At the very moment Arhat Zhongyin perished.
In Xi Niuhezhou, on Mount Ling, within a vast and magnificent treasure hall, Formless Pure Stream Buddha sat enthroned upon a nine-grade lotus pedestal. A golden halo spun slowly behind his head, illuminating the grand hall until it was limpid and bright.
Before him were ten Bodhisattvas, eighty Arhats, and three thousand Vajras, Sangharamas, and Dharmapalas, each listening solemnly as the Buddha expounded on Zen.
"...All forms are formless, like mirrors reflecting lamps; lamp illuminates lamp, fundamentally without cling or stain. Thus it is: pure waters and drifting clouds share the selfsame path; when the formless gate opens, the myriad phenomena awaken. Ask not how deep the Zen mystery runs; the lapis lazuli radiance rests within the jewel in the palm..."
Every word was like a precious gem. Ten thousand lotuses bloomed in the void amid a thousand streamers of auspicious mist. Hearing his voice brought a refreshing chill like sweet dew anointing the crown, intoxicating all who listened.
Abruptly, the sermon ceased. The Bodhisattvas and Arhats raised their eyes in astonishment and saw Formless Pure Stream Buddha's brow furrow slightly, his right fingers twitching as though divining something.
"What happened?"
They exchanged glances, yet none dared speak; only the atmosphere grew inexplicably solemn.
Whoosh!
Suddenly, Buddhist light blazed from Formless Pure Stream Buddha, and his entire being vanished from the treasure hall in an instant.
"Why did the Buddha depart without a single word?" The crowd broke into an uproar, whispering among themselves.
"Could some momentous event have occurred?"
"Who knows... Wait, Miaoyin Bodhisattva is gone as well."
"Perhaps some great catastrophe has occurred, and it is related to Miaoyin Bodhisattva?"
As they discussed this, inside another side hall, Formless Pure Stream Buddha looked grim. Looking down at Miaoyin Bodhisattva before him, he said in a heavy voice, "Venerable Miaoyin, Arhat Zhongyin has passed into Nirvana!"
Miaoyin Bodhisattva's hands trembled upon hearing this, and she jerked her head up. "How could this be?!"
"How could this be? Do you truly not know?" Formless Pure Stream Buddha said displeasedly. "Did you not dispatch him to the southern lands to abduct the friends and family of that Huang Tian?"
"Did Huang Tian kill him?" Miaoyin Bodhisattva froze. "That should not be possible. As far as I know, Arhat Zhongyin had not even begun to take action—"
"He was in the middle of conferring with demons regarding the abduction when a Yin-Yang Bracelet flew in from beyond the heavens and struck him dead on the spot." Formless Pure Stream Buddha frowned deeply. "Why did you act this way? Could your resentment toward that Huang Tian have reached such a pitch?"
Miaoyin Bodhisattva strained to explain, "I did not intend to kill his relatives; I merely wished to bring them to Xi Niuhezhou and persuade Huang Tian to take refuge in our sect."
With that, she asked in confusion, "A Yin-Yang Bracelet? Perhaps it was not Huang Tian who struck. I have never heard of him possessing any bracelet magical treasure or divine ability. Moreover, separated by countless distances, how could he have killed Arhat Zhongyin?"
"There is no need for idle speculation. Arhat Zhongyin was indeed killed by Huang Tian. Just today, he has attained Heavenly Immortal."
"Heavenly Immortal!!"
Miaoyin Bodhisattva cried out in terror. "Impossible! That is utterly impossible! It has only been three to five years since he became an immortal—how could he possibly have attained Heavenly Immortal?!"
Formless Pure Stream Buddha said nothing, though he too was deeply shaken. After all, Huang Tian's rate of progress was truly unprecedented throughout eternity, and across countless years to come, there would likely never be another like him.
Miaoyin Bodhisattva felt her head buzzing, plunged into a complete daze.
Seeing this, Formless Pure Stream Buddha sighed. Just as he was about to speak, his expression drastically changed. He looked across countless hundreds of millions of li toward Southern Jambudvipa, utterly stunned.
"The True Sage Equaling Heaven!!"
***
The green mountain stood serene; the gentle breeze blew slowly as myriad flowers blossomed, wafting a rich fragrance on the wind.
Trapped beneath the mountain, the monkey gazed boredly in all directions. Occasionally, he would lift his right hand to scratch his head, brushing away dust and dead leaves clinging to his hair.
Tap, tap...
Suddenly, light footsteps sounded.
The monkey looked up in surprise. For nearly three hundred years, no one had visited this place except for that small boy a few years ago. Had someone come again today?
Tracing the sound, he saw a youth emerge from the lush woods. Draped in a mantle of misty rosy clouds, the youth was handsome and upright, with clear, bright eyes and a dignified bearing.
"Great Sage, we have not met for many years. Greetings," Huang Tian said with a smile as he approached.
The monkey blinked, slapped the muddy earth with his right hand, and exclaimed in delight, "You're that little boy!"
"Indeed I am."
"Haha, it truly has been a few years! I never expected you to grow into such a fine lad. Not bad, not bad at all—you possess a bit of my extraordinary grace!" The monkey laughed. "I still recall you saying back then that you were heading to Xuandong Mountain to seek immortality. Have your studies borne fruit now?"
"You could say I have achieved a modest measure of success," Huang Tian said frankly.
"I can tell!" the monkey chuckled. "Your robes and shoes are pristine, and your demeanor is refined and transcendent. You must have succeeded in cultivating the Dao."
He scratched his cheek. "It is rare that you still remembered me and came back to visit."
Huang Tian smiled lightly. "When I left, did I not promise that if my studies succeeded, I would bring you fine wine and delicious delicacies? Today, I have come to fulfill that promise."
The monkey rejoiced. "Splendid, splendid! Where are the fine wine and delicacies?"
"No rush. First, we have another matter to attend to."
"What matter?"
"To free you."
The monkey froze, thinking it was a joke, but seeing Huang Tian's solemn expression, he hastily said, "I know you have learned quite a few skills, but the mountain pressing down on me is no ordinary hill. It is—"
"It is a mountain formed by a Buddha's divine ability." Huang Tian looked up toward the summit. Densely packed restrictions covered the entire mountain.
The monkey was taken aback. "Since you know it was a Buddha—"
"What of a Buddha?" Huang Tian gave a hearty laugh. "Just behold my methods!"
With those words, he flicked his sleeve. Two streams of yin and yang qi surged forth like a pair of world-shaking flood dragons, twisting and intertwining.
The yin qi was boundless and ethereal, like the Heavenly River spilling upside down; the yang qi was vast and radiant, shining like the brilliant light of the scorching sun. The two-colored divine radiances twisted into a bracelet, whistling through the air as it lunged toward the mountain peak!
CLANG!!
A thunderous crash ripped through heaven and earth!
Before their eyes, the Buddhist mountain exploded with a roar. Boulders weighing tens of thousands of jun tumbled down like an avalanche. Dust billowed, blotting out the sun and sky, while shattered rocks splattered in all directions like torrential rain. Centenary pines and cypresses were uprooted, and millstone-sized boulders were flung straight into the clouds!
The monkey trapped beneath the mountain was first dazed, then shocked, and then seized by mixed joy and dread. But now was no time to overthink. He let out a great bellow:
"Rise!"
With his head he shattered the stone pressing from above, and with both arms he threw off the shackles binding his body!
Rocks heaved and rolled away as the massive mountain was forced open and shattered in an instant!
A golden silhouette leapt out with a bound. His fine hairs were covered in dust, but his eyes burned with searing brilliance. Standing atop the pile of ruins, he threw back his head and let out a long howl to the heavens, so powerful that it halted the dense clouds in the high vault and struck panic into the immortals and sages of the four great continents!
Truly:
The turn of yin and yang shakes the Buddha's peak;
Earth rends and mountains crumble amid the fated doom.
Speak not of the Golden Monkey suppressed for so long;
Behold the winds of heaven and earth stirred up once more!
"The Immortal Stone Great Sage! The True Sage Equaling Heaven! He has actually broken out?!!"
On Mount Ling, the three Buddhas' expressions shifted, while more than ten Bodhisattvas were gripped with shock and dread.
In the Heavenly Court, the Sovereign Emperor stared wide-eyed as he saw Huang Tian standing alongside the monkey, while the Eastern Polar Emperor, who had only recently emerged from seclusion, was utterly bewildered.
In Dong Shengshenzhou, Daoist Zhuanghua Superior Sage clicked his tongue in wonder, merrily watching the drama unfold alongside the Dao Ancestor's avatar.
Across the four great continents, mighty figures from all sides cast their gazes upon the monkey and Huang Tian, who had cleaved open the mountain.
"To the southern lands!"
On Mount Ling, the startled World-Illuminating Ever-Abiding Buddha made a brief deduction with his fingers and grasped the entire cause and effect. His gaze fell upon the pale-faced Miaoyin Bodhisattva. He sighed softly and said to the two Buddhas and more than ten Bodhisattvas beside him, "Regardless of what happens, the grand trend must not be disrupted. Go to the southern lands at once!"
"Do not be in a hurry, Buddha. No need to rush," a calm voice echoed from beyond the heavens.
"Sovereign Emperor? Eastern Polar Emperor?" Following the voice, the Buddha's gaze pierced the void to see the two Golden Immortal figures in the Heavenly Court.
"The grand rise of the Buddhist order is the overarching trend of the Heavenly Dao. Do the two of you intend to act against the tide?" the Buddha asked. "We must suppress the True Sage Equaling Heaven once again. The time has not yet arrived for his emergence into the world."
"How could We ever defy the grand trend? We merely feel that today's affair is exceedingly complex, and wish to confer with the Buddha first before taking action."
"It would be better to confer later. If the True Sage Equaling Heaven escapes into the chaos, it would become quite troublesome."
"How could he flee so quickly? No rush, no rush."
The Buddha's brow furrowed tightly. He thrust his hand forward, Buddhist light blooming from his palm, and instantly propelled the Bodhisattvas beside him to Southern Jambudvipa, arriving at the location where Formless Pure Stream Buddha had once suppressed the True Sage Equaling Heaven.
Seeing this, the Sovereign Emperor said nothing further. Together with the Eastern Polar Emperor and the three Buddhas, he observed the situation in the southern lands from afar.
"True Sage Equaling Heaven. True Lord Huang."
Sent across space by the Buddha's divine ability, the more than ten Bodhisattvas showed no surprise. Standing high in the air, they nodded slightly to Huang Tian and the monkey below.
Huang Tian swept his gaze across the Bodhisattvas, pausing for several breaths on Miaoyin Bodhisattva.
The latter's face turned pale, gripped with shock and fury. There was no other reason: the fact that Huang Tian could shatter a mountain conjured by Formless Pure Stream Buddha's divine ability proved that his full-strength strike had already reached the level of a Golden Immortal. She would definitely be no match for him. Fortunately, she had more than ten Heavenly Immortals on her side, so there was no need to panic excessively.
Huang Tian let out a soft laugh and was about to make a move, but the monkey beside him spoke up: "Let me stretch my limbs! Being crushed under that mountain for three hundred years has bored me to death."
Huang Tian naturally would not refuse.
The monkey laughed at once, retrieved the Divine Treasured Iron from his ear, and shook his body.
"Grow!!"
With that shout, his body began to shoot up and swell wildly. In the blink of an eye, a ninety-thousand-zhang titan stood majestically between heaven and earth!
His head burst through the celestial realm, his heels shattered the surrounding mountains, and his towering golden body was like an inverted divine mountain. His eyes blazed with searing divine radiance, like the sun and moon coursing side by side.
And the Divine Treasured Iron in his hands transformed upon the wind into a heaven-propping divine pillar. Gilded Dao runes slithered across it like dragons, and thousands of auspicious streamers cascaded like waterfalls. With a slight twitch of the staff, clouds and winds churned wildly for tens of thousands of li around!
This was none other than the divine ability: the Law Phenomenon of Heaven and Earth!
Confronted with the True Sage Equaling Heaven in such majestic might, the Bodhisattvas did not panic. Each displayed their own methods. In an instant, Buddhist chants surged like a tide across the sky, and the Bodhisattvas manifested myriad wondrous aspects.
Some rode green lions trampling lotuses; some drove white elephants scattering beaded necklaces; treasure vases poured out waves of the Heavenly River; willow branches gently swayed to chill the stars.
The wisdom light of the ten directions wove into a boundless Dharma net, and brilliant Buddhist seals descended from the sky, aiming to suppress the monkey on the spot!
"Well come! Take a strike from my staff!"
The True Sage Equaling Heaven's golden eyes flared intensely like blazing flames. Sweeping the heaven-piercing divine iron in a full, vicious arc, he swung the staff toward the descending net of light!
As the staff moved, hurricanes howled, churning several thousand li of thick cloud seas.
THUD!
A colossal boom shook heaven and earth. The cloud sea roiled ceaselessly as glowing clouds illuminated the vault of heaven.
"Haha, delightful! Again! Come again!!"
Shattering the net of Buddhist light with a single blow, the True Sage Equaling Heaven threw his head back in laughter and let his ferocity loose with the iron staff.
Cleaving, sweeping, thrusting, smashing, jabbing, crashing—in his hands, every maneuver became a cataclysmic spectacle. A downward strike fell like an entire mountain range whipped downward; a horizontal sweep was like Gonggong battering Mount Buzhou in fury, seeking to snap the heavenly pillar at the waist!
The Bodhisattvas also brought their divine abilities to bear. The one holding a pure vase summoned star sand from the Heavenly River; fine and seemingly gentle, when gathered into a torrent, the sand weighed countless hundreds of millions of jun, attempting to coil around the staff and slow its swings.
The Bodhisattva wielding willow branches sprinkled sweet dew, each drop transforming into a pure lotus in the void, layering one upon another before the staff to conquer hardness with softness.
Other Bodhisattvas hurled precious pestles, crashing against the Divine Treasured Iron like golden peaks; some tossed scripture scrolls, sending forth countless golden runes that coiled like chains toward the giant ape's arms and body; still others struck Buddhist bells, releasing vast chimes that rippled with golden Buddhist chants to shake the monkey's spirit.
In an instant, dazzling radiances erupted across the battlefield, and blasts of wind surged like stormy seas!
Truly it was:
Staff shadows coiled as golden dragons bared their claws;
Buddhist light bloomed like peacock tails unfurling.
Shock waves sent the Eastern Sea crashing against Southern Jambudvipa;
Fright caused the Northern Dipper to shift toward the Western Extreme.
The vast cosmos rocked like an unsettled chessboard;
The dimming sun and moon spun like grinding stones!
They fought from the earth into the high clouds, and from the clouds down to the rivers and seas, leaving countless immortals and mortals thoroughly shaken. Those with greater knowledge cried out in shock:
"That giant ape wielding the divine pillar must be the legendary True Sage Equaling Heaven! Rumor has it he took form from an immortal stone, possessing luminous wisdom and extraordinary comprehension. His cultivation progressed by leaps and bounds, but his temperament was exceedingly haughty, and in the end, Formless Pure Stream Buddha suppressed him."
"Who would have thought that after being trapped for centuries, the True Sage Equaling Heaven has grown even stronger! In the past, he could never have faced more than ten Bodhisattvas without falling into disadvantage."
"His strength has indeed grown tremendously, but he still shouldn't have been able to break free from the Buddha's suppression. Who freed him?"
"When I observed from afar with my Dharma eyes earlier, I saw someone standing alongside him. That figure's appearance clearly belonged to the Heavenly Court's True Lord of Demon-Quelling in the South, True Lord Huang Tian!"
"Huang Tian? A mere True Immortal—how could he possibly rescue the True Sage Equaling Heaven? Wait, no! He truly might possess such capability, because... the Sovereign Emperor!"
"Hiss! Does this mean the Heavenly Court intends to clash with the West?! Trouble, big trouble! If these two colossal factions clash, our future days won't be easy!"
"Hard to say. Let's watch further. Let us see how this struggle ultimately ends, and then we might be able to divine the truth—"
Amid the rampant speculation and discussion, the battle in the sky grew fiercer.
Fighting with growing fervor, the True Sage Equaling Heaven suddenly let out a long cry. His ninety-thousand-zhang cosmic form underwent yet another change: two more heads grew from his neck, and four more arms sprouted from his torso.
This was none other than the divine ability: Three Heads and Six Arms!
Once this divine ability was unleashed, three pairs of divine eyes burned with radiant gold, observing all ten directions above and below without missing a single detail. His six arms whirled the Divine Treasured Iron, conjuring thousands upon myriads of staff shadows!
It seemed as though hundreds upon thousands of True Sages Equaling Heaven were swinging staffs at once. As the staff momentum compounded, its might grew ever more terrifying, until the entire expanse of the heavens was completely inundated by a sea of golden staffs.
Like a divine mountain collapsing in an instant, or the boundless Heavenly River bursting its dikes, the heavy blows crashed down, pouring forth unfathomably immense power upon the Bodhisattvas!
The Bodhisattvas turned increasingly solemn. Forming hand seals together, they subtly linked into a grand array, their magic power harmonizing into one. Behind them, numerous phantoms emerged: treasure parasols, jade vases, twin fish, lapis lazuli, lotuses...
Everything converged into a boundless Buddhist kingdom. The kingdom spun slowly, imbued with the Dao rhymes of supreme fulfillment and great eternity, and slammed violently against the Divine Treasured Iron that threatened to pierce through heaven and earth!
Wuuuum—
At this collision, heaven and earth fell silent, and all creation froze.
As if a single instant had passed, yet also as if a thousand years had elapsed, boundless light suddenly erupted. Billions of golden sparks and silver rays burst outward, spreading across the vast vault like celestial brocade, as though reopening the primordial chaos and reenacting the primeval wilderness! Below, the rivers mirrored dazzling hues, and the mountains were bathed in golden radiance!
Truly:
The cosmic form expands, cramming narrow heaven and earth;
A divine ability illuminates sorrows ancient and modern.
Beneath the staff, wind and thunder startle the holy Brahma;
As clouds part, still seen are the eyes of blazing gold!
Chapter 201