The Buddhist land could not withstand the carpet bombardment of shells, nor could the flesh-body Buddha endure the continuous, endless gnawing of tens of thousands of Dao Foundations. This was the terrifying conclusion reached by the numerous immortals observing the battle.
Not a single immortal was willing to accept such a conclusion, yet it was the unvarnished truth. Given the flesh-body Buddha's cultivation and path, it could not simply swat those ant-like templates to death with a palm strike. Slaughtering low-level cultivators on such a scale would violate its own Dao heart. Moreover, with Wei Yuan watching closely at its flank, he would never allow it to do so.
The same held true for the immortals. Even if some possessed Dao hearts hardened like steel, the glimmering karmic luck radiating from those templates would still give them pause, making it impossible to bring themselves to strike.
With karmic luck so dense, if they slaughtered all these people, the karmic backlash alone would cause them to fall from the Immortal Heaven.
The immortals cursed silently in their hearts. Ever since Wei Yuan appeared in the world, human luck—something previously treated as practically invisible—had been elevated by him into an art form.
Now, whenever Qingming charged the front lines, as long as the opposing side had an immortal or mid-to-late Scenery Command experts holding the line, every member of Qingming's core forces would be blessed with karmic luck, leaving the immortals and high cultivators trapped in a dilemma where striking and abstaining were equally untenable.
Yet if they did not deploy mid-to-late Scenery Command cultivators and fielded only early Scenery Command experts, they genuinely could not overcome Qingming's cohort of consummate dharma idols. Not to mention the likes of Zhang Sheng, Baoyun, Feng Tingyu, and Ji Liuli, who had already reached Scenery Command; whenever they encountered opponents a tier higher, they thrashed them effortlessly.
Facing the flesh-body Buddha, Wei Yuan's tactics were distinct and sharp: clear the way with artillery fire to first weaken the Buddhist land, then advance the main army, relying on martial aura and karmic luck blessings to withstand conversion and sweep aside obstacles for the follow-up forces. The vanguard's firepower was fiercely aggressive. Though they encountered no warrior monks or mighty warriors, they spared neither bird nor beast. These spirit beasts were part of the Buddhist land's strength, and Wei Yuan naturally showed no mercy.
The sheer crushing pressure of several hundred thousand soldiers' martial aura alone was enough to overwhelm the Buddhist land. On top of that, Wei Yuan brought out the devastating trump card of domain nodes, deploying twenty thousand Dao Foundations to continuously drain magic power, backed by another ten thousand templates ready to rotate in at any time, ensuring an enduring siege.
Originally, before a flesh-body Buddha, even Scenery Command cultivators seemed insignificant. Someone at consummate celestial idol like Xiaoyu dared not take half a step into the Buddhist land lest he be converted. Ordinary Golden Cores were completely out of their depth, and templates were nothing more than trash.
Yet now, Wei Yuan had brought a massive mountain of trash straight to the fore, wrestling the flesh-body Buddha on equal footing.
This was simply wrong.
A chill ran through the immortals' hearts, yet none could put their finger on exactly what felt so amiss.
The observing immortals could already see that the Buddhist land was being drained rapidly and its Buddhist power could not replenish in time. If this continued, the Buddhist land would inevitably breach, and the Pure Land would lose another round—especially with Wei Yuan watching hungrily from the sidelines.
Wei Yuan struck with immense brutality. Up in the Immortal Heaven, everyone now regarded him as a true immortal. None dared act arrogant or put on airs as a senior high cultivator before Wei Yuan; after all, the corpses of Lu Changhe, Liumiao, and Xu Shuhe were still barely cold.
What the immortals could see, the young monk naturally saw as well. His expression shifted repeatedly before turning frosty. He said coldly, "Since Benefactor remains obstinately blind, do not blame this humble monk for forsaking martial virtues."
The small temple suddenly shattered. The flesh-body Buddha rose to its feet, expanding in an instant to a height of myriad fathoms. Carrying boundless merit and supreme enlightenment, it brought a palm crashing down toward Wei Yuan's head!
This palm strike exhausted all causality; it was impossible to evade. Wei Yuan understood in an instant that even if he fled to the World of Returning Silence, he could not dodge it.
Upon the Buddha's palm, a balance scale abruptly manifested, capable of weighing any and all merit.
The young monk pressed his palms together and said, "Without all-embracing wisdom, how dare one weigh another? A sin, a sin. In days of old, the Buddha weighed his own flesh against a dove, ultimately stepping upon the scale with his entire body, which became a great merit. Today, this humble monk shall use this scale to weigh Benefactor's deeds and merit."
In an instant, Wei Yuan's divine soul boiled, and he grasped the principle behind this palm strike. Pushing the Buddhist dharma to its utmost limit, this palm placed the flesh-body Buddha's lifetime of merit upon one side of the scale and Wei Yuan's merit upon the other, weighing Wei Yuan against it.
If Wei Yuan's merit fell short, the power of this palm strike would be magnified to the absolute extreme, capable at its peak of reducing Wei Yuan to ash with a single blow, severing past and future. Moreover, this strike functioned as punishment on behalf of Heaven; killing Wei Yuan would incur no karmic debt, rendering even the hundreds of millions in human luck Wei Yuan possessed utterly useless.
Of course, in the ancient tale of the Buddha feeding the eagle with his own flesh, his whole body had to be placed on the scale to equal the dove's weight. Therefore, several portions of the flesh-body Buddha's merit were required to match a single portion of Wei Yuan's, ensuring fairness.
Even so, who could withstand the boundless merit accumulated across a lifetime by the mortal husk of a reincarnated Buddha who attained the Dao? Even among the Great Bodhisattvas of the Pure Land, more than half could not receive this strike.
The cost of this strike was exceedingly steep. It was anchored upon the flesh-body Buddha's lifetime of merit; however much merit was consumed to destroy Wei Yuan would vanish forever. If all the merit was exhausted, this flesh-body Buddha would be destroyed. It was precisely because the cost was so grave that its power was so immense.
Understanding the lethal nature of this strike, Wei Yuan's face showed anger, and he said indignantly, "Moral judgment?"
The young monk chanted a Buddhist moniker and said, "Benefactor puts it reasonably well."
Wei Yuan snorted and resisted the pull of the Buddha palm's balance no further—in truth, he could not resist it anyway. Keeping one hand behind his back, he strode calmly forward and candidly stepped onto the other side of the scale.
Delight flashed in the young monk's eyes. Among those in this realm, aside from that Great Bodhisattva in the Pure Land, whose merit could withstand the weighing of a flesh-body Buddha? If Wei Yuan had desperately tried to flee at the cost of permanent foundation damage, he might have had a slim chance of escaping. But being so presumptuous as to step calmly onto the scale, he was dead without question!
The young monk chanted a Buddhist moniker. In his eagerness, he transmitted the message back to the Pure Land: "The demon has been subdued, though the Buddha's golden body has suffered damage; a grave sin indeed—"
Dong, dong, dong! Melodious chimes resonated from deep within the Pure Land. The monks who received the news could hardly wait to spread the joyous report throughout Spirit Mountain.
Amidst his joy, the young monk felt a flicker of confusion, not understanding why Wei Yuan had scattered so many shadow retention orbs all around right at the moment of decisive battle.
Yet by then Wei Yuan had already reached the scale. The young monk thought no further of it and watched with wide eyes as Wei Yuan stepped one foot onto the scale pan.
With a colossal boom, as if the heavens were crashing down and the earth was splitting apart, Wei Yuan's height did not alter by a hairsbreadth. Instead, the scale pan was stamped down directly by his foot, crashing down level with the soles of his feet!
Then Wei Yuan lifted his other foot and stood fully upon the scale pan. The instant both feet firmly planted, the pan plunged at lightspeed, dropping in one breath to the scale's absolute limit and even smashing a huge crater into the ground!
The pan on the opposite end shot skyward. The flesh-body Buddha sat cross-legged atop it, golden light of merit surging over its entire body as dense as water, yet it could not cause the scale pan to quiver even slightly.
The young monk had long since been struck dumb, unable to believe his eyes for the first time in his life. The entirety of a reincarnated Buddha's lifetime of merit could not even shake Wei Yuan?
How could Wei Yuan possess such merit? What had he done? Had he opened heaven and split earth, or reset the world?
No matter how incredulous the young monk was, the Great Dao of heaven and earth governed all things, and this Buddha palm exhausted the limits of the Great Dao; none could cheat.
The victor had been decided, and the backlash surged forward like a towering tidal wave. The golden light upon the flesh-body Buddha vanished in an instant, exposing its deep underlying hue. Then, between its brows, the forehead suddenly cracked, splitting open into a long fracture.
The precious radiance on the young monk's body also dissipated completely. Fine wrinkles appeared at the corners of his brows and eyes. He no longer possessed his original rosy-lipped, white-toothed boyish elegance; beneath his terror, his expression turned almost ferocious.
By then, the balance scale vanished, and the flesh-body Buddha crashed into the dirt. Wei Yuan arrived before the young monk, looked deeply at him, and only then spoke: "Past, present, and future will have nothing to do with you from now on. Farewell!"
With that, Wei Yuan raised his hand. A palm spanning heaven and filling earth pressed down upon the young monk's head!
Terror washed over the young monk's face. Yet he was the one who unsealed the flesh-body Buddha, and he was the one who brought it here. With the flesh-body Buddha's merit completely dissipated and its golden body crumbling, the backlash striking him was terrifying in the extreme. It was already a struggle merely to keep his divine sense from shattering; he could not move at all, forced to watch helplessly as Wei Yuan's large hand pressed upon his crown.
The instant the palm touched his crown, the once-composed young monk suddenly discovered that all connection between himself and Pure Land Spirit Mountain was severed. In a flash, he realized that not only would his physical body be destroyed, but even his true spirit could not escape back to Spirit Mountain!
From then on, his fruition without a true spirit would become vacant, left to be claimed cheaply by whichever scheming bald thief came along.
He had remained composed earlier because he believed his true spirit could flee back to Spirit Mountain; losing a mortal body was merely shedding an outer garment. In any case, disciples in the Pure Land were plentiful; he could pick any exceptional one to serve as his reincarnated vessel. But if his true spirit could not return, this was true death!
At death's door, the young monk cried urgently, "Wait! I am Bodhisattva Xikong, dwelling high on the seventh tier of the Sea of Bitterness! I once listened to scriptures before the Great Sun Tathagata for a thousand years, counting as an initiated disciple of the Buddha! I am willing to mediate your dispute with the Pure Land—and, and I can ensure you ascend to the sixth tier of the Sea of Bitterness!"
Wei Yuan wore a faint, ambiguous smile and did not reply, only gathering endlessly terrifying Dao power within his palm.
Recalling the horrifying merit of Wei Yuan that had suppressed even the flesh-body Buddha without a shred of resistance, and thinking of Wei Yuan's vast, boundless karmic luck, all of Xikong's pride vanished in an instant. He cried, "Senior Brother is a person of great virtue! This humble monk is willing to yield my position on the seventh tier of the Sea of Bitterness for Senior Brother's cultivation!"
Wei Yuan remained unhurried, gently rubbing the young monk's perfectly smooth bald head while steadily gathering karmic luck and Dao power within his palm. Within moments, a dreadful vortex would form, running contrary to the Great Dao of heaven and earth like a millstone, grinding all of Bodhisattva Xikong's causality and samsara into dust. Such was the price of failing to weigh Wei Yuan's merit.
Right at this moment, an ethereal, melodious voice sounded: "Hold!"
Wei Yuan raised his brows slightly, thinking to himself that she had finally arrived—and it was none other than the principal figure herself.
Boundless Bright Light emerged from the void, gracefully arriving before Wei Yuan. She bowed and said, "Earlier, I knew not that Benefactor bore boundless merit; Bright Light has given much offense, and I ask Senior Brother's forbearance. That Senior Brother possesses such otherworldly merit already marks you with the stature of becoming a Buddha. However, Senior Brother seems not to have a Dao Sanctuary yet; why not relocate into the Pure Land and practice in tranquility from now on?
"The Buddha's gaze is cast beyond the heavens, and the King Buddha has long been absent from his seat. If Senior Brother assumes leadership of the Pure Land, you may oversee this realm."
Offering the position of abbot right out of the gate? The Pure Land was certainly willing to invest.
Wei Yuan continued to ponder silently. Boundless Bright Light turned her gaze toward Xikong and said, "This Xikong is entangled in many matters; he should not be slain. His past actions were due to ignorance, but Senior Brother, possessing such merit, is naturally a person of broad mind. Why not pardon him this once? Upon returning to the Pure Land, I shall report to the Buddha and assign him to serve before Senior Brother as a novice monk who trims the lamp oil. Bright Light is also willing to place herself under Senior Brother from now on, listening daily to the Great Dao and witnessing Senior Brother attain Buddhahood."
Looking upon Boundless Bright Light's flawless face brimming with precious radiance, Wei Yuan's eyes briefly revealed a hint of desire and bewilderment. Mingguang's heart stirred, her expression growing increasingly solemn and divine. Stepping forward, she said, "Senior Brother—"
The moment her voice rose, the karmic luck and Dao power in Wei Yuan's palm condensed to their absolute limit. He suddenly unleashed them, forming the upper Yin millstone, while the massive backlash from the flesh-body Buddha's failed weighing of merit formed the lower Yang millstone.
As the Yin and Yang millstones turned, in an instant they ground Xikong's flesh, bones, terrified shrieks, and all past and future into dust, spilling onto the ground as colored glazed sand!
Upon Spirit Mountain, the golden body atop a lotus pedestal shattered, and the lotus pedestal lost its luster, turning into ordinary stone.
Mingguang never imagined that Wei Yuan would strike without warning when she thought she had swayed him.
Wei Yuan gave a long laugh and said, "I have boundless merit, but broad-minded I am not. On the contrary, I am a narrow-minded man who not only avenges every slight, but prefers not to let a grudge last the night! This Xikong was about to attain Great Bodhisattva status, wasn't he? And from the looks of it, his ties with you run deep and entangled. If not for the Buddha palm weighing my merit, killing him wouldn't have been so easy.
"Bodhisattva Mingguang, I was originally considering what I could exchange him for. But since you hold Xikong in such high regard and worry so much for him, I had no choice but to kill him. So he died because of you. Do you know why?"
Boundless Bright Light asked instinctively, "Why?"
Wei Yuan chuckled. "Simple. Whatever makes you unhappy is precisely what I must do! If all were well with you, how could I bear it?"
Even with Boundless Bright Light's intellect, she was stunned for a moment before she reacted.
Settling her composure, she said, "Then I am standing right here. Does Benefactor wish to strike?"
Wei Yuan looked her up and down a few times and said, "Killing you right now is difficult and would cost too much. Forget it."
Boundless Bright Light smiled faintly, the radiance on her face softening further. People from the Palace of Grand Beginning were all the same. Compared to his predecessors, this one was rumored to be even more unruly and wanton, casting his affections everywhere.
Yet to her surprise, Wei Yuan immediately added, "Don't misunderstand. It's not that I'm reluctant to harm you—I just think it's not worth it. In any case, there will be cheaper ways to kill you later; no need to do it now. I have plenty of places where I need to spend money right now, so I have to pinch pennies."
Mingguang froze in shock. Then, in her heart's lake that had remained undisturbed like an ancient well for years, a ripple stirred—showing just how furious she was!
A dignified Great Bodhisattva like herself, possessing such sacred splendor, was actually considered inferior to some mundane material supplies in this bastard's eyes?
How was she not worth it?!
Paying no further heed to Boundless Bright Light, Wei Yuan walked over to the flesh-body Buddha, which had lost all miraculous aura. His expression turned solemn, and he sighed softly. "Delivering oneself and delivering others are both acts of merit. Senior attained the Great Dao, and even your reincarnated vessel could accumulate such immense merit; the grand vows and magnificent deeds when you first attained the Dao can well be imagined. If Senior knew that a lifetime of merit was squandered here, you would surely sigh as well.
"Regrettably, later disciples were unworthy and squandered Senior's merit. It so happens that this junior has made a grand vow and is practicing it in earnest. Senior might as well walk with me. Ahead lies boundless merit and an endless Sea of Bitterness, waiting for us to deliver."
Wei Yuan waved his hand gently. Countless starlight rays of human luck showered down, and the cracks upon the flesh-body Buddha closed and vanished one by one. Wei Yuan extended a hand to cradle it, and the flesh-body Buddha shrank to the size of a fist, settled into his palm, and vanished.
Boundless Bright Light knew she could stay no longer. Turning around, she stepped into the void and vanished.
As she traversed the void, her Zen heart suddenly wavered. She seemed to see once again that man who, surrounded by immortals on all sides, remained free and untamed.
Back then, he had simply said, "I do not regret the wager, nor do I care that I lost."
Then he turned and walked away, his body dissolving into a sky full of star-sand, fading into nothingness.
At that moment, she knew that the man whose heart and eyes had been filled solely with her was gone.
Yet back then, her heart felt nothing. Even if that man had once roamed unhindered under the heavens, even if he had given his all for her, in the end, he had only moved himself.
Chapter 1362