Chapter 182 — Heaven's Wrath
The Sword Questions the Heavens · Page 1 of 6
Upon that wordless jade wall, countless archaic golden characters had appeared. Such a bizarre sight was one that none beneath Venerable Pu Cheng—indeed, none of the monks of Fan Yin Temple at all—had ever witnessed. The jade wall now surged with auspicious vapors, now flickered with a dark red glow; the solemn, majestic golden light, shot through with an eerie, unfathomable crimson radiance, gave one a feeling of suffocation.
High in midair, Ming Li threw back his head and gave a long howl, his face twisted as though in the utmost agony. Then his gaze shifted to the wordless jade wall, and he studied those countless characters, tumbling and shifting and swaying, with the closest attention. Around his body the uncanny light of the Soul-Devouring staff grew ever brighter, and the demonic power seeping from within him waxed ever greater with it.
Even the monks of Fan Yin Temple on the ground could feel an unprecedented chill drifting down from Ming Li in the sky, settling over them and wrapping them round. After three days and three nights of tempering in the Buddhist dharma array, the demonic power of the Blood-Devouring Bead seemed not to have diminished at all—rather, it looked as though it had been wholly provoked into the open, stronger than ever before.
Anxiety showed on Venerable Pu Cheng's face. At this juncture of shifting wind and cloud, his expression seemed to shift with the clouds along the horizon, and he appeared greatly irresolute. Beside him, Pu Fang was growing impatient; he looked up at Ming Li, bathed in that dark blue radiance in the sky, his brows tightly knit, and called out loudly to Pu Cheng:
"Senior Brother, what do we do now?"
Pu Cheng drew a long breath and said with resolve: "This man is the heir of our junior brother Pu Zhao, and the vessel of his life's devotion and great vow. We cannot leave him unaided."
The words were barely out of his mouth when Pu Cheng gave a command, sat back down cross-legged, and began to recite the Buddha's name; the sound of chanting rose faintly once more. At once the monks of Fan Yin Temple behind and around him, seeing the abbot work his dharma, followed suit one after another. Moments later, a solemn, majestic golden radiance surged up once more from among those monks of Fan Yin Temple.
Yet this golden Buddhist light differed from the dharma array that had sought to deliver Ming Li over the past three days: in its solemn aspect there was less compassion now, and far more of grim severity. And Ming Li in midair, by contrast, seemed not to have noticed at all the golden light rising from the ground below and closing in to envelop him; his spirit seemed wholly captivated by those flickering characters upon the wordless jade wall.
No one could ever have guessed—and even the monks of Fan Yin Temple beneath the wordless jade wall at that moment, though they saw it with their own eyes, could not for the life of them understand—that what now flickered upon the wordless jade wall, upon that jade wall of the holiest and most revered ground in all the Buddhist faith, was in truth the fourth scroll of the legendary Heaven's Book, the classic of the demon cult!
The way of Heaven is vast and dim; the affairs of the world shift and change—who can foresee even a fraction of it?
The monks of Fan Yin Temple worshipped the Buddha day and night, and still they could not know it; Ming Li, who had weathered every hardship and seen the world's vicissitudes, likewise could not know!