Seeing the barrier, which had been on the verge of collapse, steady itself again, the warrior monks on the mountain felt as if a great weight had been lifted. Only then did they realise their backs were soaked with sweat, and a wave of lingering fear rose in their hearts.
Just now, perhaps in the very next instant, this defensive grand array, which had gathered nearly all of Buddhism’s current strength, might have been smashed apart by that monster wielding the Vajra Dharma Aspect.
That also meant that this being, like a god or demon, possessed the power to nearly take on the whole Buddhist sect alone.
Fortunately, the one presiding over the array was Agaruka Bodhisattva, and this Bodhisattva, whose overall combat strength was the greatest in Buddhism, controlled the indestructible Immovable Lord Dharma Aspect.
Bzzz, bzzz, bzzz… the golden barrier was still trembling, but when the ripples spread to the vicinity of that Immovable Lord, they were immediately smoothed away.
“Amitabha!”
The warrior monks pressed one palm to the other, both relieved and afraid.
What frightened them was this, in all the vastness of Jiuzhou, did such an existence truly exist? An existence capable of driving Buddhism to this point?
What relieved them was this, even such a terrifying monster had still been blocked.
The Buddhist sacred mountain could not be violated.
“Agaruka Bodhisattva’s Immovable Lord has never been defeated. Everyone, compose yourselves. Don’t be cowed by this monster’s Dharma Aspect. Protect the senior and junior brothers beside you.”
“Phew, Amitabha, that truly gave this poor monk a fright. Just now, this poor monk nearly thought the grand array was about to break.”
“This monster is as crude as a martial artist, it only knows how to vent brute force. Since when has any martial artist in the world ever relied on brute force to break our Buddhist grand array?”
“I’m afraid that even the Great Feng’s newly advanced first rank martial artist doesn’t possess such power.”
“The monster before our eyes is probably not something a first rank martial artist can compare to.”
The reason was simple. A first rank martial artist absolutely could not break an array formed by three first rank experts and more than four thousand Zen Masters.
The warrior monks spoke in low voices, encouraging one another. They gradually became spirited again and regained their confidence.
In the distant sky, Li Miaozhen frowned tightly.
“What a powerful defensive array. It seems even Shenshu can’t break it…”
She had phrased it as tactfully as possible, because she didn’t know what sort of temperament the Nine-tailed Fox had. She didn’t want to speak too directly and offend her.
A great battle was about to begin. She didn’t want to sour things with an ally over some unnecessary trifle.
The Nine-tailed Fox shook her head and said bluntly:
“Unless Shenshu takes back his head, it’ll be difficult for him to break this grand array.”
A half-step Martial God could overturn the entire Buddhist sect, Buddha aside, but Shenshu was not in his complete form now, so it wasn’t strange that he couldn’t break Buddhism’s all-out defence.
Moreover, deep within Ananda, there was the Buddha himself. Once the Buddha made a move, Shenshu would certainly fall into a reactive position.
At that time, the two Bodhisattvas Samantabhadra and Vaidurya, together with nearly ten thousand Zen Masters and warrior monks, might become the final straw that broke the camel’s back.
That was why the Nine-tailed Fox had kept enduring, waiting until the beyond-mortal experts of the Great Feng had freed up enough time to erase the Buddha’s advantage in “helpers”. And Xu Qi’an, this first rank martial artist, could even play a certain supporting role in the struggle between the Buddha and Shenshu.
Only then would there truly be hope of snatching back the head from Ananda.
Li Miaozhen pondered briefly. Countless methods of breaking the array flashed through her mind, but she then shook her head and said:
“We can only see whether Xu Ningyan’s burst power is really as strong as he himself says.”
Lady Flying Swallow had never seen the violence of a first rank martial artist. Before the tribulation-crossing battle had even ended, she had already been taken back to the sect by her master and Senior Uncle Xuancheng.
So she only knew that Xu Ningyan had become a first rank martial artist, but exactly how strong he was, she had no very direct sense of it.
The level of this world-shaking grand array was too high. The ones presiding over it were three Bodhisattvas, and among them was Agaruka, who controlled the “Immovable Lord” Dharma Aspect.
Under normal circumstances, it would already be difficult for them to break the “Immovable Lord”, let alone this Zen formation infused with so many experts.
Only a half-step Martial God like Shenshu possessed such power.
Bzzz, bzzz, bzzz… the golden barrier shook violently, yet it never broke, while Shenshu’s assault was unending, like a perpetual machine that never tired and never stopped.
Each punch striking the barrier raised furious winds and surging qi that stacked layer upon layer. Near Ananda, they should have stirred up terrifying hurricanes, yet when they drew close to that central Immovable Lord Dharma Aspect, all that “motion and disturbance” was wiped away.
As a result, although the gales around Ananda were fierce, they were never able to gather momentum and form on a larger scale.
After this deadlock had lasted for some time, that Immovable Lord Dharma Aspect fused with Agaruka began to tremble slightly.
The opportunity has come… In the infinitely high heavens, beneath the azure vault of the sky, Xu Qi’an narrowed his eyes and clearly saw the abnormality in the Immovable Lord.
Shenshu’s unceasing violent output had finally shaken this Dharma Aspect, which was known as absolute defence.
This was the first time Xu Qi’an had seen the Immovable Lord tremble while maintaining its momentum.
One had to know, even when he had mobilised the strength of all living beings, he had only been able to use Agaruka as a punching bag, battering him from east to west, then from west to east. Though it had been absolute suppression, in the end he still hadn’t truly broken the Immovable Lord’s defence.
Otherwise, Agaruka would have died in the Central Plains back then.
Shenshu had done it. Shenshu had created the opportunity for him to break the formation.
In the current situation, this was already Shenshu’s limit. Relying on this half-step Martial God alone, he couldn’t break this grand array. At such a moment, what was needed was another first rank martial artist, one equally famed for violence, to become the final straw that broke the camel’s back.
Taking a deep breath, Xu Qi’an slowly stretched his muscles and bones. One by one, his muscles unfurled and knotted again, and one by one, his bones gave off faint sounds.
Then the muscles along his waist and spine suddenly exploded with force, driving all the muscles in his body to exert strength and swell. His frame forcibly thickened by a whole circle, making his robe puff out slightly.
“Ah!”
Xu Qi’an let out a deep, forceful roar, the sound waves like rolling thunder.
Along with the roar, his skin slowly flushed red. This abnormality was caused by blood rushing through his vessels at high speed. His pores opened and sprayed out a bloody mist.
Blood Sacrifice!
The gu technique of the beyond-mortal Strength Gu.
Burning one’s essence blood to temporarily raise combat power.
How much combat power could a first rank martial artist unleash by burning essence blood?
In an instant, heaven and earth changed colour. The elemental forces throughout the whole world fell into disorder. Water element and fire element combined and turned into dense vapour, while wind element and earth element combined to form a sandstorm.
Within dozens of li around Ananda, the area became a chaotic and turbulent land of ill omen.
Such an exaggerated phenomenon drew the attention of the monks in the mountain. They looked about blankly, not knowing what had happened outside.
What thing, or what existence, had caused such turmoil?
So strong… Li Miaozhen secretly clicked her tongue in amazement, her beautiful eyes gazing upwards in a daze. This was the first time she had truly witnessed Xu Ningyan displaying his cultivation.
Even at such a vast distance, she could still feel that terrifying power, that might capable of destroying heaven and earth.
The joy and confidence she had felt after advancing to beyond-mortal were now completely reined in.
Without her noticing it, that Silver Gong in the Heaven and Earth Society who had pretended to be an expert, while in truth only being a minor martial artist, had already truly grown into a towering figure who upheld heaven and earth.
That left Li Miaozhen with a wistful sense that time flew like a shuttle.
Though he’s still not equal to Shenshu, this power is indeed rather frightening… the Nine-tailed Fox gave a snort inwardly. She still remembered the grudge from Xu Ningyan’s wedding day, when he had sealed a strand of her divine sense inside Fuxiang’s body, then sat on her and furiously smacked her backside.
A fox spirit held grudges very well.
As for Daoist Jinlian, Zhao Shou, and al-Asura, the three of them understood Xu Qi’an’s progress even more clearly and directly.
When he had just advanced to first rank, he hadn’t possessed this level of power.
Seems it isn’t just the blood sacrifice technique of the Strength Gu. His own cultivation has probably leapt forward by a huge margin as well, and it hasn’t even been two months… A surge of urgency suddenly rose in al-Asura’s heart, a need to chase after him with all his might.
Meanwhile, Xu Qi’an thrust a hand into his chest and pulled out a gleaming brass sword.
The moment he gripped the sword, he drew in all his aura, collapsed all emotion, and turned his dantian into a vortex to absorb the vast, majestic power filling his body.
This wasn’t Broken Jade, but the original version of One Blade from Heaven and Earth.
One Blade from Heaven and Earth had always been an extreme, unorthodox sabre art, pouring all power into a single strike. If it failed to kill the enemy, it wounded the user instead. It and the blood sacrifice technique were different paths leading to the same destination, and they could stack perfectly.
Xu Qi’an gripped the sword, inverted his body, and plunged downwards.
In Li Miaozhen and the others’ eyes, he was like a yellow meteor, blazing with dazzling golden light from friction with the air. The atmosphere and that yellow radiance formed a cone-shaped shell of qi around him as he fell at terrifying speed.
Seizing the chance, Zhao Shou flicked his Confucian cap with a bent finger, stretched out his right palm towards Xu Qi’an, and said in a deep voice:
“May this sword strike with unstoppable force!”
The power of laws follow commandments surged out, adding another layer of strength to the strike.
The yellow light visibly intensified, growing ever more blazing.
At that same moment, Shenshu accelerated his barrage. His twenty-four fists were like twenty-four pile drivers, their afterimages joining into one sheet. The “buzzing” from his fists, because of the speed, no longer had any rhythm or pause, but fused into one long drawn-out “bzzzz~”.
Just then, Xu Qi’an “fell” from the high sky, the Sovereign Sword leading the way as it savagely stabbed towards the crown of the Immovable Lord Dharma Aspect.
This time, there came a truly world-shaking boom. Amid layer upon layer of exploding yellow light, the golden barrier that had shrouded all of Ananda collapsed completely, disintegrating into a pure storm of energy.
Before the halls all over the mountain, Zen Masters fell in swathes.
They died without a sound. While in meditation, their organs were shattered by the shock, and their vitality was extinguished.
Those of deeper cultivation were forcibly “awakened” from meditation. Blood sprayed wildly from their mouths as they looked around in confusion and horror, with no idea what had happened.
Once a Zen Master entered seated meditation, he stepped into a state of self-forgetfulness, unaware of heat or cold, unable to distinguish the passage of time.
“Th-this…”
When they saw the carnage before them, they realised only a small number of the more powerful Zen Masters had survived. All the middle and lower level Zen Masters had perished, dying while in meditation.
“What happened? What happened?!”
“They’re all dead, all my disciples are dead?”
“Th-this… in all these thousand years, our Buddhist sacred mountain has never seen such a tragic sight. Even when the Asura King ascended the mountain back then, the Buddha still suppressed him in the Demon Subduing Ravine.”
The old Zen Masters were shocked and furious. They collapsed to the ground, stricken with grief, unable to accept what they were seeing.
“Just what force is attacking our sacred mountain?”
A white-bearded elder, his beard hanging to his chest and stained with sticky blood, clenched his withered hands so tightly that veins bulged on his forehead as he asked through gritted hatred.
A Warrior Monk beside him tended to the wounded while replying painfully:
“It was a monster, pitch black all over, a monster that controlled the Vajra Dharma Aspect.”
Pitch black all over, and controlling the “Vajra Dharma Aspect”? The senior Zen Masters exchanged glances and saw only bewilderment in one another’s eyes.
The old monk with the beard hanging to his chest changed expression slightly, as though he had thought of something, but instead of explaining, he asked:
“Other than him, wh—who else is there?”
At those words, the surrounding Warrior Monks all turned to look towards the main hall at the mountain summit.
“Silver Gong Xu of the Great Feng.”
“The Great Feng’s newly advanced first rank martial artist.”
The Warrior Monks spoke one after another.
Xu Qi’an, a first rank martial artist… The monks looked at one another, and for a brief while no one spoke.
After a moment, an old Zen Master said in bitter grief:
“He’s come back for revenge, he’s come back for revenge. This old monk knew it, back then we either should’ve killed him at all costs, or brought him into Buddhism at all costs. And now? Now that he’s advanced to first rank, the very first one he came to take revenge on was our Buddhist sect.”
The Warrior Monks and Zen Masters all fell silent.
As direct disciples of Ananda, they naturally knew the grudges and entanglements between their sect and the “Buddha Son”.
Buddhism had repeatedly tried to forcefully convert the Buddha Son, but because of the dispute between Mahayana and Hinayana teachings, the upper echelons had always been ambiguous in their stance. And so they had never fully made up their minds.
That had resulted in several dispatches of Arhats and Vajras to forcibly convert him, yet none had done so with the resolve of never stopping short of success.
Even back then, quite a few monks in Ananda had pointed out that if they truly meant to have the Buddha Son at any cost, then the Bodhisattvas should’ve gone to the Central Plains prepared to fall out completely with the Jianzheng and force the conversion through.
Now, the consequences had arrived.
That Buddha Son of the Central Plains, the one who had founded the path that all living beings could become Buddhas, had now advanced to first rank martial artist and come to settle accounts with Buddhism.
…
“What terrifying combat power.”
Daoist Jinlian gave heartfelt praise.
Shenshu aside, the power Xu Ningyan had just unleashed was something no first rank of any system could have taken head-on.
It wasn’t an exaggeration to say that, excluding half-step Martial Gods and the various Beyond-ranks, Xu Ningyan was probably the strongest combatant in the world today.
Well, with the exception of “Desolation”, the one who had carried off the Jianzheng and fled far away.
While al-Asura, Li Miaozhen and the others marvelled at the sheer violence of martial artists, in front of the main hall, Xu Qi’an stood proudly with the Sovereign Sword in hand, facing three first rank Bodhisattvas alone. But inwardly, he was nothing like as cold and calm as he looked.
Shenshu, hurry up and get over here. On my own, I don’t think I can handle three Bodhisattvas, and right now it feels like my body’s been hollowed out… While keeping his face stern, Xu Qi’an silently prayed in his heart.
The moment he broke the defensive formation, he immediately stopped the blood sacrifice. That would preserve his stamina effectively and lessen the backlash, but a faint sense of fatigue still came over him, reminding him of the long-forgotten weakness after squandering his fortune.
“All Warrior Monks, heed this order. Quickly escort the Zen Masters into the depths of Ananda to take shelter.”
Samantabhadra Bodhisattva’s voice, neither male nor female, old nor young, echoed over Ananda.
Before the collapsed main hall, Agaruka Bodhisattva stood tall and straight, gazing at Xu Ningyan with deep gravity in his eyes.
To his right stood Vaidurya Bodhisattva, jade-faced, with hair cascading like a waterfall, her exquisite willow brows faintly furrowed. To his left stood Samantabhadra, the red-lipped, white-toothed young monk.
The three Bodhisattvas did not attack at once. They had been cowed by Silver Gong Xu, who looked outwardly steady as an old dog while inwardly panicking like mad.
“In the end, you still came to this step.”
Samantabhadra Bodhisattva spoke blandly.
“Do you regret it?”
Xu Qi’an tugged at the corner of his mouth in mockery.
Samantabhadra Bodhisattva’s tone remained calm:
“Now that you’ve come to Ananda, you don’t need to think of leaving.”
His gaze shifted towards Li Miaozhen and the others in the distance.
“The same goes for them.”
As the last echoes of his voice lingered, a shadow vast enough to blot out the sky rose behind the three Bodhisattvas.
At some unknown point, the gigantic Shenshu had appeared behind them. His twelve pairs of arms spread wide like the fanged jaws of a flytrap, ready to devour the Bodhisattvas whole.
That sight reminded Xu Qi’an of the scene he had seen within the Stupa tower, Shenshu looming above the mist, staring coldly down at the Buddhist Bodhisattvas as though choosing prey to devour.
Without hesitation, he immediately swelled his muscles, turned his blood into a spring flood rushing through his veins, and unleashed the blood sacrifice technique.
Together with Shenshu, one before and one behind, he pincered Agaruka.
Combining the might of two peerless martial artists to kill Agaruka first. That had been the plan decided before the battle began.
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