Volume 5, Chapter 125 – Phantom

After all, it was only a shattered pocket-space; the Buddha-realm was not large.

Bai Xiang and Li Wenyu quickly searched to the end of the Buddha-realm, and inside the so-called “Golden Light Buddha Palace” they found a set of prayer beads.

Like the three ritual artifacts they had destroyed earlier, these prayer beads were also a wondrous object. According to the intelligence provided by the monks of the Buddha Palace, they had once slipped the beads around the neck of a great demon during an invasion. As long as they got them on, no matter how vicious the great demon was, it would immediately bow its head and turn into a devout believer.

“What a sinister thing.” As she spoke, Li Wenyu shot a disgusted look at the box holding the prayer beads. “Golden Light Temple really does look like an evil cult!”

She had suffered for her carelessness once already, and now she had learned. She no longer touched any object whose nature she could not grasp. Wherever she went, she stayed within two steps of Bai Xiang, afraid that the bewitchment of that Demon Pool would work on her again.

Hearing that comment, even Bai Xiang could not help glancing at her.

The meaning in her look was obvious: with all the things your Feathering Sect has done over the years, you still have the nerve to call someone else an evil cult?

When Bai Xiang had first begun practicing the sword, the intelligence she came across said that the Great Yu Court had always been on guard against the remnants of the Feathering Sect and Golden Cicada Temple. Looking at it now, they really had not been wrong to be wary. You three together could well be called the most ruthless evil cults in the history of the former dynasty.

“That’s different!” Sensing the meaning in Bai Xiang’s gaze, Li Wenyu stiffly stammered out an explanation. “Th-that… our sect did it for the greater good. If our experiments could succeed, the conflict between the two races would no longer need to continue!”

“Wishful thinking,” Bai Xiang said coldly.

“The Void Tribulation brings Loss of Order, and Loss of Order demonizes all living beings. A phenomenon like that began who knows how many hundreds of millions of years ago. How could it be silenced by a single On the Five Worms and the Xuandi Scripture?”

“But…” Li Wenyu opened her mouth.

Bai Xiang cut in with a frown. “If you try to justify the sins of the Feathering Sect again, I’ll take your life right now.”

Li Wenyu’s mouth twitched, and she did not dare speak again.

Bai Xiang ignored her and searched the Buddha Palace once more, but no matter how she searched, she could not find any trace of the last two ritual artifacts.

To make sure she had not made a mistake, she specially brought over the abbot of the Buddha Palace and searched his soul and read his spirit. In page after page of memory scenes, she saw the image of the “Light-Feather Buddha” recorded in the scriptures: feet planted on a ferryboat, a monk’s staff in hand, with a bronze mirror and a begging bowl resting in his arms.

Half a razor protruded from the bowl. Behind him, the Buddha light formed a vast halo, as though he stood in a dark sea as broad as the cosmos, its radiance illuminating hundreds of thousands of li.

There really were six items.

But the razor and the wooden boat were nowhere to be found here. They should be in other ruins.

Withdrawing her hand from above the abbot’s head, Bai Xiang asked him, “Tell me every legend you know about what lies beyond the heavens.”

“Do not try to lie. I can read the changes in your state of mind.”

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As her mastery of the path of the Illusory God deepened, Bai Xiang no longer needed to kill people in order to search their souls.

In a place like this Buddha-realm, the residents were pitiful people who had all been bewitched. The abbot had no intention of harming her, so she had no intention of slaughtering them.

Even if killing him would amount to helping him return to the cycle of reincarnation, a life is born with a life’s awareness. She would not lightly trample the understanding an ordinary mortal had forged over the course of an entire lifetime.

“‘Beyond the heavens’…” The abbot wore a bitter expression.

“In reply to Your Excellency, the legends of the outer heavens heard in this world mostly concern evil fiends.”

He explained at length, describing quite a few examples of fiends from beyond the heavens descending in invasion, turning into demons, and devouring people. It happened to correspond with Bai Xiang’s earlier conjecture that dead spirits became demons.

“What now?”

Li Wenyu edged closer and consulted Bai Xiang in a low voice. “You said before that you’d memorized the coordinates of several other ruins… but the places we checked were all wrong. Those sites have definitely been hidden away!”

In her view, there was no need to stay here any longer.

Once someone realized that a place concealed a plot likely aimed at them, one that wanted their life, no one could keep strolling around at leisure. She wanted Bai Xiang to turn back as soon as possible.

Can’t find them?

Not necessarily.

Bai Xiang said nothing. She summoned the abbot forward once more, covered the top of his head with her hand, and read page after page of churning memories from the depths of his inner body-scape.

This time, she deliberately searched for the figure of an “angel,” and soon saw several great monks painted on sheets of xuan paper.

As the sheets turned, the brushwork grew newer and newer, until it finally stopped on a monk in the real world.

The man was powerfully built, with coarse brows, glaring eyes, a flat broad nose, and thick blunt lips. He had the very face of a vajra guardian; merely standing there, he radiated imposing force.

This was the only “angel” the abbot of the Buddha Palace had ever personally encountered. The earlier “angels” were all so remote from his own memories that the abbots of those times had only painted them down, which was why those portraits existed.

Bai Xiang carefully studied the fragments of those scenes and discovered that after this great monk arrived, he first demanded that the Buddha-realm offer up ten pairs of boys and girls as sacrifices. Before his very eyes, their bodies were split open, and their souls sprouted light-feathered insect wings. Just like the dead infant, they were ushered into the brass Buddha statue.

Throughout the entire process, the great monk held those prayer beads in his hand, eyes closed, muttering ceaselessly.

And Bai Xiang also noticed that not until he left did the great monk return the prayer beads. Instead, he told the abbot to go back and wait, and the treasure would return to its place on its own.

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When he said this, the abbot did not dare doubt him. After kowtowing and seeing him off, he led the monks back to the Buddha Palace to chant scriptures. They chanted for about half an hour. When he opened his eyes, he glimpsed the prayer beads hanging from the hand of the Buddha statue in the Mahavira Hall.

So it is connected to this thing.

Bai Xiang looked at the wooden box resting nearby. With a lift of her hand, she opened it, and with another beckoning gesture, the prayer beads on the cushion inside flew out of their own accord and were seized tightly in her five fingers.

“This…”

Li Wenyu’s brows knitted at once.

She felt Bai Xiang was being far too overconfident.

The moment the prayer beads landed in her hand, Bai Xiang’s entire bearing changed. The imperial majesty and immortal otherworldliness she had worn were replaced by the meditative aura of Buddhism. Even some of the air flowing around her was being disturbed and twisted by some mysterious influence. Li Wenyu and the other monks were dazed for an instant, and in the span of a blink they seemed to glimpse a radiant Buddhist halo appear behind her.

“The Buddha Mother has manifested!”

These native residents understood nothing of the underlying principles. Convinced that Bai Xiang must be connected to the Buddha, they instinctively assigned her an identity and knelt one after another.

But Bai Xiang paid them no attention. Instead, she gestured for Li Wenyu to float up, and the two of them flew higher and higher together. In the blink of an eye they rose ten thousand zhang into the sky, until even the figures below could no longer be seen.

“What did the Xia Emperor discover?” Li Wenyu asked her.

Bai Xiang still said nothing. She merely shook the prayer beads in her hand, then pointed upward.

So holding this thing would guide you to the locations of the other ruins?

Li Wenyu first understood, then frowned deeply.

She did not want to keep exploring this place with Bai Xiang.

It was too dangerous.

Trouble Bai Xiang could handle would kill her the instant she made the slightest mistake.

And yet this was also a rare chance to grow closer to the daughter she had once abandoned.

So Li Wenyu was deeply conflicted. She could not even say clearly what she herself wanted.

Especially that strange question she asked me before.

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The memory stirred in Li Wenyu’s heart.

She actually asked me that if I had to choose, between Emperor Feng and Emperor Xiang, which one would I pick.

This really was… if it were truly His Majesty Emperor Feng, and not some swaggering, fraudulent phantom, then there would be no need to ask whom I would choose. There was never any suspense in the first place!

She did not realize that for something which should have contained no suspense at all, she had still hesitated again and again before she dared be certain.

Whoosh!

Suddenly, an astral gale blew in from ahead, whipping Li Wenyu’s hair into wild disarray and distorting her lovely face so badly that even her soul was nearly torn out of her body.

This was the “Void-Edge Wind”!

The closer one drew to the boundary of space, the more violent the Void-Edge Wind became.

At this rate, wasn’t she going to bring out the flying vessel?

Li Wenyu looked eagerly at Bai Xiang, only to discover in astonishment that Bai Xiang seemed to have no intention whatsoever of taking out a vessel.

Does she want to kill me?

If they kept ascending like this, they would soon leave the Buddha-realm and enter the void. With the toughness of bodies in this place, wouldn’t we die the instant we went out there without a ship?

Clatter.

Just as Li Wenyu was wavering between shock and suspicion, she heard Bai Xiang flick the prayer beads in her hand, producing a string of clear yet densely layered chimes.

As though answering her summons, the vault of heaven above them was suddenly torn open into a smooth round aperture, and beyond that opening lay the pitch-black universe of the void.

Splash, splash.

Amid the sound of tidal waves, an unmanned wooden boat ferried its way through the passage and came to a stop right in front of them.

Th-this is the wooden boat from that set of treasures?

Li Wenyu was astonished, but Bai Xiang had already stepped aboard.

Under the pressure of Bai Xiang’s gaze, Li Wenyu also boarded the boat and watched it start moving on its own, carrying them completely out of the Buddha-realm space.

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How marvelous, Li Wenyu thought.

All around them was now total void. It was filled with all kinds of chaotic yet powerful force fields and radiation. Logically, the instant she came out she should have burst into a slurry of blood and flesh, and yet at this moment she could not feel the slightest pressure at all.

Was it the effect of this boat…?

Suddenly, the Xuandi Scripture, which had been branded into the depths of her heart, surfaced. All its information condensed into dense golden Sanskrit characters that floated inside Li Wenyu’s inner body-scape, and gradually assembled into a pixel-like image that kept changing over time.

What is this?

Li Wenyu stared wide-eyed, thinking it was another one of those deceptive tricks.

But she soon stiffened, because this time what she saw was no longer a phantom whose face was hidden within golden light. She clearly saw within the image a tall, lean man. Although his features looked nothing like the appearance of Emperor Feng recorded in the Feathering Sect’s texts, she simply knew that this had to be him.

It had to be Emperor Feng!

It was His Majesty the Xuandi!

Li Wenyu was beside herself with excitement. She saw Emperor Feng’s lips moving, as though he were saying something to someone beyond the pages.

As a worldly expert whose mind, skill, and body had long been brought into perfect harmony, Li Wenyu also understood lip-reading. She tried to decipher the words, piecing the sentence together bit by bit in her heart.

[Your… death… is not… the end…]

[You are… the embodiment… of my… ideals…]

[You and I… were always… one and the same…]

[So…]

[My… death… is also… not the end…]

What was this?

The amount of information in those words… to whom was the Xuandi speaking?

The change that followed seemed to answer that question.

The golden Sanskrit characters suddenly shattered and scattered with a rush, then recombined in midair into a golden Buddha not too different in build from Emperor Xiang, with light-feathered wings on its back, palms pressed together, seated upon a lotus dais.