method, he had not expected something like this.

From a weak student, who had a hard time finishing a 400-meter run, he became an expert martial artist whose physical fitness had improved by more than a hundred times. His brain was not able to adapt to the sudden growth, and he would sometimes accidentally damage the things around him.

Therefore, for the safety of his peers in the school as well as other people, he reckoned that he should stay at the temple and wait for his body and brain to adapt to the newfound strength first before going out to meet people again.

The old abbot gave an understanding nod. “Alright. When the construction team comes later, I will get them to repair the staircase as well.”

After that, the old abbot fell silent for a second before continuing, “I’ll help you inform your teacher that you will be taking two days of leave from school. Don’t worry, Shinsei, you can leave your phone aside.”

“Okay then…” Truth be told, Baishi Shū felt a little embarrassed. He knew that the old abbot did that was for his own good, what happened just now was just an accident. He was confident that he could control his strength when using his phone. After all, he did not want to waste money on buying a new phone.

Be that as it may, he did not insist and allowed the old abbot to help him contact the school on his behalf. Then, he went to the forest outside of the temple. After he found a nice spot, he began exercising to adjust himself to the surging power that he had gained from practicing the Baishi Universal Deliverance four times that morning.

He was not going to perform any martial art skills. There were no scriptures in Reimei Temple that taught martial skills, and he had not been exposed to anything like this before no matter if it was in his previous incarnation or in the current one.

In his previous incarnation, he had just been a young man in his mid-twenties. He had just graduated from university for two years before he was sent to this world. He had never signed up for any fitness classes, yoga classes, or Taekwondo, and he had never stepped into a gym before.

The silver lining was there was the internet here. He went online and searched for a fitness video. Then, studying the person in the video, he began to move his body around.

After half an hour, he was slowly getting hold of his own strength. However, this did not mean that he could stop now. He was aware that the moment he started practicing the method, he would lose control of his power again.

This was easy to explain. If practicing the Baishi Universal Deliverance could improve his physical fitness by one unit, then as a person who had a zero base of physical fitness, to begin with, it could be considered as an exponential growth after practicing the method for a couple of times. He assumed by the time he had a dozen of units in a few more days, increasing one or two units of physical fitness would not cause his body to react so drastically anymore.

Three days.

This was the deadline Baishi Shū had set for himself.

He aimed to adjust his body to the raging power within three days and return to school. It went without saying that he did not take any break while he was away from school. He had several university textbooks kept in his bag, so he could read them at any time. It was just that the reading atmosphere in the temple was not as good as when he was in school.

Returning to the temple, he sat on the futon and sighed.

Suddenly, the phone in his pocket vibrated. He pulled it out and carefully tapped the screen. Then, he saw a message.

It was from Asada Senna.

The miko had been sending messages to him recently. Most of the time, she would talk about the results of her video, when the next request would come, and express her admiration that Baishi Shū had so many requests while she had none.

The second episode of “Midnight Ghost Busting” was a huge success. Apart from that, it scored a pretty good result in several video sites outside Japan as well.

Baishi Shū reckoned that this must have something to do with this world. Due to the frequent paranormal activity, people in this world often heard about all kinds of urban folktales.

However, due to the reason that the number of paranormal activity that occurred was far too few compared to the total population, most of them had not seen a ghost before. They just heard about them from their friends or family members, so they were skeptical about the story that went around. Even if there were real ghost videos on the internet, they did not quite believe it. After all, they were not professionals like Baishi Shu, so they could not tell the real from the fake. Besides, even live-streaming videos could be faked, let alone those paranormal activity videos whereby props to imitate ghosts could be easily made. Therefore, it was no surprise to see that Asada Senna’s video, which featured real exorcism, could attract such a large amount of audience and fans, given her status as an official miko from a famous shrine.

In fact, her video had become so popular that people were beginning to imitate her. That was the reason she was so restless. She wanted to produce more videos so that she would not be overtaken by other people.

Unfortunately, most of the fans and viewers from the “Midnight Ghost Busting” chose Baishi Shū over her when they needed someone to help them ward off the evil spirits.

“It is all your fault, do you know that? You can have eight requests in one night, but I have none!” This was the first message that popped up the moment he switched his phone open.

Well, Baishi Shū had to admit that this was a fact.

Although the viewers might favor Asada Senna more since she had a cute face and a charming voice, when they really encountered an evil spirit, most of them would approach the monk who came out at the last minute and got rid of the evil spirit in one strike. After all, all of them were clear that between two of them, Baishi Shū was the one with the real skills.

Truth be told, the people that came to him recently had been troubled by evil spirits for a long time. Most of them were poor, and their cases were not as severe. Otherwise, they would not have waited for so long before they finally approached Baishi Shu. Hence, he took three days from Friday to Sunday to settle all the requests.

There had not been anybody calling in today. Baish Shū figured that he had to do something. He could not stand to see Asada Senna fade out of the public eyes because she could not produce any more videos since she did not receive any request.

Although he still had not decided which building he should add the next time, it never hurt to earn some money.

Besides, it would also affect him if Asada Senna’s popularity and fanbase dwindled. If that happened, he would not be able to make an appearance in her video anymore. By that time, no matter how much money he earned, there was no way he could direct popularity to Reimei Temple. Without popularity, there would not be any visitors, and nobody would know about the existence of Reimei Temple.

After a short bout of thinking, Baishi Shū had an idea.

He tapped the screen with his finger lightly and replied, “How about this? When I receive a request next time, I’ll ask my client’s consent to allow you to tag along and record the exorcism process. But I won’t share the remuneration with you. Are you okay with that?”

“Sure! Sure! I’m okay with it! Thank you, Baishi-san!” Asada Senna replied instantly.

In the corridor of a shrine, Asada Senna pumped her fist in the air. Happiness was written all over her face as she said, “What a stonehead! I have been hinting to him since Friday, and now, he finally gets me!