Taming the Buddha

Taming the Buddha is a xianxia fantasy novel by the Chinese web author o Di Shen. It was serialized on Qidian from January 31, 2011, to May 30, 2012, running 192 chapters including five side stories, for a total of about 500,000 characters. The story begins on Mount Lianheng: the lotus demon Hualian is harassed by a tiger demon and rescued by a man in white, Yin Mo. Yin Mo claims to be the martial uncle of the abbot of the Golden Wheel Temple, yet he eats meat, drinks wine, and kills, utterly unlike a traditional monk, and he keeps telling Hualian, "Benefactor, you have a karmic bond with the Buddha." As a lotus demon of extraordinary origin but extremely weak cultivation, Hualian's greatest fear is becoming the lotus throne beneath a Buddha, so she refuses to believe in Buddhism even at the cost of her life, and even asks him whether he could stop believing in the Buddha and become a demon instead. Their relationship unfolds through a series of arguments and mutual aid. As Hualian searches for her mother and clears her name, she drifts through a prince's mansion and the Imperial Preceptor's residence, establishes herself in South Creek Mountain City as an alchemist, is framed and put on trial, and finally goes far away to the demon realm for bitter training, where her cultivation advances by leaps and bounds. The story's underlying theme is breaking down the fixed opposition between Buddha and demon: the Buddha is not a god to be begged from outside, and "taming the Buddha" means mastering one's own Buddha nature and subduing the demons in one's heart. Written with humor and a playful disregard for convention, the novel deals with demon-world conflicts, questions of identity, and emotional bonds; it is a standalone story within the shared universe the author built together with Half-Calpa Immortal and Possessed.