“Farewell…” Chu He said hoarsely.
His fingers suddenly tightened, and with a crisp cracking sound, the little phoenix’s neck drooped limply.
Zhou Hui’s pupils constricted abruptly, and he cried out, “—Phoenix!”
He lunged forward, but then a figure flashed before his eyes, forcefully blocking his path—it was Sakyamuni’s cold and heartless face.
Sakyamuni’s face was full of the solemnity of a high god of the Heavenly Dao, but perhaps it was the psychological effect of knowing his true nature, Zhou Hui only felt an indescribable evil in his eyes, as if he were a venomous snake hissing in the dark, preparing to devour someone. Zhou Hui narrowed his eyes, and the next moment, he suddenly raised his hand. His arm transformed into a long blade with a mottled, bone-white surface and a curved, ferocious shape. The hilt wound around his strong arm in circles to fix it in place. The blade was extremely curved and sharp. With one slash, it brought a whistling hurricane, heading straight for Sakyamuni’s throat!
Sakyamuni said coldly, “You base demon, you dare to be disrespectful to a high god of the Heavenly Dao?!” As he spoke, one hand grew explosively, covering Zhou Hui’s head like a cattail-leaf fan!
With a tremendous roar, Sakyamuni’s giant hand and Zhou Hui’s blade collided in mid-air. The pure gold floor tiles of the entire Buddhist hall shattered one after another!
Amidst the sound of tearing, a bloody gash, so deep the bone was visible, appeared on Sakyamuni’s palm. Fresh blood splattered in the air as he quickly withdrew his hand.
“…So that’s how it is,” Sakyamuni said, looking at his palm with slight surprise, then looked up to examine the large blade in Zhou Hui’s hand. “This is your shed beast tooth… I didn’t expect my golden Buddha body to be injured by such a lowly thing. You have committed a heavenly crime worthy of having your soul scattered.”
Zhou Hui sneered and brandished his blade, flinging off a trail of flesh and blood. “A creature of the demon’s eye, and you dare to call yourself a golden Buddha?”
As soon as his voice fell, Sakyamuni’s expression changed slightly, but it was only for an instant. Then he actually smiled. “You know, how do you know?—Oh, I was just suspecting why the phoenix suddenly planned to defect to the Demon Lord. So he finally guessed my secret and told you, so that you, a monster also born from the demon’s eye, could be my vanguard in killing me…”
Before he could finish, he suddenly turned around. Even Zhou Hui didn’t react. He just saw him grab a pure cyan arrow that had silently attacked from behind!
“Oh?” Sakyamuni snapped the pure cyan arrow in two and said lightly, “Even you have turned your blade against me, little phoenix?”
·
Ahead, the smoke of battle dissipated. Chu He stood on the cracked ground, panting slightly. After a long moment, he raised his bow and said coldly, “You should go, Zhou Hui… This is a matter between me and this person. It has nothing to do with you.”
Zhou Hui sternly rebuked, “What did you say!”
Sakyamuni, however, looked as if he had heard something very funny and said with great interest, “Did you hear that, demon? He said it has nothing to do with you.”
“What does it matter if it has to do with me or not at a time like this!” Zhou Hui ignored Sakyamuni and only shouted at the phoenix, “Should I go out and watch you die now? If it were you, would you be willing to just walk out like this?!”
“Zhou Hui…”
Chu He was silent for a moment, then slowly shook his head. He drew a second arrow from the void, drew his bow, and aimed it vaguely at Sakyamuni.
“I’m sorry, I never told you about this person’s existence,” he said in a low voice.
“This person called Sakyamuni, I once saw him as my faith. After being abandoned, my whole spirit collapsed. In order to find sustenance, I knelt under the Bodhi tree, chanting scriptures and praying to Buddha, day after day for a thousand years. However, Mount Sumeru’s endless campaigns against the Four Evil Paths and its indifference to the wars in the human world made my faith in all the gods and Buddhas greatly doubted and shaken… It was not until your appearance that I saw another possibility.”
“You don’t believe in anyone, you don’t kneel to anyone, you don’t need to cling to any ethereal religion. You hold power tightly in your own hands, only using it to do what you want to do, pursue the person you want to pursue, and live a life that follows your instincts and is free of guilt…”
“I want that kind of life too. Therefore, I decided to take you as my last faith, to try one last time before I fall into demonhood.” The phoenix paused, a trace of weary difficulty in his voice. “So I was very afraid of being deceived and abandoned again. Fortunately, you have not disappointed me, except for that incident with the snow mountain goddess Śakti. If a person like me falls into demonhood, I might become one of the hubs of the hell demon’s eye, having my energy endlessly drained until I die of exhaustion…”
A look of horror flashed in Zhou Hui’s eyes. He heard Sakyamuni ask with a smile, “Then are you not afraid that by turning your blade against me, a golden Buddha, your divinity will be shattered by heavenly punishment, and you will henceforth fall into demonhood?”
Chu He looked at Sakyamuni with a calm gaze. And behind him, where the dust and smoke had cleared, the little phoenix’s neck was broken, its corpse lying on the ground, its dull eyes wide open, staring in the same direction.
It was truly a scene that sent a bone-chilling cold from one’s limbs to the depths of one’s soul.
“It doesn’t matter,” Chu He said. “The me right now is fearless. Do you know why?”
Sakyamuni opened his mouth, seeming to want to say something, but then his gaze suddenly sharpened!
Chu He’s fingers loosened, and the pure cyan arrow shot through the smoke, instantly reflected in Sakyamuni’s eyes!
Sakyamuni’s figure disappeared from where he stood. The pure cyan arrow passed through the spot where he had been and lodged itself heavily in the white jade wall with a thud.
Then, Sakyamuni appeared in the air a zhang away from Chu He. Chu He drew his arrow and bow, aiming straight ahead, and attacked head-on. However, the next moment, it still pierced through the air and into the wall!
Zhou Hui shouted, “Be careful!”
Chu He was not flustered. He drew out seven pure cyan arrows, arranged them in a series on his large curved bow, and closed his eyes. At that moment, the change in the sound of the wind, the flow of the air, and even the direction of every floating dust particle were imprinted in his eyes through his closed eyelids. Even Zhou Hui subconsciously paused his charge towards him—
A few seconds later, Chu He turned around without warning and suddenly released the arrows!
The seven arrowheads were like meteors, tearing through the long sky in a series. The next second, a spray of blood erupted into the air!
Success?
Chu He’s eyes snapped open. He saw Sakyamuni’s figure appear from the void. Not a single one of the seven long arrows was wasted; all of them had pierced his chest, abdomen, and thighs. The remaining momentum pushed his entire person backwards until he slammed into the wall with a bang.
Chu He was stunned for a moment, then suddenly realized—it hadn’t hit a vital spot!
A skilled archer would have an instinct to hit a vital spot. Chu He barely needed any reaction time. He directly drew another arrow and shot it into the air. Opposite him, Sakyamuni didn’t even dodge. The arrowhead pierced his heart without any surprise.
Blood flowed down the white jade wall, dripping onto the scorching ground.
Chu He stood there, motionless. From Zhou Hui’s angle, he could see the extremely tense muscle lines from his shoulder to his back and waist slowly relaxing.
However, just as he was about to step forward to check, Sakyamuni, not far away, moved.
Sakyamuni raised his hand, pulled out the last pure cyan arrow that had pierced his heart with a splat, and slowly looked up at the flesh and blood dripping from the arrowhead.
Then his gaze turned to Chu He, and he smiled. “With the bones of a demon like Zhou Hui, you think you can hurt me?”
Chu He’s pupils constricted. For a moment, he was almost stunned in place. At the same time, Sakyamuni stood up from the shattered and collapsed wall. The seven pure cyan arrows were all pushed out of his body, and in mid-air, they all turned around and automatically shot back the way they came!
Bang!
—At the critical moment, Zhou Hui rushed forward, pushed Chu He aside the instant the long arrows came stabbing at him, and swung his giant beast-tooth blade in a circle, cutting all seven bone arrows in half!
Chu He staggered a few steps and gasped in astonishment, “Zhou Hui, that’s your…”
The shattered bones rained down from the sky. In the firelight, Zhou Hui’s firm side profile was unclear. He only seemed to have given Chu He a deep look.
The next second, Sakyamuni came from the sky. The wounds pierced by the long arrows regenerated and healed at a speed visible to the naked eye. The torn flesh made him look particularly ferocious. In an instant, he pounced in front of Zhou Hui!
—Clang!
The impact of the blades clashing spread out in a ring, hitting Chu He in the chest and sending him flying. After landing heavily, he immediately struggled to get up. He saw a rapidly rotating hurricane enveloping a space with a diameter of more than three zhang. That was Sakyamuni and Zhou Hui’s battle zone. Because the tide of energy stimulated by the battle was too intense, it presented two colors, bright white and dark gray, strangely intertwined, like a huge bomb that could shatter the world at any moment.
Zhou Hui had consumed too much power in his fight with the Demon Lord. He was only able to hold on now by sheer willpower. And Sakyamuni, after all, was known as the boundless-in-power golden Buddha. He soon gained the absolute upper hand. In the gap when Zhou Hui’s large blade had lost its momentum after a slash, he suddenly pulled out a vajra staff from the void and heavily struck Zhou Hui in the abdomen, knocking him to his knees!
—The staff was thicker than the mouth of a bowl, weighing over a thousand jin, and shone with a thick golden light. It was completely different from Shenwan Tiansi’s demon-subduing pestle, which had been passed down through generations of Tibetan living Buddhas and was inlaid with various precious stones. Zhou Hui’s internal organs were injured by this blow. Before he could get up, Sakyamuni swung the staff down again, and a slight, crisp sound of a bone cracking came from his back!
Chu He was furious. He drew the twelfth pure cyan arrow and resolutely drew the bowstring!
—That was his last arrow, his last phoenix bone.
The phoenix bone was extremely divine, almost usable as a substitute for a divinity, and had a strong demon-breaking effect. It didn’t need to hit Sakyamuni’s vital spot to cause great damage, but the same was true for the hell demon Zhou Hui—back during the great war between gods and demons, when Zhou Hui came through the air across the crowd, and the Phoenix King shot the eleventh phoenix bone from the city wall, Zhou Hui had only caught the arrow shaft with his bare hands, and his entire arm had been burned black, almost spreading to his heart.
Therefore, this arrow had to be sure to hit Sakyamuni and absolutely could not graze Zhou Hui.
Chu He panted slightly, aiming with trembling hands, then his fingers suddenly steadied.
—However, at this moment, Sakyamuni swung his staff down again, and Zhou Hui immediately let out a roar of pain.
In desperation and fury, with no other options, he suddenly caught sight of the Demon Lord’s divinity he had been clutching in his palm and instinctively swallowed it!
Chu He’s hand on the arrow shifted, and he said sharply, “Don’t swallow it!”
But his voice was too late. There was a strong beastly nature deep in Zhou Hui’s blood, and a beast acts on instinct when cornered. The divinity was swallowed as soon as it entered his mouth.
Immediately after, he felt an excruciating pain in his esophagus, as if it were being scorched. His stomach convulsed violently, trying to expel the thing, but he gritted his teeth and endured it, raising his hand and sword to firmly block the vajra staff that was coming down again.
With a clang, sparks flew for several meters. Zhou Hui rose up brazenly, swinging his beast-tooth blade like a storm. Each attack brought with it a dazzling arc of light as if creating the world, forcing even Sakyamuni back repeatedly with the dense and powerful attacks!
—Can’t stop.
Zhou Hui knew he couldn’t stop.
Although his abdomen felt as if a rotting monster were constantly tearing at it with sharp claws, the excruciating pain as unbearable as being burned by fire, he knew he couldn’t let this breath go, this momentum could absolutely not be broken. Once broken, it could not be resumed.
He firmly believed that the Demon Lord’s divinity would work. This strange psychological comfort made him unprecedentedly fierce and swift. An unusually domineering and powerful force seemed to flow from his dantian, climbing up his limbs to his arms. The next slash erupted with hundreds of times more power!
—Bang!!
With a terrifying cracking sound, the beast tooth forcibly cut the vajra staff into two. The remaining momentum instantly chopped off Sakyamuni’s entire arm!
The severed arm fell to the ground with a thud. The next moment, Zhou Hui’s beast tooth shattered. He slammed the hilt of the blade on the ground and then, with a churning stomach, let out a loud retch.
The incompatible Demon Lord’s divinity, after a brief period of effectiveness and immense pain, was finally vomited out completely, wrapped in a ball of fresh blood!
Zhou Hui’s whole body was convulsing in pain, trembling constantly, but he still panted heavily and reached for the divinity in the pool of blood, intending to swallow it again. However, at this moment, the armless Sakyamuni staggered forward and stepped on the gray-black, flowing, and glowing divinity, saying coldly, “You ignorant fool, you have no idea how to use it, do you?”
Zhou Hui reached out to grab it, but then another mouthful of blood spewed out!
Sakyamuni stepped firmly on the divinity and didn’t move. With his remaining hand, he raised it into the air, and the divinity under his foot instantly turned into tens of thousands of gray-black threads that connected to his palm, forming a scorching ball of light.
Within the ball of light, countless fine electrical currents seemed to be surging. Sakyamuni sneered and, grabbing it, slammed it down on Zhou Hui’s head!
—In that very instant, Chu He aimed his long arrow and released his hand.
The phoenix bone arrow whistled through the air, pierced Sakyamuni through the chest, and pinned him firmly to the wall several meters away!
“Ah—”
Sakyamuni let out a scream of excruciating pain. The demon-breaking power, centered on the bone arrow, quickly burned half of his body black!
This turn of events was so sudden that Sakyamuni had not anticipated it at all before being hit. As he flew back, the divinity slipped from his hand and fell to the ground. Chu He rushed forward and at the same time reached behind him, intending to draw the Buddha’s bone knife.
“It’s over,” he stared at Sakyamuni and said, word by word.
However, Sakyamuni, trembling, grabbed the phoenix bone in his chest and said hoarsely, “You’re wrong, my dear little phoenix… it’s still early.”
Chu He’s fingers had already touched the hilt of the Buddha’s bone knife at the back of his waist. Behind him, Zhou Hui swayed to his feet, and suddenly his face changed drastically. “—Phoenix, move aside!”
At that moment, Chu He only heard the ground beneath his feet shake, followed by a loud roar. A bad feeling rose in his heart. Just as he was about to leap forward, it was already too late.
Behind him, a vajra giant broke through the earth, towering over everything, and scooped up Chu He, grabbing him in its two giant palms!
—Summon Vajra!
Under the Buddhist hall of the Formless Heaven, there was actually a summoned puppet vajra that Sakyamuni had prepared in advance!
Just as Zhou Hui was about to step forward, he heard Sakyamuni say coldly, “Stop—if you dare take another step, I will have all of the phoenix’s limbs broken. Do you want to try?”
Zhou Hui hesitated for a moment, and saw Sakyamuni really make a gesture to the summoned vajra. Immediately after, the vajra’s fingers, which were holding Chu He’s arm, bent, and the elbow joint instantly snapped in the opposite direction with a crack.
Zhou Hui cried out in anger, “Phoenix!”
Chu He’s body was suspended in mid-air. His face, due to the excruciating pain, was drained of all color, as pale as paper, sweat pouring down like rain. However, he endured it without a sound, only looking tightly at Zhou Hui.
“I… I’m fine,” he finally managed to force out a voice amidst his trembling after a long moment. “I’m fine.”
Zhou Hui’s back molars were clenched so tightly they were almost about to break. He abruptly turned to Sakyamuni and saw him finally pull the pure cyan arrow from his chest and throw it on the ground with a clang.
“How ironic,” he said hoarsely. “The bone that was drawn for me back then is now pointed at my Buddha body… How truly ironic.”
He swayed to his feet, looking a bit unstable due to the missing arm. The sight was both terrifying and absurd. Zhou Hui watched all this with cold eyes and said, “Back then he loved you, but you only deceived and used him. Now he loves me, so he wants your life for my sake. What’s wrong with that?!”
Sakyamuni, however, laughed and said leisurely, “Do you know how I was born?”
Sakyamuni’s face was covered with dust and black ash. The bloody hole where his arm had been severed was still gushing blood, but he seemed not to care at all. He casually brushed his hand over the wound, and the blood naturally stopped.
“Tens of thousands of years ago, the hell plates shifted, and Mount Buzhou was struck, forming a deep chasm. When the tremor was transmitted through Mount Sumeru to the Formless Heaven, the phoenix’s jade embryo was shaken and fell to the edge of hell’s demon eye, cracking on impact. The Buddha saw all this through the mirror of karma and, not wanting the king of all birds, the phoenix, to be born in hell, immediately descended from the Formless Heaven to Mount Buzhou, thus opening the direct path from the Formless Heaven to hell.”
“At that time, the Buddha’s light shone for ten thousand zhang, all things cried out, and the demonic creatures of the sea of blood all prostrated themselves. The Buddha descended before the demon’s eye and was about to pick up the jade embryo when he saw the jade embryo shatter and the phoenix chick be born. In an instant, a clear sound echoed through the heavens and the earth, celestial music surrounded them, and a five-colored divine light illuminated the nine heavens and ten earths with extraordinary magnificence.”
“When the phoenix chick spread its fledgling wings and let out its first clear cry, a thought moved in the Buddha’s mind, and he felt a fondness. His faith was thus no longer invulnerable, and I was born from his eighth consciousness.”
Sakyamuni smiled, but Chu He, who was bound by the vajra giant, had a look of extreme shock on his face.
“So you… are a heart-demon born from the true Buddha’s feeling of affection?” Zhou Hui was a bit confused. He paused and then asked, “Then after you returned to the Formless Heaven, how did you deceive all the gods and Buddhas?”
Sakyamuni smiled. “I was born from the Buddha’s eighth consciousness, occupied the Buddha’s divine consciousness and golden body. After returning to the Formless Heaven, naturally, no one suspected… except for Venerable Bhadra, who had ascended to the Formless Heaven from Mount Sumeru with the true Buddha tens of thousands of years ago. Do you understand now, demon? Your attack on me is disrespect to the true Buddha. Although there will be no heavenly thunder in the Formless Heaven, you will naturally be punished by thunder when you go out.”
“After you die,” he said, looking at Zhou Hui, “the demonic energy circulating from the demon’s eye will be mine alone. From then on, all the gods and Buddhas will no longer be my opponents. I will reign above Mount Sumeru and even the Formless Heaven, and from then on, I will become the sole master of karma and life and death…”
Perhaps because victory was in his grasp, Sakyamuni finally showed a triumphant expression for the first time in history—the majestic, peaceful false mask finally disappeared from his face, replaced by an undisguised, chilling coldness and ambition.
He took half a step forward. With this movement, Zhou Hui’s eyes twitched slightly, and he moved inconspicuously towards the fallen Demon Lord’s divinity not far away.
“—Don’t move,” Sakyamuni immediately said coldly. “Do you want to see the phoenix suffer again?”
Zhou Hui’s movement immediately stopped.
“However, I will not completely kill the phoenix,” Sakyamuni said leisurely. “After all, he is a child I raised myself, unlike you… It is said that after a phoenix achieves nirvana and becomes a jade embryo, and then hatches from the shell, it will completely wash away the memories of its previous life. So what does it matter whether I act against the phoenix or not?”
He looked up at Chu He in the palm of the vajra giant and smiled slightly, then went to pick up the Demon Lord’s divinity, weighing the gray-black ball of light in his hand.
At this time, half of Sakyamuni’s body was scorched black, one arm torn off, yet the divinity in his hand quickly gathered a terrifying electrical current like a swarm of tens of thousands of snakes. Not far away, Zhou Hui was exhausted from the continuous severe injuries, his weapon shattered and his hands empty, his head and face almost bathed in blood, barely able to stand.
The contrast was so stark that it was almost tragic.
“Just now, the phoenix said it was over. I said it was still early,” Sakyamuni walked towards Zhou Hui and said condescendingly, “Now is the real end.”
He raised the divinity high, and the halo of light turned into a dagger with lightning coursing through its entire body, reflected in Zhou Hui’s constricted pupils.
Zhou Hui panted slightly, took half a step back, and subconsciously looked up at the phoenix.
—Then, in his eyes, a burning ball of fire was reflected.
“Get out of the way…” Chu He said, trembling, in the firelight, then, regardless of anything, he shouted sharply, “Zhou Hui, get out of the way—!”
Sakyamuni abruptly raised his head, his face instantly becoming very confused.
He saw the phoenix’s entire body suddenly burst into flames. The golden-red, high-temperature flames caused one of the puppet vajra’s giant hands to burn off and fall to the ground with a roar. At the same time, the flames flew and transformed in the void, becoming the shape of a huge, brilliant phoenix.
“The phoenix’s true form?” Sakyamuni said in astonishment. “—How is that possible? The phoenix’s true form has already been struck by heavenly punishment and turned into charred bones!”
However, the next moment, the puppet vajra’s other mountain-like giant hand also crashed down. Amidst the rubble, Chu He appeared in the air, his figure wrapped in the phantom of a flying phoenix, and in an instant, he was above Sakyamuni’s head.
“Not… not completely charred bones,” Chu He’s voice was trembling and panting, but his side profile in the firelight was very calm. “I buried the remains under the giant mountain range of the human world, guarded by the Golden-Winged Roc for hundreds of years, precisely to prevent today…”
Zhou Hui suddenly realized something and rushed forward, grabbing Chu He’s shoulder. “Wait! What are you trying to do?! Didn’t you say you’d leave it to me?!”
Chu He looked at Zhou Hui. After a long while, he reached out his cold fingers in the raging fire and caressed this man’s handsome, wretched, and furious face. “You… if I turn into an egg… can you pick me up?”
Zhou Hui let out a roar of extreme anger, and immediately after, the ground under their feet shook violently, throwing both him and Sakyamuni to the ground!
—It was the Himalayas.
The abyss of the Himalayas in the human world, finally, in the violent impact of the phoenix’s remains, sent out the first tremor that shook the nine heavens and ten earths.
·
In hell, at the Mount Buzhou demon’s eye.
Maha’s foot slipped. He quickly grabbed onto a mountain rock to steady himself and said in surprise, “Did the Himalayas collapse?”
Not far from his side, Jia Louluo sat cross-legged in the valley, turning a string of Buddhist beads in his hand, and said faintly, “No, the phoenix bones are coming out.”
“…Phoenix bones?”
Maha was stunned for a moment, then suddenly realized something. “—Wait, what does it mean the phoenix bones are coming out?”
Jia Louluo closed his eyes and chanted scriptures silently, not paying attention to his brother. So Maha strode over, snatched the Buddhist beads, directly pried open his brother’s mouth and stuffed them in, then grabbed him by the neck and asked, “I’m asking you, what on earth does that mean?!”
“Cough, cough, cough!” Jia Louluo coughed from being choked by him. After a long while, he finally managed to get the Buddhist beads out of his mouth, took a breath, and said, “Why do you think I was staying on the Himalayas?”
Maha was stunned.
“I was a guide on the snowy mountains. When there was an avalanche, I would have people pray in the direction of the phoenix’s remains, and thus I would save their lives. People’s wishes are most sincere at the time of life and death. I collected such willpower for hundreds of years, so I could keep the divinity of the remains from disappearing…”
Maha couldn’t help but interrupt him. “Why on earth did you do that?”
Jia Louluo was being held by the collar by his brother, but his expression was not wretched. He just looked back at Maha’s beautiful and demonic face very calmly.
“It’s simple,” he said calmly. “If even the remains completely decay, what would there be to achieve nirvana with?”
