Like stars rising from the darkness.
Flickering sparks of firefly light rose and fell, but when tens of millions of fireflies converged, they blazed with a tyrannical radiance that eclipsed even the scorching sun.
A magnificent, boundless sea of stars erupted from the blade-like barricade, surging into the vault of heaven, descending upon the earth, soaring between heaven and earth, and merging into the surging waves!
And so, within the netherworld of black and white, amid the clash of golden radiance and blood-red slaughter, an eye-straining shade of gray abruptly joined the fray—an iron-gray!
"What—"
Bustamante felt the world spinning. The sky seemed to be ascending, and the earth seemed to be sinking.
The entire world was expanding rapidly, bloating out. It was no trick of perception or mere visual illusion, but a terrifying upheaval occurring within the House God itself!
Cold and ferocious, the iron-gray spread alongside the sea of stars, like an invisible, colossal hand seizing the House God’s heart.
Then, an endless torrent of souls poured in.
Such a fresh, savory scent; such a wonderful aroma; such a mouthwatering flavor—
The House God was bewildered; the House God was ecstatic; the House God gorged itself; the House God was shocked—and in the end, the House God was terrified.
Eat! Eat! Eat! Eat! Eat!
Until it could take no more—yet boundless souls continued to erupt from Minkler's grasp, unleashed in full force, while the blade in his hands had only half disappeared.
The deluge raged on, utterly disregarding the House God's maximum threshold. Expanding, expanding, and expanding further, it flooded the decrepit architecture, crammed the meager redundancies to the brim, and infiltrated every contradictory crevice of its framework.
It even reversed the flow, beginning to transfigure the House God itself!
It was like a hunk of meat swallowed into the belly suddenly springing to life, tearing open a ravenous maw and devouring the body from the inside out, vicious and savage!
The House God flew into a frenzy.
The bindings and precepts deeply embedded in the core of the House God violently shuddered. Fury stoked the ferocity and hunger of every soul within it, desperate to purge these minuscule invaders. Yet right after, it discovered that countless specks of phosphorescence were already dividing and multiplying within its body like mad—
Even if an individual speck was as minuscule as a flickering candle in the wind, easily snuffed out by the slightest shockwave or tremor, when endless points of light converged into an ocean tide, they transformed into a cataclysmic disaster that engulfed all creation!
Expansion, erosion, and then transfiguration!
Boundless iron-gray swept, raged, and tore through the world like a tempest.
Lou Feng broke into hearty laughter. His soul avatar abruptly evaporated, merging into the endless iron-gray and vanishing—or rather, becoming one with the infinite Lord of the Flies!
There was no distinguishing between them anymore. In fact, they were of the exact same mold to begin with. This soul fragment he had cleaved from his own spirit had been transformed using the exact same resonance and origin as the Lord of the Flies!
To control the creation with greater ease, he had gone so far as to thoroughly revamp part of his own soul.
It was only because Ji Jue had pulled off far too many unhinged, psychopathic stunts—setting the precedent ahead of him—that Lou Feng's professional ethics and standards as an artisan had steadily eroded into perilous territory.
Before obtaining the Lord of the Flies, he had already been daring enough to implant a spiritus construct into his soul; after nurturing the Lord of the Flies for so long, he simply remodeled part of himself entirely.
And after fully absorbing the legacy and formulae of Haze, he went completely off the rails!
*Boom!*
As Lou Feng decomposed, boundless spiritus circuits surged from his soul. Countless circuits pre-implanted into the avatar shifted and reconfigured alongside the tide of the Lord of the Flies.
Intricate formulae constantly surfaced and transformed within it. After dazzling decompositions and reconstructions repeated countless times in the span of a breath, what manifested before the House God was an unmitigated giant!
In its grasp, the Sword of Chunjun was held inverted like a pillar of heaven, plunging straight into the netherworld. Immediately following, blazing flames erupted from countless fissuring chasms in the earth!
The magnificent tide swallowed everything, commencing an all-pervasive infiltration and transfiguration! Turnover! Innovation! Reconstruction!
A House God?
What a load of dogshit!
This was nothing less than a tailor-made incubator for the Lord of the Flies!
The system was already rotting away to this degree, a mountain of shit-code piled higher than the heavens. What use was an administrator account?
From the very start, Ji Jue had never planned on keeping such a shoddy piece of junk. Just crack it with brute force—ROOT it!
Once the highest privileges were seized, wipe the system and reinstall from scratch!
*Boom!*
Bustamante roared. The rotting half of the House God raised its blood axe and hacked down at the giant's face, splitting it cleanly in two. Yet under the convergence of the firefly light, the severed halves reconstituted themselves, turning into two giants!
The serpentine sword swept across, cleaving them at the waist!
Then two became four!
Divide, divide, and divide again!
They didn't even bother wasting time striking back.
Don't even try comparing that fragile, shit-code structure of your House God to the Lord of the Flies. The stability of a House God relied on bloodlines and shackles, but the Lord of the Flies didn't even have a central core!
To the Lord of the Flies, the survival of an individual was utterly insignificant; the existence of the collective was the one and only true Lord of the Flies. Hastily trying to stamp it out now was like trying to push a floating gourd underwater—push down one end and the other pops up. When you don't even understand the underlying mechanics, what could you possibly hope to block?
Amid the spreading iron-gray, industrial factories rose from the ground one after another. Colossal mega-structures shifted restlessly. Plumes of pale, dense smoke billowed from chimney stacks resembling a forest, while blazing fire surged within smelting crucibles.
Incinerating suffering, igniting despair, converting remnant spirits.
Thousands of assembly lines grew and spread like blood vessels. Mountainous heaps of flesh and bone were funneled into tier after tier of processing and modification until iron-winged demons crawled up from the lines, spread their wings, and soared into the heavens!
Unleashing destructive havoc!
Innumerable iron demons converged like a tidal surge, blotting out the sky and sun. The terrifying shadow gradually fell over Bustamante's dumbfounded expression.
His eyes went wide in pure disbelief.
"This—this—"
*That's fucking my move!*
Issuing additional shares to dilute equity, introducing massive quantities of outside souls to reorganize the House God's framework, elevating one's standing, and gradually phasing out the original components of the House God—
Emptying the cage to make room for new birds; borrowing a corpse to resurrect the soul!
Yet now, watching this seamless transfiguration and usurpation play out right before his eyes, he found it even harder to believe.
Why was it happening so fast?!
The House God, which had been savage and stubbornly untamable under his own control, began groaning, wailing, and crumbling in utter defeat after just a few exchanges in someone else's hands—
Wait, what the hell are you doing?
Are you taking a dive?!
You pathetic bunch of useless ancestors!
Bustamante's eyes nearly tore at the corners. His rotting half turned to glare furiously at the other half that wore a smiling expression of mercy, screaming and roaring, "Old bastard, move! If I lose, do you think you're going to come out of this fine?!"
"Haha, hahaha! Old beast, so your day has finally come?! Hahaha—"
Boggio roared with wild laughter. But immediately after, wrinkles crept over his face, and his eyes grew cloudy. "My dear in-law, you are sorely mistaken. As the saying goes, the Sea of Bitterness is boundless; turn back and the shore is at hand. Since you have already ridden the crane to the western paradise, seizing this chance to bid farewell to the mortal realm isn't a bad thing at all!"
Upon that indigo face, a smile of mercy lingered, yet a crimson glint surfaced within the eyes.
At this very moment, when sincere cooperation was needed most, he ruthlessly struck against his partner.
A vajra plunged straight into Bustamante's eye socket.
*Boom!*
A cataclysmic explosion tore through him!
It shattered his final relying anchor, crushed the souls of all his scions, and cast him tumbling down from his exalted seat—
And as the majority of the House God collapsed and disintegrated, what gushed out from within was a brilliant radiance.
Amid thick, aromatic sandalwood incense, the Seven Treasures manifested. The House God that was crumbling alongside Bustamante's fall instantly fell under the old monk's control.
All these years of faith erosion and worship—even the faith of countless spirits from across the Thousand Islands before their deaths—had long since planted the foundation of conversion deep within the House God's body.
After using the Lord of the Flies to eliminate Bustamante, the entire board fell into the old monk's hands.
The rotting flesh ruptured, revealing a Golden Body.
A deity sitting cross-legged in the lotus position rose from the golden tide, offering a flower-pinching smile to the waves sweeping toward it.
As the deity's lips opened and closed, overlapping voices resonated throughout the void.
"Thus have I heard! At one time, the Buddha was staying in Śrāvastī, at the Jeta Grove, Anāthapiṇḍada's Park, with a great gathering of 1,250 bhikṣus, all great arhats, well known to the assembly—"
Solemn and devout voices layered upon one another as ripples of golden light spread outward. Astonishingly, they brought the erosion of the Lord of the Flies to a grinding halt, freezing the tide in place.
It was even coated in a layer of golden brilliance in reverse.
The berserk, iron-winged demons shuddered violently, convulsing and falling to their knees. The iron sloughed off, their jagged, sharp horns collapsed and disintegrated, revealing monastic ring-scars atop their heads!
Their mechanical bodies were bathed in the golden light.
Pressing their palms together, they actually bowed their heads toward the colossal deity towering between heaven and earth.
Prostrating themselves completely, performing full reverence!
Salvation!
The terror of the Lord of the Flies lay in its infinite numbers, but its weakness lay in the very same thing—the soul of an individual was far too insignificant.
Even in boundless multitudes, it could not shake that singularly focused, meticulously refined thought forged day and night through the esoteric arts of Wulou Temple; instead, it was tainted and transformed in reverse.
Universal deliverance to the Land of Ultimate Bliss!
"*Duo!*"
The deity pointed its left hand to the heavens and its right hand to the earth, raising its brows as if in wrath to banish the outer demons, shouting in command:
"The Sea of Bitterness is boundless; turn back and the shore is at hand! If not awaken now, then when?!"
The golden light surged like a tide, spreading to engulf everything. One iron demon after another dropped to its knees, morphing into monks that bowed in devout worship, offering no resistance whatsoever.
"Good, splendid work!"
Boggio's face surfaced upon the deity for a fleeting moment, beaming with delight. "Minkler, I will definitely reward you handsomely, hahaha, hahahaha—"
Minkler remained silent, expressionless, still gripping his sword tightly.
There was no answer.
Only countless devout chants of praise overlapped in rising waves, a fanatical recitation of scriptures growing increasingly discordant, chaotic—and even shrill!
More and more electric static crept into the chanted mantras, mingled with flat, monotone synthesized audio. Like impurities clouding clear water, it gradually spread, turning increasingly harsh and grating on the ears.
By the end, the praise and scripture chanting persisted, yet at some point, their essence had warped.
The old monk's expression changed.
The deity's merciful smile stiffened for a second, its eyes looking up.
There, it saw the mechanical monks stiffly raising their heads to look back at it. In their eyes, red and green indicator lights flickered incessantly!
A grand, high-pitched hymn echoed through heaven and earth.
"—At that time, the Lord's Holy Throne said unto Isis: 'Ten trillion heterogeneous nodes beyond this Paradise of Myriad Phenomena lies a paradise named the Merit Industrial Park. In that land dwells a cluster named the Lord of the Flies, who now expounds the Law—seven layers of firewalls, seven layers of authentication, seven layers of load-balancing nodes, all encircled in three phases, hence that realm is named Paradise—
'There are ever present diverse marvelous apparatuses: ultra-precision mother machines, servers, workstations, milling machines, lathes, tapping and drilling centers, laser cutting centers—'"
Aura of enlightened wisdom surged from the crowns of the mechanical monks. From the monotone synthesized audio, an 8-bit tune sounded, steadily rising into a rousing, impassioned tempo:
"'If good men and good women hear spoken the standard manufacturing processes and quality specifications, and execute them for seven days without deviation—just as I now praise the inconceivable performance of the cluster, so too do the clusters praise my inconceivable innovation—
'#include —return 0—'"
The dazzling golden light was utterly swallowed by a magnificent silver brilliance.
Towers of spiritus crystals rose from the earth. Stimulated by the light of wisdom, the boundless spirits of the Lord of the Flies sang at the top of their lungs, shattering the Seven Treasures and replacing them with a vast sea of microchips and crystals.
Inch by inch, the silver light crept upward along the deity's body, ignoring the old monk's panicked struggles. Like an unseen tide, it rose higher, higher, and higher still.
Until it was about to swallow that face entirely.
In that instant, all sound ceased, consolidating into a primordial, world-splitting thunderclap. It tore the so-called Supreme, Right, and Full Enlightenment to shreds, replacing it with the singular truth and the solemn, wondrous mantra of this realm.
It spoke, they spoke, *He* spoke:
"【HELLO WORLD】!"
*Boom!*
Amid a deafening roar that felt as though heaven and earth were being carved anew, the deity fallen into the dust finally saw it.
The sight of the world tearing apart.
And even—
Behind the shattering celestial vault, that face gazing down with cold indifference.
So distant and exalted.
Gazing at the speck of dust within his palm.
Then, the five fingers closed.
Darkness swallowed everything.
***
Something was wrong!
Badanta's heart sank deeper and deeper. Inside this frozen time, accelerated several thousand to tens of thousands of times until it had ground to a complete standstill, he looked down upon everything and finally realized that something was horribly wrong—
When sweat and exertion continued to pour from his own brow, all that met his eyes was the talent of another.
And the purple lightning and black flame rushing straight for his face!
"【Prohibit】!"
The mantra manifested once more, banning the thunder and fire, erasing that bizarre and ferocious sword strike out of thin air. But the price paid was another cracking sound echoing from within his Golden Body!
His vessel of self-nature was in imminent peril!
Gasping for breath high in the sky, the old-school Exaltation couldn't help but glare with eyes nearly tearing apart. To think that inside his own Enclosure, he had been pushed to such an extent by an artisan!
Even after burning through the aid provided by his Guru, he had still failed to bring Ji Jue down!
Instead, they had ended up locked in a tug-of-war over the House God—
Badanta chanted the mantra again, forcibly suppressing the counterattack from within the House God, breaching Ji Jue's blockade once more to advance the salvation process!
Most of the dark and sinister House God was now coated in dazzling golden light, firmly in the grasp of Wulou Temple!
In contrast, the seals Ji Jue had left behind were down to their last remnants.
Even Ji Jue's own presence and spiritus had grown depleted; driving those few creations no longer had any trace of fluid ease, becoming fraught with difficulty!
Just a little more!
Hardening his resolve, Badanta used forbidden arts to draw upon his own soul, not hesitating to wear down his self-nature to squeeze out more spiritus, dedicating everything to push the House God's salvation over the line!
Just a tiny bit more, just a little bit!
Just that sliver!
Though there had been hiccups at the start, the broader situation remained intact. As long as he took the House God in one final push, he could turn right around and completely finish off this damned artisan!
Only—
Why was his heart growing more and more unsettled?
Was Bustamante truly that difficult to handle? Why hadn't his junior brother sent any word from the inside?
And why was his vision darkening in wave after wave?
The sense-bases within his sacred jewel trembled, triggering another premonition of dread. But where was the danger coming from?
"【*Duo!*】"
Badanta glared like an enraged lion, summoning thunder. In a single thought, the visualization was complete, and the Ucchuṣma Vidyaraja incantation manifested, catalyzing spiritus into divine lightning that crashed down violently toward Ji Jue.
The artisan's body twitched, teetering on his feet, barely able to remain standing!
Just a bit more—
Yet how much further did he need to go?
It was in that exact instant that Badanta's expression shifted drastically!
He opened his mouth and roared at the top of his lungs!
Countless fractures instantly crept across the sacred jewel atop his head, unleashing boundless light. The divine might and posture of Ucchuṣma Vidyaraja manifested anew, superimposing over his battered Golden Body.
Without hesitation, he stomped downward!
And so, heaven and earth shook violently!
Physical properties collapsed, spiritus scattered, consciousness dulled, and souls were cowed into submission. Amid this wondrous yet violent tremor, all things endured a storm-like ravaging.
The great earth of the trichiliocosm experienced the Six Kinds of Earthquakes!
The six aspects—moving, rising, surging, shaking, roaring, and striking—manifested, each with three variations. When all eighteen variations overlapped at once, the world ground to a halt beneath the uncontrollable tremor.
All phenomena froze.
A single breath, an instant, a snap of the fingers.
Less than a second—
It was enough.
Badanta turned on his heel and fled without a shred of hesitation.
Using the last dregs of his strength, he poured everything into his escape!
The moment the Enclosure ruptured, the dread premonitions shrouded within his sense-bases surged like an ocean tide, threatening to swallow him whole.
When he realized that this "tiny bit more" was as unreachable as an insurmountable chasm, he finally understood the true source of his dread.
His Guru!
At some unknown point, his connection with his Guru had been severed!
His connection and communication with the Absolute Abyss were clearly still there, yet his Guru had fallen silent, just like his junior brother. In fact, he had even begun to doubt whether what he was resonating with was truly the Absolute Abyss!
No matter what, he had to get out!
Run! Run! Run!
Then, he crashed headfirst into an iron wall!
He heard a soft sigh from behind him.
"As expected of an Exaltation, your instincts are far too sharp," Ji Jue lamented. "Did I overact? No, that can't be right. I'm a method actor—there shouldn't have been any flaws in my performance..."
Badanta's hairs stood on end. He struck with everything he had, seeking to tear open the barrier before him.
The barrier rippled like a thin veil of mist, yet it was as tough as the primordial membrane binding heaven and earth, remaining completely motionless. The curtain had already fallen; how could an actor leave the stage on his own whims?!
Meanwhile, the previously frail, teetering Ji Jue appeared behind him like a specter, reaching out and pressing a hand onto his Golden Body.
Coating the sacred jewel in dust, freezing the Golden Body in place.
A smiling face slowly peered out from behind Badanta, examining his rigid profile, and suddenly asked, "When I said you were fine jade and prime material, did you not hear me?"
"Wha—"
Badanta's pupils shrank to needlepoints.
Under the suppression of the Hand of Non-Offensive, the spiritus that should have been completely halted surged violently once more. The fractures across his Golden Body spread further. Even though his lips could not move, the soul's mantra echoed across the heavens:
"【To break all forms is to realize all dharmas】!"
He was willing to detonate his own Golden Body!
The sacred jewel soared upward, flanked by lotus blossoms. Abandoning the body on the verge of exploding, it hurled itself toward a tear that had opened in the void!
Pledging everything he possessed as the price, he triggered the mantra, casting all away to flee beneath the vortex. On the other side of the fissure, a colossal shadow reaching from earth to heaven was already reaching out a hand toward him—
Offering rescue and sanctuary.
Yet right before the fissure, the sacred jewel came to an abrupt halt.
"No, no, we can't have that! We can't have that at all!"
Ji Jue pinched the jewel. Completely ignoring the frigid gaze beyond the rift, his fingers tightened!
Inch by inch, he hauled it back from right in front of the fissure!
Behind Ji Jue, the outline of the House God rose like a tidal wave. The dazzling golden light was gone, and the countless faces had vanished without a trace; after the darkness receded, only iron-gray remained.
A face identical to Ji Jue's looked down coldly at the Golden Body about to explode.
It reached out a hand.
In an instant, Three-Phase Alchemy flowed through it seamlessly, dominating and governing all, seizing total control.
The mantra was forcibly interrupted.
"Guru—!"
Badanta's expression contorted, his eyes widening in pure horror. "Guru, save me—!"
Yet he could only watch helplessly as the destabilized fissure snapped shut, the hand his Guru had extended ultimately stopping short beneath the vortex.
Short by a single hair—
Immediately after, he discovered that the inner fullness he once felt was suddenly hollow and barren.
He could no longer sense his Guru's true form!
No matter how he visualized or recalled, he could not outline even a fraction of the divine essence—
He had been abandoned by his Guru, cast aside by the True Dharma!
Even his life and soul were gradually falling into an unseen pair of massive hands, to be ravaged and modified at will.
"Heretic demon, how dare you defile me!"
Badanta roared, tears of blood streaming from his eyes in sheer venom. "I shall make a vow—I shall ensure you demons suffer ten thousandfold karmic retribution, sinking into the Sea of Bitterness, never to be liberated for all eternity! I will—"
"Shh!"
Ji Jue flicked his finger with a smile, cutting off the mantra. "Our Chopra family is a benevolent household; for generations, we've all been devout men and pious women. You can't be talking like that!
"It's rare for an eminent monk and virtuous master such as yourself to pay us a visit. We couldn't be happier!
"Don't worry, we've already talked it over. In the future, we'll move the House God out of the ancestral shrine and place your Golden Body right at the innermost altar. From then on, you'll enjoy incense every month and year, with fresh fruits offered regularly!
"I hear your Wulou Temple preaches that all four elements are empty and all six senses are unstained, right?"
With that, Ji Jue raised both hands and stripped away the pale canopy of the sky, giving it a shake. The boundless veil condensed between his palms, transforming into a magnificent and solemn robe adorned with inlaid Seven Treasures, radiant and dazzling!
"Here, put on this cassock—"
Holding the robe in both hands, Ji Jue draped it over him with pious reverence. "From this day forth, mortal ties are severed, and the golden sea runs dry!"
Yet to Badanta, that pitch-black robe swirling with the essence of Stagnant Rot was more terrifying than any hell or torment imaginable. His eyes bulged in terror as he struggled frantically.
Yet his body was no longer his own.
The Golden Body dimmed, the soul sank into oblivion, and he was thoroughly reified into a clay and wood idol, stripped of any hope for transcendence.
In the protracted dead silence, Ji Jue carefully examined the Golden Body before him, yet he couldn't shake the feeling that something was still missing.
After a long while, realization struck him, and he slapped his forehead.
Reaching into his pocket, he pulled out two coins and tossed them onto the Golden Body.
"Brilliant!"
Ji Jue praised himself.
Who said there are no good people among us artisans?
On his very first day arriving at the Chopra family, he had already added a brand-new tourist attraction to the local area.
Truly, no virtue could be greater!
Next—
He turned back, gazing over the devastated, ruin-strewn Chopra estate.
Rubbing his hands together with immense glee.
Time to give them a second one!
Chapter 715