Chapter 622: The Might of the Third Eye
The monk Jiankong followed King Yama into the distance, leaving the Great Brahma Heaven. This monk was deeply puzzled, thinking to himself, "An incident from childhood? What happened to Layman Qin during his childhood? Why did my Buddha see him in the Netherworld? And why doesn't Layman Qin remember it?"
He had many thoughts, but clearly King Yama was being secretive and unwilling to discuss it further.
Moreover, King Yama walked very quickly and urgently, as if he couldn't bear to witness the scene of Qin Mu slaughtering the monks, but rather wanted to flee the Great Brahma Heaven early to avoid being implicated.
"My Buddha knows many secrets but is unwilling to tell me. Could Layman Qin really be that terrifying?" he mused inwardly.
In the Great Brahma Heaven, before the dilapidated temple, Qin Mu's figure was almost invisible to the naked eye. All the monks simultaneously activated their Buddha Eyes, Heavenly Eyes, and similar divine abilities just to capture his form.
His speed was too fast, a fleeting shadow. He unleashed all sorts of techniques—sword arts, divine abilities, blade techniques, spear arts, fist techniques, and more—all while moving at a breakneck pace, leaving onlookers dazzled.
The monk Kongxiang roared, his body shining with golden light like a four-faced great Buddha, possessing four heads and eight arms. He flew through the air, clashing head-on with the charging Qin Mu.
The two sped past each other in the sky, striking fast and furious. Kongxiang, towering at over eight feet tall and immensely robust, was nonetheless being pushed backward by Qin Mu as they flew.
In midair, their fists collided like thunder. Other monks soared up to surround them, but suddenly golden blood rained down like a downpour.
Kongxiang's vital energy and blood exploded within him, his entire body crackling with bursts of sound. His skin split open, blood gushed forth. In his head-on clash with Qin Mu, his blood and energy boiled over, surpassing the limits his body could contain. The violent vital energy and blood exceeded his physical endurance, causing his body to burst apart.
The moment other monks surged into the air to besiege Qin Mu, they saw Kongxiang's tattered corpse plummet from the sky.
Those monks flying upward suddenly saw a flash of sword light in the air. Startled, they quickly unleashed their divine abilities to blast at the sky.
A vast ocean of sword light, like a sea of blood, poured down—the First Sword Style of the Calamity Sword, Bloody Ocean!
Violent vital energy and blood mixed with the sword light swept through. Within the bloody sea, swords emerged like dragons, darting freely. One monk after another clutched their throats or shielded their brows, their bodies sinking into the bloody ocean.
Above this sea of blood, Prince Makara stood atop the waves, lotus flowers churning beneath his feet. He pinched a lotus blossom, blocking Qin Mu's assault.
Whoosh—
Qin Mu spun around, his robes fluttering, long hair flying, holding his sword with his back to him.
Prince Makara saw an opening and was about to strike, when suddenly the blood sea split open. A pitch-black gate passed through his body.
Prince Makara froze, his body slowly sinking into the blood sea. His primordial spirit had already been pulled into the Netherworld by the Gate of Bearing Heaven.
The blood sea dissipated, and corpses fell from the sky.
Compared to these young monks sent by the Heavenly Court, Qin Mu was far superior in combat experience and skill. The Heavenly Court's monks had long resided in the Buddha Realm, a place perpetually at peace, as stagnant as a pool of dead water.
Living in such a place naturally made the people content and prosperous, with few desires or ambitions. But this excessive stability also led to a decline in Dao techniques and divine abilities.
When such arts had no use, no one would cultivate or study them.
They had been too peaceful for too long, losing their drive and initiative to fight and strive. Qin Mu was different. He had grown up in the perilous Great Ruins, and by his youth, he could already traverse that danger-filled land.
As for Yankang, it was a nation brimming with vitality, its national power surging madly. It had enemies but also a stable rear base. Dao techniques and divine abilities evolved with each passing day.
On the front lines, soldiers fought; in the rear, cultivators applied these arts to improve the daily lives of the people.
Thus, new inventions like tower ships, flying chariots, and true essence cannons emerged in droves, fueling Yankang's creativity. Dao techniques and divine abilities advanced rapidly.
As for the Grand Heavenly Emperor's Heaven, the brutal war had left no stable rear, and even the social structure was incomplete. Without a foundation for innovation and creation, Dao techniques and divine abilities had no room to develop.
Qin Mu was born in the Great Ruins, taught meticulously by the Nine Elders from childhood. He also lived through the era of Yankang's expansion and the State Preceptor's reforms, which enabled his current achievements.
Moreover, he was one of the leaders of those reforms, the creator of the Eighteen Sword Styles, the pioneer of the Primordial Spirit Guide, and the first to initially achieve enlightenment through the sword.
Compared to these monks who had lived in the Buddha Realm without experiencing any storms, he was already on a completely different level.
Qin Mu looked up. Ahead, the monk Puzhao was charging toward him. This monk, a Heavenly Human realm powerhouse, had debated with the demon ape Zhan Kong and been bathed in Buddha light. But when the demon ape casually blocked him, he couldn't help spitting blood and nearly died.
He was no match for the demon ape in debate, but his strength was unfathomable. As he sprinted, he stacked his seal techniques, each move—fist, kick—grand and imposing, with strict discipline.
He unleashed his most adept seal techniques. With each seal, a Buddha's image appeared. Behind him, his primordial spirit sat like a majestic Buddha, surrounded by numerous Buddha projections that performed various seals in sync with his movements!
Puzhao charged like thunder rolling through clouds, lightning arriving before the sound!
The technique he now used was the great divine ability from the Great Merit Heaven of the Buddha Realm: Illuminating All Beings!
Few among the monks could cultivate such a great divine ability!
His momentum grew stronger, his primordial spirit more powerful, reaching a point where the arrow had to be released!
Just then, Qin Mu raised his index and middle fingers together, forming a sword finger at his brow, then thrust it forward!
The First Style of the Calamity Sword: Opening the Calamity!
Puzhao had already reached his limit. Seeing a sword light flying toward him, he roared, and the Buddha projections behind him erupted, unleashing myriad techniques forward.
Qin Mu turned and leaped down from the air, landing on the ground. He felt a bit puzzled: "Strange. When I use this sword technique, my true essence is usually drained almost completely. But now, I feel like my true essence is still incredibly abundant, like a wellspring, seemingly endless..."
He sensed that his true essence remained at its peak, as if it could never be exhausted. After fighting so long, using nearly every divine ability and combat technique, including many high-consumption great divine abilities, his true essence showed no sign of depletion.
Even more bizarre, he felt his true essence cultivation rapidly increasing!
This completely defied common sense.
Then he immediately pinpointed the source of the problem.
It was the third eye on his brow.
Every time he killed someone, a surge of vast true essence flowed from that eye into his entire body, as if rewarding him. The more he killed, the richer the reward.
"Strange, strange. This eye is indeed highly problematic..."
Sss—
A ten-mile sword light pierced through Puzhao's head, dazzlingly bright, illuminating half the sky.
Puzhao's Illuminating All Beings technique, with its overwhelming power, struck only empty air. Qin Mu had already used the Heaven-Stealing Divine Leg to escape the area.
Puzhao's eyes went vacant, and he collapsed.
Behind him, the sword light suddenly contracted into a small sword pellet, spinning down from the air. Before it landed, the pellet expanded into nine dragons, their heads pointing down and tails intertwined above, forming a large canopy. With a clang, it trapped a monk.
Inside the Nine Dragons Divine Fire canopy, flames and sword light erupted, pulverizing the monk and burning him to ashes.
Meanwhile, Qin Mu landed and raised his hand. The Nine Dragons Divine Fire canopy flew back, rapidly shrinking into a large hammer in his hand.
Qin Mu roared in fury, flames surging behind him like a great volcano erupting. He hurled the hammer forward, putting all his physical strength into the throw, smashing it into the chest of a charging monk.
The moment he threw the hammer, his leg muscles tensed, and he blasted forward.
The monk's chest caved in from the impact, and the hammer drove him backward. Trees on either side flashed by in a blur, exploding as he crashed through them.
But in the next instant, Qin Mu was before him, reaching out to grab the hammer's handle.
The hammer flowed like water, transforming into a long spear. Qin Mu impaled the monk on its tip, then shook the spear, tearing the monk apart!
"Don't fight individually!"
Prince Fuyun shouted urgently, "Everyone gather around me! Use the Buddha Eye divine ability to burn him to death!"
The surviving monks, who had been chasing Qin Mu and bombarding him with various divine abilities and spirit weapons but failing to catch him, suddenly understood. They converged on Prince Fuyun.
One by one, the monks formed a human wall, standing on each other's shoulders, stacking up to sixty-four in number.
"Buddha Eye, open!"
The sixty-four monks pressed their palms together. Some had three heads and six arms, some had two faces on one body, some manifested the Vajra true body, others the Arhat form. They all activated their Buddha Eyes.
"Cleanse the demonic aura, vanquish evil!"
Their voices boomed, their auras merging into one, as solid as an iron wall, as imposing as a city wall.
Swish—
Buddha light converged into a torrent, gathering together, shaking mountains and splitting rocks, causing space to tremble violently. It shot toward Qin Mu!
Instantly, the Buddha light blazed intensely, the Buddha chants rang out thunderously, and everything in its path was shattered into dust!
Qin Mu had just impaled that monk with his spear. He immediately shook the spear, transforming it into a large shield of tortoise and snake in front of him.
Boom—
His body trembled violently, and he was blasted into the air, shield and all. The shield, composed of eight thousand flying swords, could no longer hold its shape. The swords vibrated with the impact, on the verge of collapse!
Qin Mu grunted, spat blood, and was hurled out of the island in this golden sea of Buddha light, crashing into a mountain peak protruding from the golden sea.
Prince Fuyun and the other sixty-four monks soared into the air above the golden sea. In midair, they roared in unison: "Boundless Buddha Dharma, Arhat descends to the mortal world!"
Weng—
Buddha light blazed from their eyes once more, all converging into a single beam aimed at the spot where Qin Mu had landed!
"You only dare to rely on numbers? Do you think I'm afraid of you?"
Before the Buddha light reached the mountain peak, a section of the mountain exploded. Qin Mu shot into the sky, his hair disheveled, his hands clasped in front of him forming a strange seal.
As he formed the seal, his three eyes grew brighter and brighter. The left eye was yang, the right eye yin—one blazing with Solar True Fire, the other with Lunar True Fire. But neither could compare to the third eye on his brow.
From that third eye, patterns like butterfly wings emerged and spread out, like a butterfly just emerging from its chrysalis slowly unfolding its wings.
This vertical eye grew increasingly eerie. Suddenly, Qin Mu completed his seal, swung his hands back, and thrust his head forward. With a boom, three beams of light shot from his three eyes.
The Buddha light collided with his three-eyed divine light. In midair, the human wall of sixty-four monks collapsed, limbs and bodies flying everywhere!
"Saturn, Mahabach..."
Qin Mu was about to wipe them all out when suddenly his mouth uttered obscure Netherworld language. Startled, he thought, "What's happening? Why am I suddenly speaking the Netherworld tongue?"
Even as he thought this, he suddenly laughed, "Hehe, enough offerings. The souls of these baldies don't taste bad..."
Qin Mu licked his lips, then suddenly became alert: "No, I didn't intend to do that! What's wrong with me?"
"Wretched beast!"
Suddenly, a thunderous roar rang out. A Buddha flew through the air, pressing down with a massive hand, and shouted sternly, "You are indeed a demon, beyond redemption! Today, the Buddha will unleash his divine wrath and utterly annihilate you!"
"Can't win, can you?"
Qin Mu laughed, "If you can't win, give my body back to me, and watch how I tear him apart."
As he said this, a chill ran down his spine. These words were clearly his own, but they were definitely not his thoughts!
———— Dragon Qilin stared at the washbasin: I really want to come out for a walk. If the monthly votes fill the basin, I'll come out for a walk~~