Chapter 251
Chapter 251
At that moment, a horde of huge, blue-faced, tusked ghosts came racing wildly from the distance in utter disarray.
It was as if something terrifying were driving them onward. They charged straight into the passage between the two realms.
“Hurry! Once we get out, we’ll be free!”
“The mortal world is full of living flesh. We can feast to our hearts’ content!”
Hua Jiunan’s brows drew tight. He immediately moved to stop them.
It was not because he was some hopeless do-gooder. If these powerful ghosts broke into the human world during the present Age of Dharma Decline, disaster would follow. No one knew how many ordinary people would die at their hands.
Just as Hua Jiunan was about to strike, Eighth Master Chang blocked him with his tail.
“Wait, young master physician!”
“I’m not trying to overstep my place. Let’s watch and see what happens first.”
Hua Jiunan did not understand what Eighth Master Chang meant, but he trusted his friend. He lowered the Copper Coin Sword he had just raised.
The onrushing ghosts howled as they swept past the group. One particularly savage ghost even bared its teeth at Hua Jiunan.
“Stinking Daoist. At least you know what’s good for you!”
“Holy crap! You think you’re hot stuff, talking to my boss like that?”
When Daji got angry, there were consequences… consequences delivered by slingshot…
Before he could fire, however, the ghosts reached the mouth of Two Realms Mountain and stopped dead. It looked as though someone had cast an immobilization spell on them.
Then the mountainsides on either side split open into enormous mouths lined with steel blades. Amid a rapid series of crunches, they devoured the entire horde in the blink of an eye.
Chen Daji stared, dumbfounded.
“Goddamn… good thing we didn’t go over there…”
Eighth Master Chang wiped nonexistent cold sweat from his brow with his tail, shaken by the narrow escape.
“You little bastard, let Eighth Master teach you another trick. When a crowd is fleeing together, never run at the very front. The ‘idiot’ scouting the way dies first!”
Chen Daji nodded repeatedly, promising to remember the lesson.
As they spoke, a boundless reek of blood suddenly flooded the area. A faint floral fragrance drifted through it. The two utterly opposed scents mingled into something even more nauseating.
“Hahaha! Namo Amitabha!”
“Didn’t I say so? The mighty Two Realms Mountain could never be that simple. Sure enough, it has another mechanism!”
An enormously fat man, a mountain of flesh, came floating toward them at high speed. He looked remarkably like Maitreya Mahasattva, the Buddha of the Future among Buddhism’s Buddhas of the Three Ages.
Maitreya Buddha, however, was plump, with a prosperous, jovial, and serene air. This man was all rolls of flab and savage menace.
Beneath him was no golden lotus, but a lotus of flesh formed from three hundred and sixty Living Corpses.
The corpses writhed and wailed in endless torment, struggling to escape the fat monk’s control. Their noise irritated him. After a curse, he snatched up one of them and began to gorge himself.
The corpse screamed hideously. Foul black blood ran from the corners of the monk’s mouth. In moments, he had devoured it completely, bones and all.
Then a new Living Corpse struggled and “grew” from the vacant place.
The fat monk roared with laughter. He cast Hua Jiunan and the others a cold glance, then floated straight to Two Realms Mountain.
“Namo Amitabha!”
“Ghost Elder fell for my diversion. A mere dead thing like you cannot stop me from returning to the mortal world!”
He tore an arm from one of the Living Corpses, tossed it into the air, and began to chant.
“Above Heaven and beneath it, I alone am supreme!”
“When the new Buddha rises, ten thousand Buddhas hide. Demons and monsters, heed my command. Muster the ghostly troops and pacify the realm!”
With a muffled boom, a vast cloud of black mist exploded overhead. More than a hundred ferocious ghosts flickered within it and threw themselves into a frenzied assault on the two mountainsides.
The mountain walls once again became a giant maw bristling with steel blades and snapped at the ghosts.
Moments later, the passage through Two Realms Mountain had suffered some damage, but every attacking ghost had been swallowed.
The fat monk flew into a rage. Pointing into the void, he bellowed, “Luo Menghong, are you still not going to show yourself and help? Once Ghost Elder returns, neither of us will escape!”
As he finished speaking, an old man in black Daoist robes slowly emerged. He held a horsetail whisk in his left hand and a Blood Ruyi Scepter in his right. Though he had the refined air of an immortal, evil seeped from every part of him.
Countless densely packed ghosts appeared with the old Daoist.
“We pay our respects to the Sect Master. Boundless is the Sect Master. Protect us and hasten our return to the True-Void Homeland.”
The old Daoist wore a solemn expression. With a gentle sweep of his whisk, he scattered a sheet of black light. The ghosts beneath it all showed looks of contentment.
“The True-Void Homeland. The Unborn Parents.”
“Buddha Faqing, there is no need for haste. I will help you now.”