"...Benefactor shares an affinity with our Pure Land."
With a Buddhist chant, a colossal golden body appeared between heaven and earth, barring the path. The cyan brick beneath Tuoba Dafeng's feet transformed into glazed, jewel-strewn ground. A bodhi tree appeared in the courtyard, and not far away emerged a Merit Lotus Pond. Blossoms of lotus cried out together, "An affinity! An affinity!"
With the emergence of the golden body, heaven and earth temporarily transformed into a Buddhist Pure Land. Tuoba Dafeng knew that though it was called temporary, in truth, with the slightest delay he would be shifted alongside the Pure Land beneath his feet into the true Pure Land. He was not an immortal yet, after all; once cast into the Pure Land, there would truly be no coming out.
Tuoba Dafeng suddenly deflated like a punctured ball, instantly collapsing into a black speck smaller than a grain of dust, and violently slammed into the mountain-like golden body! *Clang!* Like a great bell or grand chime, the sound resonated through heaven and earth. That golden body actually swayed, nearly tumbling backward! Lowering its hill-sized head, it gazed at the massive void that had opened in its chest. For reasons unknown, though Tuoba Dafeng had clearly been smaller than the point of a needle, he had gouged out a hole a thousand zhang across.
Halfway up Spirit Mountain, several lotus petals suddenly broke off and tumbled down from a lotus pedestal.
Without pausing for an instant, Tuoba Dafeng shot straight ahead after piercing through the golden body, punching through every obstruction until he finally tore his way out of the Pure Land.
The world around him shifted again, turning into a vast, desolate Gobi desert where ravines rolled across the earth and dry winds howled. Tuoba Dafeng materialized with a cold sneer. "Bah! What kind of dogshit are you, trying to convert me into your Guardian Wisdom King? Look at your own karmic attainment and see if you even deserve it! Just heavily damaging your merit and fortune is getting off easy!"
He looked back over his shoulder. Seeing no Vajras or Arhats giving chase, he strode swiftly forward. This place was distinctly different from the environment surrounding the Great Baohua Pure Land sect. Tuoba Dafeng reckoned he was still within the grand formation, which was why he saw such a sight. As for the solution, it was simple enough: just charge straight ahead.
Tuoba Dafeng's mindscape world had already been condensed to the absolute utmost, granting him an extraordinarily lofty status. When he wished to go forward, forward he went; his divine consciousness would not be deceived like an ordinary cultivator's, thinking he was flying in a straight line while actually circling in place.
Having been maintained by the Great Baohua Pure Land for over a hundred thousand years, the sect-protecting grand formation was naturally vast beyond measure. But no matter how immense an array was, it had its limits and boundaries. As long as Tuoba Dafeng flew a bit longer, he would always be able to fly out.
Yet this flight lasted for several days.
As he flew on and on, the unchanging scenery before Tuoba Dafeng's eyes finally shifted. An isolated peak connecting earth to heaven appeared, standing starkly on the land, singularly eerie.
Tuoba Dafeng suddenly turned his head. In the sea of clouds behind him, a pair of eyes slowly opened, instantly illuminating the entire world. The expanse between heaven and earth was merely enough to reveal the head and chest of a golden body.
With a shift of his divine thought, Tuoba Dafeng cast his senses infinitely high—only to discover that he had been in the palm of this golden body all along. That isolated peak was merely a single raised finger of the Buddha.
Tuoba Dafeng's expression shifted slightly, but he immediately sneered. "You truly are utterly unreasonable! Trading on that sliver of Buddhist affinity from years past, you interrupted my quiet cultivation to make me step forth and suppress Wei Yuan for you—and fine, let that pass. But now that I failed to defeat him in our duel, you turn around and kick me while I'm down? What kind of sense does that make?"
The lips of the colossal Buddha spanning heaven and earth parted slightly, its voice shaking the entire world. "Benefactor Tuoba, you clashed with that Wei Yuan, yet were bested in defeat and further stoked the arrogance of external demons. This was the planting of an evil cause. You arrived at the Pure Land having broken your seamless body, and henceforth you shall become a Guardian Wisdom King of the Buddhist kingdom. This is the karmic effect."
Tuoba Dafeng laughed instead of raging. "I risked my life for your Pure Land, and losing becomes your excuse to refine me into a puppet?"
"Sadhu. A Guardian Wisdom King is no puppet..."
"What's the damn difference?!"
"Benefactor Tuoba, had you still retained your seamless body and suffered no loss to your cultivation, you would have been free to select a golden body and cultivate across multiple lifetimes. Before finally re-attaining your karmic attainment, you would still have been yourself. But now your true body is damaged and your Dao heart flawed; you can no longer choose a golden body. Becoming a Protector Wisdom King is your present karmic fruit."
Tuoba Dafeng raged, "Because I was injured and bled, I'm useless now, is that it? The things promised don't have to be given anymore, is that it?"
"There is naturally no reason for the Pure Land's promises to go unfulfilled. It is merely that Benefactor has now lost your affinity with them."
"I lost my affinity? It's clearly that you Pure Land monks couldn't resist your greed and grabbed two extra steamed buns!"
"Sadhu. That precisely demonstrates that Benefactor shares an affinity with our Buddha."
Tuoba Dafeng's fury peaked. Letting loose a long cry, he said chillingly, "If you want my dharmic body, come take it yourself! I'd like to see just how many lotuses you're prepared to sacrifice!"
The Buddha chanted a sacred name. Then the firmament changed color—the entire sky was revealed to be formed from Buddha palms! The two hands came together, trapping Tuoba Dafeng between them.
Yet from between the Buddha's palms, the sound of thunder rumbled without ceasing, rolling on for a long, long time.
***
Upon returning to Qingming, Wei Yuan opened the exit of the Spirit Herding Ring. Large contingents of cultivators had long been waiting. The moment the exit opened, they filed into the immortal ring to inspect the cultivators within, carrying out the wounded. Then masses of cultivators marched out of the immortal ring, leaving only thirty thousand templates permanently stationed inside.
Wei Yuan returned to his immortal estate and sat in his study, his face frosty. Great Baohua Pure Land's repeated incursions had already touched upon his bottom line. However, Qingming was developing by leaps and bounds; with every passing day, its strength closed the gap. Wei Yuan had therefore exercised forbearance. Even when tens of millions of people in northern Western Jin were converted, he had taken no major action, merely accelerating the pace of his war preparations.
The floating road cutting across Eastern Jin and pointing straight toward Northern Qi was the expression of Wei Yuan's stance. Yet building that road would incur an astronomical cost and take several decades. Wei Yuan had originally needed these decades to focus on development while gradually perfecting his own Dao path, but as things stood, the Pure Land clearly had no intention of granting him that time.
Tuoba Dafeng's assault had sounded a wake-up call for Wei Yuan. Today it was Tuoba Dafeng; tomorrow it might be Wanyan Dafeng, and the day after that, Murong Dafeng...
At this thought, Wei Yuan's gaze grew progressively deeper. Since eight or nine out of ten things in the world never go as one wishes, there was no need to wait until everything was fully prepared...
Yet there was one thing Wei Yuan still could not understand: Tuoba Dafeng's defeat had felt slightly unnatural. When their mindscape worlds clashed, Wei Yuan had been poised to crush Tuoba Dafeng just before his own Dao force was exhausted, which would have left Tuoba Dafeng unable even for his true spirit to escape, bereft of all hope of reincarnation.
Yet this outcome had seemed to take Tuoba Dafeng by surprise as well, so much so that the moment he realized it, he had broken away and fled at all costs, only to be hunted by Wei Yuan along his aura and dealt a brutal blow.
Unable to puzzle it out for the moment, Wei Yuan did not dwell on it further, turning instead to the Splendor of the Many Realms to check on the progress of the research into Pure Land conversion.
In a chamber of the Xuanming Medical Research Center, a farmer was preaching scripture to dozens of believers before him. His face was filled with sanctity. Long passages of scripture spontaneously formed within his consciousness, and as soon as they appeared, he naturally comprehended the profound subtleties within.
He expounded upon his realizations one by one, speaking with gentle eloquence so that the tens of people before him could also cultivate the true Dharma and reincarnate into the Pure Land of Ultimate Bliss in their next lives. He was not the only one preaching. In other rooms, people of all sorts were lecturing as well, every one of them utterly earnest. There were hundreds of such chambers, and several hundred people preaching simultaneously.
All the chambers were built around a colossal pillar, spanning several tiers top to bottom.
Those masters endowed with heavenly scriptures were not actually facing congregations of believers, but rather circular platters crafted from colored glaze. In each platter rested a scrap of flesh and blood, quietly bathing in the Buddha light.
Chapter 1237