Journey to the West: Please Call Me the White Bone Demon

The golden pillar of light, imbued with the majesty of a sage, plummeted to a height of three hundred feet, pressing the air in Yingdu City so tightly it was almost solidified.

On the streets, many people's legs went weak and they knelt on the ground. Young children were held tightly in their parents' arms and could not cry out. The whole city was shrouded in the shadow of that light, like the suffocating moment before the sky collapsed.

Yun Zhao made a move.

He took a step and his figure disappeared from the steps in front of the new Leiyin Temple. When he reappeared, he was three zhang directly below the pillar of light.

His robes billowed backward as the holy might pressed down from above, yet he remained perfectly still in mid-air.

He opened his arms, palms facing the sky, and thirty-six Sea-Stabilizing Pearls flew out of his body at the same time, arranging themselves into a huge circle above his head.

Each bead reflects the phantom of a different world, and the thirty-six worlds overlap and rotate in the ring, creating a chaotic light curtain.

The moment the beam of light struck the Sea-Stabilizing Pearl, the entire sky exploded in a blinding white light.

The white light expanded in a spherical shape in all directions, dispersing all the clouds within a thousand miles and revealing a vast, dark blue sky.

The ring of the Sea-Stabilizing Pearls trembled violently, and all thirty-six pearls hummed simultaneously, like a gong being violently struck, each sound carrying an extremely heavy vibration.

Yun Zhao's arms sank downwards in that instant, and his body plummeted three zhang to the ground.

He gritted his teeth, took a deep breath, straightened his arms again, and the light on the Dinghai Pearl ring shone brightly once more. The phantoms of the thirty-six heavens and earth rotated together, grinding away and dissolving the remaining power in the pillar of light layer by layer.

Each time the illusory image of heaven and earth lost a layer of power, it emitted a crisp, shattering sound. By the time the thirty-first layer of heaven and earth shattered, a thin line of blood had seeped from the corner of Yun Zhao's mouth.

The thirty-second level, the thirty-third level, and the thirty-fourth level.

His magical power was rapidly depleting, and the surging power in his meridians made the skin under his robes numb, and the knuckles of his ten fingers, which were gripping the magic seal, turned bone white.

The moment the illusory image of the thirty-fifth layer of heaven and earth shattered, he groaned and fell downwards, kneeling on one knee in mid-air.

The remaining power of that golden pillar of light finally dissipated into countless fragments of golden light under the crushing force of the thirty-sixth heaven and earth. Like exploding fireworks, they fluttered down and landed on the rooftops, streets, and shoulders of the people of Yingdu City, turning into tiny specks of light and disappearing silently.

The crying and screaming in the city stopped.

The people kneeling on the ground raised their heads and saw that the deadly light hanging overhead had dissipated. They saw a handsome young man kneeling on one knee in mid-air, blood at the corner of his mouth, his hands still in the posture of supporting heaven and earth.

Yun Zhao slowly stood up, wiped the blood from the corner of his mouth, and turned to look in the direction of Zhunti.

Looking down at all this from high above, Zhunti finally showed a rare hint of surprise in his blue eyes, but that surprise vanished in an instant and was quickly covered by an extremely cold expression.

He withdrew his index finger, stood with his hands behind his back, and said calmly, "No wonder they fell into your hands, since they could actually catch a casual flick of my finger."

He spoke in a casual tone when he mentioned the four words "pointing casually".

But these four words sounded particularly heavy to the ears of those below.

The residual power of a casual finger strike reduced the combined strength of three Quasi-Saints and most of the cultivation of a peak Quasi-Saint Tathagata. In the end, Yun Zhao had to exhaust the power of the Sea-Stabilizing Pearl to barely neutralize it.

The saying "below the sage, all are ants" has now become a tangible reality in everyone's eyes.

Yun Zhao was not overwhelmed by those four words.

He stood in mid-air, looking up at Zhunti's azure figure, his anger rising at an unprecedented speed.

He originally thought that even if the two Western Saints made a move, it would at most be aimed at him and Tathagata. He had plenty of ways to deal with them. Even if he couldn't defeat the Saints, he could just perish together with them.

But he never expected that Zhunti's finger would be aimed directly at those ordinary people in the Chu Kingdom who had no cultivation.

That's karma.

The karma of destroying a city and slaughtering millions of mortals is immense, especially considering that Zhunti intends to completely destroy the Chu Kingdom, which encompasses most of the Southern Jambudvipa.

That terrifying karma would be difficult even for a saint to bear.

Yun Zhao angrily rebuked, "Zhunti! I and Tathagata destroyed your lineage, so if you want to settle accounts, come at me! What grudge do the people of Chu have against you? Did a single mortal die in the destruction of Mount Ling? How dare a dignified saint lay a hand on mortals?"

As he finished speaking, his voice echoed throughout the city of Yingdu. The people in the city who looked up at the sky heard these words, and their expressions of panic were now mixed with confusion and bewilderment.

Zhunti looked down at him, her blue eyes completely calm.

He sneered, his voice descending from the heavens: "When you destroyed my lineage, did you ever ask for my permission?"

"Mount Ling is the culmination of countless eons of our Western Sect's efforts, the foundation that my senior brothers and I built brick by brick. You just demolished it and merged it as you pleased, and now you come to talk to me about karma and implicating the innocent?"

He took a step forward, and the golden lotus beneath his feet burst forth with dazzling light in the void: "If you want to destroy my life's work, I will destroy yours; if you want to sever my lineage, I will destroy your foundation."

"You founded the State of Chu, and those mortals are your subjects and your followers. Since you care about them, you should understand that I'm returning everything you did to me to you exactly as it was. What's wrong with that?"

Yun Zhao's brows furrowed tightly, his voice filled with anger: "How can this be the same? I merged with Tathagata at Mount Ling, yet all the monks of Mount Ling either joined the new Buddhist order or left the mountain on their own—not a single one was missing!"

"Your doctrines are your teachings, your traditions, and the will of the people. I'm seizing your facade, not killing you!"

Zhunti looked down at him, her cold smile undiminished.

"The lineage of Taoism?"

Zhunti retorted, "Without Mount Ling, without those palaces and golden statues, without those disciples kneeling on prayer mats chanting scriptures, tell me, where is the lineage? Doctrines are always built on a foundation. You demolish my building and then tell me the bricks and tiles are still there. What kind of lineage is that?"

His voice grew louder and louder, his blue monk's robe billowing in the wind: "You're right, you didn't kill anyone, but you killed something more important than a human life."

"You have destroyed the hard work of countless generations of my life, and you have destroyed the foundation upon which the Western religion has gradually climbed to sainthood from nothing."

"You come to me today to reason with me, talk about karma, and talk about implicating the innocent? Let me tell you, reason is something people only talk about when they can't win a fight. I can beat you, so I won't reason with you."

As he spoke, he raised his right hand again, this time spreading his five fingers and gently pressing downwards.

The illusory image of the Buddha's hand, stretching across the sky, also pressed down, slower than the previous finger strike, yet carrying a sense of absolute tightness that covered the heavens and earth, like a giant bowl about to engulf the entire city of Yingdu and the entire continent of Nanzhanbu.

The Sanskrit characters in his palm swirled like a wheel, generating an irresistible suction force that pulled the grass, trees, sand, and stones on the ground upwards.

Yun Zhao's expression darkened completely.

"Are you really going to disregard everything?"

Zhunti's face showed neither joy nor sorrow: "At worst, I'll just sink the Three Realms."

They've gone mad, they've really gone mad.

At this moment, not only Yun Zhao and the entire Chu Kingdom felt that this was incomprehensible.

Even those old guys watching from hundreds of millions of miles away had a thought in their minds after hearing Zhunti's words.

Today's Zhunti bears a striking resemblance to the Tongtian of yesteryear.

From the moment this sage stepped into the Three Realms, he made all the preparations. His goal from the beginning was not just to settle accounts with Yun Zhaoru.

What he wanted was to vent his anger, to take revenge, and to fill the hole in his heart that had just been torn open with the same pain.

Yun Zhao took a deep breath, and the thirty-six Sea-Stabilizing Pearls re-condensed in his palm. The azure light surged around him like a tide, temporarily blocking the suction force from his body.