Volume 3, Chapter 97 – Closing In (Double-Length)

With a wave of her hand, Bai Xiang called Feixiang Heaven back. The sword swept up a wisp of black qi drifting out from Xuanyi’s death, then she lowered her gaze and saw nothing but a vast stretch of ruined city.

Her clash with Xuanyi had actually been brief, only a few minutes from start to finish. But the damage their collisions had done to the city had already gone beyond what a conventional missile strike could inflict.

Broken walls, piled rubble, smoke and dust drifting over shattered stone. Here and there she could vaguely see mangled limbs struggling beneath the gray powder. Cries for help and wails of pain grew thicker and thicker, droning in her ears. Bai Xiang closed her eyes. She did not want to look at this any longer.

That really had been her oversight. When she took the bus here in the first place, she had not expected the fight to flare up this violently all at once.

She shook her head inwardly. She had never wanted Baco City to become like this.

You could see that from how she had tried to compensate that Luohou driver, and from how she had once planned to move people from here to Zhen’nan to live and work. She did not treat these dark-skinned southerners as some kind of lowly caste.

But Xuanyi—no, Dark-Heaven Shinu—was an enemy even more frightening than Qin Wuyang. Bai Xiang had not dared hold back midway, and had had no time to worry about causing further destruction.

She had better leave here first.

Hearing police sirens drawing ever closer, Bai Xiang dropped to the ground and slipped into a side alley under cover of the smoke. She meant to find a place to take medicine and heal, and tosort out her gains from this fight.

She really had gained a lot. As she ran, her golden eyes shone dangerously bright.

She had paid for it with bruised soft tissue all over her body, internal bleeding, and even slight fractures in the ribs at her chest. But she had obtained a segment of Dark-Heaven Shinu’s memory.

Through that memory, she had not only gotten a first glimpse of the Illusory Realm—at least a certain kind of Illusory Realm—but also learned from those exchanges that Golden Cicada Temple’s Dao lineage had actually originated from Luofu Temple’s predecessor, Golden Light Temple.

Luofu Temple was not the name of a faction. It was just a cluster of towers and halls built up into a scenic landmark.

Its root was southern Buddhism, and the root of southern Buddhism was Golden Light Temple itself, an ancient Dao lineage founded by Golden-Light Treasure-King Buddha.

As for Dark-Heaven Shinu and the Dark-Heaven Dharma it had passed down, those were outsiders, like cuckoos in another bird’s nest. They were a new faith grafted onto Golden Light Temple’s Dao lineage.

According to that memory, sixteen hundred years ago the Illusory Realm pathways had been severed by the Yu people. The great powers of Golden Light Temple, including Golden-Light Treasure-King Buddha and Jade-Reed Wisdom Buddha, had abruptly vanished. After struggling on for some time, the remaining monks of Golden Light Temple split into two groups.

One group chose to go north, crossing Longchuan and South Mountain to enter Yu territory and spread their teachings there. The other group chose to stay. They firmly believed the Buddha World-Honored would not abandon them and that they could wait for his return.

But as one day after another passed and the Illusory Realm pathways never reopened, the monks who stayed began to waver.

Several hundred years ago, they happened to discover another Illusory Realm entrance. To their delight, they found that with their efforts that place could send faint thoughts across, equivalent to establishing contact with the “upper world.”

That was the Illusory Realm plane where Dark-Heaven Shinu dwelled. Those people thought they had found a savior, never realizing that opening that Illusory Realm would bring their Dao lineage to the brink of annihilation.

“These events took place a very long time ago. The connection between that Illusory Realm pathway and the main world was still weak, which limited how much Dark-Heaven Shinu could influence this side. Back then it could not yet project black qi.”

Bai Xiang slipped into an empty house, silently entered and sat to regulate her breath, healing as she sifted through the causal threads.

“But its power to bewitch hearts was very strong, even exceeding the ‘phantom-spirit’ power some Demon Pools possess. That made it easy for it to control all the monks of Golden Light Temple. Through that tiny connection it transmitted the Dark-Heaven Scripture of Saving the Suffering and Delivering the World and completely polluted them.”

The polluted monks gradually became gloomy, vicious, and lost the ordinary emotions they should have had.

At regular intervals they would hold sacrifices to the Dark-Heaven World-Honored One. The offerings were chosen from among their own number.

The specific ritual was this: first, peel off the offering’s skin in one complete piece. Gouge out their eyes. Destroy all five senses, cast them entirely into the world of Dark-Heaven samsara so they could never get out, then fold them into a Dark-Heaven kasaya and twist it like a rope. The blood slurry seeping from the spiral folds would then be sent through a crack in the Illusory Realm.

That blood carried the offering’s consciousness. Through it, they could ascend to the “upper world” they imagined and become those indescribable twisted monsters.

What should have been a heinous evil ritual became, under the Dark-Heaven Dharma’s phantom-spirit, an ascension that everyone competed for.

The Golden Light Temple Dao lineage still remaining in Ancient Shinu was swiftly wiped out, leaving only the ever-growing Dark-Heaven believers walking the world and spreading distorted Buddhism to the surroundings.

Dark-Heaven Shinu was very cunning. It did not want to stick its neck out before the pathways were open, and it kept its believers quietly hiding.

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Only in recent years had a group of people come seeking them out, calling themselves remnants of Golden Cicada Temple. They said they could no longer endure the Yu people’s suppression and wanted to work together. Only then had the believers’ actions turned a little more aggressive, and they began making real preparations for Dark-Heaven Shinu’s descent.

“Golden Cicada Temple, Golden Light Temple.”

Feeling the medicine dissolve quickly in her body and flow with her qi to heal her injuries, Bai Xiang silently spoke in her heart. In her awareness, a torn-up Buddhist scripture floated into view.

Its name was The Tathagata Body-Ferrying Scripture. Bai Xiang had pieced it together from the fragmented thoughts of believers in Dark-Heaven Shinu’s memories.

It was heavily incomplete. All its contents added up to only three hundred and sixteen characters. Judging by the size of the Dark-Heaven Scripture of Saving the Suffering and Delivering the World, it would not even fill two pages.

But there was nothing to be done.

The monks chosen as offerings had fallen into absolute fanaticism for Dark-Heaven Shinu. Their consciousnesses were twisted and chaotic, no longer like normal beings. The fact she could scrape this much out at all was thanks to Dark-Heaven Shinu itself—because it had worried that memory might influence its believers, it had forcibly extracted it.

In the end, it all fell into my lap.

The corner of Bai Xiang’s mouth rose slightly.

Though The Tathagata Body-Ferrying Scripture was heavily incomplete, as she looked at those Sanskrit characters, scattered pieces of scripture rose in her mind on their own.

Some came from Buddhist texts she had read in her previous life and this one.

But others came from the Scripture of Returning to Origin and Transforming Qi, from its commentary sections.

Those pieces together formed a half-complete Great Golden-Light Dharma Seal. Bai Xiang fused them, combined them with what she had learned, and condensed them into a sword seal.

That was the strange mudra she had formed when she sat in the air.

As soon as that sword seal formed, more than half of all the qi-origin in her body was drawn out by Feixiang Heaven. The sword cleaved down from the sky in an instant. The way it regulated and controlled Heaven-and-Earth energy far surpassed what a beginner like her could manage, and it cut Xuanyi down in one stroke.

Once she confirmed her injuries were under control, Bai Xiang examined the sword seal more deeply. The more she studied it, the more she felt her earlier understanding had been crude and shallow. Her “Taishang Premonition” was refined along with it.

Not only that, she also felt an itch in her legs and feet, as if that part of her body were going through a second growth. The itch ran all the way from her bones.

That sign was quite close to the condition Sun-Chasing Scripture emphasized.

Sun-Chasing Scripture had four main sections.

Mountain-Crashing.

Drinking-Water.

Divine Footwork.

Sun-Chasing.

She had already mastered the Mountain-Crashing section. The later ones she had not yet touched. “Legs and feet turning soft, an itch deep in the bones” was one of the stated conditions for cultivating Divine Footwork, and she had not thought she would meet it now.

Was it because she had dug out the Hidden Field Orifice and the “great medicine of the human body” it contained, pushing her physical strengthening to a critical point?

She did not know the cause, but she figured using the Great Golden-Light Dharma Seal also had something to do with it.

“Sun-Chasing Scripture must be like The Tathagata Body-Ferrying Scripture, a technique left behind by ancient mighty ones.”

So Bai Xiang thought.

This was not just some vague intuition. Both techniques had that same ancient feel, and the ingenious, foundation-laying ways they controlled blood and energy were far beyond what Sword Dao methods could reach.

They really had given her a lot of insight.

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By grasping the Golden-Light Sword Seal and deepening her Taishang Premonition, Bai Xiang’s dao-age leapt forward another step.

If she could master the Divine Footwork section, perhaps her legs and feet could be strengthened again.

Like that kick she had landed on Xuanyi.

With Divine Footwork perfected, she might have been able to send him straight to the afterlife with a single kick.

Unfortunately.

The explanation for Divine Footwork in Sun-Chasing Scripture was the least coherent.

Refining the body until “legs and feet turn soft, itch deep in the bones” was only one of the conditions. The follow-up instructions for cultivation were just “keep running, do not stop,” which was baffling.

Even someone as proud as Lu Qingning had nearly been driven mad by that technique. In the end she had had no choice but to shelve the scripture and wait for some future opportunity to train it.

Bai Xiang was not greedy. She had already gained enough today, so whether she could practice Divine Footwork did not worry her.

Once she finished sorting out and reflecting on her cultivation, her curiosity turned back to the Scripture of Returning to Origin and Transforming Qi.

Why did that book contain content capable of supplementing the Tathagata Body-Energy?

Wait.

Had it not originally been an old Golden Cicada Temple method?

Realization dawned on Bai Xiang.

That answered everything.

“There are three authors of this book. Besides Monk Yuanjue and Chan Master Wenluo, there is another, Daoist Qu, Huang Ye.”

“Huang Ye is most likely an incarnation of Daokong’s Yaosui… which means Monk Daokong must also have ties to Golden Cicada Temple.”

“When I met Daokong’s Yaosui in Blood Abyss, it asked me to come here to take a sword and learn a method. Was that because it had calculated this was a major base and wanted to use Dark-Heaven Shinu to kill me?”

With this key lead in hand, many previously tangled questions unraveled in an instant. Bai Xiang’s wariness toward Flame-Saliva Demon Kingdom shot up.

Golden Cicada Temple.

They had not been able to stay in Great Yu and had followed the vein-born demons’ example by going elsewhere.

Remembering that Feixiang Heaven still held Xuanyi’s remnant soul, Bai Xiang drew the sword and checked. She found, disappointingly, that his memories were utterly shattered. There were no key details to extract, hardly even a few images.

Naturally.

She remembered how evil and strange Dark-Heaven Shinu was and assumed it had sucked almost all the substance from Xuanyi’s soul. The wisp that remained would hardly be worth anything.

These ancient gods and Buddhas were not easy to deal with.

Dark-Heaven Shinu’s black-qi avatar alone had been able to suppress Qin Wuyang with ease. If Qin Wuyang himself had come, he might not have escaped, let alone faced the true body hidden in the Illusory Realm.

Yet even so terrifying a being had behaved very cautiously before it met Golden Cicada Temple’s people and obtained more intelligence, like a squirrel hiding in its hole watching the world outside, terrified of being spotted by other predators.

Who knew where it ranked among those “mighty ones” and “venerables.”

Thinking of what Xuanyi had said about the imperial daughter and the changes when the pathways opened, Bai Xiang felt a little uneasy.

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She took out her phone, intending to send the information she had gained back to Maozhou. But she discovered that none of her signals to the north went through. It was as if they were being blocked by some sort of energy field.

“We cannot afford to waste time.”

Enduring the numb itch in her legs, Bai Xiang forced herself up. She meant to go back and find Aurora.

Feixiang Heaven had not only absorbed Xuanyi’s soul. It had also swallowed the remnant souls of many monks and believers whose black qi had been sucked dry, leaving them dull and blank. Their messy memories had all been pushed back to Bai Xiang.

Some of those monks’ memories included the location of Black-Rock Demon Kingdom’s Illusory Realm, and complete methods for breaking the guarding Demon Pool and sneaking inside.

So she had to hurry.

Take what she needed, then get back at once.

…

At the same time, in Maozhou, at a gap on a peak of the Longchuan Mountains.

Zoom in, and two small figures stood on the gap’s edge. One was a tall, thin man in a long robe, with a clump of “hair” on his head like a bird’s nest threaded with multicolored feathers, and round tubular glasses that seemed to sink deep into his eye sockets. He was fiddling with a strange device that looked like a mini satellite.

The other was a slender woman in a dark red tight combat suit with long black hair. She stood to the side with her arms around a longsword, coldly watching the robed man adjust the machine.

“All right,” the robed man said after a while, lifting his head. “The signal shield for this sector is established. If no one finds this place, you will have half a month to deal with them.”

“Can it really hold that long?” the woman narrowed her eyes, clearly skeptical.

“You people trust those uncanny methods far too much,” the man said, stroking his tubular glasses as gently as if they were a lover. “You never realize that technology is a mighty power too, that we should reexamine so-called ancient arts with a scientific eye. I promise you will not be disappointed.”

“Easy to say,” the woman snorted. “There is not much among your methods that gives me pause. You talk about prosthetic bodies, but beings without even their natural divine remains intact still have the nerve to cultivate?”

“That is only because the degree of modification is not enough.” The man’s voice went cold.

“You only look at those cripples, of course you see nothing. As for mechanical bodies, what is the point of partial augmentation? The essence of this path is to replace the entire body step by step with a steel frame, and that in itself is a kind of cultivation.”

“Really?” The woman smiled. “Is that why you have to drink oil every half hour?”

“You are monitoring me?” The man curled his lip, and the air between them turned tense.

“Enough.”

Just then a tall, broad-shouldered man with chalk-white skin in a black combat suit walked out of the nearby forest. As soon as he appeared he admonished them, “Save your strength for Shenming Sword Dao. Do not start fighting and break the toy. We do not have spare parts to fix it.”

“Hmph.”

The woman turned her head. Though clearly unwilling, she gave the white-skinned man some face and held her peace.

“Even you came,” the glasses man said, his expression shifting slightly when he saw him. “So you are done hiding. It is starting.”

“That was clear from the moment we asked you to do this.” The white-skinned man neither confirmed nor denied.

“What about the other places? Are we only handling Maozhou?”

“Other places have other people handling them,” the white-skinned man nodded. “You are worrying about too much.”

“I am looking out for you,” the glasses man said with a smile. “Especially up north. What I have heard is not very encouraging.”

“…The pathways are widening. The connection between the upper world and the main world is growing deeper,” the white-skinned man said steadily. “You could say that with every second that passes, our strength grows. You have no idea what that means.”

“I hope so,” the glasses man exhaled. “I am tired of working with losers.”

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“Not this time.”

Hearing that, the white-skinned man also allowed himself a faint smile.

“Get moving.”

“There are still teammates coming from the north.”

“Is the goal to wipe out Maozhou’s base completely?” the woman followed behind him and asked curiously.

“Wipe out?” The white-skinned man frowned.

“Our goal is to utterly erase this place.”

…

At the same time, on a towering city tower in Beique, a slovenly old man stood proudly on the parapet, looking out at the vast frontier beyond the passes.

It was close to sunset. He could clearly see a monster’s silhouette, shaped like a dinosaur, hauling itself up over the golden horizon, as if meeting his eye from an unfathomable distance.

“Master…”

Senior Sister Qin stood beside him, holding the sword case in her arms and watching this with some worry, glancing up at the old man from time to time.

“The sun is about to set.”

Qin Wuyang spoke lightly.

“And who knows, once it gets dark…”

“Whether the sun will rise again as usual.”

Is it really that serious?

Senior Sister Qin frowned.

That monstrous shadow had appeared almost every day recently, yet it still feared the old man and had not dared come closer once.

But in the next instant, her pupils shrank to pinpoints.

That monster…

That dinosaur-like monster’s shadow… how had it suddenly split into so many heads?

One, two, three…

She could not make them out.

They were beyond counting.

Like a crowd of split ghosts standing silently on the horizon, motionless and soundless.

Senior Sister Qin’s skin erupted in goosebumps.

Right after that, more things emerged one after another, including blood-red clouds spearing down from above the sun’s disk.