"It has truly been a very, very long time... since I faced such weak opponents." Wei Yuan slowly opened his eyes and sighed with amusement. "...Fun!"
With a flick of his wrist, he tossed the two butcher knives into the Sea of Bitterness. They vanished without a trace, as if they had never existed.
By now, the Sea of Bitterness had regained its calm. Of the five treasure ships, one had been destroyed and three had fled. The first to flee was already on the verge of vanishing where the sea met the sky. The one following close behind moved at extreme speed as well; stripped of its Wisdom King and having lost the vast majority of its Vajra mighty warriors, the hull was light, making it far swifter than when it had arrived. The final ship was not fast. Chanming stood at its stern, gazing back across the distance with a complex expression. He pressed his palms together in a respectful bow toward Wei Yuan before returning to the cabin. The remaining treasure ship now rested in Wei Yuan's palm—barely a foot long, yet packed with intricate detail and exquisitely wrought.
Wei Yuan pinched the miniature ship, tipped it upside down, and gave it a gentle shake. A small heap of Vajra mighty warriors tumbled out. With a casual wave of his hand, Wei Yuan cast them into the Sea of Bitterness. After flailing across the surface a few times, they were assimilated by the sea, slowly sinking toward the ocean floor.
Around Wei Yuan, the Sea of Bitterness had turned blue-green, though it had visibly shrunk compared to the beginning. Within this blue-green sea lay a patch of white seawater surging with undulating light, buffeted incessantly by the blue-green currents. With each wash of the waves, wisps peeled away and transformed into blue-green water. And with every wisp of white water converted, the boundary of the blue-green sea expanded by a corresponding fraction.
The outcome of the great battle was that Tuoba Hong and the nameless young man had slaughtered their way through the army of Vajra mighty warriors and seized a treasure ship. That cluster of white seawater in the depths was what remained of the slain Wisdom King's dharma body.
In Tuoba Hong's eyes, that nameless youth's butcher knife technique was utterly earth-shattering, possessing the grand profundity of stirring karmic destiny and reshaping fate. Put simply: under those two butcher knives, all things were pigs.
Yet in the end, when Chanming was clearly doomed to die, the nameless youth had spared him. Not only that, but he had also allowed him to take away the Wisdom King and the surviving Vajra mighty warriors.
Tuoba Hong could not make sense of it no matter how hard he thought, but the nameless youth's cultivation and combat prowess were leagues above his own; there had to be a deeper purpose behind the choice. He wished to strike up a conversation, but after a dizzying spin of heaven and earth, the Sea of Bitterness vanished, and he found himself standing inside the Three Realms Temple.
Tuoba Hong felt a deep sense of awe. Just moments ago, he had been over a hundred thousand li away, fleeing the Pure Land's pursuit. Not only had he suddenly been drawn into a massive battle, but after the fight, his true body had even appeared within Qingming's Three Realms Temple. If this was not a grand divine art, what was?
The youth immediately bowed earnestly toward the Buddha statue, then sat down on a prayer mat beside the hall to quietly contemplate the sensation of the Buddhist power that had just blessed him.
Within the Splendor of the Many Realms, Wei Yuan manifested dozens of avatars, listening to reports across different halls. Although this clash in the Sea of Bitterness had ended, its repercussions were only just beginning.
"The invaders have been identified. Chanming has newly attained arhatship with the title Arhat Suxing Qingjing, and his master is Bodhisattva Di'antian. The two beside him were Arhat Dexin and Wisdom King Qingxuguang. As for whose lineage Wisdom King Qingxuguang belongs to, there is no record in the surviving scriptures."
After finishing his report, an elderly cultivator with snow-white hair and beard stepped to the side. He originally hailed from the Baohua Pure Land and was meant to inherit a Wisdom King's golden body. For reasons unknown, the golden body was granted to someone else instead, cutting his Dao path short. Indignant, he had appealed up the hierarchy, only to be inexplicably convicted of a crime and cast out of the Pure Land. After surviving countless brushes with death, he managed to flee to Qingming. In Qingming, he naturally received the fair treatment he deserved and now served as an expert researcher on the Baohua Pure Land.
Hearing the report, Wei Yuan was somewhat surprised. "That little slip of a girl was actually a Wisdom King?"
"Judging by the aura of her dharma body, she should indeed be a Wisdom King."
Wei Yuan nodded, and this avatar vanished on the spot.
At the very end of the recent clash, Wei Yuan had originally intended to keep Chanming behind as a sacrificial offering for his battle banner, but a message from the Splendor of the Many Realms had changed his mind. Chanming's Buddhist light was pure, clearly showing he had strong backing. His master, Bodhisattva Di'antian, was one of the few Bodhisattvas in the Pure Land who had attained the ultimate fruit despite originating as an external demon. Such a background meant one thing above all: he was formidable in battle.
And that young girl of a Wisdom King clearly had significant backing of her own; otherwise, she would never have developed such an arrogant temper.
According to the conventions of the Pure Land, suffering such a crushing defeat—losing so many Vajra mighty warriors and even a Wisdom King—was by no means a trivial matter. It might even alarm the Buddhas.
Once they returned, parceling out the karmic accountability would become a massive headache. Under normal circumstances, after such a disastrous rout, even an arhat's status would be stripped away. If Chanming were sent back, an intense internal power struggle would erupt if only to dodge the blame.
This suggestion aligned well with Wei Yuan's thoughts, though for somewhat different reasons. From what Wei Yuan understood of the Pure Land, most karmic attainments nowadays preceded the Buddhas who occupied them; many seats were no longer held by those who had originally attained them.
Under such circumstances, cultivators of the Pure Land were mostly puppets of the golden bodies tied to those karmic attainments. Even if killed, another would pop up before long. Better to leave these three intact. After all, opponents of noble lineage who were this laughably incompetent were something Wei Yuan hadn't encountered in a very long time.
The Vajra mighty warriors brought along by these three youthful fruition-holders were each brimming with divine radiance, so overflowing with incense merit that it almost spouted from the tops of their heads. At a glance, they were clearly direct retainers of great Bodhisattvas.
Their golden bodies shone brilliantly, but their combat ability was an utter mess. In all likelihood, they had barely fought a handful of battles in their entire lives.
These Vajra mighty warriors were like an emperor's palace guard: impressive enough for display, but their actual combat strength was virtually nonexistent. They could only bully lower cultivators and mortals. A single Tuoba Hong had battered them into utter disarray. Had they faced cultivators from the Palace of Grand Beginning who truly specialized in combat, a single person could likely have swept them all aside.
Inside another massive hall, hundreds of research cultivators were gathered. The treasure ship Wei Yuan had captured was placed in the center of the hall, where numerous cultivators measured, dismantled, drafted diagrams, and took notes. Just like that, the colossal treasure ship was gradually reduced to component parts.
Wei Yuan did not disturb them, confident that with the capabilities of these researchers, it wouldn't be long before Qingming had its own sea-crossing treasure ships. Over thirty other halls were also analyzing this battle, each dedicated to a different field of study. Five and two of those halls were devoted specifically to the anatomy of Vajras and mighty warriors, respectively.
Meanwhile, the entirety of Qingming mobilized, initiating a comprehensive audit of Buddhist devotees to determine exactly how many had died under the karmic fallout of that battle in the Sea of Bitterness. Through this project, the research cultivators aimed to map the correspondences between the Sea of Bitterness and the mortal realm, developing appropriate countermeasures to protect mortal devotees. These dozens of topics were all core research fields, currently being subdivided into finer subjects and distributed onward. The number of cultivators mobilized within the Splendor of the Many Realms and Qingming continued to swell.
Watching these scenes unfold, Wei Yuan was naturally quite satisfied. This was an approach that had never before appeared in this realm. The Pure Land would never suspect that a mere dispute of the Dao in the Sea of Bitterness would end with them stripped down to their bare skin.
Wei Yuan suddenly recalled something and hastily issued two more tasks, both concerning the channeling of Buddhist power and the blessing of devotees. One was a request to develop more blessing techniques with greater potency, accompanied by the requirement that they be resplendently dazzling, maxing out visual majesty and spiritual presence; whether the actual power was great was not especially critical—what mattered was that it looked overwhelmingly powerful.
The other was a method for true-body descent into the mortal world. After all, lower cultivators like that youth possessed frail dharma bodies that were awkward to maneuver; it was far better to descend with his own physical dharma body... much handier.
Chapter 1260