Volume 5, Chapter 118 – Extrapolation

“This was the work of the ancients,” Bai Xiang said with certainty.

“The traces are far too old… no telling how many years ago it was, but Golden Light Temple probably entrusted its wish to the Order-Preserving Treasure and tried to create the ‘Six Paths of Reincarnation.’”

Oddly enough, this had once been Zhu Qingluo’s wish as well, yet it had been realized here in this remote corner.

“Come on.”

She was the first to rise into the air.

“You’ve asked your questions. We should hurry to the next village.”

Li Wenyu did not understand. “The next village?”

“Of course.” Bai Xiang nodded. “I can feel it. This place isn’t large, and there can’t be too many villages and towns inside it. There may even be more evil artifacts like that bronze mirror. I’m going to find them and destroy them, and only then will I go investigate the western source.”

There was indeed nothing wrong with that line of reasoning.

But Li Wenyu immediately thought of the brass Buddha statue enshrined in the Buddhist hall.

She could not help thinking: the other settlements probably had their own Buddhist hall as well, one held in the highest reverence by the locals, didn’t they?

And if there was a Buddhist hall, then there would surely be a Buddha statue inside. In Guo Family Village, she had touched the Buddha statue and obtained half of the Xuandi Scripture. She had no idea whether touching the Buddha statues elsewhere would bring other gains.

Naturally, she had no reason to object. So she followed Bai Xiang at speed to the next village, and then the one after that. Finally, in the third large settlement, they discovered a brass monk’s staff.

The staff was held in the hands of an old monk from a temple. Though made of brass, its surface shimmered with golden radiance. A mere shake of it produced a crisp clattering sound. It was said that even demons and devils could be subdued by it. Some great demons had even knelt before the staff and sworn never again to invade the town.

Bai Xiang was direct. The moment she saw the old monk emerge holding the staff, she drew it over with a pull and chopped down with one palm, slicing the staff clean in two.

“You! Insolence!”

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The old monk froze for a moment, then flew into a rage together with the other monks. Pointing at Bai Xiang, he shouted, “This demon has descended while pretending to be an angel. Men, come seize her and subdue her!”

Bai Xiang glanced at him and slashed at him diagonally with the edge of her hand. A formless strand of Sword Qi tore through the air, cleaving the old monk, the temple courtyard behind him, and even the pagoda behind the temple that enshrined sarira relics. The whole thing collapsed in a clattering heap.

“A monster!”

“A great demon has come!”

How could the mortals here ever have seen such power? They scattered in an instant like startled birds and beasts, no longer daring to resist Bai Xiang.

“You, come here.”

Bai Xiang had Li Wenyu stop one monk, then asked him, “How many years of history does this temple have?”

The monk stammered, “A-a-about two thousand years?”

“There are stories among the people that there are great demons and demon kings here. What is the story with those monsters?”

“I… I don’t know either! I only know that no matter what, those monsters can’t be exterminated. No matter how many are killed, more keep appearing to replace them!”

“And after those monsters are killed, do specks of light also fly westward?”

“N-no! When monsters die, there’s only blood… and blood-qi… and it drifts straight upward to the sky above!”

“I see.” Bai Xiang nodded, then instructed Li Wenyu, “Let him go.”

Li Wenyu released her grip, and the monk scrambled away on all fours in utter panic.

“You asked him all that because you suspected the monsters were reincarnated too?” Li Wenyu looked at Bai Xiang curiously.

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Bai Xiang shook her head.

“Then what?”

“The monsters born under the influence of Loss of Order are very different from normal living beings. Based on his answer, those monsters aren’t part of this reincarnation system either,” Bai Xiang said. “Their source should be the void, the drifting dead spirits in the void.”

Dead spirits…

At that word, Li Wenyu could not help getting gooseflesh.

One reason most life-forms could not cross the void without protection was that the void was filled with every sort of chaotic force field. Another was that countless dead spirits were hidden within it.

Dead spirits normally could not be seen. In fact, according to some sects, they did not exist at all. Only when a world approached destruction, when the laws of that world and the void began to intermingle, could one glimpse the dead spirits within the seven-colored glow seeping through those cracks and ruptures.

“These relic coordinates aren’t far from one another. They may once have belonged to the same large Illusory Realm plane,” Bai Xiang guessed.

“And the fact that they’ve been shattered into fragments like this means, without question, that they were torn apart by a Void Tribulation. There must be many drifting remnants of dead spirits nearby. Once those things fall in here, they get captured by this system of rules and molded into mindless demons.”

“If the legends of delivering demons are true, then this too counts as a form of deliverance.”

At that point, she suddenly turned to look at Li Wenyu.

“To put it into practice this way is also somewhat close to Emperor Feng’s thinking.”

Wasn’t it?

Emperor Feng believed that all living beings were worms. From that he refined the view that all beings were equal, then went on shouting about joint rule by the two races. Put plainly, he wanted to paper over the conflict and keep the balance level.

In that sense, the rules of this Buddha-realm really were quite close to his ideals.

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There was a “Six Paths of Reincarnation.” If every living being’s rebirth after death was completely random, and if true monsters were also incorporated into it, then this place really would be very equal.

After all, this was a place where even death did not count as the end, and where most people lived in peace and contentment.

It was closed off, yes, but in exchange it had gained a rare tranquility.

Bai Xiang had only mentioned it in passing, but Li Wenyu was deeply shaken.

Because she really had obtained the Xuandi Scripture from within the Buddha statue.

If there truly was such a connection… wouldn’t that mean Emperor Feng had extremely close ties with Golden Light Temple? It might even mean that Golden Light Temple had been the state religion of Great Xuan.

Thinking of examining the Buddha statue here, she quickly seized the chance to say to Bai Xiang, “I suspect this place has some connection to Great Xuan. I want to take a look inside the Buddhist hall.”

The reasoning was sound, so Bai Xiang was not suspicious and entered the temple with her.

Or, strictly speaking, the temple ruins.

The tall structures here had all collapsed. A thick layer of bricks and broken tiles covered the entrance to the Buddhist hall, and only after they were moved aside could one step inside. Sure enough, a brass Buddha statue was enshrined in the center, ten times the size of the one in Guo Family Village.

This Buddha statue looked rather like the Demon Lord.

Bai Xiang frowned.

The Buddha statues they had encountered before had been relatively small. Their features had captured the spirit, but had not been all that specific.

This time, with a larger one before her, she found that the carved face really did resemble the Demon Lord’s. She began to suspect that the entire relic and Buddha-realm had been arranged by the Demon Lord.

That was not impossible. She had remained fixed within the Sky Sea for ten years, while the voidfiends had begun gathering into an army around the second year of Zhengyuan. By that logic, the Demon Lord must have taken form and gained intelligence sometime before then. He had had at least eight years to contact and collude with the Silver Sea Merchant Guild and, after obtaining the coordinates, come here and make arrangements.

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But what could he have arranged?

The Jiuluo Guangyu Buddha?

That thing had originally had no intelligence, which made it rather similar to the Demon Lord’s former self, Blood Soul Heaven.

So was he planning to devour the Jiuluo Guangyu Buddha?

By deliberately spreading statues of himself and twisting the faith of the living beings here, was he trying to redirect the power of wishes onto himself and steal that power by such means?

With her brows furrowed, Bai Xiang saw Li Wenyu walk up to the Buddha statue and place a hand on it to inspect it.

Right… I still don’t understand why he wants Li Wenyu killed.

If it were for the sake of dealing with me, then capturing her alive would obviously be more valuable. What possible benefit would killing her bring them? At the moment, I still can’t see it…

Without thinking much about it, Bai Xiang used “Void Extrapolation.”

That thing worked when it wanted to and failed when it wanted to, and when it did work, it was usually at times when she did not especially need it.

She had only tried it out of habit, but unexpectedly the scene before her vision suddenly blurred. The brass Buddha statue turned at once into a long, slender figure radiating golden light, and it was rebuking Li Wenyu below it.

“That Di Xiang is brutal and lawless. She is not my inheritor. How can you stand with her and be her accomplice?”

“Hurry and offer up this flesh of yours to me.”

“Let me manifest.”

“Let me take in her Xuan bloodline.”