81. The Temple Master's Sword, the Eye Demon's Mark

Song Jiu and the City God of Qing'an County had never once dreamed that this would be their fate.

They had prepared thoroughly, thoroughly enough.

A single county City God, Song Jiu holding the seal only on a temporary basis, and eight hundred little gods.

With strength like that, even if they ran into one of the terrible beings known among the aberrations as a Calamity, there would still be a chance of survival.

And yet this God-Burying Tomb was crawling with aberrations, with disasters as common as dogs in the street.

In the sky hung a colossal eye monster, its surface overrun with fleshy tendrils, a Calamity in its own right.

And hidden in the shadows was another Calamity: a black claw with four fingers.

What sort of damned place was this God-Burying Tomb, to draw so many monstrous existences to it?

Most crucial of all, they did not even have a chance to flee.

After that Yellow Calamity gave the order, two black claws emerged from the void and pressed down on the foreheads of Song Jiu and the City God of Qing'an County.

The flame above Song Jiu's head was instantly snuffed out.

As for the City God of Qing'an County, it was as though a bolt of lightning had struck him; his eyes rolled white, and he lost all control of his body at once.

At the same time, the appearance of the owner of those black claws surfaced out of the void.

It was some ten-odd zhang tall.

It had eight heads, each face ferocious and beastlike, with a flush of red on the cheeks but a deep indigo across the brow.

Beneath those heads, its torso was a blue-black hue.

It had no hair; its skin was rough as sandpaper.

Its upper body was broad and powerful, with sixteen arms.

Its lower body, however, consisted of only a single leg, a chain wrapped around the ankle.

"Mangshan Lord!!!"

The instant Song Jiu saw that monster, his expression changed drastically.

As if he knew it.

The Calamity called Mangshan Lord gave Song Jiu a cold glance and said, "A cultivator, and a long-tongued gossip!"

Song Jiu opened his mouth to speak, but the words that came out became a pig-slaughtering scream.

Aaaaaaaah!!!

With a wet rip, Song Jiu's tongue was yanked clean out of his mouth.

Blood gushed forth.

Mangshan Lord held Song Jiu's tongue between its four black fingers and tossed it straight into the mouth of the head directly facing Song Jiu.

The whole scene had happened too suddenly.

Chen Huangpi could not make head or tail of it.

He was thinking that Song Jiu had not even said anything, and Mangshan Lord had already torn out his tongue.

Truly a twisted creature.

At that moment, Yellow Calamity explained to Chen Huangpi, "Great King Yellow Skin, you may not know this, but Mangshan Lord is not one of our fellow natives from the Hundred Thousand Mountains. It is a Lohan from the Western Buddhist realm. In the spring of the fourth year of the Qingli reign, it went to the imperial capital of Great Kang, and for reasons unknown, it suddenly transformed into an aberration."

"The cultivators of the Great Kang capital tried to kill it. Luckily, after it became an aberration, it grew exceedingly terrifying, and only then did it narrowly escape into the Hundred Thousand Mountains to become an outlaw."

"So that's how it is."

Chen Huangpi mused, "It hates cultivators so much and calls him a gossip. Could it be that it once suffered because of its own talkativeness?"

"Haha, that cannot be said, that cannot be said."

Yellow Calamity chuckled awkwardly and refused to continue the topic.

As though this were some sort of taboo.

But Chen Huangpi did not care.

He had long been wary of Yellow Calamity.

Last time, he had seen through at a glance that Yellow Calamity was trying to pull some hearts-and-minds trick.

He simply would not fall for it.

Now he was even more certain that Yellow Calamity was deliberately putting on a show.

It was only trying to maintain that all-seeing, all-arranging image. Otherwise, with so many aberrations and disasters gathered here, and even two Calamities among them, could it possibly be because of strength alone?

Just then, Mangshan Lord came over, dragging Song Jiu and the City God of Qing'an County like two dead dogs.

It had only one leg, so to say it walked would be inaccurate; in truth, it hopped.

Yet its body was not huge, and it hopped with such steady balance that it was even faster than walking.

As for the little gods, they were driven along like a flock of sheep.

Mangshan Lord hopped to Chen Huangpi's front. The eyes on its eight heads only glanced over Chen Huangpi once before it fixed a cold stare on Yellow Calamity. "When do we open the God-Burying Tomb?"

"Right now!"

The instant Yellow Calamity spoke, it immediately commanded the temple to hover above the God-Burying Tomb.

At the same time, the mutated divine statue sprang into action.

Ever since it had arrived, it had completely ignored Chen Huangpi, as if it had already let go of the earlier grudge.

Suddenly, the gaping bloody maw on its chest split open, and out crawled an aberration with a huge head and a body and limbs terribly thin.

The aberration blurted out, "The Great Fierce Evil God has arrived. Why do you not all retreat at once?"

"It is the Big-Headed Aberration!"

Chen Huangpi cried out, "How did it become like this?"

At that, the Big-Headed Aberration turned sharply and looked at Chen Huangpi. In that same familiar tone, it said with some helplessness, "G-Great King Yellow Skin, the Great Fierce Evil God's throat bones were dug out. It swallowed me and made me parasitize its body so I could speak for it."

"Later, when you go to the market, I won't be able to take you..."

Before the words "take you" could be finished, the mutated divine statue roared, startling the Big-Headed Aberration into shutting its mouth at once.

The other aberrations had long since moved aside.

That vast mound of the God-Burying Tomb instantly left a huge open space.

The mutated divine statue stood near this open area, the vertical pupils in its palms opening wide as though searching for an entrance.

Not long after.

It pointed to a certain spot.

That spot was neither dead center nor in any of the cardinal directions.

It was more like a point indicated in passing.

The next second.

"Yes, yes, yes!"

Inside the temple, Yellow Calamity opened its mouth wide and spewed out a mouthful of yellow mud.

Its body had long since solidified.

That mouthful of yellow mud seemed to damage its vital energy; cracks immediately spread across its body.

Within the yellow mud was a trace of golden blood.

As though guided by a will of its own, it lunged straight toward the spot that had been indicated.

Then the yellow mud seemed truly to latch onto something.

A mark had been made.

Yellow Calamity lifted its head and looked at that enormous eye hanging in the dark clouds.

There was no pupil in that eye, nor any white.

It was filled entirely with writhing flesh tendrils.

One glance was enough to make Chen Huangpi's scalp go numb.

Not because he was afraid.

But because he could feel that an incomparably terrifying force was gathering within that eye.

It seemed capable of destroying heaven and earth.

It was even more dreadful than the blood-red beam emitted by the demon eye whose pupil was the red moon of the demon tree and whose iris was the night itself.

What shocked Chen Huangpi even more was that, from the terrible power gathering within that gigantic eye, he could actually sense a strand of an extremely familiar aura.

The writhing flesh tendrils within the eye parted one after another.

Revealing the darkness within, like an abyss.

Then that darkness began to boil.

A thread of brightness, faint beyond measure, emerged from within it. The instant it appeared, the darkness was split apart.

The white thread grew thicker and thicker.

Like a pupil.

No, not a white thread.

It was a beam of light, a sword light.

A sword light so sharp that merely looking at it gave one the illusion that even the soul was being cut open.

"Quick! Close your eyes, now!"

The bronze oil lamp shrieked in terror. "It is the temple master's sword, the sword light of that blade!"

"Contract master, do not look, do not look!"

The voice of the Death-Claiming Ghost was filled with agony.

Chen Huangpi was wearing its skin, and so he was naturally seeing through its eyes.

At this moment, the Death-Claiming Ghost felt that if it kept looking, it would truly be split in two by that sword light.

"Is Master's sword in that eye?"

Chen Huangpi tightly shut his eyes, his thoughts in utter confusion.

Although he had never seen that sword before,

and had only ever heard of the Nine-Distance Bell without ever seeing its form,

the bronze oil lamp had seen it, and held the sword in his master's possession in extremely high regard. If one spoke of killing power, then within the Pure Immortal Temple, that sword was the strongest of all, beyond even the Nine-Distance Bell.

And that evil Buddha had been an existence like an immortal.

Yet it had been beheaded by that sword in a single strike.

This giant eye was terrifying, yes, but it was only a Calamity. Could it possibly be stronger than that evil Buddha?

Chen Huangpi's mind was in disarray.

He very much wanted to open his eyes and see whether his master's sword was inside that giant eye.

But the moment that thought arose, he forcibly crushed it.

"A-Ghost's eyes can't take it. I can't drag it into this."

Chen Huangpi felt helpless.

And then, all at once, his mind rang with a violent boom, and text like birds, fish, and insects surfaced one after another.

It was the complete text of the Yin-Yang Union Divine Cultivation Art.

Like the Five-Viscera Spirit Refining Method, this technique for cultivating the primordial spirit also trained itself automatically, as if it were alive.

It had sensed Chen Huangpi's will.

The Six Yin God, which had yet to fully take shape yet had been forcibly driven several times by Chen Huangpi, suddenly opened its eyes wide.

The next instant.

Chen Huangpi suddenly felt everything around him plunge into darkness.

Then he, too, opened his eyes.

These were not his eyes, and yet they were his eyes.

They were the eyes of the Six Yin God.

Chen Huangpi only felt as though he had acquired an extremely bizarre perspective.

Everything in every direction was laid bare before him.

He looked at his own fleshly body.

His eyes were tightly shut, while golden-black characters floated within his mind.

Within the five viscera, the same characters were hidden even more deeply.

In the kidney temple, the demon tree was still being nourished by black smoke, still being stripped of its power.

Looking upward, one could see Chen Huangpi's liver. Within it, a steady stream of yellow-green vital energy surged forth, cycling day and night, endlessly forging the liver temple.

Within that not-yet-formed liver temple, it seemed as though something existed.

Even with Chen Huangpi now borrowing the Six Yin God's perspective, he could not see that thing in full. He only felt that it was something like black smoke.

"Black smoke grows out of the kidney temple, so naturally something new will also grow in the liver temple..."

Chen Huangpi had a vague realization.

Then he turned his gaze outward from his body.

He saw, at the point where the entrance to the God-Burying Tomb had been indicated, a massive tomb gate. Many eerie characters were carved upon it, like underworld script, yet entirely opposite in nature.

Underworld script was obscure and dark.

These characters, however, were upright and luminous, carrying an indescribable, ineffable sense of transcendence.

Chen Huangpi had never seen such writing before, yet just like with underworld script, he knew its meaning at a glance.

Though there were countless characters, together they conveyed only one idea.

Suppress Immortals.

Suppress Immortals.

Chen Huangpi said in confusion, "The mountain gate of the Pure Immortal Temple turns into the Suppress Immortals Temple at night. Could this God-Burying Tomb have something to do with my temple?"

The God-Burying Tomb was far from Jade-Glory Mountain and the Pure Immortal Temple.

At the very least, it was thousands of li away.

Chen Huangpi had never been here before. The doubts in his heart piled up, but no one could answer them.

He then looked again at the gigantic eye in the sky.

Within it, that sword light had already taken form.

Brilliant and dazzling, it blazed like a sun, radiating its sharp brilliance without restraint.

Even the eyes of the Six Yin God felt a trace of stinging pain.

Chen Huangpi endured the pain and opened his eyes wide, determined to see clearly.

Only when that sunlike, blinding sword light suddenly contracted and slammed toward the tomb gate did he finally make out everything within the giant eye.

His master's sword was not there.

There was only a sword shadow inside.