Shanle badly wanted to curse out loud: empty realization, his foot! Yet as he took a closer look, he began to see the subtle ingenuity behind repeatedly repaving the road.
Tear it open, enter, pack it tight, come out, seal it up, tear it open again... over and over. The Heaven of Joy and Bliss was delicate and magnificent; how could it withstand such relentless torment? A profound imprint would inevitably be carved into it, forging karmic ties.
Shanle gritted his teeth in fury. He was well aware of methods that broke ground, but in the Buddhist scriptures, this was not called breaking ground—it was called establishing glorious rites.
The usual practice was to construct temples and dharma altars, carve colossal statues of the Buddha into mountains, and so forth, thereby establishing bonds and karmic affinity with the realm to gradually refine it. Who on earth behaved like Wei Yuan, stubbornly digging up the very same road over and over without end?
The Heaven of Joy and Bliss was the place where Shanle had attained the Dao, a land he ordinarily pampered with utmost care. He never anticipated that Wei Yuan would not only barge in, but act with such sheer brutality, sending pangs of unbearable heartache through him.
Shanle gnashed his teeth and took his leave. Moments later, golden clouds surged in the distance as countless devotees advanced upon auspicious clouds—they were actually launching a siege against the city!
Wei Yuan was thoroughly astonished. Was this not smashing eggs against rock? He immediately recalled the cultivators scattered outside the city, then ordered Dao Foundation cultivators to form battle arrays atop the walls for defense. In the blink of an eye, the auspicious clouds swept before the fortress. From within the clouds tumbled countless lions, tigers, serpents, and eagles, alongside numerous giants several tens of feet tall, their bodies gleaming as though lacquered in gold. Mingled amid the horde of ten thousand beasts, they charged toward the city.
Tens of thousands of birds of every size surged forward, cloaked in Buddhist light and flying swift as lightning, arriving over the city in an instant. Yet the defenders manning the walls were Qingming battle array cultivators; flying directly above the city made the flock nothing more than sitting ducks.
With that, the Qingming cultivators unleashed ten thousand arrows at once. Guided by the divine senses of Jun Weizhi, Han Li, and others, the deadly shafts locked onto targets both large and small across the sky. In an instant, feathers scattered and blood burst forth; within breaths, over ten thousand birds were shot down!
Yet the moment each bird fell, a burst of Buddhist light flared from within its body before twisting into black qi, hurtling along karmic ties straight toward the person who had slain it. As the black qi settled upon them, the Qingming cultivators suddenly felt their bodies grow leaden. Every breath burned raw in their mouths and noses, and drawing in spiritual energy sent searing waves of agony through their meridians.
Wei Yuan recognized at a glance that these cultivators had been infected by the karmic debt of slaying the pure land's devotees, tumbling straight down from their initial state of establishing karmic ties with heaven and earth. If favor and malice were each graded on nine tiers, then these cultivators had plummeted from the first tier of favor straight down to the seventh or even eighth tier of malice—utterly detested by gods and ghosts alike, with only the lowest tier, condemned by heaven and earth, remaining beneath them.
"Careless..." Wei Yuan muttered, glancing toward the direction where Shanle had vanished.
In the eyes of a Bodhisattva, all living beings were equal. A mortal was a devotee, and a beast, bird, fish, or insect was likewise a devotee. These beasts and birds were, in truth, devotees guided into the Heaven of Joy and Bliss; even a tiny sparrow possessed a spiritual standing equal to that of a hundred-foot giant.
The tens of thousands of wild beasts, hundreds of giants, and tens of thousands of laymen and monks outside the walls were merely a feint; the true killing move lay within the tens of thousands of birds flying into the city. To shoot down birds flying at such heights required Dao Foundation cultivators. Yet killing a single bird was tantamount to slaying a Buddhist monastic. Slaying two invited lingering misfortune and constant, lethal peril. A few whose archery was exceptionally refined had loosed continuous volleys and struck down three birds in a row, only to drop dead on the spot.
To say nothing of slaying three birds, even those who shot down two were completely rejected by the Heaven of Joy and Bliss. The spiritual energy of heaven and earth had turned utterly toxic to them; breathing in even a sliver more would cause them to perish from the poison.
Although a little bird was equal in spiritual standing to a giant, standing did not determine combat prowess. Those giants possessed boundless strength and thick hides, worth thousands upon thousands of birds in a real clash. Once the birds were slain, they would serve as the main force breaching the city.
With this maneuver, Shanle had baited Wei Yuan into slaughtering the devout birds, squandering over ten thousand Dao Foundation elites in a single stroke. If these people remained in the Heaven of Joy and Bliss, they would only cause heaven and earth to detest Wei Yuan all the more. Moreover, each of them carried seventh- or eighth-tier malice; a single one of them was enough to offset the goodwill of dozens of others.
Wei Yuan could already feel his body growing buoyant, showing signs of floating upward. This was the unmistakable symptom of the Heaven of Joy and Bliss beginning to reject him.
Deciding without hesitation, Wei Yuan promptly drew the ten-odd thousand karma-tainted Dao Foundation cultivators into the Spirit Herd Ring. There were a hundred thousand Dao Foundation cultivators in the city; losing ten thousand still left ninety thousand, which would not change the overarching situation.
Just as Wei Yuan was pondering this, the birds in the sky suddenly dove toward the city. The swiftest falcon among them moved like a flash of lightning, fast enough that only the divine senses of Jun Weizhi, Han Li, and their peers could track it.
Yet neither of the two even lifted a hand, merely looking on as the falcon crashed into the ranks of Dao Foundation cultivators and detonated with a roar. Karmic debt splattered like spilled ink, instantly tainting dozens of Dao Foundation cultivators!
Wei Yuan stood suspended in midair, similarly staying his hand, but every action of Jun Weizhi and Han Li had fallen squarely into his gaze.
The cultivator originally tasked with commanding this battle was at the mid Dharma Idol stage. In the face of imminent peril, the armor on her body suddenly shattered, her long hair whipping wildly as her cultivation forcefully broke through into the late Dharma Idol stage!
A colossal heavy sword abruptly materialized between heaven and earth. It possessed neither edge nor radiance, yet its conception enveloped a hundred li. Within its expanse, every sentient being felt as though massive boulders had been strapped to their bodies, rendering them incomparably heavy.
The birds' speed plummeted, giving her room to maneuver. In that very instant, she took control of several thousand Dao Foundation cultivators, compelling them to unleash two rapid arrows at speeds far beyond their ordinary cultivation, each bringing down two birds.
In a flash, black qi clung to every one of those several thousand Dao Foundation cultivators, and all of them coughed up mouthfuls of black blood.
The woman then flicked her finger toward the heavy sword suspended in midair. A silent sword chime washed across the entire field, causing the ten-odd thousand surviving birds to detonate into Buddhist light! In the blink of an eye, the boundless Buddhist light turned into black qi, surging toward her in a torrent. Turning her head in haste to reveal an exquisitely beautiful face, she cried out, "Foster Father, save me!"
Wei Yuan's face turned black as the bottom of a pot. Reaching out with a grasping motion, he drew away the greater half of the black qi enveloping her, casually molding it into a tiny red lotus before tossing it into the lotus pond before the temple below.
Her body still shrouded in black qi, the woman bowed to Wei Yuan and bolted toward the entrance of the Spirit Herd Ring. The several thousand Dao Foundation cultivators tainted by karmic debt also fell into formation on the spot without daring to linger for a fraction of a breath, following her into the Spirit Herd Ring in orderly ranks.
*Damn it...* A grim thought flashed through Jun Weizhi's mind.
This late Dharma Idol cultivator who had suddenly emerged appeared exceedingly young, and in truth, she was younger still—scarcely past thirty years of age. At such an age and with such cultivation, her progress was already hot on Wei Yuan's heels.
That heavy sword was great art concealing craftsmanship, bearing not a shred of superfluous imagery, its sharpness restrained within, its quality extraordinarily high—falling only slightly short of Wei Yuan's own. She walked an ultra-refined, unadulterated Dao path akin to Tuoba Dafeng's.
For a figure like this, even with Jun Weizhi's immense arrogance, he had no choice but to regard her as a lifelong rival on par with Han Li, while Lei Ling would have to take a back seat. Where on earth had she come from?
Furthermore, she had stepped forward without the slightest hesitation, suppressing and slaying the flock of birds with a single sword, taking the karmic debt upon herself before retreating from the realm to recover. What was that? That was nothing less than shouldering burdens for her lord!
By contrast, the utter indifference displayed by himself and Han Li just now was far too glaring!
A dark shadow fell across Jun Weizhi's heart. Although Wei Yuan had acted as though he had seen nothing, with the formidable strength of the Creation Immortal Venerable's divine sense, what could possibly escape his notice? Appearing nonchalant at this moment merely meant that he had truly etched the matter into his memory.
Gazing at the spot where the young woman had vanished, Jun Weizhi suddenly wondered: was he truly indispensable after all?
Having suffered two setbacks in succession, Wei Yuan's expression had turned thoroughly grim. Seeing that the ten thousand beasts, monastics, and devotees had already reached the foot of the city walls, he finally spoke, his words slow and measured: "Since the two Bodhisattvas have chosen to resort to such underhanded methods, do not blame Wei for showing no mercy!"
With a tremendous boom, a cloud of yellow mist suddenly erupted from the heart of the great city, sweeping across a hundred li like a ferocious sandstorm. Mirage demons of all sizes poured down upon the earth like torrential rain, painting the ground in a layer of earthy yellow in the span of a breath.
The instant the mirage demons struck the earth, they burrowed deep underground, riddling the soil with countless holes in a mere moment.
Shanle's eye twitched. Yet once he clearly recognized the origins of the mirage demons, his heart eased, and he burst into boisterous laughter. "Even if you summon tens of millions of such lowly demonkind, how long will it take them to gain recognition from heaven and earth?"
Wei Yuan offered no reply, simply lingering in midair as he watched the mirage demons pour down like a downpour.
Suddenly, Shanle's heart twitched violently. Deep underground, he discovered that a mirage demon had actually given birth to a newborn demon!
In the blink of an eye, countless mirage demons that had burrowed into place began to breed, spawning hordes upon hordes of newborn mirage demons.
A chill welled up from the depths of Shanle's heart, swiftly spreading across his entire body. His limbs grew rigid, leaving him momentarily unable to move!
Unlike those mirage demons that had descended from above, these newborn mirage demons were born within the Buddhist nation—making them native inhabitants of the Buddhist Pure Land by birth.
Chapter 1245