Chapter 425
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Translator: Ace
Chapter:
Chapter Title: Grievances from Jimo City
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Lu Yang followed Perfected Being Demon-Quelling as they flew out on beams of escape light. Before long, he spotted the bustling crowd gathered outside the Jade Pivot Sword Pavilion's mountain gate.
Leading them was an old man.
His face was etched with deep wrinkles, his frame hunched over. Yet he wore a monk's robe and clutched a string of prayer beads, standing silently at the center of the throng.
‘Shiyuan?’
A flicker of recognition stirred in Lu Yang's heart, but he quickly shook his head. He had seen through the old man's true nature—this one had merely cultivated a handful of Buddhist techniques and recited a few sutras. He bore no acknowledgment from the Pure Land. Loose cultivators like him dotted the world, but they were worlds apart from true Buddhist adepts.
‘Though his nerve outstrips even a real one.’
Gazing at the old man and the crowd behind him, Lu Yang couldn't help but marvel inwardly. A bunch of unaffiliated loose cultivators, clustering at the Sword Pavilion's gate—what were they after?
Rebellion!
‘No, wait—not necessarily without backing.’
Under normal circumstances, their clamor wouldn't even reach Perfected Being Demon-Quelling's ears. There had to be a hidden hand orchestrating this!
‘Perfected Being Xie and Guangming Fuzi? Already moving this swiftly?’
Realization dawned on Lu Yang. Loose cultivators stirring trouble at the Sword Pavilion's gate wasn't due to any respect for independents. No—someone within the Sword Pavilion needed this uproar!
They were simply preying on Perfected Being Demon-Quelling. As the world's foremost sword cultivator, he had personally emerged from the gate to meet them. In the Primal Saint Sect, such rabble would have vaporized on the spot, their souls shipped off to the sect's refining secret realms to pave the way for disciples' cultivation.
“Shiyuan. You've grown old.”
Perfected Being Demon-Quelling descended on his beam of light before the old man. His brows furrowed at the sight of the monk's robes, and he let out a sigh.
“The lingering effects from back then must still plague you badly.”
“Have the thoughts of pledging yourself to the Pure Land resurfaced?”
As the words left his mouth, Perfected Being Demon-Quelling reached out, as if to clap the man on the shoulder.
But in the next instant, his expression froze stiff.
The old man had retreated a step.
Perfected Being Demon-Quelling's hand hung suspended in midair. His eyes locked onto the old man's furious glare, and a sharp rebuke exploded in his ears.
“Ye Guangji!”
The old man's body trembled—as if from fear, as if from cowardice—yet he raised his head with resolve, uttering Perfected Being Demon-Quelling's birth name outright.
“I ask you! That drop of Buddha blood which fell into Jimo City all those years ago—was it because you clashed with a Pure Land eminent? Did you slay that eminent from the Pure Land, only to deliberately let the Buddha blood rain down on my Jimo City? And then, using it as pretext, butcher every soul in the city? Is that the truth of it?!”
The old man's words thundered forth like a bolt from the peaks.
Lu Yang stood right beside Perfected Being Demon-Quelling, watching as the old man's followers turned scrutinizing, accusatory gazes upon them.
Yet Lu Yang felt not the slightest ripple.
After all, Jimo City had been little more than a loose cultivator outpost. Only Shiyuan here—the old man himself—was a Foundation Establishment Perfected Being. The rest were mere Qi Refining nobodies.
Not worth deeming as people at all.
Lu Yang remained unmoved.
But Perfected Being Demon-Quelling's countenance shifted. He exhaled a long, heavy breath, helplessness etching his features.
“The events of that year were not my doing. Hidden truths lie behind them.”
With another sigh, Perfected Being Demon-Quelling continued.
“My duel with Jing Guan—though I claimed her head and sundered her form—was no simple matter.”
He was not a True Lord, after all.
The pinnacle of the world's top Foundation Establishment sword cultivator amounted to slaying a Fuzi in three strikes. Those three strikes marked a process, implying the foe had room to trade blows.
Were it a Golden Core True Lord instead?
Barring the World Honored One's personal descent, any mere Fuzi—however profound—would be crushed in a single grasp!
Perfected Being Demon-Quelling fell short of that. He required three strikes, and thus some elements escaped his grasp. Like that single drop of Jing Guan's Buddha blood.
“The upheaval in Jimo City stemmed directly from that drop of Buddha blood. It carried the Pure Land's profane arts—chants of conversion—that infected all who heard or beheld it, twisting them into Buddhist adepts. Had it gone unchecked, Jimo City and the surrounding lands might have birthed a lesser Pure Land.”
Had she prevailed, her death would still have fulfilled the Pure Land's aim.
Compounded by the Pure Land's pacts with the various True Lords, the Sword Pavilion's own True Lords held back.
Even for Perfected Being Demon-Quelling, it could have been spun favorably: Buddhist fiends run amok, avenged by his blade for the fallen.
Yet he refused.
He had not come to avenge the dead.
He had come to save them.
Thus, with one man and one sword, he beheaded the entire city of Jimo—severing the Pure Land's hold, restoring their wits.
Here, a puzzled look crossed Perfected Being Demon-Quelling's face.
“I explained all this to you back then, Shiyuan. Your kin and comrades didn't perish. Didn't you reunite with them just a few years ago?”
“Didn't perish?”
The old man's eyes blazed red.
“You duped me! If you've the guts, open your storage pouch. Let all behold its contents!”
Perfected Being Demon-Quelling nodded without hesitation. He unfastened the pouch from his waist and loosened the seal.
In an instant, voices erupted from within like a mountainous sea. Countless heads floated in clusters, chatting animatedly in their circles—faces alight with joy, devoid of any deathly pallor or sorrow.
Yet the scene grew only more uncanny.
Lu Yang had witnessed it countless times, yet his scalp still prickled. The loose cultivators behind the old man recoiled in terror.
“Behold, everyone!”
“Do these look like living souls to you?”
The old man's eyes nearly burst from their sockets.
“A man without a heart is dead. With everything below the neck gone—can such things still call themselves alive?”
“How are they not?” Perfected Being Demon-Quelling looked baffled. With a wave of his hand, he drew forth the former denizens of Jimo City.
“A few years back, you spoke with them yourself. Lacking Foundation Establishment and shielded by my arts, they've retained their looks across the years...”
“You lie!”
The old man cut him off with a ragged roar.
“I received guidance from an eminent one long ago. These are neither alive nor dead—mere puppets in your thrall!”
“Called salvation, yet true enslavement.”
“All those you slew may seem undying, but theirs is a fate more horrific than death—eternal thralls, forever bound to your whim!”
Lu Yang: “...”
By the end, the old man stamped in fury.
“And the Pure Land—what benevolence! We needed no saving from you. Absent your interference, I might now cultivate there as a Buddha patriarch, basking in eternal bliss. Instead, I languish in this mortal coil, enduring苦!”
“You severed the path to Buddhahood for us common folk. You stole our lives.”
“What 'no killing'? Pure posturing for fame!”
Posturing for fame!
As the old man's cry echoed, the crowd behind him roared in unison.
To Lu Yang, it was a mere zephyr, unworthy of note.
But in Perfected Being Demon-Quelling's ears, it drew forth a profound sigh.
That sigh stemmed not from the old man or Jimo City.
As the world's premier sword cultivator, Perfected Being Demon-Quelling was even-tempered and approachable.
But approachability did not make him weak.
Accusations Lu Yang dismissed out of hand?
He might heed them, yet they would not shake him.
‘Shiyuan isn't privy to secrets. For him to know of my storage pouch—of these heads... no outsider did this. Someone from within the Sword Pavilion whispered it.’
This obliquely validated Lu Yang's earlier report.
That was the true source of his sigh.
‘So impatient already?’
‘So eager to force me to sacrifice the sword intent I've honed my life for?’
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