Journey to the West: Starting with becoming an apprentice of the Nine Heavens Demon-Subduing Patriar

"On behalf of Heaven".

Lu Shanjun weighed the two words in his hand, then shook his head. "The Tao Te Ching says, 'The way of Heaven benefits without harming.' Your road will first have hundreds of corpses piled up at the crossroads."

"If the sky walked like that, it wouldn't be the sky, it would be you."

The old monk stopped laughing.

"Amitabha."

He wrapped the prayer beads around his wrist and stood up.

"Young benefactor, you carry incense. As a deity, you are most afraid of bloodshed and excessive talking. If you do not enter this temple tonight, you can live for hundreds more years."

He pointed to the roof.

"Tonight it's raining, and the yin energy is at its peak. You are pure yang, and in this rain, you are like a lamp placed in the wind."

Lu Shanjun took off his straw hat and hung it on the broken door frame.

He gripped the stone sword tightly, and it flew three inches from his hand, hovering in mid-air. The sword's spine hummed softly, and a faint dragon's roar could be heard.

"In my furnace, water is on top and fire is below, burning inside my own cavity."

Whether the timing is right or wrong is none of my business.

The last vestige of gentleness in the old monk's eyes vanished.

"Huijue, pinch the beads..."

He hadn't finished speaking.

Because the sword is no longer where it was.

Of the four fragments of the Qingyun Swordplay, he only obtained the Fire and Wind chapters. The Wind chapter describes speed, specifically the sword arriving before the sound even reaches it.

A white rainbow passed under the three young monks' ribs, went into the wall, swirled, folded, and circled back from behind.

The three bodies were still sitting upright by the fire, their heads already in the flames.

The flames rose a foot high.

The middle-aged monk was the first to react. He clasped his hands together, and golden light enveloped his body. The stone slabs beneath his feet exploded, and he lunged towards the temple gate.

The sword light chased after them from behind.

The stone sword had been tempered by the essence of the sun and the fire of thunder. As soon as the blade passed through, the golden light disappeared like snow being thrown into a furnace, with a sizzle.

The old monk's prayer beads had already flown into the air.

Eighteen ebony beads scattered in mid-air, circling around him, each bead gleaming with a point of golden light. As soon as the golden light appeared, a chanting arose, one after another, penetrating straight into the man's Niwan Palace (the area above the head).

Lu Shanjun's soul suddenly trembled.

Methods of captivating the mind.

This string of beads is probably the key to their ability to capture beasts.

The chanting of Buddhist hymns pressed into his sea of ​​consciousness, trying to seize his three souls and seven spirits by the back of his neck.

But what first rang in his mind was not the Buddhist chant, but the sound from the foot of the mountain.

"Please, Tiger God, open your eyes..."

"Grandpa Tiger God, my child started school this year..."

"May the Tiger God protect you, and may your truck cross the border safely!"

One stick of incense after another, one phrase after another, the accumulated power of countless wishes from six years surged up from the dantian, coating the outside of the soul, hot and heavy.

The chanting of Buddhist scriptures crashed against it like raindrops hitting a city wall.

"Huh?" The old monk's expression changed.

The rain suddenly stopped for a moment.

This mountain, this rain, this entire soaked world, all pressed down on the temple. The wind swirled around the beams and pillars, the raindrops twisted into white threads in mid-air, and the earth's energy from the foot of the mountain rose heavily upwards.

The realm of communion borrows the power of heaven and earth. Within a single temple, heaven and earth become his hands and feet.

Lu Shanjun took a step forward.

As soon as he landed, the two fires in the hall poured down on him at the same time, the flames shrinking inwards before suddenly expanding again.

The white threads of rain stung his body, turning into white vapor inch by inch.

The stone sword circled around him once.

Where the sword struck, a gust of wind ignited a fire, and white steam filled the entire hall.

"What kind of swordsmanship is this? How could it break through my Buddhist light...?"

The old monk finally panicked. This sword could summon wind and fire, which was extremely strange. As soon as the Buddha's light gathered, it was pierced with several wounds. He clenched his five fingers together, trying to pinch the mother bead. If the bead shattered, people thousands of miles away would know that something had happened here.

But the sword light arrived first.

"Buzz..."

A flash of white light passed by, and the wrist was severed at the root. The mother bead slipped from the hand and rolled on the ground.

The old monk opened his mouth to shout, but the stone sword turned back and pierced through the back of his neck, emerging from between his eyebrows.

That borrowed power of heaven and earth dissipated faster than a lamp going out. The wind returned to the mountains, the rain returned to the sky, and the water from the eaves dripped onto the bluestone again.

Only two skeletons, five heads, and a corner of a gray robe burning brightly in the fire remained in the hall.

It took less than ten breaths in total.

……

Lu Shanjun sheathed his sword and stood there, mentally reviewing those ten breaths.

He won not because he was more skilled.

If the old monk's communion technique were used in the wilderness, or in his own monastery that he had cultivated for many years, and if he were given enough time to gather the power of heaven and earth, with the Buddha's light being boundless, he would most likely be the one to die tonight.

But no matter how much he borrows, it's still borrowed.

A guest is always a guest.

"Master is right."

He exhaled a long breath, his palms sweating as he gripped the sword.

If the Water Thunder Technique has already achieved minor mastery, then that strike just now was a thunderbolt rolling out from one's own dantian, without needing to travel through these ten breaths.

The next fifteen minutes were quite busy.

He first retrieved the ordination certificates. Each of the five monks had one sewn into their flesh-covered pockets, bearing the seal of Lingshan, sealed with sealing wax, and numbered. He peeled them off one by one, wrapped them in three layers of oilcloth, and carefully kept them close to his body.

He then took the string of ebony beads. A strand of golden-red was coiled on the mother bead, exactly the same as what the wild animals had seen. He wrapped it tightly with a coarse cloth and stuffed it into his bag.

Then came the corpses.

The wound was too clean. It was a neat, straight line; anyone who recognized sword wounds could spot it at a glance.

Lu Shanjun squatted down and stretched out his claws.

Golden fur, black paws, and thick fingers.

He tore open each wound, widened it, pulled out claw marks, and dragged them outside the hall, laying them haphazardly on the rainy ground, as if they had been bitten and pounced on by something.

Rain is the best at washing things. It washes away scents, traces, and smells.

Finally, he returned to the hall, scattered the two fires, and swept the ashes into the mud. As the strong wind rose, his own pure yang energy and the tiger demon's stench dissipated completely.

After doing all that, he looked up.

Behind the clay statue, the mountain god trembled like a leaf in the wind.

"come out."

……

When the mountain god climbed out, his official hat had fallen off, and sparse white hair was stuck to his forehead.

He knelt down and kowtowed repeatedly: "Immortal, this humble god saw nothing and heard nothing..."

"You are the mountain god of this area."

"Yes, yes..."

"How many years has the temple been collapsed?"

The old man paused for a moment, then lowered his voice: "...Thirty-seven years."

"They wanted to exchange 30,000 people for incense offerings, and they sat in your temple, discussing it all night." Lu Shanjun looked at him. "You squatted behind your own statue all night."

The mountain god buried his head deep into the earth.

I will not kill you.

"According to the Heavenly Laws, you are the Mountain God, in charge of the water, soil, birds, and beasts of this mountain range, not the lives and deaths of 30,000 people. Your inaction is not a violation of the law."

Lu Shanjun picked up his sword, walked to the door, and turned around.

"But there's one thing I don't understand."

"What's the point of you playing the role of a god?"

"Mortals have prayed for you, offering incense stick by stick, for three hundred years. Now that the incense has stopped, you cower like this. What are you so afraid of?"

"Afraid of death? God has already died once."

Rain dripped down the edge of his straw hat.

"If you are such a god, it is only right that your temple collapses."

After saying that, he left.

The rain stopped in the latter half of the night. The next morning, a gap opened in the clouds, and the sun shone into the valley, with dampness rising from it.

A figure in a green robe had already crossed the mountain ridge and headed southwest.