Chapter 167 — Decisive Battle
The Sword Questions the Heavens · Page 3 of 5
Abbess Pucheng closed her eyes and joined her palms, murmuring Buddhist incantations low—soft and swift, like song yet not song, like speech yet not speech. The Great Compassion Golden Wheel, slowly turning in midair and shedding ten thousand rays of golden light, descended from above her head and came to rest before Pucheng's face, the Buddha's true form and the dharma aspects of the Arhats together confronting this savage fiend such as the world had not seen since ancient times.
In the golden light, their countenances seemed at once compassionate and wrathful: compassion, to pity all things under heaven; wrath, to subdue demons with fierce slaughter. Who could say which face was the Buddha's true visage?
The low chant of sutras grew from soft to loud, and in an instant resounded through heaven and earth!
Brilliant golden light burst forth, too dazzling for the eye to bear, like a heaven-full of Buddha-flame consuming all things, swallowing every trace of black before it and raising a vast golden orb of light in midair. Such a spectacle was truly rare in this world; all above the sea of clouds were shaken, awed by the matchless power of the Buddha.
Yet even as the crowd stood dumbstruck, that uncanny black—which seemed to have been cowed by the peerless power of the great Buddha—stubbornly flickered forth again from within the golden radiance, and amid all that blazing splendor, like a slender black needle, stabbed into the Great Compassion Golden Wheel.
Upon that supreme Buddhist treasure, the golden wheel, the Buddha's countenance, so compassionate before, was suddenly and strangely crossed by a streak of black. Almost at the same instant, the solemn chanting that filled the heavens stopped short, and the clamorous world fell into an eerie stillness.
Every eye turned at once to the two figures within that golden light.
Across Abbess Pucheng's face flashed a look of pain, while that thread of black vapor, as though newborn, swiftly swelled from a fine filament, gradually taking shape, and revealed the figure of the Beast Lord.
The black vapor rose steadily higher, and the righteous-path cultivators all changed color. Seen from afar, the Beast Lord's face still showed no expression; even his eyes remained cold. Now upon the golden wheel, upon the Buddha's holy image, that uncanny black began to appear, growing ever heavier, and the image's countenance, once compassionate and serene, turned savage, ever more hideous.
Abbess Pucheng's face changed drastically. Her expression darkened; with a low cry, her monk's robes billowed though no wind blew, and her form seemed in an instant to swell, as though goaded. The golden light that filled the sky abruptly wheeled about with a shrill hiss, rushing swiftly back before Pucheng and swiftly condensing into a golden orb the size of a palm, golden rays darting within it, almost like the sun in the heavens; even from far off one could feel the surging Buddha-power within.
Once more the solemn sound of chanting rose in the sky.
The golden orb flashed with dazzling radiance and slowly advanced; under the urging of such solemn and majestic Buddhist power, the black vapor upon the Buddha's countenance on the Great Compassion Golden Wheel gradually faded and began to return to normal. And the Beast Lord seemed to sense something too; his expression shifted slightly.
Then the golden orb at last touched the Great Compassion Golden Wheel—and of a sudden the golden light drew inward, and the whole treasure wheel seemed to turn transparent, as though a rosy dawn had at last burst forth; the Buddha-power, flowing like liquid, gushed out from within it like a long-banked volcano, glittering with countless golden sutras of the Buddhas.
In an instant the whole sky became a golden ocean; golden rays surged to fill the heavens and blanket the earth, and no other color could be seen. In such a resplendent sea of light, it seemed no demon or fiend could possibly survive.