Chapter 275 - 202: "Heroic Spirits" in the Tower (Part 2)
Cultivating the Martial Dao, gazing upon the world from a high peak, settling scores as I please, the companionship of a beautiful woman... none of it seemed to matter anymore.
A dazed look on his face, Xie Yuan unconsciously and slowly raised his hands, bringing them together as if in prayer.
However, just as his palms were about to meet, a burning sensation seared his arm. His mind instantly cleared, and he jolted awake.
’What am I doing?’
He quickly snatched his hands apart, a cold sweat breaking out across his back.
’It felt like... I was just a hair’s breadth from completely converting to Buddhism. Once my palms touched, the next step would have been to shave my head.’
’That would be unthinkable...’
Xie Yuan could feel the statue’s Buddhist aura was immensely powerful, capable of instantly influencing even someone like him, who had no inclination toward Buddhism whatsoever. He subconsciously lowered his head, staring at the ground before his feet, daring not to look up again.
’If the 6th Layer is already like this, what could the 7th Layer possibly hold?’
But he didn’t dare investigate further. If the 7th Layer held a statue with an even stronger Buddhist aura, he feared he would cease to be himself the moment he set foot on it.
Steeling himself, Xie Yuan turned and walked directly toward the stairs leading down.
Behind him, however, the side of the giant, four-faced Buddha statue facing him slowly lifted its gaze. A golden light glinted in its eyes as it stared at his retreating figure.
Xie Yuan descended three floors without stopping, not daring to cast a single glance at the giant statue along the way.
Time and space within the Slaughter Tower had clearly been brought to a standstill, yet the upper floors remained so bizarre. Those three colossal statues were at once sacred and perilous, making one want to give them a wide berth.
’As expected of ancient ruins. I’m already taking a massive shortcut, and it’s still this dangerous.’
When Xie Yuan reached the grand plaza on the first floor, he felt the danger had lessened considerably and breathed a sigh of relief.
He looked at the bandits growing out of the pillars, fell silent for a moment, and shook his head.
’Growing bandits is better than growing Buddha statues.’
’This time, it was all thanks to these two petals of the Eight Trigrams Lotus...’
Xie Yuan looked down at the two lotus petals on his arm, his gaze softening.
The two petals couldn’t help him with his cultivation insights and seemed to offer no practical benefits. When he and Mu Chaoyun had parted ways, he had offered to return them to her. A complete lotus would naturally be far more effective for her.
But Mu Chaoyun had simply shaken her head, saying that it was a treasure regardless and that it might prove useful to keep it with him.
If nothing else, she had added, should they ever be separated, the mystical connection between the petals and the main lotus would ensure they would one day meet again.
’Perhaps that last part was Mu Chaoyun’s true intention.’
Faced with such a romantic reason, Xie Yuan naturally couldn’t refuse. He had kept the two petals of the Eight Trigrams Lotus ever since, never expecting they would prove to be so miraculously useful time and again.
’I wonder where she is now...’
Xie Yuan let out a breath, lowered his sleeve, and began to pace slowly between the pillars lining the plaza.
He examined the various murals and reliefs upon them. Their exquisite craftsmanship went without saying, and their content seemed to depict many Buddhist tales, imbued with deep Zen meaning. Unfortunately, his knowledge of Buddhism was scant, so he couldn’t decipher most of it.
As he continued to look, a sharp glint flashed in Xie Yuan’s eyes.
’These murals and pillars... they’re not as simple as they look.’
He had a faint feeling they formed an Array. If it were to be activated, escape would not be easy.
Having examined the pillars on this side and gotten a rough idea, Xie Yuan was about to cross the grand plaza to inspect the other side when he suddenly froze.
In the center of the grand plaza, a stone slab now stood.
A stone slab that hadn’t been there before.
A chill ran down Xie Yuan’s spine, and he swiftly scanned his surroundings.
Silence. Stagnation. Emptiness. There was nothing.
Xie Yuan’s brow furrowed. After a moment’s hesitation, he slowly approached the stone slab, which stood slightly taller than him, and looked up at it.
The slab was densely inscribed with ancient Sanskrit. The text was extremely long and appeared to be some kind of scripture.
However, Xie Yuan didn’t understand regular Sanskrit, let alone the ancient form. The only reason he could even identify it as ancient Sanskrit was that the Cloud Mountain Sword Sect’s Outer Sect offered many basic literacy courses that had showcased the forms of Sanskrit script and touched upon some Buddhist classics.
He stared at it for a while, completely bewildered.
Since he couldn’t understand it anyway, he was about to turn away. But then he suddenly felt the Sanskrit characters on the slab begin to shimmer before the text abruptly imprinted itself upon his mind. Inexplicably, he understood the meaning of a short passage:
"...Thus, at the time of my return, there will be three portents. First, the yellow sands will recede, and my kingdom will see the sun again, bathed once more in its light. Second, the Slaughter Tower will remanifest, and its light and shadow will illuminate the city. Third, the earth will move and the mountains will tremble, the ten-thousand-li Buddhist Kingdom will become reality, and I myself shall—"
The message cut off abruptly, leaving Xie Yuan rather baffled.
The passage read like a clumsy translation—a mix of styles, half-classical and half-vernacular, with some parts that felt like garbled code. Xie Yuan couldn’t make it out clearly, nor could he fathom how he understood it at all.
He did, however, understand the three portents and fell into thought.
’The first portent seems to be what Lu the Third described when he entered the ruins. The second is what’s happening now, but there was an earthquake this time, too... Uh, surely that has nothing to do with the explosive I used?’
Xie Yuan wasn’t so sure...
’Oh well. It’s not like anyone’s going to blame me.’
As for what "the time of my return" or a "ten-thousand-li Buddhist Kingdom" meant, Xie Yuan didn’t quite understand. But his intuition told him it was nothing good, and he couldn’t help but frown.
He studied the slab a while longer, but with no further revelations, he committed the matter to memory and continued exploring elsewhere.
Having realized the stone pillars and murals formed an Array, he suspected the stone houses were also not what they seemed. Sure enough, near the doors and on the roofs of many houses, he spotted primed but untriggered traps, frozen as if time had been paused.
’I feel less like a beta tester and more like a GM at this point...’
Xie Yuan muttered to himself as he watched the traps, revealed in perfect detail whenever the walls flickered between solid and ethereal.
After making a full circuit, Xie Yuan returned to the room where Lin Zhen and the three others were. After a moment of thought, he decided to simply move them to the second floor.