Journey to the West: A clone sacrifices to the heavens, possessing boundless magical power.

At this moment, the abbot's room was brightly lit.

Through the gap in the window paper, Fan Yuan saw Elder Jinchi pacing anxiously inside the room. His brocade cassock had been removed and neatly folded on the offering table, with the bundle containing the cassock placed next to him.

The old monk would occasionally stop and listen intently to the sounds coming from the front yard, his face showing both the elation of impending success and a hint of fear of the unknown.

"Hurry...hurry up and start burning it..." Elder Jinchi murmured to himself, his hands tightly gripping the prayer beads, his knuckles turning white.

Just then.

"boom!"

A loud bang came from the front yard.

That was the sound of kerosene being ignited.

Immediately afterwards, flames shot into the sky, turning the originally dark night sky a fiery red.

"Mistaken firing! Missile firing!"

"It's on fire! A huge fire!"

The cacophony of shouts instantly shattered the tranquility of the night.

However, this is just the beginning.

Just as the flames rose, a strange wind suddenly arose from the ground.

The wind came in an extremely strange way; instead of blowing elsewhere, it specifically whipped up the flames and rushed towards the surrounding monks' quarters and temples.

What was originally just a fire surrounding the meditation hall was instantly out of control thanks to the strange wind, turning into fiery dragons that roared and devoured everything flammable.

"This is Sun Wukong fanning the flames!"

Fan Yuan understood immediately; the front yard was in complete chaos.

"Fire! Firefighting!"

"The wind is blowing in the wrong direction! Why is it burning towards the main hall!"

"My robe! My scriptures!"

The monks, who were originally prepared to watch the show, were instantly thrown into a panic. They were horrified to discover that the fire was completely out of control. Not only did it not burn Tang Sanzang, but it also rolled back and burned their own dwelling.

Inside the abbot's room, Elder Jinchi's expression changed drastically upon hearing the exclamations outside.

He rushed to the window and pushed it open, only to see that the front yard was already a sea of ​​fire, and thick smoke was billowing into the back yard with the wind.

"What...what's going on? Guangmou! Guangzhi!"

Elder Jinchi shouted in a panic and turned to rush out the door to check the situation.

But after running two steps, he seemed to remember something and suddenly turned around to look at the brocade cassock on the offering table.

That was a treasure he had exchanged for the entire foundation of the Zen temple; it could not be lost!

He rushed back to the offering table, grabbed the robe, and tried to find a place to hide it.

But at that moment, the fire in the front yard, fueled by the wind, actually ignited the front hall of the abbot's room.

"Grandmaster! Grandmaster, run! The fire is coming!"

A young novice monk's mournful shouts came from outside the door.

Elder Jinchi's eyes were filled with tears from the smoke. He looked at the cassock in his arms, then at the roof beams that were starting to smoke, his eyes filled with despair and madness.

"No! My robe! No one can take my robe away!"

He carried the cassock, but instead of running outside, he rushed towards a hidden corner inside the room.

Fan Yuan, who was hiding outside the back window, narrowed his eyes slightly.

He saw that Elder Jinchi had pressed a mechanism on one of the walls of the inner room, and a hidden door slowly opened.

It was a hidden, secret chamber!

The old monk, carrying his robe, slipped inside, and then the hidden door closed perfectly, as if it had never existed.

"I see."

A smile appeared on Fan Yuan's lips.

In the original story, the Black Bear Spirit took advantage of the chaos to steal the cassock, but now, the Black Bear Spirit hasn't arrived yet, and Elder Jinchi has chosen to hide in a secret chamber in order to protect the cassock.

This secret chamber can protect against fire and people, but it cannot protect against the divine sense and methods of cultivators.

Moreover, with Elder Jinchi hiding, the abbot's room was now completely empty.

Aside from the cassock, this old monk, who lived to be 270 years old, still has all the other treasures he amassed outside!

Fan Yuan controlled the avatar of the refugee, took out the iron crowbar he had prepared beforehand from his pocket, and gently inserted it into the gap of the back window.

"Click".

With a soft click, the window bolt broke.

The clone nimbly flipped into the house, landing silently.

Fan Yuan ignored the hidden door. The cassock was a karmic connection between Sun Wukong and the Black Bear Spirit, and he couldn't touch it, nor dared to. If he took the cassock, Sun Wukong would hunt him down all over the world, which would be a death sentence.

His target was the seemingly inconspicuous bottles and jars in the abbot's room, which actually contained hidden spiritual energy.

Using the firelight, Fan Yuan's avatar, a refugee, quickly scanned the entire house.

……

Inside the abbot's quarters, the heat was intense.

The fire in the front yard, fueled by the demonic wind summoned by Sun Wukong, had already spread like wildfire. Thick smoke billowed into the house through the broken window frames, choking people so much they could barely breathe.

The refugee clone controlled by Fan Yuan was currently lying under Elder Jinchi's bed, its hands like iron hooks groping through the gap between the wall and the bed board.

Although this clone had no sense of pain, Fan Yuan could clearly perceive that the clone's exposed skin was rapidly dehydrating and blistering under the high temperature. A mortal body was as fragile as paper in the face of such intense fire.

time is limited.

"Click".

A very faint, crisp sound.

Fan Yuan was overjoyed. His fingertips touched a slightly loose brick, and without hesitation, he pressed it down hard with all his might.

The hidden compartment on the inside of the bed popped open, revealing a black lacquered wooden box about half a foot square.

Upon opening the wooden box, there was no gaudy glitter of gold and silver jewelry inside, only two seemingly ordinary jade bottles and five dusty stones with uneven, pitted surfaces.

But Fan Yuan's eyes lit up instantly.

Although the aura emanating from the jade bottle was sealed by wax, he could still smell a rich medicinal fragrance. The five gray stones made Fan Yuan's breath catch in his throat.

Spirit Stone!

Although it contains many impurities and has mixed spiritual energy, making it a defective product among spirit stones, it is still a rare cultivation resource in the human world where spiritual energy is scarce.

This must have been obtained by Elder Jinchi from that black bear demon in exchange for countless amounts of mortal gold and silver.

"All the good stuff is mine!"

Just as Fan Yuan had tucked the wooden box into his pocket, a beam above his head suddenly snapped and crashed down less than three feet away, scattering sparks and blocking his path.

At the same time, the sound of noisy footsteps and the clattering of buckets could be heard outside the window.

"Quick! Save the abbot's quarters first! The elder's treasures are all inside!"

"Splash water! Quickly splash water!"

The monks' shouts were right next to us.

Fan Yuan's heart sank.

There's no way out.

If he were to rush out with the wooden box at this moment, he would inevitably run into the monks who were putting out the fire. This clone had no cultivation, and once surrounded, he would be trapped like a turtle in a jar.

Moreover, the clone's legs had been injured in the collapse of the roof beams, making it slow to move and unable to safely leave with these things.

Forcibly taking them away will only result in losing both their money and their lives.

Fan Yuan was a decisive person and made a decision instantly.

"Since we can't take it with us, we'll just hide it for now!"

His gaze swept quickly across the room. The wooden furniture, already charred from the high temperature, offered no concealment whatsoever. Only…

His gaze fell on the floor beneath his feet.

The floor of the abbot's room was paved with thick bluestone slabs, and near the desk, there was a slab of stone that was slightly darker in color than the surrounding ones.

Fan Yuan controlled his clone to drag his injured leg over, and used the iron crowbar he carried with him to pry open the crack in the stone slab.

The stone slab was heavy and remained motionless.

"Open it!"

Fan Yuan gritted his teeth and exhausted the last bit of strength in his clone. Finally, a crack was pried open in the stone slab.

Below is a long-abandoned drainage culvert, dry and deep, surrounded by hard rock, a natural fire-proof safe.

Fan Yuan quickly took the two bottles of pills and five spirit stones from the wooden box, wrapped them in layers of tattered cloth strips he had torn from his body, and stuffed them into the depths of the dark ditch.

After doing all this, he laboriously pushed the bluestone slab back into place and grabbed a handful of incense ash from the ground, sprinkling it into the cracks to cover up the signs of prying.

"Make a note of this location first, and come back to retrieve it after the fire is extinguished."

Fan Yuan breathed a sigh of relief. At this moment, the clone's arm was severely burned, and its vision was blurred by the thick smoke.

Just as he was about to control his clone to find a way out, a terrifying aura that could change the color of the sky and earth suddenly descended.

The flames that had been raging inside the house seemed to be held down by an invisible hand, pressing down in unison before trembling and retreating in all directions.

The noisy voices outside the window vanished instantly, replaced by a deathly silence.

Immediately following was a series of extremely heavy footsteps.

Boom!Boom!Boom!

With each step, the ground trembled, as if a mountain were moving.

Fan Yuan manipulated his clone to look out through the window frame, which had been burned down to nothing but a thin frame.

In mid-air, a dark, demonic wind rolled in, instantly suppressing the red light that filled the sky. When the wind dissipated, a giant man as tall as an iron tower was revealed.