Esoteric Buddhism: To live as king in America

"Hey, Mian, I need to tell you something. The master has set up magic arrays all over this building. To prevent leaks, I won't tell you where they are, but they definitely exist. With them there, you guys just need to sit in your rooms on the 21st floor and wait through the night. Tomorrow, all the filth will be expelled. Keep an eye on those clueless foreigners for me. You know, this isn't discrimination, but their underdeveloped brains aren't enough to understand these things. If they find out about the magic arrays, they might ruin everything."

Wang Yuanli's words seemed to echo in his ears. These were the words of advice that the seemingly pitiful landlord had given him when he put his arm around Mian's shoulder during the afternoon visit.

It now seems he was completely fooled; the magic array he set up hadn't done anything to remove the "dirty thing," and might even have been used against him. However, this seemingly useless object had strangely come to work.

Red lines, seemingly drawn with vermilion, spread outward from the clutter piled under the bed along the different colored floor tiles. In the dim light of room 4-4, they extended towards the bloodstains left by the dragged corpse, like a clear road sign guiding Mian in the direction she should go.

This is undoubtedly part of the magic array drawn by the master invited by Wang Yuanli, and it certainly shouldn't be in this room at this time. It acts like an anchor, showcasing a portion of the room's current appearance.

Without a doubt, this is exactly what I've been looking for.

"Mr. Leo, could you please help me clear out the clutter and bedding? Also, be careful, there might be a trap hidden there."

Specialized tasks should be handled by specialized personnel. Given that the opponent has methods to break through your defenses, teaming up with Leo, whose stats are currently higher than yours in all aspects, is definitely the best choice.

Leo understood immediately and dragged the still unconscious Sherry from outside into the room, then helped Mian clean up the clutter under the bed.

The more Mian cleaned up, the more alarmed he became.

Piles of cheap convenience food packaging bags occupied the outermost area under the bed, but once you peeled away that outer layer, an incredibly foul stench was revealed. A clump of rotten, smelly clothes, dead rats, and expired mothballs were mixed together, forming the most intensely pungent core of this pile of clutter.

Mian and Leo forced themselves to clean it up, but what appeared before Mian again left him speechless.

It was a pile of old books and notebooks wrapped in transparent plastic bags, along with various men's personal items. The name written in black pen on the notebooks indicated the owner of this junk—the long-lost grandson of the deceased old man.

All that could be seen was a plastic bag covering the bag. The old woman seemed to be trying to preserve as many of her grandson's last belongings as possible, but in the end, she failed. Rats had gnawed through the plastic bag, and cockroaches had rushed inside, laying eggs and frolicking about.

The trash was all very fresh, as if it had been there in the last few weeks. Just looking at it, Mian could almost picture the time when the thugs of the Anvil Gang were running rampant in the stairwell, while the old man was forced to hide in his home, trembling with fear.

If this is truly what the room used to look like, then what kind of life did the elderly man who lived here lead before he passed away from what he called "acute asthma"?

If it weren't for some kind of dirty thing causing trouble, could this old man really have survived in such a situation?

Mian's expression was somewhat unpleasant, and her acting skills finally failed to conceal her inner hesitation, which was revealed in her trembling hands.

But Leo didn't stop. This stowaway, born in Quanku, seemed to have long been accustomed to it all. Mian then granted him immense power through the cards, and even when he was alone, he easily cleaned up all the trash, along with the entire bed.

Soon, an intricate magic circle drawn with cinnabar and an ebony statue placed under the bed appeared before the two.

The statue, dressed in a long robe and holding a mace and whip, carried a strong sense of ancient Eastern culture. It was clearly a guardian deity who exorcised demons and protected the righteous path, although the object of its glaring anger was not a ghost or monster, but a pile of garbage left behind by a lonely old man in the final days of his life.

"Sir, what should we do now?"

Leo asked Mian a question, and Mian turned his gaze to the shard of mirror in his hand, which, as always, shimmered with a somewhat dazzling white light.

You have found the footprints left by the beasts under the red dragon's command. You know you now have one thing to do—cut down all the branches blocking your path and head to the beasts' lair.

"Destroy the magic array along with the statue."

Mian took one last look at the pile of trash left by the old man, sighed, and finally gave Leo this instruction.

Leo nodded excitedly, raised his fist, and smashed the statue and the floor tiles with the magic circle in them in no time.

In that instant, Mian suddenly felt an electric shock, just like when he first touched the holy sword with the mop handle, and an incredibly real scene unfolded before his eyes.

It was a dense black forest. The sword was brandished, cutting off branches and revealing eye-like wounds on the tree trunks.

A fervent retinue of attendants, torches in hand, followed behind, while militiamen armed with spears and steel swords carried the foreign princess as they followed Mian.

Mian saw in their eyes a kind of eagerness, a roaring desire in their hearts—they longed to achieve great things, to eradicate this dark forest, waiting only for their king to take that first step.

"Snap!"

Mian took a step forward, and in an instant, the illusion before him vanished along with the collapse of space.

With a cracking sound like shattering glass, the space where Mian and the other two were located changed once again.

The dirty and messy old man's house vanished without a trace before Mian's eyes, replaced by a room that seemed to embody minimalism.

However, before Mian could even regain her footing and recall where she was, a sudden feeling of weightlessness washed over her. The entire room seemed to have been turned upside down, as if it had been flipped 180 degrees.

The floor and ceiling were reversed from the walls on both sides, causing Mian and his group to lose their footing and plummet downwards. Given the original distance between Mian and the walls, such a fall would not have been a problem.

However, at this moment, Mian's team did not only have two able-bodied men, but also an unconscious wounded soldier.

Shirley was falling headlong into the cabinet with its sharp edges, completely unprepared.